With millions of albums sold as the founding member of 1980s rock band Ratt, Stephen Pearcy’s legacy in the annals of music history is pretty secure.
More than just a musician these days, he is an innovative entrepreneur with business interests in the realm of marketing and motorsports, as well as within the music business. In other words, he has a full, fulfilling and happy life.
But sometimes the rock and roll bug still bites and it hasn’t been as deeply imbedded into his creative flesh as it is now with a new solo album, his fourth in all, Smash, set to be released through Frontiers Music on Jan. 27, as well as a return to Ratt.
With his solo projects, Pearcy has allowed himself to be more eclectic in his approach to songwriting and recording, and that remains the case with the material on Smash.
“I can be as diverse and as heavy or as crazy as I want to be. Or I can be lighter and more melodic. I can do something like the sweet little number Summer’s End, which is the last song on the record, without being shot down by people saying, ‘oh we can’t do that.’ The great thing about writing is you can do anything. I don’t worry about a song being a hit or not. Back in the day the record label used to pick the singles and sometimes they were on and sometimes they weren’t,” he explained.
“I deal with subject matters on Smash that I have never talked about before. There are songs about relationships but not necessarily about people. The song Ten Miles High, which is going to be an upcoming single, that’s about the relationship between the interstellar people and us. And then you get into a song like Shut Down Baby which is a total trip. There’s this girl with diamonds in her hair who leads me to a place where there’s a stairway to heaven. And she’s talking about crop circles and taking you anywhere you want to go. I honestly don’t know where all this stuff came from.
“I have a very personal song called Rain, which is about my daughter, but then I have another song that’s filled with all this cowboy slang called Hit Me With a Bullet. And I tell ya, you’re going to need an old western dictionary to understand the words because that’s where they came from. So there’s some fun stuff on this record, but then there’s some real life crazy shit in there too.”
A more light-hearted, almost stereotypical 1980s hair metal-type romp is the song Lollipop, which Pearcy called a “Van Halen-ish kind of vibe, with good times and girls and just a lot of fun energy.” While Dead Roses is essentially a ‘what goes around comes around’ number.
“It’s deliberately set at somebody’s sights from my point of view, but it’s an address to any person from anyone who has been wronged. It’s pretty much saying, ‘keep doing what you’re doing and see how it bites you in the backside.’ It’s a pissed off little tune and, again, I don’t really know where that came from but it’s something I felt I had to get out of me,” he said.
“Passion Infinity is one of my favourite songs on the album. And it’s one where I am talking about the children of we earthlings and how no one is using their eyes and nobody wants to see what’s really happening and how we’re being controlled. It’s a view of the future that we really don’t want. These days nobody wants you to think, nobody wants you to see, nobody wants you to hear.
“So with my songwriting I try to be creative and try to not be totally outside of the box, but with Smash it was time to do something that was relevant to me that I think people can enjoy. Some songs are definitely tongue in cheek, but I am addressing some things that are of some concern. I also realize that the world will still turn. Listen, this album isn’t meant to be some kind of mindcrime, it’s just a record full of substance and however you want to take it, I am cool with that. I have always been that way. So I had some fun with stuff and some things I chose to treat more seriously.”
Pearcy said he and his bandmates, including guitarist Erik Ferentinos, drummer Greg D’Angelo, bassist Matt Thorn and guitarist Chris Hager, spent a lot of time honing the tracks to make sure they put their best foot forward as a band.
“We did spend a lot of time on these songs. One day I would have a complete set of lyrics for a song and then the next day I would go off and write a whole other new batch of words. We went through a ridiculous amount of rehearsal and fine-tuned all the takes for all the music to make it as cohesive as possible. It was a lot of work,” he said.
“It got to be exhausting after a whole because we were in there really pounding the mat saying ‘this could be better, that could be better.’ We even laboured over the sequence of the songs. I sequenced the record to have a beginning, a middle and an end. When you’re done listening to the record I want you to have a sense you were on a journey, just like it used to be. By the time you get to Summer’s End it’s time to relax the mind and the body.”
The debut single from Smash is the raucous rocker I Can’t Take It, and it was mixed and mastered by a name very familiar to long-time Ratt fans – producer Beau Hill.
Hill was a key collaborator in the band’s early days and helped Pearcy and his bandmates develop a signature sound the set Ratt apart from many of their so-called ‘hair metal’ contemporaries. Hill was the producer on the band’s first four full-length studio albums for Atlantic Records: Out of the Cellar (1984), Invasion of Your Privacy (1985), Dancing Under Cover (1986) and 1989s Reach for the Sky.
“I wanted him to do the whole record but he was out of the country for much of the time. I have always admired Beau’s way of working. I mean, come on, we had a lot of success together so it was easy to bring him in on this project. We still have another song that he worked on that we haven’t presented to anyone yet,” Pearcy said of his long-time friend.
“We grew up together in the business. Beau was a staff producer at Atlantic when he was introduced to us. The minute we went into the studio with him to start demoing stuff we clicked. He was the one who went, ‘what is that song? It’s amazing’ And it happened to be Round and Round. He said that we were going to start with that one, so right out of the box he felt there was something special about our songs and about the band, so it just went from there. And he always had a good instinct as to what to do with our songs.
“We found our own way of creating our distinct sound. He and I worked to track my vocals to sound a certain way. It wasn’t that I couldn’t sing, but we wanted to layer the voice in a certain way, with a low, a medium and a high part. When we put them together, it was that Ratt sound. So he helped in many ways, and he has helped me with some of my solo stuff over the years too. He’s always got great ideas as a writer and he’s just a great producer. We worked together for years and years for a reason – because it worked.”
The rest of the album was produced, mixed and mastered by Thorn, with Pearcy and guitarist Ferentinos acting as executive producers.
As for Ratt, it has been a tumultuous time for the band and the brand as the four surviving members – Pearcy, guitarist Warren DeMartini, bassist Juan Croucier and drummer Bobby Blotzer – were embroiled in a legal showdown over who has the rights to use the Ratt name.
In late 2015, Blotzer began to use just the name Ratt representing the group he was currently leading, which played material from the band’s back catalogue. DeMartini launched a lawsuit, claiming Blotzer was essentially using a tribute band but claiming it was the real thing. That case has yet to be heard. But another one was resolved in November, when Pearcy, DeMartini and Croucier reclaimed the name and ousted Blotzer from the partnership controlling the brand.
There are still some appeals and other litigation pending, including a court date with Blotzer on Jan. 23, but it appears that a reconstituted version of Ratt, featuring the three original members (co-founder Robbin Crosby died in 2002), alongside former Quiet Riot axe master Carlos Cavazo (who had been in the band from 2005 to 2014, when that incarnation of the band took a break) and a drummer to be determined, will be touring and working on new material.
Pearcy said he is glad that the band’s legacy, in his view, has been preserved with the most recent court case.
“We took time off from Ratt in 2014 for plenty of reasons. We weren’t prepared to go out again due to some circumstances, hence the turmoil that proceeded after that decision. And that’s because the main guys didn’t want to get together and we didn’t need to. We had been around for so long and didn’t want to get together just for the almighty buck. But one person, I guess, felt they needed to do that because they didn’t write the music [thus earning the royalties]. But we think the dust has finally settled with the decision in November. It’s been a long process but at the end of the day things are now going to be happening pretty quickly. The problem was it was starting to sound like propaganda – you start telling people the same thing often enough, and they will believe it. But that approach isn’t working any more,” he explained.
“What this person [which is how he referred to Blotzer throughout the interview] is doing is persecuting themselves even further. The fans and average people don’t give a shit about this stuff. They care about the rock band and the music. But the question I have to ask is why are you destroying the integrity of this band even more because it’s not going your way? It’s uncalled for, and it has meant the end of that person being involved in this group now. And that’s what happens – you cut out the cancer. A lot of the reasons we didn’t do anything was because of this person.”
Pearcy believes that if Crosby were still alive he would have been ‘furious’ with all the legal shenanigans.
“The thing is, it all comes out in the wash. The worst thing about what was happened was that they were presenting it as if we were in the band too. And some promoters cared and some didn’t and that’s their wrong doing. But there were times when it was misrepresented that we were going to be there and people who paid money were expecting us there and then when they didn’t see us, all hell started breaking loose. And it just fell in on itself like a house of cards. Me, Warren and Juan just had to sit and watch it all happen and wait for the right time to move in,” he said.
“So all we’re doing is taking care of business. This has been a problem for a couple of years now. If they [Blotzer’s version of Ratt] had gone out there and done their own thing, great, no problem. I don’t use Ratt when I go out and do my thing. I can say that I am the guy from Ratt or whatever and that should be enough and that’s what they should have done. But you don’t blatantly rip it off and try to change the course of history by saying these guys are better than the originals. Honestly I don’t even want to dwell on all the crazy things that were said.”
And Pearcy said there is new music definitely coming from Ratt.
“Warren and I have demoed a couple of songs already, as have Juan and I. And we will get together after some upcoming shows. Carlos is still in the band, but we haven’t figured out the drums yet. We want somebody in there who is going to be stable, but in the meantime we will bring in a hired gun for some of these upcoming events.”
When it comes to both Ratt and his solo rock and roll career, Pearcy said he isn’t thinking too far down the road.
“I don’t plan on doing this forever. [He turned 61 in July]. In a couple of years I might take another two or three years off. It’s just the way it is. I don’t necessarily need to go out there and beat the mat for any purpose. I have been there and done it many times. I have other things in my life. I have a family and kids and you have to think about your health as well. There’s just so much going on in my life now, and that’s great,” he said.
“I think there are a lot of musicians and bands out there trying to jockey for their next episode in the limelight. We’re not like that. We have a choice. We are saying we want to do this, or we don’t and when we do it, we’re doing it on our own terms. And that should be respected by fans, by our family and friends and by the music business. Those of us in Ratt have almost killed ourselves out there before and there’s no need to do it again. We already lost one of the main guys due to all the excess. It’s a different world for most of us now.
“That being said, we are looking forward to getting out on the road. There are a lot of places that Ratt hasn’t been in some time, including overseas, especially Europe. There are some markets that we never really hit back in the day, and now the opportunity is there to touch base with fans there, and that’s what we intend on doing.”
For more information on Pearcy, visit his website at www.stephen-pearcy.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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