Brian Robertson's debut album as a solo artist, "Diamonds And Dirt", has been decades in the making. Robbo, as many of his fans call him, has played in great bands such as Thin Lizzy, Wild Horses, Motörhead and Frankie Miller's band. On "Diamonds And Dirt" Robbo was joined by vocalist Leif Sundin (Michael Schenker Group), background singer Liny Wood, drummer Ian Haugland (Europe) and bassist Nalley Pahlsson (Treat). Recently Sleaze Roxx had an opportunity to talk with Robbo about his body of work, his new album "Diamonds And Dirt", his time in Motörhead, his thoughts on the resurrection of Thin Lizzy and the passing of his friend Gary Moore. This is a good one... enjoy.
Sleaze Roxx: Brian, you will be releasing the first solo effort of your career, "Diamonds And Dirt", later this month. What's taken so long in getting a solo effort out?
Brian Robertson: Well, after Thin Lizzy I played in Wild Horses and a lot of my original material went into those two albums. Then after that, as you know, I went on to play with Motörhead and we recorded "Another Perfect Day" which I wrote most of the music for. After Motörhead I went on to work with Frankie Miller for 10-15 years. I've been so busy working on other people's stuff that I didn't have time to concentrate on an album of my own.
It wasn't until we found a bag of cassette tape demos that I had been working on over the years. We drove to England to pick up all of my recording equipment and bring it back to Stockholm (Sweden). I came across a plastic bag that wasn't marked, but they were obviously demos. I stayed in England, but my friend Soren Lindberg was driving back through five countries so I gave the bag to him to listen to the tapes on his trip back. I thought, if nothing else, it would help break the journey up a bit. Soren got about half way through the trip when he called me from Denmark at some truck stop. He said, "Hey there's some really great shit on here." The next thing I know he's playing some of the tapes through his mobile phone and I started to remember some of the songs. Once I got back to Stockholm Soren and I sat down and listened to the tapes together. It was his idea to do the album... not mine. A lot of the stuff on the demos was written on keyboards, the next thing I needed to do was to transpose it onto guitar. So that's how it all started... you can credit Mr. Lindberg -- it's all his fault (laughs)!!
Sleaze Roxx: How far back did these demos date back?
Brian Robertson: They date back to right after Thin Lizzy and there were a couple that were from before I joined. Then there was stuff that went back to the early '90s with the band I had with former Cult drummer Les Warner and Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven -- we recorded some 24-track demos together, "Passion", "Devil In My Soul", and "Texas Wind". Like I said before, I had to rewrite the lyrics to reflect where I am today. It was a big undertaking, but it was fun, because you're not writing from scratch... the ideas are already there. This also applies to the Lizzy tracks that I recorded, they were there but when we recorded them we could have done them a bit differently.
Read the entire interview on Sleaze Roxx.
No comments:
Post a Comment