When John Corabi decided to join classic-rock supergroup The Dead Daisies in early 2015, he knew it was going to be a cool project, but what he didn’t know was that it was also going to be an exciting and frenetically-paced project.
The former frontman/songwriter for Motley Crue (1992-1997) was pulled into the mix when the band’s co-founder and original vocalist, Australian rocker Jon Stevens, had to pull out just before recording was set to begin on The Dead Daisies‘ second album, Revolucion, which came out in 2015. Initially thinking he was just going to tour with the band, Corabi soon found out that he was going to be thrust right into the epicentre of the band’s creative process.
“I was just getting back from a tour with my solo band when Marco called and asked if I wanted to check out the band he was working with. I was put in contact with the Daisies’ manager and was invited to L.A. to meet everyone and see if it was a fit. They wanted to meet me but I wanted to meet everybody too. I knew some of the guys but wasn’t familiar with everyone, including David Lowy, who started the band. I met everybody, we had some cocktails and some dinner and then they were talking me into going down to Cuba for some shows. So literally two weeks later I was in Cuba rehearsing with The Dead Daisies and at that time we had some special guests in Darryl Jones and Bernard Fowler from the Rolling Stones,” Corabi said from a hotel room in New York City, where the Daisies were rehearsing.
“I think they knew my history as far as what I had recorded, and I know that the tag ‘formerly of Motley Crue’ would be an important draw for the band, but I think they really wanted me to go to Cuba to see what I was like to work with and just see what I was like onstage doing the material. So I guess it was kind of an audition.
“I got through that and they said, ‘hey, can you go to Australia and work on our new record?’ Next thing I know we are in a studio putting together the band’s second album and we only had a month to do it. After we did the record we were immediately on tour with Kiss in Europe and then we came back to the States and went out with Whitesnake and then we were back with Kiss in Australia and then back to Europe with Whitesnake. We ended right before the holidays at the end of 2015 in Israel. By January of 2016 we started the new record with a new label. So, it’s been a whirlwind.”
Corabi and a revamped lineup of Daisies is set to release album number three, Make Some Noise on Aug. 5. The debut single/video, Long Way to Go, came out on Spitfire Music/SPV on June 17. A fairly extensive U.S. tour is set to follow throughout the months of August and September.
That album also came together under pretty substantial deadline pressure.
“We decided to record in Nashville with producer Marti Frederiksen and we all lived together with me, because I live in Nashville too. This time it was worse because didn’t have one finished song, whereas there were at least a handful written for the previous record. Everybody came up with a pile of riffs and melodies and stuff and we just got into a room and wrote for about a week solid. We had 20 to 25 solid ideas and fine-tuned it down to the 12 songs on the album. We wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered all those songs in a month. It was crazy, but fun,” he said.
“So it was kind of old school, man. And the reason we were able to do it was because we didn’t overthink anything. It was all gut reaction and instinct from a bunch of musicians who know what the f*** they’re doing. And the music we were doing was right in everybody’s wheel house. It’s straightforward 1970s classic rock and roll. We’re not reinventing the wheel, or trying to be trendy. We’re just doing shit that we dig. I have got about 15,000 songs on my iPod and I would say 98 per cent of it is made up of catalogues of 1970s bands. So we are proudly waving the classic rock flag, even the way we recorded the album like the way Deep Purple or the Stones did it back in the day.”
The Dead Daisies was the brainchild of Stevens and fellow Aussie David Lowy (Red Phoenix, Mink), a guitar god ‘down under.’ The two wrote and recorded the bulk of the first album, which came out in 2013, which featured producer John Fields doing much of the remaining instrumentation. Slash co-wrote the band’s first single. Lock ‘n Load, and also played on the track.
For touring purposes, the fledgling musical enterprise drafted a number of well-known American musicians, including two members of Guns N Roses: guitarist Richard Fortus and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, as well as bass virtuoso Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy). With the band members having incredibly full schedules, sometimes fill-in musicians would need to be drafted for individual shows or shot runs. These have included current Rolling Stones band members Darryl Jones and Bernard Fowler, and a host of drummers, including Ozzy/Black Sabbath skin basher Tommy Clufetos.
In 2015, Stevens left the fold and Corabi, best known for his time with The Crue, as well as the band The Scream and collaborations with Bruce Kulick (Kiss, Grand Funk Railroad) and current Kiss drummer Eric Singer, was pulled into the mix by his pal Mendoza.
And he has loved every second, and is now kind of a veteran of the band, as after another turnover in membership, he has been joined by former Whitesnake and Dio axe-slinger Doug Aldrich as well as former Foreigner and Whitesnake drummer Brian Tichy for the recording of the new album.
“There is so much ungodly talent in this band and yet everyone is so damn laid back. It’s the most stress-free experience I have ever had in a band, man. Honestly, this thing is a rarity. The lineup of people we have in this band – the talent is just ridiculously off the charts. But everybody is just mellow. Everybody is super easy to get along with and everybody is funny as hell. We are just here to have some fun and rock out. We’re all veterans of this thing. We have it all figured out. There’s no stress, there’s no anything like that. We do our job and we love it. It’s killer,” said Corabi.
He said he has loved the chance to work with the likes of Aldrich, Mendoza and Tichy, all of whom have incredible rock pedigrees throughout the world.
“At the end of the day, we are very comfortable with who we are as individuals, and very comfortable with the band as it is. We are not trying to be something that we’re not, and we’re not trying to impress each other or anyone else. This is who we are, this is what we do. And we’re not apologizing for anything. We are what we are. If you like it, great. If you don’t, no big deal. But there is no doubt that there are some amazing players in this band and that we have created some kick ass rock and roll songs,” Corabi said insistently.
“Marco Mendoza, honestly, it’s just stupid some of the shit that this guy does on his bass guitar. It’s just crazy. If you want him to play any kind of music, he can do it. I dare you to try to pick a style or genre that he can’t play. I have seen him working with little kids in a school in Cuba and he was able to connect with these kids because he could drift from funk to rock to jazz and then move to Latin salsa stuff. Homeboy is a beast on the bass. Then you have Doug Aldrich, who is a monster guitar player and great songwriter. He’s so talented, he makes everything he does look stupid easy.
“And then you’ve got Tichy. I know first-hand that he is scary on drums: Brian is honestly one of the best drummers I have ever played with. And I just want to literally punch him the throat because as good as he is on drums, he can sit down and play the f**king guitar as well. He went to Berklee [School of Music in Boston]. He’s got so much music knowledge in his brain it’s ridiculous. And then to top it off all of these guys are stupidly funny and great guys to be on the road with. And Dave Lowy is kind of the ringleader. He’s the guy that kind of keeps everything running smoothly. He’s a great player too, and a super cool dude. It’s been great getting to hang with him.”
Corabi was 32 when his band, The Scream, released their first album, Let it Scream, in 1991. The band was one of the hottest on the southern California scene at the time, and thus when Motley Crue was looking to replace founding vocalist Vince Neil in 1992 he fit the bill. Both Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee felt Corabi would take the Crue in a different direction and add a unique songwriting element to a band looking to withstand the death of the 1980s Hair Metal movement with the inception of Grunge at that time.
Corabi recorded one full-length album, called Motley Crue 1994 today (it was self-titled at the time) and then an EP called Quarternary later that same year. He also contributed a great deal as a writer to the band’s next album, Generation Swine, which saw the return of Neil.
The 1994 album was underappreciated at the time, as is common with records where the beloved original singer is ‘replaced.’ Corabi can be mentioned in the same breath with the likes of Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens (Judas Priest) and Blaze Bayley (Iron Maiden) as people wo were maligned by press and fans – for no reason other than they were not Vince Neil, Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson, respectively. It’s no coincidence that all three bands lost their singers while grunge was dominating mainstream music, and it’s arguable that the albums put out by Crue, Priest and Maiden in the mid-1990s would still not have sold well even with their vaunted original singers because of the massive change in the tastes of the record buying public.
Corabi is refreshingly philosophical and upbeat about the nearly six years he spent with Motley Crue, and generally will not engage in the drama drummed up by some journalists or fans looking to create a viral quote.
“A lot of fans did support me and came out when Motley went on tour back then. You know what’s funny to me? It’s been almost 20 years since I left the band and I still get people who write to me with a chip on their shoulder. People think I had something to do with Vince not being in the band. Normally I read it and just delete those emails, no big deal. But for some reason I felt like answering one guy. I said, ‘listen; at the end of the day, I wasn’t the reason why they got rid of Vince. I don’t even know if they got rid of him or he quit. What happened between them happened and by some stroke of luck, I just was in the right place at the right time,’” said Corabi.
According to Corabi’s recollection of events, this is how it went down. Scream got a plug from Sixx in a recent edition of Spin 
Magazine, and Corabi called Motley Crue’s management office to thank them, having no idea the turmoil surrounding the band. He left his comments and then was shocked to get a call not long thereafter to say that Neil was out and that they were offering him the chance to be the new vocalist.
“They offered me the opportunity to join what was at the time one of the biggest f***ing bands in the world. And I dare anybody to do anything different that I did. It was financial freedom for me and my family. It was a way for me to step up to playing arenas. It was a way for me to travel the world. So I said all this to the guy and a few days later he wrote back saying he didn’t really look at it from that point of view.”
Corabi said he also received flak for his 2014-2015 tour where he and his solo band played the Motley Crue ’94 album in its entirety live.
“Some fans wrote to me saying I needed to stop living in the past and ‘f***ing get your own life.’ Again, I normally delete those but felt like responding to one of them. I said why wouldn’t I do it? It was brought to my attention by my manager that it’s the 20th anniversary of the record. Why wouldn’t I go out? I co-wrote every one of those songs. They’re not playing them, so why wouldn’t I? Oddly enough, I did a few shows and then I started getting emails from people saying, ‘dude, I waited 20 years to hear that stuff live.’”
Part of the reason why the songs from that record weren’t heard live by many was that the tour to support it was neither extensive, nor undertaken with any sense of urgency or intensity.
“That tour with Motley was a f***ing disaster. I will admit it. We literally went out and toured for maybe three months and it was over a very tiny area in the United States. There was a ton of places we never played. I don’t think we ever went north of North Carolina and we barely played the Midwest. We never got to Canada. We never went to South America and we never went to Europe,” he said.
That being said, there is no ill will on Corabi’s part for any of his former bandmates. For many years there was a seeming rift between he and Neil, which was mostly a dramatic fiction. Recently, both he and Neil posted the exact same photo on their individual Facebook pages showing the two standing arm in arm together backstage at a recent festival where Corabi was playing with his band and Neil with his own solo band.
“Vince and I have always been cool with each other. We were talking just before that picture was taken about all of the comments everybody made on the internet about the fact that Vince and I were both doing that festival. Even he was saying ‘I know, it’s stupid.’ We were sitting there and laughing and one of the guys from his band took the photo and we both posted it saying, ‘hey guys, contrary to popular belief, we f***ing like each other.’ So we’re fine,” he said.
Corabi was not able to take the 20th anniversary shows overseas due to prohibitive costs, but he did record some of the shows for a DVD which he hopes to release later this year, along with another solo record.
But in the interim, he is focusing on his new adventure with the rollicking road show that is The Dead Daisies. For more information about the band, the forthcoming album and tour, visit http://thedeaddaisies.com. To follow what Corabi is doing, visit http://www.johncorabimusic.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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