After bursting onto the scene in the early ’80s with the monster hit “Turn Up The Radio”, Autograph had its share of challenges and member turnover. They are back now with a new lineup and a new record called Beyond. Guitarist Jimi Bell recently joined me to talk about this record, as well as his work in House of Lords.
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with guitarist Jimi Bell –
On how he hooked up with Autograph – Well, the history of that goes back pretty far. I had met the band, the original lineup even back in the early 80s when I was endorsed with Kramer Guitars. I had played a NAMM show. There was one in Chicago at the time. The band that I was in, Joined Forces, was being sponsored by Kramer, and they brought us to this thing called the Kramer-Duncan Jam. It was Seymour Duncan and Kramer Guitars hosting this thing at a hotel. This particular one was at a theater and it just so happens Autograph was on that. So that’s when I first met the guys. But fast forwarding, I think it was like somewhere in 2014. This other band that from the guys from House of Lords, Chris McCarville and BJ Zampa, we had this other project called Maxx Explosion. So Autograph, the lineup that I joined was playing a show up in Massachusetts, and they wanted us to open for them. So we played, and that’s where I reconnected with Steve (Lynch) and Randy (Rand). That’s when I first met Simon (Daniels) and Mark (Weiland) for the first time. I hit it off with those guys right away. So every time Autograph came around and played at Mohegan Sun Casino, me and Mandy would go see him and show our support and got to be friends. Then it turned out that we would go down a day early maybe and have dinner with them. So we started hanging out. It just so happens that when Steve quit the band in July of 2019, I saw that he made this big post on Facebook. He was leaving, whatever, didn’t want to play those. He wanted to move on in a different direction. So I called the guys because House of Lords doesn’t tour a lot and I wanted to play more. So I called them and I already knew them. So I just said, “Hey, I’d like a shot at auditioning with you guys”. So they sent me a couple of songs. Randy and I hit it off great. So I called Randy and he sent me three songs. He said, “we’ll”Well, learn these and then we’ll go out to LA and do an audition”. So I learned those, and then I said, “Well, I know these. So can you send me three more?” So it just so happened, I did that and I learned those three. So before you knew it, I just asked them for the entire set. So I learned the whole set with all the vocal parts. I started calling the singer, Simon Daniels. I called him up and we were doing FaceTime back and forth going over vocal harmonies and everything. I just wanted to be really prepared, which I was. So I met Randy and they ended up where they said, “Look, you’re just going to play the next three shows with us and we’ll see how it goes”. I said, “Oh, great”. So that’s what happened. I met Randy in Atlanta and we flew to California together. That same day that we landed, we had a rehearsal. We had three days before the show and we played one song and that’s all it took. It was one song and they knew I was their guitarist from that point. :56

On carrying after the death of Randy Rand, the last original member of the current lineup – Well, the record was all done and completed and handed in before Randy passed away. All the artwork and everything. So there wasn’t any doubt about anything to do with that. When you think about it, this is Randy’s very last recording of his life here. So that’s sort of a really big deal. Basically, Simon and Mark have been Autographed for 10 years, a decade. They’ve been in that band for that long. That’s longer than the original lineup even lasted. They’ve had an album, they had an EP out, and a full-length record, and now this one. Simon’s looked at as the lead singer of Autograph and us carrying on and carrying on the tradition and bringing our new and the new music and everything to the masses is is something Randy wanted, especially because Randy loved this record more than anything in the world. So I write a lot of the music parts. Simon wrote lyrics and he had a couple full songs that were added. I’ll write right here. I’m in my studio right now. I write music and then I send it to the guys and see what they think. Everything I sent Randy, he was like, “Oh, my God!”, he absolutely loved it. He worked so hard on every song, he came up with these amazing bass lines and practiced and practiced before he went to California to lay down his tracks. So, this is all for Randy. We dedicate all our shows to him. We dedicate the album. We managed to get in a special dedication into the artwork for him and everything. It was devastating. I think about him every day, every single day…We just keep going. Simon has a massive amount of fans and the band has just a lot of respect for all the new material that goes on. You can say the same thing about Foreigner or Lynyrd Skynyrd now. Plus you got to think of it like this, we have all this music that we’re writing, I still have so much more material that I wrote already for another two records almost, if we had to. Why would Simon want to just say, “Oh, you know, that’s it, I put 10 years of my life into it”, that would be very unfair? 5:21
On writing with the band as soon as he joined – I told Randy when I first joined the band, they had the songs that they wanted me to play and I said “I got no problem doing this I really want to be with this band I love you guys, we’re going to have a lot of fun, but you do realize I’m a writer”. I said, “I wrote most every track, the music of almost every track, on the House of Lords records and now we got nine records out”. So, I said, “I’ve written music all my life I want to bring something new to this band”, so right as I joined the band I actually sent Randy a couple of ideas, just over the phone of me playing guitar, and he flipped out. He goes, “Oh my god”, and the fact that I could sing backups was a huge factor too in getting in the band. You’ve got to have vocal because we do all three part harmonies, every song, every single song I’m singing. So, yeah, I jumped right in. What I would do is right here I’d, I would write a complete song, no lyrics or melodies, just a complete music song. I send it to them to get their opinion on it, and if they like it, they go for it. I would send it to Simon first because he’s got a lot to do with the lyrics. It would have been pointless to get Randy and Mark psyched on a song if it didn’t gel with Simon because he’s the one that has to do a lot lyrically and melodies and the other songs got to catch you melody-wise. So, that’s what we did. Then, after he said he liked it, we all heard it and got all the guy’s approval and we just move forward. This is a daily thing for me, I don’t, I don’t know if you realize, I popped out another five songs a week for another artist just because I just write all the time. Things just come to my head and I started going with it. 9:04
On if he tried to keep a thread of the original Autograph sound in the new music – Absolutely we did. For example, the video song, “This Ain’t The Place I Want To Be”, when I came up with that idea, in my head, I said, “What can I do that will bring a hint of the old, the original lineup or something into this, but make it sound like we’re sounding now?” So I decided to do one of these two-handed tapping things at the beginning, right off the bat to kind of bring that into the sound of what we were doing and I wanted to kind of bring back the vibe of the old songs. So that’s what we really concentrated on. Also, the thing that we really concentrated on for this record was huge hooks and choruses. I learned a lot in writing with James Christian and with writing for House of Lords. When I wrote a bunch of tracks with them, I would notice when the choruses come in, they were loaded with harmonies and it sounded huge there was always a lift right as the chorus came in. So, I said to the guys “I want to try this. Even bigger choruses than what you guys did on any of the other two records that you’ve done so far in the past”. I said, “Every time a chorus comes around let’s layer it with mountains of harmonies”, and man it just worked. And I remember pretty funny, I think it was Mark because Mark, our drummer, is an incredible producer and engineer. He’s a great drummer but he did the whole album, produced, and engineered it. They were trying to do things like at first they said, “Well let’s maybe not do the huge harmony on the first course, and then this after the second verse will bring in the massive amount of harmonies this is a big lift”. I said, “Guys, people’s attention span is this big right now”. I write my songs or the course comes in about a minute and 15 seconds, at the latest maybe 1:30 that’s pushing it to. So, I said, “We got to hit them with that first chorus and make it impressive because half the time a listener will listen to something, and after the first chorus if it doesn’t grab right off the bat they’ll move on”. I said, “Let’s make sure we get as much oomph out of this song as possible”, and they agreed and it just came out great. I couldn’t be more pleased that I love working with these guys I gotta tell you. That was another thing, Randy, every time we played one of these songs when we had the mixes Randy was just like, “Oh my god this is so good. so good”. The saddest thing is that he’s not alive to actually see the record come out because I know how proud he was of it, but at least he got to hear it he got to hear the whole record before he passed, all the final mixes and everything so that’s huge. 11:58
On upcoming touring – We do whenever we get booked. We’re with a really big agency we’re with Sullivan Bigg, he books everybody. He does Vince Neil, Queensryche, Stryper, Slaughter, Vixen, the list just goes on and on who he handles and we’re with him. So lately, we’ve been doing shows with Quiet Riot and Stephen Pearcy, as matter of fact, I’m off to LA, to California anyway tomorrow or the next day to play with Quiet Riot at some big casino and then we go back like a week later and played a Whisky. So, whenever the shows come, we go. We’ve had shows come at the very last minute to and, and we always managed to pull it together somehow. 15:50
On adding Mark Mangold for the new House of Lords record – Well, the writing process was so different on this because I didn’t know anything about Mark, I didn’t know too much about anything that was going on. I had lost contact with James (Christian) for a while during the whole Covid thing and everything. There wasn’t really much going on. So finally, out of the clear blue James, I hadn’t talked to him almost since I joined Autograph which at that time was a couple of years, maybe two and a half years or whatever. He contacts me. This is typical James Christian he just contacted me by email and says not, “Hey, how you doing how’s everything I miss you and haven’t seen you”, because he and I are close, it’s. “Hey Jimi, Frontiers wants a record for 2021. Can you send me some material?” He told me something about how he’s been working with this keyboard player I didn’t know who Mark was. So I sent James some material. But I also had him revisit some songs that, because for every House of Lords record I put together 14-16 songs, and there are always leftover songs. So I said, “James I want you to relisten to this because this is a good track”. After he picks what he’s doing, there are a lot of good songs that are just sitting that he just forgets about. He found some of them that he absolutely loved and move forward on it. Then we just kept going with the thing and he started sending me stuff that Mark Mangold had done. The first time I heard the song “House of the Lord” I went, “Oh my god, this is cool”. It was a really smart move. I like the fact of having fresh, fresh blood with something like this because James still played keyboards on every record. But they were not so prominent, we had Michele Luppi from Whitesnake because he’s a good buddy of mine so Michele Luppi came in on the last couple of records, Saints of the Lost Soul and New World, New Eyes, and he played this big keyboard intros and played keys on a couple songs. But to have Mark Mangold actually writing in the process. I think it gives a whole different flair when you have a keyboard player writing. 17:10
On a possible Maxx Explosion reunion – I would do anything for that to happen. As you know, Chris and BJ are in Dokken. I’m, I’m ready for that and I know a lot of people are ready for that if Maxx could get back together. We did we had a really good tight-knit three-piece unit. It just worked out, the three of us. We had keyboards on tracks, but a couple of times we just even just did the show without tracks. Let’s just go for it because we all sang. That band is where I got my voice going because in all the other projects I happen to be in, I didn’t have to sing at all, except for House of Lords but that was just some backing stuff for the most part. Maxx is where I really had to concentrate on a lot of stuff. So, it was a good thing. I’m hoping that band gets back together I get messages about it all the time. 20:36