Sometimes you have to look back to move forward. House of Lords has had two distinct eras, one guided by the keyboard playing of Gregg Giuffria, the other led by the incendiary guitar playing of Jimi Bell. The one constant has been vocalist James Christian who has now assembled the best of both eras by bringing in keyboard wizard Mark Mangold to play alongside Bell’s guitar on their new release Saints and Sinners. James Christian recently took some time to talk about this new record and lineup.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with James Christian –
On the band’s new lineup – Well, Chris Tristram is actually still with the group, he’ll be touring with us, he just didn’t play on the record, for various reasons that didn’t happen. Mark Mangold was another story. Mark was introduced to me by Fiona, who was also a friend of my wife, Robin Beck. So it was a small community of people that knows other people, and Mark happens to be somebody that I’ve known of for years, back to the days of Michael Bolton, because he was working with Michael when he was doing “Fool’s Game”. At the same time, I was in Connecticut, Mark was in Connecticut, working with Michael, so we just never ran into each other, we knew each other, but we never ran into each other. Fiona reintroduced us, and come to find out, he loves the same style of music. When I brought up the word, “I love stuff that’s pompous”, he just started laughing, “Oh my God, I thought I was the only one that ever used that word”, and I said, “Nope, me too”. So that was a great way to start the conversation and we knew what kind of record we wanted to do. Now, when you have Jimi Bell on guitar, so we know where we are there, we just didn’t know where we were going with the music with Mark in the band, but we managed to make this happen in a way that everybody shines on the record, they showcase but there’s still room for everyone to do their thing, along with the new drummer Johan Koleberg from Sweden. 1:09
On reintroducing keyboards to the House of Lords sound – There’s only one keyboard player that I’ve worked with, I’ve worked with other keyboards prior to Gregg Giuffria, but Gregg Giuffria was only keeyboard player like that, that I ever worked with. Let’s face it, he’s kind of a hard person to replace because he’s a large figure. So years went by and we didn’t have a keyboard player for many reasons, financially, it didn’t make any sense to bring a keyboard player over to Europe , it cost a lot of money, all those keyboards. So we managed to just use tapes when it came to the keyboard parts, and we all got tired of doing it and hell, even if we don’t tour, at least we’re gonna put out a record that we love. But we are going tour, we’re going to make it work because the record is doing so well that the touring part took care of itself. 3:07
On if he feels Saints and Sinners is a throwback to the original band sound – Absolutely. The thing is, Jimi has even mentioned many times, “Oh we should get a keyboard player”. He wasn’t like worried that, “Somebody else is going to start stealing my solos”. When Jimi plays a solo, you’re gonna know it, even if it’s only one, he is that kind of player. The both of them together, they’re so good at what they do, that when they start doing solos together, which they do quite a few times on the record, it’s just pure magic. I love it. I love listening to it. 4:53
On if this lineup has been able to play together – The funny part of it is, because we already know we could play it together, so we do something on Zoom, I work on Zoom with Mark Mangold, Zoom or whatever, Skype or whatever we had at that moment, we work in the same room. My studio screen is like 55 inches wide, so he’s in my studio when we’re working. With Jimi, I don’t need to be in the room with Jimi, I’ve worked with him for like 10, 12 years. He knows where the solo sections are, he knows what we’re looking for, and he goes and he does his parts. 99% of the time he usually comes back the way we want it, he just knows. He’s old school, he knows what’s supposed to be done. Onn this record was a little different because now he had a keyboard that was taking in a lot of real estate on the track, so you had to be a little bit more picky about what you wanted to play in where you wanted to play it. “Mistress of the Dark” is a perfect example, where you have power guitars and power keyboard going on pretty much through the whole song, but not really fighting each other, complementing each other. A lot of great creative things happened on this record. 5:42
On Jimi & Mark working to complement each other – Yes, that’s the most important. Can you imagine if they were playing 100% all the time? It just wouldn’t work. That’s the beauty of being able to hear things over and over again, and having your time to really break down sections and say, “Let’s do this here”, and nobody added an ego. If we said, “Maybe they won’t be a guitar for a bar here”, It wasn’t like Jimi’s gonna freak out, or there was gonna be no keyboards here. It was, “what’s right for the song? What makes it build?” Then I gotta have to mention Johan over in Sweden, the furthest away, but he had the task of playing to some of the stuff we gave them, but we didn’t give them complete tracks at the time, so I kinda had to tell him, “This is what’s going to go on here, so be aware”. That’s pretty good stuff he did for all we put him through. 7:31
On how the record was written – Well, the writing worked where there were songs where Mark Mangold brought in a majority of it, and then others where he joined in on stuff we already had. Again, it wasn’t like somebody had to have more songs than anybody else. Mark and I did three songs together before we even chose one, and those three never made the record. We were looking for something specific. Those first three songs didn’t give me the feeling of like, “Wow, we are definitely on a good footing here”. I needed to have a song to launch us. The song that launched the way we were writing was “House of the Lord”, when that came about, we all knew where the record was going. 8:45
On upcoming touring plans – We’re getting offers for stuff already now for next year, which is all festival stuff. Which is way happening for me, I’d rather be a festival situation where there’s 10,000 people to play for, then maybe 250 or 300 people doing the clubs, not that I wouldn’t do them because I would. I started in clubs, I loved it then, then I went to big arenas with House of Lords and Cheap Trick and Scorpions, done all that, but I still love going back and being one-on-one with people in clubs. You can’t beat it. But the fact of the matter is, when you’re promoting a record, festivals is the best thing to do, because you’ve got an audience. We have Hard Rock Hell in February or March 2023, and then we had the Frontiers Festival, which is something that’s gonna be promoted, talked about very soon, they’re in the work of putting it all together…It was really the weirdest thing with talk about getting on certain tours like Monsters of Rock or Sweden Rock, or stuff like that. All that came up at those times because they didn’t really know the later material was, “Do they still have a few members from the original group?” It happened to be if we had Gregg Giuffria in the band every venue would have taken us because of the familiarity to the music that they knew. They weren’t even listening to the later stuff, although now, they are, I don’t know why because this record brought them back. For some reason, the keyboards made the difference, go figure. 10:31
On if using the House of Lords name with a new lineup was both a blessing and a curse – Yeah, you’re probably right, I think maybe you are right there. It was a big presence with Giuffria and House of Lords, it just was. The relationship between Gregg and Gene Simmons, there was just so much about that, that got so much press, so much that even when the new House of Lords came out and they still knew that I was a singer, it just didn’t get into the mainstream of that community the way other things would have. What can you do? We were putting out good records. We did a couple of casinos that worked out great whenever we did a supporting act, and we did a few festivals and one in Spain, a couple of other places that went great, but they took some chances. They heard the record, and that’s how they booked it. Cruises, like Monster of Rock, they go by, who’s in the band. It’s the same bands every time, there are just a few different ones. M3, it’s literally the same bands each time. One time the guy called me up, he goes, “I’m putting you guys on the show. I heard some of your stuff you’re going on that show”, and then it never happened, but if it happens again, I’m sure this time it will be a different reaction. 14:03
On if he would ever reach out to the original band to guest with the current lineup – Absolutely. I would take Chuck (Wright) on the road any time, but I don’t know if it would be enough for him. He does a lot of things with it, something in Hollywood called Ultimate Jam Night, so he’s really, really busy with that, so for him to give that up, it would have to be a pretty steady thing. With Quiet Riot, it was kind of weekend thing, and they didn’t happen every weekend, but he was able to do both. No doubt I would take Chuck Wright into the band and that heartbeat. Chuck would prefer, believe me, because I know Chuck, the first three records is what he would want to concentrate on as far as playing live. Believe it or not, never got away from not having to do 70% of the first three records, and even though we had all those other records out because of the air play we got on first three albums, that’s what people remember. 15:58
On playing later-era material live – We do it because we love the songs, obviously. It all depends on where we’re playing, sometimes in Germany, our sets change in Switzerland our set changes a lot. We played a place called G7, I don’t know if it’s still around, but it was a big place. We did really well in Switzerland, so we had an audience that was buying our records, our new records, our old records, you name it, so we could be flexible about what we played there. Other places, they came there to hear “I Want to be Loved”, “Pleasure Palace”, you name it, I can go through the list. They wanted what they wanted. 17:28
On new solo music from him or wife Robin Beck – Well, I’m sure I will end up doing a solo record. At this point, I’m really so exhausted from doing this last record that the rest is going to be very appreciated all the way till the end of the year, and then we’ll start gearing up for touring in the beginning of the year. Plus I gotta go in for a hip replacement, which is not the most fun in the world, that’s happening next week, but I should be fine by the end of the year, so everything would be good there. Robin’s working on a record right now, and she’s got many writers that she’s collaborating with, so that’s another project My thing, as far as the solo thing will be way down the line until House of Lords’ new tour will be exhausted and Robin’s thing comes out, then we’ll probably talk about it. 18:26
