James Christian has guided House of Lords since 1987. The band is releasing its 14th record, and James’ 10th alongside guitarist extraordinaire Jimi Bell, called Full Tilt Overdrive on October 11. James recently sat down to talk about the legacy of House of Lords, the new record, and so much more.
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On his creative partnership with Jimi Bell in House of Lords – That’s pretty much very easy to describe because Jimi, being the guitar player and being a very, very prolific writer when it comes to writing patterns, themes. So he basically writes the tracks. His tracks will become our songs after some working here and there because he writes a lot of different parts. Basically, it’ll be my job to dissect what parts are in and what parts are out. Or maybe what he thought was a verse, I thought this other place was a verse. So, there’s enough information in there. But the main thing is, it’s got the vibe of whatever House of Lords wants to do for an album. Basically, he controls that end of it, as far as what his playing does. Vocally, that’ll be my end and the marriage is great. I remember on the first album (World Upside Down), I thought that this was going to be a problem because he writes so heavy and House of Lords is so melodic. It ended up being a blessing more than a curse because if you’re a melodic singer and you sing to a heavy metal track, this can work really well. Especially the fact that my voice is a little bit on the edgier side anyway. It always works out.
On the addition of Mark Mangold and bringing back the old House of Lords sound – The reason why there weren’t keyboard players prior to Mark Mangold is that Greg Guiffria was a very unique player. He had a unique sound. He was also a unique individual, character, whatever you want to call it. I didn’t want to just put in a keyboard player and it had to be somebody who could fill those shoes. Fiona, who was also an artist back in the eighties, a great singer, she had mentioned to me Mark Mangold and that he worked with Michael Bolton. I know Michael Bolton from the early years of working the same circuit. So I said, “This is something that I should look into.”
So I got Mark’s email from Fiona. We started texting just to make sure everything was cool before we actually got on the phone. Then when we got on the phone, he started telling me about some songs he had and songs he had written for Michael. I thought, “You sound like you could be a really good addition to what we’re doing”. He started sending material. Immediately I could tell by his playing that he was a guy. I love B3. That’s one of my favorite sounds. He had so many songs with B3 sounds, and solos, and themes. I said, “We gotta try this out on one of the H. O. L. albums”, which happened to be Saints and Sinners, and I was only going to use him for keyboards. But his writing fit in with House of Lords so well, probably because we come from the same era. We grew up with the same type of music, we understand melodic rock, and he became a writer and a partner, and actually a part producer, a co-producer with me.
On creating records now and opposed to when the band started – Back in the first three records that we did. We had the best of everyone. You had Andy Johns producing, David Thoener producing. We had the best studios in New York City. Everything was there for us. So when we came back after all these years, things changed and computers were driving home studios more than anything and making it a lot more affordable to do records. But one thing you didn’t have was producers because you can’t, they don’t have them online unless you want to rent one. But you need producers. You have to learn to do yourself, or you’ll be doing a record for literally nothing because the budgets that we have in 2024 are nothing like what we have now. So if you were to invest in a mixer and a producer and all those things, the band would be working for nothing. They can’t do that. You gotta learn to be able to produce your own music. If you need to be, have somebody mix it. On this album, I was smart enough to say, “Let’s try another guy”. And that guy was Dennis Ward, and he, to me brought a new, a new life into the mixes. We’ve worked with him before on World Upside Down, and I loved what he did on that album and Come to My Kingdom, I loved what he did on that album. But then after that, we used some, a few different mixers and they were all good mixers, don’t get me wrong, but you know some time to time you need a change and on this album it needed it.
On if House of Lords records as a band or remotely – We do it remotely. There were times during Saints and Sinners, where Mark and I and the mixer would be together in the same room. The guy, the mixer had a setup where we could all be there. I could see his board. Mark could see the board. I could see Mark and we mix the album that way. Which was a nice way to do it because we were all part of it. I could listen on my NS10s. I didn’t need to be in Sweden, that’s where it was. So that worked out really good. The whole album wasn’t mixed there, but some of the songs were. On those songs, it was nice to be able to be there, because let me tell you something, doing emails and saying “Bring the kick drum up on this part at 05.1”, I mean, you go on forever. So with Dennis Ward, we had an agreement, let him mix it. The whole song, let him mix the whole song, send it back to me. I think maybe the changes I had made were so minute. They were vocal rides where I’d like to hear my vocal here or do something there. He just knew exactly what we wanted. He’s also a musician, so that helps. But that made it a lot easier because the mixing process for me is a nightmare if I can’t be there. I’m very picky about what I want to hear.
On if he had a lyrical theme in mind for the record – I didn’t know I had a theme in mind. The first song I wrote was “Crowded Room”. It ended up being the first song on the album also, and I wrote it about multiple personalities and not that I suffer from it, but because of a movie I saw that inspired me very much to delve into it and maybe write something and see if it could actually be done or would anybody even care? So it turns out people do care and people were really interested in it and the lyric so that started the record going. From there, Jimi brought me some more tracks and, and we put together “Full Tilt Overdrive”, but not until Mark Mangold got involved in that song because I was working on that song by myself.
I have to say he improved that song in so many ways. I give credit where credit is due. That’s important to me. So Mark Mangold really brought that song to life and Jimi’s guitar playing is just undeniable. When when he’s on, he’s full on. I grab those songs and I keep them. I just said, “Okay, if I don’t use it on this record, we’ll do it on another”. But that song was an easy one once Mark came in and I heard the title, I just said, it’s “Full Tilt Overdrive”. Said, “I have no idea what that means, but I love the way it sounds”. It sounds really cool. So I finally found out it was about a pinball machine and pinball machine associated to a woman and a sexy woman. I guess the combination of it works and it works as you can see by the lyric. “It’s a silver ball and a body bitching”, all of these things. It made rock and roll sense.
So other than that, the writing stayed within the band with the exception of one song. It was a song that someone presented to me because they were fans of the song, “Can’t Find My Way Home”. They thought that had the same vibe. Now the guy who sent me the song was Christian Fuhrer, who’s done background vocals and also co-wrote on a couple of songs that we did. I trusted his judgment to send me. I’m not going to have everybody send me songs. He sent it to me and within 10 minutes, I emailed back, said, “I’m doing this song”. It’s called “Taking the Fall”. It starts out very swampy, down home with the drop D on the, on the acoustic guitar. I said, “This is great”. The lyric knocked me out because it was about a guy who was being pursued by the police for something that they were claiming he, the girlfriend is missing and that he did it. So he says, “I’m not taking the fall”. It’s all a great story. I love a good story. So those are the songs. Those are the only different songs. Mark was involved with everything and Jimi involved in his songs. I, myself involved with pretty much all of them
On how much time goes into sequencing the record – That wasn’t as hard on this record. It was others This one I knew it had to be “Crowded Room”. I just knew that it would introduce the band with a bang, in your face, rock and roll, and nice harmonies, great interludes, pre-chorus was one of my favorite pre-choruses, and to me, sometimes pre-chorus is always just the little thing you put in there before hit the chorus, but in this case, that pre-chorus became a chorus-chorus. Plus the chorus, then you got two choruses. So I was just, I was so excited about that. From there I remember, I think it was “Bad Karma” being the second one that was picked. So then “Bad Karma”, you always got to go by how momentum goes when you’re listening to an album. You don’t want to just keep them going for four or five songs and then just bring them down abruptly. So we kind of had it where by the time it got to “Full Tilt”, you were ready for it. It’s like a coach writing a ball player’s lineup. Number four is the clean-up. So that’s the way we approach those types of sequences.
It was only one place for “Castle”. There’s just no way you’re going to make a 10-minute song be in the middle of a set. Luckily, that song deserved every minute of that 10 minutes. It was funny because Frontiers has never complained about it. Usually, they’re like, “Could you trim off a minute on that one or two minutes?” They didn’t, they just didn’t balk. They said, “That song takes the album away from being a single album and we need it to be a double album”. They had no problem with that. So I’m happy with “Castle”. That’s Mark’s creation. Jimi Bell’s guitar work was just incredible on it, for him to delve into a song like that. First of all, it’s right up his alley because he loves Rainbow, and he loves Deep Purple, even has a band called Beyond Purple. He understands that music so well.
So that’s the way the album works, is that the songs and the musicians are tied to the stuff that they love, rather than one person writing it and the lead singer saying, “I love this song and we’re gonna do it”. I would like not for that to happen. I’d like everybody to be happy. But at the same time, you gotta have an album with the best songs that you can find.
On if House of Lords plans on touring for this record – We’re going to definitely promote this record. We didn’t promote the last one. There was a couple of problems on that one and we didn’t do it. There was a show we were supposed to do sometime this week. That was canceled. It was due to an illness that I have that I’ve been recovering from almost a year now. I’ve been in treatment. I’m waiting to get results so that I can make my future plans. Our intention as a band is to go out there and do this tour and promote it here in the States. I’ll always do our gig in Connecticut. To me, that’s the one I look forward to the most. I grew up in Connecticut and all my friends come there. My new friends come there and Jimi’s and everyone else’s. So it’s a party for us before we take the show on the road.
On if they will bring on a bass player for live shows – Yes, absolutely. I used to be a singing bass player, but I don’t think I could sing and play this stuff and be comfortable. It’s been many years. I used to do it all the time and they were intricate songs, but I haven’t done it in years. But I love playing, I like having the bass be an instrument I can control in the studio, because as a singer, I wanna know where that feel is and I know I want a feel a certain way. No offense to anybody else. I’m sure they could do it. But I’m there.
On the future of House of Lords – The question is, as long as the music moves you. First of all, we certainly don’t do it for the money. The love of music has kept me doing what we do from the beginning. I used to say before I even got signed was that I would do it for nothing. If somebody asked me to sing a demo, I would do it for nothing, just to plant a seed. That’s kind of my attitude. Became my attitude throughout my career, but this comes a point where you need, a little bit of a return on your investment. And that happened with House of Lords. It happened because when you have a record and you have tours and you have videos and you have all this stuff going on and publishing deal, it comes from every which way, but loose. That’s the way it was on the first three records. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is incredible”. But that ended. When it ended, I had 10 years of really not doing anything because the music industry changed so much. As it does many times, but this one was a big one. It was from hardcore rock to grunge, Nirvana, Pearl Jam. I appreciate it now. I appreciate the music now, but I hated it back then because it meant what we were doing was no longer relevant. But that’s not the case anymore.
