Asked to take a 10,000-foot view of L.A. Guns’ 40-plus-year career, guitarist/founder Tracii Guns offered a succinct description:
“What a cluster(expletive),” he said with a laugh.
Founded in 1983, the sleaze rock band has seen dozens of members (including Axl Rose), dueling lineups at times and a lifetime of drama. But the current version, which includes Guns and classic lineup singer Phil Lewis, appears to be locked in and consistently producing new music. L.A. Guns’ newest release, “Leopard Skin,” will drop on April 4, marking their fifth album in the past eight years. The first single, “Taste It,” released in February, with their second single, “Lucky Mother(expletive),” just released Thursday.
The new album is decidedly less metal than their past few efforts, instead going into more funky, classic rock territory.
“A lot of James Gang kind of stuff, the weird James Gang stuff that I listen to. And then a lot of the James Gang stuff isn’t real song-y. So I was able to take some of those vibes, those directions and compress them into more of a song format,” Guns said. “Because that’s the thing with Joe Walsh back then: he played a lot of those like Keith Richards, Angus Young kind of riffs before those guys did. And it’s great having a big encyclopedia to draw from, but yeah, I mean, you can really hear so many influences on this record.
“It’s definitely not a metal record, that’s for sure. I mean, even on the heaviest song, ‘The Grinder,’ I’m just playing slide guitar all the way through it. It’s not even bar chords. That was intentional. I wanted to see if I could record music that had that same kind of impact without the big massive guitars. But if anybody’s worried, live, I can’t play without the big massive guitar sounds. Those are always there.”
Following a stint on the Monster of Rock cruise from March 10-15, L.A. Guns will open their tour on April 22 with a show at Jergel’s Rhythm Cafe in Warrendale, with Red Reign, The Cheats and Xander Demos Band opening.
In a call Monday from “right under the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles,” Guns discussed writing the “Leopard Skin” album, why it’s important to keep making new music and a long-delayed documentary:
With this new album, what was the songwriting approach?
Pressure. The time we get, not a release date, but a turn-in date for a record, about four months before that date, I panic. And then I sit in in my studio and I stare for a couple hours and I think, ‘What the hell am I gonna do?’ And then I just start playing guitar and come up with something and then make a little arrangement around it. Then I’ll send that to Adam Hamilton, who’s our studio drummer, and then he’ll record a drum track for me and then that’ll come back. And that’s really how it starts. It starts like, ‘Is this good? Does this feel good? Is this what I wanna be doing?’ And then, nine out of 10 times it is, because that’s the mood I’m in at the time.
And then just let it flourish all the way down the line. But I really feel like that pressure of a deadline and kind of panicking really pushes me subconsciously to have things come through. It opens up the floodgate. Once I’m two songs in, the floodgate’s really open. … But for this one, I was really happy, which doesn’t happen all the time. I was really in a good mood and listening to a lot of different stuff. I always listen to early ’70s stuff and late ’60s stuff, but a little bit more disco and funk and soul crept into what I was listening to. And I think it shows in the writing, if not a little bit, it definitely sparks some different directions here and there. And I would send the songs to the guys and they were just like, ‘Yeah man, this is happening.’ Because it’s mostly really upbeat, fun stuff. I mean, there’s a couple of suicidal things on there, but for the most part, it’s pretty upbeat.
Does this album showcase the versatility of the band?
Definitely. The one thing that always blows me away is when Johnny (Martin), our bass player, comes in to do his tracks. He always really adds something on his bass guitar, which I can’t say for everybody I’ve ever played with. A lot of guys come in and they play the song. He really brings the rhythm section to another level where I’m sitting there tracking him, and he just does stuff that — I hate the term blows my mind — but just something I would never have thought of. Just like, ‘Whoa, yeah, yeah, do that. That’s great.’
We’re always trying to showcase the musicality of the players in the band. That’s really important to me. I’m a little bit of one of those guys. But songs come first, and cohesive songwriting really comes first, and no matter what I write, Phil (Lewis is) going to sing it and it’s going to sound like L.A. Guns. So I definitely have that confidence to not put any boundaries on the music writing. That doesn’t mean we’re going to come out with an Enya record anytime soon. But definitely keep it rock ‘n’ roll. Any form of rock ‘n’ roll is OK with L.A. Guns.
What keeps you motivated to keep making new music when a lot of bands from your era would just be happy to rest on their laurels?
Well, those other people have a life, obviously. (laughs) Me, creating music, that is my life. That’s what I do. So I would be very unhappy if that stopped. That would crush my soul, for sure. When I’m not writing and recording, I’m still playing and I’m still creating. So it’s either that or working on hot rods, and hot rods are bad for my fingers. So probably more guitar playing these days.
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How does the mentality or the show change as a headliner vs. as a support act, like you were last year here with KK’s Priest?
We kind of have three formulas, and the set depends on how long the opening set is. Sometimes they’re 45 minutes, sometimes they’re an hour. And when you get the 45-minute set, you really get mostly just the old stuff, because we obviously don’t want to disappoint anybody that’s paying money to hear their favorites live.
And then when we get the extra 15, pop a couple new ones in with the old ones. Then on a full headliners (show), anything goes. We try to keep it under 90 minutes because people start getting frazzled, including us, we’re not exactly spring chickens. We really try to get to the songs, because I have a tendency to just kind of noodle on guitar all night. So I try to limit that these days, if everybody’s kind of staring at me from the side of the stage, like, let’s go. (laughs)
Is the documentary still in the works? Did that ever come out?
No, I don’t know what the deal is with that. When people do documentaries about somebody, they kind of do their own thing and I did interview for it. The guy, Fabien (Martorell) is his name, a French guy, really really good filmmaker actually, and he interviewed a bunch of people that I’ve worked with, I’ve been friends with years, but I think he had some really unrealistic high hopes out of the gate. He thought he was gonna sell the documentary. I don’t really know for sure. But the company that I did the Randy Rhodes documentary with, they offered to buy the documentary off the guy and the guy wouldn’t sell it, so I really don’t know. A lot of these things that musicians seem to be involved with, we really aren’t. It’s a weird thing.