Jack
Starr has been churning out metal since his days with Virgin Steele in the 80s
and on into bands like his Burning Starr project. I had never paid much attention
to the Virgin Steele material, but Jack’s new project, Guardians of the Flame,
was pleasantly surprising in that it is a no-bullshit ripping metal album. On
Under a Savage Sky, the vocals wail, the riffs crunch, and Jack’s soloing scorches.
When it comes right down to it, that’s what it’s all about. I had a string of
bad luck with a couple of interviews due to a bad recorder-to-phone connection,
resulting in my first attempt at an interview with Jack being scrapped because
I simply couldn’t hear through the static. Jack was more than happy to let me
conduct the interview a week later and it probably turned out better than the
first one. We spent a lot of time discussing guitar playing, as well as the
new album. Here’s what Jack had to say. Hi Jack.
[After some small talk, we discuss the CD review - Scott]. Hey, your
review was very cool by the way; I really dug it. I gotta say this while my
girlfriend is still in the room. [In the background, I hear “Sharon, the only
song that he really didn’t like is “Sharon of the Woods.” Tell him about the
chorus in “Sharon…” - Sharon now gets on the phone]. Ok, the chorus in “Sharon…”
was not written by Jack. The guys changed it and I even said to him, I like
the original chorus. The original chorus is very haunting and very much in keeping
with the rest of the songs.
Cool, I don’t feel so bad now [Laughs].
[Sharon says] You were totally, totally right.
It’s a decent tune, but the chorus really got on my nerves.
[Sharon says] You know what? The chorus got on my nerves too. The original was
really beautiful. The original was haunting; it was nice.
[Jack gets back on the phone] It was really weird because I thought they were
changing the song for the better. I always give people the benefit of the doubt;
you know, maybe it’s better. And she told me it’s not better, it’s worse. It’s
like I had a definite vision for that song and the whole concept was it was
supposed to be eerie, kind of otherworldly.
Yeah, I wanted to cover that song as well in the interview;
there were several things in the first interview that I found interesting. Anyway,
I must admit that I was never a big Virgin Steele fan, but I like your Guardians
of the Flame project quite a lot. Have you gotten this kind of feedback from
others?
Well, I can tell you that it’s exciting and direct; that’s exactly the kind
of feedback we’ve been getting from people, including a lot of people who came
right out and said they weren’t big Virgin Steele fans, but they dug this. The
distinction that I wanted to make is that what’s out there now claiming to be
Virgin Steele is really just a Dave Defeis solo project. He writes all the music,
he arranges everything. For the guitar player, he even writes out his solos;
that’s how Dave is. So I said something one time to Dave, like a year or two
ago, when we were still talking. I said, Dave, you’re taking this control freak
thing above and beyond; you’re even writing the guitar player’s solos. He said
something snippy to me, to the effect of, “well, that’s because he [guitar player]
is talented enough to be able to play what I write.” [Laughs]. The inference
was… I don’t read and write music. The inference was that if you don’t read
and write music, then you’re an inferior musician. But you know what? I have
two words for Dave Defeis: Jimi Hendrix. He didn’t read and write music, and
I could go on and on: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, George Harrison
of the Beatles… That doesn’t mean shit. It doesn’t sound like Virgin Steele
because it is a new Virgin Steele and the old Virgin Steele doesn’t really exist.
The thing that a lot people identify Virgin Steele with, it certainly doesn’t
sound like that. They’re very predictable, artsy fartsy I guess. But I don’t
even want to dwell on Dave. I appreciate you noticing it, that’s all.
I thought your guitar work in particular was excellent.
Do you believe this is the best performance of your career?
Yeah, I would say it is my best guitar work that I’ve ever done with one possible
exception. I did a very little known album in 1990 called A Minor Disturbance.
That was an all-instrumental album. I spent a year-and-a-half of my life making
the album, so it came out great. Unfortunately, we just really didn’t have good
distribution. Important Records said they were going to distribute it and they
did. My album came out the same week as the Steve Vai album and they decided
to push the Steve Vai album and my album got put on the back burner. What was
happening was that all their sales people, when they were calling stores, were
kind of pushing the Steve Vai album and not pushing my album. In retrospect,
and I say this with all humility, my instrumental album holds up even better
than the Steve Vai album that came out the same week. It’s getting re-released
in 2003 in Brazil on a label called Front Line Rock. It was a really good album.
I don’t know, maybe it was a little ahead of its time. It was a guitar album,
but it wasn’t a guitar album in the sense of, “look at me, look how fast I can
play.” It was more a guitar album in the sense of “take these songs and feel
something.”
Something that the non-musician could also appreciate.
Thank you. That’s exactly what I was trying to go for. But then 13 years later…let’s
move up to 2003, I started to recapture that kind of intensity and now it’s
with me for good. I can feel it. I can’t go back now. I just feel like I made
a break-through in my playing. I’ll never go back and play without that kind
of fire. It’s like a cry of desperation. I play almost like I have to, like
someone that’s crying out. Listen to me, I can play [Laughs]. It’s kind of like
I’m pissed off in a way, like I didn’t get my dessert. Ritchie Blackmore said
this about me: “Jack Starr, that’s the boy that didn’t get his ice cream.” At
first, when I heard he said that, I was pissed off at him. Then I thought about
it and realized that it was actually a compliment.
When and where did he say that?
He said that in the year 1989. We were actually playing a show for one night
and my bass player comes up to me before we went on and gives me an ice cream
on stage. He walks up to me and gives me an ice cream. My bass player’s name
was Freebase, but that was his nickname. His real name was William Fairchild.
I had a band called Burning Starr. We had a couple of albums out. Anyway, he
comes up on stage and I’m like, “why are you giving me this ice cream?” He goes,
“because Ritchie Blackmore said you never got your ice cream, so here’s your
ice cream.” Strange story, isn’t it?
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Actually,
when you mentioned Steve Vai earlier, it made me think of the three-guitarist
tour with Vai, Malmsteen, and Joe Satriani.
I put guitar players in two categories: the heartless technicians and the
guys who play with feeling. The guys who play with feeling are not on that
tour. The guys who play with feeling are Gary Moore, Michael Schenker, Stevie
Ray Vaughn, B.B. King, Jack Starr, Ulrich Roth, and people like that. The
heartless technicians are the guys who rattle off scales - “look at me, I’m
wonderful, I’m great.”
Like the Myxolydian Scale.
[Laughs] Yeah, like the Myxolydian scale and I don’t even know what it is
[the term was used in a press release describing Jack Starr’s playing style
- Scott]. I don’t want to come off like I’m putting these guys down because
they can do things that I can’t do. I’ve actually tried to do what they do.
I’ve actually tried to play a million notes per minute. I come close to doing
it, but not to the extent of some of these guys. Why did I try doing it even?
I don’t know, when I first heard this Yngwie guy and he plays like a trillion
notes per second - oh, I want to be able to do that. I tried and tried, but
it’s not me. There are some things that I do, even on this new album, that
are actually very technical and very flashy. I have a blues background. I
grew up with Clapton and people like that. |
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What
category would you put Eddie Van Halen in?
That is a really great question. He’s definitely not a heartless technician.
He plays with feeling and he also has a blues background. I’ll give you a
perfect example. I always knew I liked Eddie Van Halen, but I never realized
how much I liked him. One day I’m reading Guitar Player magazine and there’s
an advertisement for Kramer guitars. The advertisement is supposed to be a
guy sitting in his room, kind of like the bedroom you have when you’re a kid
- you’ve got your record player, your bed, your little amp by the side of
the bed. Eddie is portraying the teenage kid that is sitting on his bed with
his favorite albums. The weird thing is I looked at the albums on the bed
in the advertisement and they were all my favorite albums. I realized right
then that Eddie picked those albums out; it was like Jeff Beck’s Truth, Johnny
Winter, Cream, and the first Jimi Hendrix. It was like he listened to the
same crap I listened to. To make a long story short, you can hear the feeling
in Eddie’s playing. Steve Vai, honestly speaking, I’ve never heard anything
he’s done that I’ve liked. He ruined Whitesnake. The English have a saying
when something is so unbelievably bad they call it a cock up. It was just
a cock up, that album with Whitesnake. I don’t know what was in David Coverdale’s
brain. I guess it’s that Steve Vai is a reasonably good-looking guy, he’s
got long hair, and he just looked like he would fit the bill. It was like,
ok, this guy looks good, he can play great, and he can play flashy. But that’s
not enough. The guy that they had, Mick Moody, who looked like Steve Vai’s
father and who was overweight and everything else, and who could play, not
flashy but with feeling. Then the other guys who played on the record with
“In the Still of the Night” or whatever it was, those guys were great. I heard
so many different accounts of who played on that record.
What about Tony MacAlpine?
It’s the same thing with Tony, maybe a little bit more feeling, I don’t know.
It’s all the triplets, all the arpeggios. I met Yngwie once. I used to have
a friend who was a record producer. He produced Appetite for Destruction and
the Yngwie album, Odyssey. One day Yngwie was over at his house and I went
over there. We were hanging out for a couple of hours. Yngwie played me some
stuff on the guitar. I told him, I think you’re a great player, but I don’t
really like that style of playing, I’m more into blues. He says, man I love
blues, so he plays some blues. He proceeded to sit down and play some blues
and I have to honestly say it was brilliant. Yngwie can play his ass off and
play this stuff, but for whatever reason, I haven’t really heard it on his
records. Whereas, I heard Steve Vai attempting to play blues on many things
and he can’t overcome his technique. He’s a prisoner of his technique. It’s
like a filmmaker who is really knowledgeable in all these different camera
angles, but the movie becomes a showcase for his technique, rather than a
showcase for his filmmaking.
Let’s jump into the album. You’ve known some of the
players on Guardians of the Flame - drummer Joe Hasselvender and bassist Ned
Meloni, both of Burning Starr - since 1984. Apparently, you discussed a project
like this one with them, but didn’t actually move forward with it until 18
years later.
Joe was in Raven. The other guy, Ned, was in Burning Starr with me, as was
Joe. The other guy, Shmoulik Avigal, was in a band called Picture. They’ve
all been around the block. Joe has done a lot of stuff. He was in a band called
Pentagram. He’s done a lot of good stuff. But that doesn’t mean anything;
everybody has done a lot of good stuff. The only thing that matters is if
you’re good now. [Laughing] You know what I mean? It’s like; ok I did this
in the past, so therefore buy my album.
So you, Joe, and Ned got together and starting talking
about doing this project.
Exactly. I called them up and said listen guys, I want to get back into metal,
I want to do an album and I don’t want it to be really slick and overproduced
and glossy. I just want it to be fun. Can we just go in there and have fun?
To quote Robert Plant, “does anybody remember laughter?” They said, yeah,
we’re up for that. We got together and did about a month of pre-production.
I said it’s more important for us to be able to play this stuff live than
for us to be able to cheat and create a good album that’s something that doesn’t
really exist. They agreed with me. Let’s just keep playing, let’s just hang
out in Florida, and let’s just play like we actually are a band…again. We
had been a band. If that can happen, then we should make an album. If it can’t
happen, then we really shouldn’t. That was pretty much the game plan. Today,
unfortunately, people make albums and they do it with studio trickery, program
this, and program that.
Everybody’s using Pro-Tools.
Yeah, using Pro-Tools. Let’s cut this part out over here, let’s put this part
over here… It just gets ridiculous. This is probably - and I don’t want to
sound pretentious - one of the most honest metal records every recorded. Nine-five
percent of this album is totally live. If we had wanted to cheat, we could
have put a microphone in front of each song and basically just made it seem
like a live performance. Sometimes I added a rhythm guitar, but everything
else, all the leads, were like one take.
Yeah, it’s got that feeling like you guys just plugged
in and went for it.
Yeah, we totally did. But that’s the way these guys are. This gets back to
what we were saying before. We’re not trying to do Dream Theater here; we
don’t even like Dream Theater [Laughs]. So why would we try to be them? This
is the opposite of that kind of stuff. This is the kind of stuff they did
in the 70s. It’s bizarre. It’s almost like Ted Nugent meets whatever.
There is definitely some gonzo guitar going on.
Well, I tell ya, I love Ted Nugent. Ted Nugent can do no wrong as far as I’m
concerned.
At least the 70s stuff, but yeah.
Well, definitely. When I talk about Ted Nugent, that’s what I’m referring
to. In fact, I don’t even know what he did in the 90s. You know what it is?
Sometimes you like something so much you don’t want it to be ruined by hearing
what it turns into. In the case of my album, at least people don’t have that
attitude about me because I’d be screwed [Laughs]. Let’s not listen to Jack
because we like what he did in 1984. Luckily, what’s happening is a lot of
people are very curious about it. The album has got a life of its own.
Like I was saying, I was pleasantly surprised because of the Virgin Steele
thing, but as soon as I heard the album I forgot about that and I thought,
this is just a kick ass metal album.
Yeah, I appreciate the compliment. This could have been Virgin Steele III.
I probably didn’t learn a new riff since 1984. I probably didn’t learn one
new thing on the guitar and I’m proud of it. The beauty of it is I’m like
a primitive painter; I don’t even know any better. And I’m not even ashamed
of that. I guess some people would say, how could you say that, 20 years went
by and you didn’t learn anything [Laughs]. But it’s the truth. I don’t even
care.
You snagged Shmoulik Avigal after hearing his band Picture.
Tell me about how you found this guy. You basically just called him up and
said you wanted him to sing on your album.
Yeah, it’s the truth. I heard him initially in 1985 in his band Picture. I
thought he sounded really great and I contacted him. Then we lost track of
each other. He ended up coming to America after I contacted him, but he came
two years later and I had already found a singer. So when he came, I recommended
him to some people and he stayed in America. When it came time to do this
album, I said wouldn’t it be great if I could find this guy again and see
what he’s up to. He hadn’t done much in a really long time. He still had the
hunger to do it, so it was cool. You
said he’s way out in Coffeyville, Kansas?
Yeah, he’s out in the middle of nowhere. |
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What
the hell is he doing out there?
You know, I don’t know. I guess life is very strange like that. People go
off and they do what they do. I’m as curious as you are, but we all find happiness
where we find it. There
are more than a few moments on the album where Shmoulik sounds a good deal
like Ronnie James Dio.
Yeah, and that’s cool. It’s a good place to be compared to.
You use some interesting sound textures on the title
track of Under a Savage Sky. To quote the press release, it “owes much to
the Celtic sounds and mixolydian scales of the Emerald Isles.” As we discussed,
neither of us even know what a mixolydian scale is.
Well, I don’t know what it is. This is what I think it is. Because it has
the word “mix” in it that maybe it’s a mixture of minor and major. Maybe
there are transitional notes in between the two scales. Maybe that’s what
it is. There is only one person that I know that could really answer that
correctly and that would be Joe Stump. Do you have is number?
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I
interviewed him several months ago, but I don’t have his number any longer.
If I give you his number, will you call him and ask him what it is. Just say
Jack and I want to know what it is [Laughs].
Actually,
I could e-mail him.
On the interview, we’ll have what I think it is and then we’ll have what it
really is. [I e-mailed Joe and here’s what he had to say: “Mixolydian is a bluesier
version of the major scale and it’s not all that commonly used in metal (too
happy sounding). Jack usually uses darker minor scales.” - Scott]. By the way,
Joe is a really good player. Joe is a good guy and he deserves a lot more success
than he’s getting. I really believe that. But you know, this business, nobody
knows why things happen the way they do. I know there are a lot of very deserving
people out there that have not even had half the success that I’ve had, and
I’m thinking of myself as not having the success that I deserve. It’s just a
weird business.
What’s
strange to me is that somebody who wrote the press release must have known what
a mixolydian scale is, yet you don’t know what it is.
That’s exactly what I was saying in the last interview - because we’re doing
these interviews every week, right? [Laughs]. Just a little aside there. Anyway,
in the last interview, I gave you this really weird example. I’ve been playing
guitar for like 30 years, so now you can figure out that I’ve hit the big 4-0,
which is cool with me because I’m happy being that age that I’m at and still
doing it. I met this guy and it turned out he was a classical music promoter,
but they don’t call themselves promoters in the world of classical music. They
call themselves impresarios. He was listening to one of my metal albums and
he just went on and on - “your use of the mixolydian here was brilliant and
I especially loved your harmonic minor reference in the outro of this song over
here…so it’s obvious Jack that you’ve studied classical music.” I looked at
him and said I don’t even know what you’re talking about [Laughs]. I’ve never
studied classical music; this is all trial and error. I’m basically like the
monkey that sat at the typewriter for a hundred years and started writing Shakespeare.
I’ve been playing so long. I’ve tried all the different scales and whatever
sounds good to me I’ve used. As it turns out, the stuff that I came upon is
all technical stuff. I’m a very technical player, even though I don’t know what
I’m doing. So it’s almost a contradiction.
Do
you have a favorite song on the album?
My favorite song on the album is “Conspiratos Sanctos.” I like the minor scale
on that and I also like the lyrics. Lyrics are important to me as well. It’s
about conspiracies and how little we know in terms of there being powers greater
than us. There are entities that we know nothing about. Sometimes they act in
our interest and sometimes they act against our interest. There is an organization
called Skull and Bones. Many of our presidents in the U.S. belonged to that,
have belonged, and still belong. It’s a secret organization. We don’t know what
their goals are; we don’t know what their by-laws are… We can only assume that
it’s a good organization because some of our presidents have come from that.
That song addresses that. In the liner notes on the album, I mention that it’s
been 40 years and we still don’t know who killed John F. Kennedy. We have no
idea. Why I chose to use the Latin terminology for the title is that the church
itself is very, very secretive, the Catholic Church. They’re very secretive
and very powerful. I thought it was a good subject matter for a song.
The
instrumental, “Anthem for the Nations,” is a cool track. Did that start out
as an instrumental?
That definitely started off as an instrumental. I wanted to create an anthem,
like a majestic kind of thing. It sounds kind of like a national anthem, so
I said it couldn’t be a national anthem because they’re all taken. I’m a believer
in the fact that we should all be proud of our countries naturally, but we should
also be proud and understand that we should think globally as well as nationally.
Once we start doing that we’ll start having a different mindset on a lot of
different things.
Crash
Music released the album in the States.
They’ve been doing a great job so far. I’m very, very happy that they’ve taken
the ball and are running with it. I really didn’t even expect the U.S. release
for this. We kind of made the album without the thought that this was ever going
to get released in America. I’m happy too because Crash is really a very cutting
edge kind of label. They’ve actually got some really great bands in the new
[not “nu”] metal genre, so I like the fact that the people at Crash accepted
this record and understood and believed in it for what it is, even though it
doesn’t follow the cookie-cutter new metal kind of thing at all. They recognized
that it still had validity even for an 18-year old kid that grew up with Korn
or Limp Bizkit or whatever. They can dig this because the common denominator
in all my albums, especially this album, or an album by the Sex Pistols or Disturbed
is basically this: intensity. Intensity is intensity. You’re either making honest
music or you’re not. If you’re not making honest music, it doesn’t matter what
production values you have or how modern it sounds, it’s still not gonna be
honest.
You
can’t bullshit a metal fan anyway.
Yeah, you hit the nail right on the head, man. They know.
You
had mentioned to me earlier in an e-mail that you just returned from doing some
pre-production demos with Joey of Manowar and that you are exploring the possibility
of recording for his production company, Magic Circle. Tell me more.
What’s going on with Joey is basically this. We had gotten together. We got
together about three times already for like a week at a time. We’re up to 20
songs now. There is a very good chance that I’m going to sign with his production
company. I can’t say for sure because it hasn’t happened yet and I’m weighing
it. I like Joey and I like where he’s coming from.
What’s
up next for Jack Starr?
My goal is to get an album out before this summer. I started working on the
new album three months ago. I’ve been doing pre-production on it for like three
months now.
So
you’re not going to mellow out or anything, are you?
Oh, this album will be considerably heavier. It’s going to be a great album.
I feel like I have a lot of prove. I don’t know why I feel like that, but I
do and I think it’s probably a good thing. I don’t want to come off cocky. It’s
nothing to be cocky about; this is my life. This is what I do, so fuck it, let
me do it. I’m not saying I’m doing this better than anyone else, but I’m doing
this from the heart.
