Zan/Cody is made up of two original members of Swedish glam rock legends Shotgun Messiah. Zinny Zan and Harry Cody haven’t recorded together since the iconic debut record from Shotgun Messiah, but they are back now with a new band, Zan/Cody, and a fantastic new record called Beautiful ‘N Damned. Both men joined me for their first interview together in over 35 years.
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On what brought the two back together – ZINNY: That is correct what you say. We haven’t worked together for 35 years. Harry’s been doing two other Shotgun Messiah albums after my departure and I did my thing. We’re living on each side of the ocean, so to speak. What do you say, Harry? We have spoken back and forth, of course, every now and then when there’s a birthday, and “how are you doing?” If there an earthquake in California, I check and see that Harry’s still around, things like that. But then, of course, we spoke a little music here and there and so on. Then the idea come came up, “How would you feel doing a little guitar here and there?” Then I thought heck, why would he do that? The best thing would it be if we could be on equal ground and do something together. Harry said “Let’s try and see what happens. Let’s send each other a few songs just here and there.” From then it really spun off, I would say. What do you say, Harry?
HARRY: Yeah. It started out like Zinny said, we started out just exchanging pleasantries and, reconnecting on a personal level, so we stayed in touch that way for a few years. Then Zinny said, “You wanna do something?” I was like, “Yeah. Yeah”. I always respected his sense of melody, and he’s got a great head for hooks, so it was like, let’s see what happens if we trade some ideas. I sent him a couple of my song ideas, he sent me a couple of his, and we just said, “Yeah, I think we’ve got common ground here. Let’s pursue it. Let’s see what happens.”
On if the chemistry came back quickly – HARRY: That’s the fun of it. I think of us as brothers from back when. It ended ugly back in the day, but that was then, and that brotherhood bond has never gone away. So, it was nice to reconnect that way. When we started working it so obviously fell into place. We always knew that we had very similar idols growing up. We listened to the same stuff, and we were influenced by the same thing. As evidenced by the first Shotgun album, what we were doing, Zinny on his end and us on our end, had nothing to do with the Swedish scene at the time. We were soul brothers from the get-go, and it was just time to reconnect.
On the writing process for Beautiful ‘N Damned – ZINNY: I would say we were from the get-go, I would say we came from the same platform. Just like Harry said, we had the same, growing up, we had the same influences and so on. We always been, both me and Harry, and the whole old Shotgun Messiah gang, always had that, the attitude, and it needs to be there. It needs to have this nerve, this spark. It was fantastic when we started again, and you just smiled, and we were like “there it is.” We necessarily didn’t do anything more than trading ideas, riffs choruses, this and that. Harry is a fantastic man to listen to things and go like, “Do half of that instead of the whole. We can leave that for later.” The arrangements that Harry does is absolutely fantastic. It just fell into p- into place. There was no arguments with anything, really.
We like, “Okay, this song, is this good enough? Let’s wait with that one. This one is perfect like it is here and there.” No triggers like, “We need to do this,” or “We need to do that.” Harry told me one when we had, I think it was “I Am the Shit”, the song and he said that “I’ll do a little doodling here and there when I feel it’s cool because this, this song has it already. I don’t even need to do a solo here.” I go like, “Oh, okay.” There’s no solo there, and it is not needed because the things he does between things when I sing and the things he does in the end and everything. I would say no, there was not really, we just back and forth with songs and there it was.
HARRY: Yeah, there was no butting heads or anything, and we’re also experienced enough now to respect each other’s space. So, I let Zinny do the Zinny thing, I don’t mess with the vocals. Back in the day, there would’ve been huge arguments about every step of the way, but he lets me do my guitar thing, I let him do his vocal thing and as long as we’re on the same wavelength, and we found that we were, it just works by itself. There’s no effort. It’s not painful.
On if anyone else worked on the record – ZINNY: Not musically, let’s say writing songs, me and Harry only. Arrangement, me and Harry, and then we have three musicians with us on this album. It’s a drummer, Björn Hagelin, and a bass player, Nalle Paulsson, and then an old friend Chris Laney joined in to do the mixing. He’s gonna play with us live as well.
HARRY: Yeah, they came in to the at a later stage. At the rudimentary stage, I programmed drums here, and I play a very bare bones kind of bass, and then Zinny brought in a couple of pros. The drummer Björn, he’s got a far better drum sound and arrangement ideas than I do for drums. Same thing, Nalle is a fantastic bass player. He just upped my bass parts so much. So, I’m glad to have them aboard, but they came in, after the creative part was already finished.
On the musical diversity on Beautiful ‘N Damned – HARRY: That goes back to our influences.
If you listen to the old Alice Cooper albums, they’re all over the place. There’s a central theme, but there’s that one song that sounds completely different, but still in that same universe. So many of the bands, even Aerosmith and my mind is blanking right now, but it’s, it was an idea from the get-go that we’re not doing an AC/DC album where pretty much every song is rock and roll. We show a bit more of our different influences and just widen, widen the landscape. Zinny, help me out here.
Zinny: We don’t really think about it, I would say. The same back in with Shotgun Messiah days. We stood out because we wanted something that we haven’t heard before. We were influenced, like Harry said, by everything from Alice Cooper, he could do anythingm and Aerosmith, this was very early on with their half of the “Wak This Way” thing, and so on and so forth. So of course, you get influenced by that. When you feel comfortable, and we all did, Tim (Skold), Harry, and me, and Stixx (Galore), we all felt comfortable with what we were doing. When you feel comfortable, you just do things. You just do shit. You don’t think about, “Oh, it should be this”, fuck that box, I wanna be out of that box. I wanna do whatever we feel like, whatever Harry comes up with.
Harry come ups, comes up with “She Walks With Violence”, which is like you say, it’s a fantastic song. Stands out on this album, which it should. I just thought that, “God, this is so good. Let’s do this one.” So it was one of the earliest songs that we did, to be honest.
HARRY: Yeah. I had that one laying around and as soon as Zinny and I got in touch, I was like, his voice would be so perfect for this song. He has the gravitas, he has the base, the attitude. It’s a match made in heaven to me. I really think that song came out good.
On the sequencing of the album – HARRY: That’s Zinny, he worked hard on the sequencing part of it. Since the Shotgun Messiah days, we’ve had that basic attitude that the song, the album has to start with a bang, you just go in guns blazing, and then you show the landscape in whatever order you want people to experience it. Zinny did a really cool job with this one. I don’t think I had any notes on your sequencing ideas.
ZINNY: Thank you, but again we always listen in with each other, and Harry had the same thought, I think it was one or two songs that Harry said “how about this there instead?”, and we changed it to that. So again, the mindset was there from both of us. We just felt that, okay this is a good flow, we need something here. Just like you said, “She Walks In Violence”, I think it’s perfect where it is.
On the Bowie tribute “Let’s Be Heroes” – ZINNY: I’ve been a huge David Bowie fan since I was seven or eight years old. There is a reason why I’m called Zinny, it’s very close to Ziggy, things like that. He had that spiky hair long before the punk rock and so on and so forth. I always followed his career, and I thought he was he was always gutsy. Again, he could go anywhere just like me and Harry feel “Okay, we can do whatever we want.” That’s exactly what David Bowie did as well. So many times I’ve been around thinking about what song could I cover, now when he’s passed away and everything. I just felt like it doesn’t matter what I do, because you can never do something that David Bowie did better, or maybe not even close to it. So, I thought hell, I’m gonna do some kind of homage to him. Then I thought let’s build lyrics out of his titles. That’s what I did with that. The music there with Harry and everything and, I felt it just fitted.
On if they had a lyrical theme in mind for the record – ZINNY: I’d say it was just where we were at the time. Again, I never thought, I don’t even think that we ever spoke about that, me and Harry. Yeah. I sent him lyrics, he sent me lyrics. We’re both lyricists, and it could be, “Help me out with this one,” or, “You help me out with that one.” We never even asked, “Where do you wanna go with a song?” Because I could see when he had written something, and it was just a few lines he needed, and I see, okay, I know where you’re coming from. I know where you are. So, I put my little blend in there. Harry did the same thing. He’d go, “how about this?” and there it was. Again, it sounds a little cocky, excuse me for the word saying it just floated in like it did, but again, that’s what it did. Of course, our party days is long over, we’ve been there, done that, paid for it, and here we are still around, and so there’s other things to write about. We never spoke about it, so it’s not, “Let’s do this theme,” or anything like that at all. I don’t think I ever even said anything when it comes to “Let’s Be Heroes”
I think I just sent Harry and said this is a homage to David Bowie.” He went, “All right. Okay.” That was it, we didn’t have any plans for it, it’s just things we’re picking up, things we’re having, things we think about, of course, and things we see, things around us today.
HARRY: Yeah. We wouldn’t sit down and say, “Okay, this is what the album’s gonna be about.” It’s just happenstance, and we need lyrics to be evocative more than finger wagging.
On if Zan/Cody will continue – HARRY: There’s more coming.
ZINNY: There’s absolutely more coming.
On touring – ZINNY: Right now, we have dates set up. We can’t go out with them right now because we’re gonna do our first, very first show on the Swedish National Day June 7th at Sweden Rock Festival. It’s in the written that after a week, after a show like that, you can go out with your tour thing. We don’t have a big tour, but we have dates set. We also need to work with the things, we are on different sides of the world. Harry’s in the US and I’m in Sweden, so we have to look into that. There are European countries that want us. There is interest from the US as well, which is very nice I think. We will see and look into it, and as much as we can we will of course do it. But then again, we can’t do a single show here or there due to the fact that it’s travel around. It’s gotta come in some sort of packages, and that’s what we’re working with right now. But yes, there will be touring.
On if they started album #2 yet – HARRY: It’s a bit early for that but, of course we’re both creative people, so ideas are swirling around. We just haven’t sat down and tried to do anything together yet. But of course, we’re nonstop working.
On the status of Shotgun Messiah and Harry’s project with Tim Skold – HARRY: That’s completely separate. If Tim and I were to do something, we have most of an album recorded. If we do that, that will be under the Shotgun Messiah moniker, because when Shotgun Messiah left off, we were the two remaining members. So, we would pick up where we left off. But to reunite the old band would feel too much like nostalgia for me. I wanna look forward. I think that’s why Zan/Cody doesn’t really…obviously people are gonna bring up Shotgun Messiah. There’s no helping that. But we’re not using that as, “Come hear the old songs,” or anything. What we’re doing is a fresh take with a couple of tips of the hat. Of course, we’re gonna play some of the cool stuff from the first album.
I’m also in Rhino Bucket now, so I’m gig economy. You have to stay busy. I’m the lead guitarist for Rhino Bucket out here in Los Angeles. Tim and I are on ice now because he rejoined Marilyn Manson. He’s playing bass with Marilyn Manson again. So that Shotgun Messiah thing, unfortunately after the big tease from a year ago, nothing will come of that in the foreseeable future. It’s still there. We may pick it up again. I hope so. I’d like to hear it out because it’s really good stuff. But right now, I’m in Rhino Bucket and I’m doing Zan/Cody, and there’s enough hours in the day to do both.
On Zinny’s other projects – ZINNY: Yeah, the book has been one of my ghosts or monsters I’ve had in my head for so many years. I’ve been asked many times, and I had many people coming up, saying, “Okay, release this book now.” I probably will never do that. It’s almost written, finished, but I’ve been going back and forth like, “Okay, it would be a fun thing. It would be good, and it’s a lot of fun”. I’m not going in with all the sex, drugs and rock and roll things. Of course there is things with parties, this and that and so on and so forth, but it’s mainly about me and the music industry and sometimes you you have to have 80% of humor to even survive because there’s so much shit going on sometimes. But no that, I said the book will be written. I will finish it and I will leave it to my kids so they know who dad was before I was dad. That is not a project anymore and will not be. I worked on a solo album, but right now I’m absolutely too busy with this. So, if there are good songs there, absolutely, and I love the songs that I have there, but I will focus on Zan/Cody 100% for me right now.
