Few bands have had as many lives as L.A. Guns. Emerging from the Sunset Strip in the 1980s, the band has had a rollercoaster of a career. Phil Lewis and Tracii Guns reunited in 2016 and have since released some of the band’s best work. Their new record, Black Diamonds, is out and recently Phil took some time to talk about it.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Phil Lewis –
On what motivates him and Tracii to keep creating new music – It’s interesting that you say it’s our 15th release because I never really thought about that. That would make sense. For me, it’s our fourth release. I think of this band, it’s like Mark 1 and Mark 2, this is L.A. Guns 2.0. There’s a vibe that’s very similar to the early L.A. Guns and obviously, physically, that’s who we are, but we’ve come a long, long, long way in our abilities and our writing and our performing. A long way from those early “show no mercy” days, we’re real proud of them, we embrace them, and it’s a big part of our live performances as we get a kit doing those songs, knowing it’s a soundtrack to a lot of people’s lives, the soundtrack to our lives. But this post-reunion recording is just a completely different creature. It’s an aspect of the reunion I was really fascinated by. We haven’t spoken to each other, Tracii and I haven’t spoken to each other in something like 15 years. I think when we finally did bury the hatchet and we did decide that we were gonna work, it was like we were making up for lost time. He’s a very prolific, when I say “he” just assume I was talking about Tracii, he’s a very prolific writer. One of the big appeals to me to do the reunion is the fact that he had all this great material. Because what I was doing prior to that, I hadn’t released anything in something like three years, and I wasn’t happy about that. We’ve more than made up for lost time, I feel, and select you in a secret, we’re already started the next one. :55
On still getting better with each release – I always feel like the latest one is always the best one. It’s interesting, we did an interview for Checkered Past, and what a completely opposite record to make. That was all at home, laptop, pandemic, no interaction, other than like this, Zoom, and file exchanges to do a whole record. We did the whole record like that, and it sounds cohesive. It’s just that at no point were we ever in a room together, playing those songs before they were recorded. They were all basically constructed and the pieces were sent in and put together. This record is completely different. This is us in a room cooking, working out ideas, and putting in suggestions, and it was just so much fun. We were actually recording on the tour bus during our last summer tour when we were out with (Tom) Kiefer. We’d have a day off, or we’d have a few hours and we just get out the laptop and the interface, and start putting it down, and it was really, really good to be immersed in there, especially after the record before which was so isolationist. This one’s got a lot more heat on this one, it’s a lot more physical than the one before, and I really like Checkered Past. It was just, I feel like many things, it was a victim of the pandemic. We didn’t really get a chance to play much of it live, we play “Cannonball”, and I’m immensely proud of that. I think you are right. I just feel like we just get better with every record, it is supposed to be that way, isn’t it? 3:42
On the diversity of sound on this record – Yeah, that’s a great thing about this band, we can do anything. Some of those songs, you describe, not the big metal opening song, and certainly not the big epic ballad, but the other stuff, like the three-minute stuff. It’s really, really cool, and I think It’s youthful, and I attribute that to Johnny Martin, our bass player and writer of course, and Ace Von Johnson who also collaborates and writes, who wrote “Like a Drug”, which is at the moment my favorite song on the record, that changes. That’s the great thing about this band. We were raised on bands like Zeppelin, and The Who, and there they would meander musically they would go all over the place. There might be a folk song, there’d be a blues song, and we were just raised, when I say “we” I mean Tracii and I, we were just raised with that mentality and every song should be a bit different. Now there are bands that have made a tremendous living and made lots of people happy with doing that one-dimension thing, like AC/DC. You’ve never heard an AC/DC ballad, and I don’t suppose anyone really wants to. But much as I love that band, and I don’t think I’d be very happy being in a band like that or Motorhead, or something like that, where we were just restricted to just playing that one style. I like the fact that we can shape-shift a lot. 6:40
On adding new material to the set – It’s very, very tricky. It really is, because sometimes we barely get 60 minutes on stage, other times we get a lot longer, we can be up there like 90 minutes, an hour and a half, and that’s when we can do more new stuff. We like to pepper it with new stuff. We keep doing it, but also, we gotta pay the bills. We can’t not do “Electric Gypsy” or “Sex Action” or “Never Enough”. These are staples that I think people would be pretty upset about if we didn’t do them. So it’s always a juggling act and it’s only getting harder now with these four records what to pick, and we’ve got it down to three. We know what three we’re gonna do to start with, but we’re not sure where we’re gonna put them, we’re working on that. We’re gonna do “You Betray” live, we’re gonna do “Diamonds” live, and we’ll do “Wrong About You”. It’s a bit of everything there a bit punk, the big ballad, and the big metal opening. 9:01
On bands using backing tracks live – Oh no, I don’t think it’s come to that point, anywhere near that point. I’ll be honest, the early stuff, I didn’t vocally set the bar that high. It’s just like if you listen to the end of Bon Jovi doing “Runaway”, it’s helium voice, it’s squeaking up there. I would never do that because at some point you’ve gotta go out live and do it, so I would never do anything that I can’t do live. There are some nights, my God, I would love to have just the safety net of it, but that’s not what we’re about at all. I’m patting myself on the back because that tour we did last summer, it was about eight, nine weeks solid, and towards the end, we were really cramming them in. We were doing six, seven, eight, nine shows in a row and that’s tough on the singer, it really is. But I was incredibly focused, incredibly disciplined, I was so focused on getting through the end of it. That tour had its challenges, and I could just taste that finish line. I did not wanna fuck it up, I didn’t want it to come off the rails, so yeah, it was a lot of that. I mean, I can understand a stadium tour with a lot of visual stuff going on, needing backing tracks. You have to do that. Well, it’s his funny thing, Motley Crue comes to mind that absolutely needs them, and then there’s a band like Rammstein who don’t use backing tracks. If ever you would think that there will be a band that would, it’s Rammstein, but they don’t do it live every night. I mean, given the choice of seeing those two, it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? 10:57
On his current relationship with Tracii Guns – Well, as I said, we just really felt like we wanted to make up for lost time. The argument was so far long ago that we pretty much forgot what it was about to begin with, in the first place. We know each other really, really well, we probably know each other longer than anyone else in each other’s lives now. So we just know each other’s boundaries. We understand each other very well, and that doesn’t mean for a second, “Oh well, we don’t interfere with each other in each other lives or personally”. No, that’s not true, we do. There were times during that last tour, he was having a hard time, and things did get really, really personal, and I really feel the fact that we have so many years under our belt as friends enabled me to do that. But if at any point you say “Look, fuck off, Phil. It’s none of your business”, I would. I know Tracii to be that way. If that’s how he felt because we know each other that well, and if he did, I wouldn’t be offended, I’d be, “Okay, alright”. Yeah, and that’s just the way we are. 13:46
On upcoming tour plans – We got a show at the Whisky on the 15th as sort of a party for it, something of a celebration for it, but no, not really. I mean, it’ll be great playing our favorite venue, playing new stuff at our favorite venue. We’ve got a gaggle of dates coming together on the West Coast, and then there’s some stuff in the latter part of June, there are some East Coast states like Illinois and some places we haven’t been in a while, like Nebraska, that’ll be interesting. There isn’t a big album tour launch in preparation. Nothing like that. 15:37
On the future of L.A. Guns – I certainly see another album on the horizon, I don’t see there would be a problem with that. I’m looking forward to it, actually. I’m delighted that people, you and other people feel that we’re making progress, that it’s getting better. I feel that if we can do it one more, I’m not sure I wanna go for much further than five, to be honest, but certainly have a crack at another one. That would be a great way to round it off and I’d look forward to it. I haven’t heard much at all. But I’m not worried about it. 17:16
