Black Star Riders have made one of the best pure rock `n roll albums in a long, long time with All Hell Breaks Loose (Nuclear Blast). Made up of the most recent lineup of Thin Lizzy, the band opted to create a new band identity to move forward with new music, while acknowledging the history of the players and the sounds they created. We caught up with drummer Jimmy DeGrasso to talk about joining the band, the changes the band has undergone and the making of the album among several topics.
Congrats on All Hell Breaks Loose! First off, please tell us how you ended up joining the band?
It’s actually pretty simple, and it’s probably the shortest story I will ever tell. You know I played with Damon in Alice Cooper. And he and I have known each other for many years. And I crossed paths over the years with Scott Gorham, crossed paths with Ricky (Warwick), crossed paths with Scott and Marco (Mendoza) and so on. I had seen Scott as few really big shows when Scott came to see Alice Cooper in London. I guess what happened was last October, they had a band meeting last year and Brian Downey didn’t want to tour anymore. It just is what it is. He just didn’t want to do one more tour cycle. They had a meeting to discuss getting a new drummer. So they asked ‘who do we get’. So they were going over names and my name came up. And I think one of the guys brought my name up and Damon says ‘I know him!’. And someone else said ‘I know him! he’s cool!’ And someone else said “Let’s hire him”. (laughs) So there was really very little thought about it. They just knew how I played. Damon said he had my number so he called me. And I was on vacation in Hawaii with my wife and kids. So Damon calls me up, and Damon is a very thorough person, called me up and said ‘Look I have to talk to you about something’. I’m trying to get to the beach with my kids and all this other vacation stuff. So Damon gets on the phone and says ‘We’re gonna do this thing, and we might not call it Thin Lizzy and Brian doesn’t want to tour anymore’. He’s giving me all the details, going into this whole explanation. And I’m like ‘Damon I don’t have time for this. I’m trying to get my kids to the beach.” I said ‘Damon, does it involve me getting on stage with you and the guys from Thin Lizzy, and playing some Thin Lizzy songs? Yes? Okay, then I’m in. I gotta go” It really was that simple. And that was really it. (laughs) In this day and age, it really didn’t require a lot of explanation. It was like what are we gonna do? That’s it. Click. I flew out in January to work on the album. My kids go ‘who was I talking to?’ and I said ‘I think I’m gonna join sort of Thin Lizzy, but not! So let’s go to the beach!’ (laughs) It’s kind of funny because of also been involved where I got called and it’s like “I want you to join our band… blah blah blah blah blah.. can you fly out and play with us? We wanna check you out.” and I say ‘If you want me to join the band and check me out, how many guys are you checking out?” And they say ‘we are looking at twenty-five drummers’, and I say ‘Oh god! Forget it! Don’t even waste my time’. It’s not rocket science at this point. Just find the guy you like, if you like the way he plays, and just play with him. Find a buddy of yours. Listen to their record you like, find the guy and just call him. I have seen so much drama go into hired band members. Just find the guy you like, call the guy and be done with it.
Was it easy to come in to a situation where you had some history with some of the guys, already, as opposed to a hired gun situation?
There is a reason why there’s a handful of guys who continuously work. They bring their A-game, they have a good attitude, they want to work, they have a sense of humor and they love to tour. If you were gonna get a new guitar player you say ‘Who can I think of who is going to be fun to ride on a bus with and tour the world for the next eight months? Who is going to be fun to hang out with on days off? Who is going to be a pain in the ass? Instead of wondering if that guy was in Guitar Player last month? Who gives a shit? You have to find the guy who is fun to hang out with and who brings in a positive vibe and is just fun to hang out with.
How much of All Hell Breaks Loose was written when you joined the band?
The bulk of it was done. I started getting some demos right away. They had some stuff demoed with Brian. They literally had some really rough demos on acoustic guitars, done with tape recorders. They sent it over and I was just sifting through it. The funniest thing is the single ‘Bound For Glory’ was the most undone demo we had done. Even in L.A. as late as January 4th, the song was not done. Damon came in and said he had this riff he was messing with and didn’t know how it was gonna work out. We just started working on a chorus for it. And Ricky had some lyrics sketched out, for the most part, but it was very rough. Literally we wrote that in like a day! (laughs) And then it became the first single! It’s really interesting how they had some song ideas that they were sitting on for two years that didn’t make the record, and this song was written in a day and became the first single. You never can tell. That is why you always keep writing, right up until you go into the studio to record your album
What was it like to work with Kevin Shirley? I’ve heard he can be pretty funny and eccentric.
Kevin is great. He’s really low key. I had heard a lot of that stuff too, so I was really excited to work with him. The thing about Kevin is he really gets music and the heritage of it. He understands the modern sounds too and the vintage sounds. He really knows the sound of things, going back from the 50s and 60s. He is not one of these producers who takes a band and tries to shape and remold them to what he wants to do. But I think he is really great at getting the best sound out of a band. He works really fast and is just really fun. Kevin is a great musician himself. I don’t think we ever had a bad day. We recorded in what… two and a half weeks and mixed in another week? When you make a record you sometimes have many moments where you… you always have rough spots making records. There is always a moment making a record where people don’t agree, and don’t get along, and there is some kind of pissing match. And with this one, we had none of that, it was great. I hope we can do the next one with him. I thought he was great!
So the next BSR record is already being planned?
Oh sure! As we were finishing the record, we were already talking about when we will do the next record next year, and even how we will do the next one. I’d like to do it even faster, if possible. In the old days you would go in at nine, ten in the morning and go all night. That was the norm. And with us we’d go in at 12 noon and finish a five. We did even more work, because we were used to working all day. And I’m the kind of guy who can go all day and night, likes to keep working. I want to stay in there. We just kind of had fun and it just kind of happened. The whole thing was positive and I hope we can do the next one with him, with all the stuff we both have coming up. I’d like to get in there next year and make a new record really quick. There is all sorts of chatter going on about what we are going to do next, so we’ll see what happens.
It’s cool to hear your signature playing on songs like the intro to ‘Bound for Glory’, the fills in ‘Bloodshot’, ‘Valley of Stones’ and others. Was it important to you to keep your own drumming style and identity intact on these songs?
Wow! First of all that is really observant of you. Most writers have no freaking idea about the music and the thought that goes behind it. Of course, I put little or no thought into creating an identity, because if you think about creating your identity, you have already lost the game. My ego doesn’t depend on people noticing me, so I can get into drum magazines. I honestly don’t care about any of that stuff. I grew up a fan of Brian and we have some of the same lineage. A lot of songs with Thin Lizzy are ‘blues based swing’. A lot of bands don’t do that. There are only a few bands that do that. It was almost like rock/jazz when I heard that. You never heard that kind of stuff on the radio. Even ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, when I first heard it as a kid, it was almost like a jazz track. There was early Aerosmith and they used to do a little bit of that, but in a different vein. It was more important for me to make the band sound good. Brian was more of a blues based drummer. And I come from more of a jazz, big band style of drumming. I did a lot of blues shuffle drums when I was coming up in Y&T in the 80s and 90s too. So I’m kind of familiar with that style.
I interviewed Ricky a while back and he spoke about wanting to be genuine, to pay tribute to ‘Phylo’, and not be considered just a cover band. What can fans expect from the live show from Black Star Riders set list wise?
It’s been a really twisty course the last years for those guys. Because they had all of this new material. By their own admission they had a bunch of guys from the original band. And this is new material that wasn’t made with Phil. It’s really unique. It’s not negative But at the same time, people want to hear the Thin Lizzy material. On another hand you have these guys who were in the original band. And it’s tough because what do you do? So many of these scenarios came across the table. And the conclusion was to change the name, but still play the Lizzy songs. They have this great music and fans want to hear it. And I want to play it! Damon grew up a huge Thin Lizzy fan, and Damon is a great songwriter. So when he went to write songs with Scott and Ricky, they didn’t try to mimic anything, but it’s nice to write new songs in the vein of that material. It just pushed them directionally, so that they were writing every day in the vein that they were playing every day. I have heard different comments from people, that listened to the record and said… it sounds like probably what the next Thin Lizzy record (with Phil) could have sounded like. And there was no intent to do that. We were just writing songs. There was no pressure to write another ‘Chinatown’ or to sit down and write another ‘Bad Reputation’. None at all. There were a few songs, that didn’t sound anything like Thin Lizzy. I would be sitting in the control room with Kevin, and Damon would be tracking some leads with Gorham. And I would say ‘Damn!, that sounds like Thin Lizzy!’ And Scott isn’t like that. I think sometimes that Scott doesn’t want to sound that way. But whenever Scott plugs in a guitar, it sounds like Thin Lizzy. If he plugs in you ‘Oh it’s Scott Gorham.’ It’s the same thing with Jimmy Page, it sounds like Led Zeppelin. So it’s people really bizarre. So they hear things and say ‘wow that’s really reminiscent’. That could have been on an old record. It was so odd. It’s just really odd how all the stars lined up for us, and it just worked.
What do you guys have lined up for touring?
Plans are open right now. We’re heading over to Europe in a couple of days, the big festivals. We are hitting Europe really hard beginning in October. We have offers in for January and February of next year, have a headline tour booked for October in Europe, and tickets are on sale for that now. We’re gonna wait and see for the next few months. We’re getting the record out now. I wish we could have gotten it out in February, but it is what it is. And as far as the set list, I was just talking this over with Ricky last night, and I think it’s gonna be 50/50. And the record is so good; I think it should continue to be 50/50. BSR-Thin Lizzy, BSR- BSR-Thin Lizzy-Thin Lizzy-BSR. I have a feeling what is going to happen, if we don’t get on a package tour for the fall in the states, we’ll just do our own headline tour in House of Blues type of places.
Keith (Keefy) Chachkes