After a successful appearance at the popular M3 Rock Festival in Maryland in August of 2019, L.A. Guns, featuring original members Steve Riley and Kelly Nickels, was signed to a new management deal, got a new agent and inked a recording deal with rock label Golden Robot Records.
By the end of the calendar year, and entire album’s worth of material was written, recorded, mixed and mastered. Entitled Renegades, the album is expected to be released at some point this year. To kick things off, and tide self-isolating and social distancing fans over with some new material, the single Crawl was released on all digital streaming and download platforms on April 20.
Besides Riley and Nickels, the lineup of L.A. Guns also features lead guitarist Scotty Griffin and Edmonton, Alberta native Kurt Frohlich as the band’s frontman.
“Kurt is Canadian, yes he is. And what a great find for us he has been, I’ve got to tell ya. We didn’t audition any singers, he was the first guy that we contacted through a friend in Las Vegas, where he was living at the time. Now he’s in Florida, but he’s a Canadian all right, from Edmonton. His dad actually works for the Edmonton Oilers, so he’s a true Canadian. And I’ve got roots in Canada too. I’ve got a lot of family up in Nova Scotia. And also, being originally from Boston, I am a big hockey fan too. Kurt is such a great talent and a great singer and a great Canadian. He is doing a great job of representing you guys down here,” Riley said from his home in Los Angeles, adding that Crawl, the first single from Renegades was penned by the returning Nickels.
“He came up with the idea and sent something to me from New York, sent the basic idea. We all wrote two or three songs on the album, and Kelly brought Crawl in, and it was in its barest form, but it was pretty much what it would become, and then we finished it off. We make it a whole song and put a beginning and an end and a bridge on and connected the whole thing. But the spark for the song and the main melody and structure was all Kelly. And having Kelly back and playing with me is just awesome right now, because he’s such a great songwriter. I think everybody knows he wrote [L.A. Guns’ biggest hit single] The Ballad of Jayne – he wrote a bunch of great stuff on the early albums.”
Riley said that the band didn’t waste time putting together Renegades, focusing their energy and creativity over a shore, but intense writing and recording session.
“We started recording it in mid-November and we did it old school, like in the Sabbath days, just going in with a quick pre-production, then like a seven-day recording session, and a four-day mix. The whole thing was put together by the first week in December, and then we went in and mastered it. Kelly did the artwork and I produced the album and everything, including packaging and stuff was done by the first week of January. So, we just made it before all this pandemic stuff shut everything down,” he explained.
“And we were thinking of pushing it back and maybe recording this year but thank God we didn’t do that. We would have been screwed . There would have been nowhere we would have been able to do it, and no way to do it anyways because we all live in different parts of the country.”
Unfortunately, there are some dark clouds that are impinging in on the ebullient and upbeat Riley’s positivity regarding the new music and forthcoming album.
The elephant in the room, so to speak, for Riley and L.A. Guns, is that there are, in fact, two versions of L.A. Guns now on the scene. The other one, featuring classic lineup vocalist Phil Lewis and original guitarist Tracii Guns has been written about a couple of times by Music Life Magazine, releasing two albums over the past three years or so. It is a subject that needs to be dealt with, even at the cost of extending this article substantially.
At present, there is legal action to strip Riley of the right to use the name and branding of the band, a battle which he says he welcomes since he believes he has always been a member of the classic lineup of L.A. Guns alongside Lewis, Guns and Kelly Nickels – and has never left the band. Therefore, in his mind, if he has never left L.A. Guns, he must still be a member of the original L.A. Guns. The return of Nickels last year to his L.A. Guns means there are two ‘classic’ members in each lineup.
“I am the longest tenured member of L.A. Guns; I am the only original classic member that never quit the band. And I have always run the business side of the band from day one too. So, I have always been an instrumental person in terms of putting the things together for the band and pushing it forward and making things happen. I came in from WASP [in 1987] and I really knew the business well, and these guys were still a club band. I immediately took over those reins and they wanted me to, the original guys wanted me to do that. I never quit the band, bro. I know that Tracii left [in 2002] and we kept going for, like 15 years after that, Phil and I. And then Phil left [in 2017] but I never left the original L.A. Guns,” he said.
“With Kelly back, I don’t feel like this is a second version of L.A. Guns, this IS L.A. Guns, the L.A. Guns that was always going, and never stopped. Kelly rejoined and we have continued on. We’ve finished a new album that sounds like L.A. Guns, and is true to our style and our sound and with the original rhythm section and two of the classic members. We’re trying to make every effort to make sure people know that, that they know who we are. We don’t want to confuse anybody either, bro. We know there’s a little confusion out there, and I guess there always has been with L.A. Guns.
“Both Tracii and I own the name L.A. Guns, and the trademark, the badge, legally we both own it. We’re both partners from 1996 on when the rest of the classic members left. They all quit in 1995 after the Vicious Circle tour. Tracii and I continued on. We became partners and we were best friends and continued on. We registered the name in both our names and went on like that until Tracii quit the band in 2002. Phil had already rejoined [in 1999], so Tracii left, signed a record deal with another band and a new management deal. He was completely out of the band, and it was very well known that he quit the band. Phil and I continued for 15 years and did a number of albums together, before Phil decided he wanted to do some shows with Tracii, and eventually became another member who left this band.”
Riley said he understands why many fans feel confused, frustrated and torn, like children watching their beloved parents divorce. He is adamant that his ultimate wish was that none of the classic members ever left, and claims he did everything he could to convince them to stay.
“Listen, when Kelly Nickels and Mick Cripps {long time former guitar player] left in 1995, I tried to talk them out of leaving the band. And luckily, they’re still friends of mine. And when Tracii was going to leave, I tried talking him out of leaving. I told him he could do both things; he could do L.A. Guns and Brides of Destruction [with Nikki Sixx] in 2002. I pleaded with him to not quit L.A. Guns, but I could not talk him out of it. I could not talk Phil Lewis out of leaving when he wanted to leave, but welcomed him back when he came back, and then staying with me for 15 years before leaving again. I tried to talk all of these guys out of quitting L.A. Guns and I wasn’t very successful. They all wanted to leave and go do something else. I never left, and I just hope that the fans know that. I never left and I kept the band going for all these years,” he said.
“And I want them to know that I am truly sorry for the confusion, but I never wanted any of the classic members to leave at any time. I tried my hardest to talk them into staying and continue believing in what we were doing. And I wasn’t successful. And now it’s come to the point where they want to come back, but start their own thing, and that’s just not the way it works. I am not going to give up on something I have worked on for 35 years – not for anybody, not for anything. I just know what happened – that I ended up being the only classic member that never left the band.
“I am a total optimist and I always want original bands to stay together. I was so disappointed with the original WASP when we were disbanded [earlier in 1987 before he joined L.A. Guns], when it was Blackie Lawless, Chris Holmes, Randy Piper and myself. I was so disappointed. I just wished that band, that classic lineup had stayed together, and it’s the same for L.A. Guns. I had always hoped that we could all stay together, because we were all so tight. But, when somebody wants to quit and go do something else, there’s really not a lot that you can do but just try to talk them out of it. I do feel good that Kelly’s back and he is having a blast and writing great songs and doing all the artwork for the band. You’ve got two of the classic members together again, the rhythm section, the power behind all those songs. And I just feel good about it and good about what I’ve done with this band and the new music we’ve made.”
The forthcoming album Renegades will be released on the band’s new label, Australia-based Golden Robot Records, a deal that not only provides the budget to record new music and tour support, but because of the location of the label in the South Pacific, an easy entrepôt to the Far East markets as well as the entirety of the populous Pacific Rim.
“The music scene in America has changed so much, not only from not having many records stores and hardly any rock on radio, but you have the labels only signing pop, hip hop and country acts. For rock bands, since you don’t really make a lot of money off records anymore, you’re doing a record as kind of a promotional piece, it’s something you can go out and tour behind, and something cool for the die-hard fans. Nobody in the U.S. is really signing rock artists. It’s just not happening. With Golden Robot, we’re treating it like a normal record deal from a U.S. label. We’re doing the same things we always do. We got a deal from outside the country, but all the work on the album is happening in the country, using studios here,” Riley explained.
“Being on Golden Robot is going to helps us tour the Pacific Rim countries, because they’re down in Australia. So, we’ll be able to tour there and New Zealand, South Korea and Japan, and that whole region. And with our reputation in the U.S. we’ll still be able to tour here. We also want to show our fans and the industry that we’re writing new music and that we’re eventually going to go on tour. We know that we have hardcore fans that really want to hear new stuff and that’s great. We will be able to deliver it to them.”
No firm release date for the release of Renegades has been set yet, but Riley said he hopes to have it out before the end of the year, and that at some point, once pandemic restrictions are relaxed, L.A. Guns can hit the road again.
For more information on the band, Crawl, Renegades and any post-Covid-19 tour dates, visit https://www.laguns.net, www.facebook.com/officiallaguns, or www.instagram.com/laguns2020.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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