Text: Anne-Marie Forker
Photo: Jimmy Fontaine
Hi Joe! The last we met was just before your Wembley experience. How was it?
Wembley was awesome. At the end of the day, it’s just another show really, but when shows like that where you’re being videoed and you’re in a legendary place, they just carry a bit more weight. We brought more production and it was awesome. It went as well as it could have, I think. I’m glad that we were able to put it out there for free on YouTube, and not make a too big of a stink about it and do a full release thing. A moment in time. I think we had a good set going there and a lot of great moments and Lzzy was on fire. It was fun and it was at the end of the album cycle, at the end of the chapter. A perfect celebration of everything up to that point.
And now you have your sixth album finished. What was the inspiration behind the title “Everest”?
We talked a lot about what we were going to name this record. Every time, we couldn’t beat “Everest”. Why do you do this as a band? Why are you in the band? It’s like climbing Everest. Why do you do that? There’s no magical thing at the top that you receive. You don’t get a prize. But you have to just do it, you know? Every decision, every record, every song, every show, every solo or song at a show, it’s like life or death. Because for us, it is what we do and we want to always be getting better and always be climbing. We still love it. I feel like there’s so much more to say and more to do. We’re like halfway up the mountain, maybe, if we’re lucky. You just keep climbing and you keep going and put one foot in front of the other, even when things aren’t working out and things fail, and it’s like, okay, I’m gonna let it slide down a little bit, but then you just get up and you keep going.
You can tell you guys love it because even between tours, you and Lzzy went out and did those living room sessions.
Oh yeah, that was so much fun. I hope we can come to Europe and do that just because we love it. It’s so mellow. It’s just a totally different vibe. When I met Lzzy in 2003, she was a terrible waitress. She was just awful at it. And it’s so funny, and I was like “let’s just never work a real job together”. Why don’t we just go and play every night. We can do this, we have got to learn a few songs. I remember I found my notebook with a list of every bar within a 50-mile radius of where she lived, and we called every single one of them and crossed them out if they didn’t have live music. There’s the person you talk to, send them a demo tape, a demo CD or something, call him and then we ended up within a month doing these four-hour acoustic shows for like 75 bucks or something. But you do it enough times a week and it pays your rent and we’re good. We were having fun doing it. We were talking about that last year. How much fun that was. We thought it would be fun to try that again and just do it like the old days. We didn’t know what it was going to be like in a theatre setting or a club setting instead of a bar, but it was so much fun. We didn’t put our in-ear monitors in, we just played in the room with everyone. It was hilarious. We loved it. I just talked to our agent about it the other day and we’d love to come back and do something like that over here in Europe. I don’t know when.
That would be really welcomed here! You worked with Dave Cobb for the first time on this record. What was different about that? What did he bring to it?
Literally, everything was different. We were used to working with our last producer, Nick Raskulinecz, and he’s like my brother from another mother. I love that guy. We talk all the time, still talk about music, talk about recording, but we just had to switch it out, you know, like we had to, I knew what to expect like going in with Nick and I just wanted to do something different. He was cool. “That’s awesome. Good for you guys”, and I’m so glad that he gave us his blessing and wasn’t mad about it, because we love him to death. Dave Cobb doesn’t make a lot of big rock and roll records. He’s made a few with Greta Van Fleet and Rival Sons but not with our heavier side of things. It was amazing. We went in there and sat down every day, like “let’s write a song right now and record it right now”. “I don’t make demos.” We all live in Nashville, and Dave has the most famous studio in Nashville, RCA Studios, where “Jolene” was recorded and “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton. It’s the coolest studio. We’re thinking “Sweet! We’re gonna be at RCA Studio” but no, he moved to Savannah. We all flew down to Georgia and moved in upstairs in this house in the swamps, basically. Right away, we realised it was the best thing ever because when was the last time the four of us have just hung out unsupervised? We had the house to ourselves at night and nobody was there. The whole lower level was like a recording studio, and so we just hang out playing music. David’s job was in the afternoon and we’d record that day and finish that evening and do it again the next day. We went in with the shirts on our backs and 20 years of being a band together and it was so much fun and every idea was recorded while it was fresh and exciting. We had to relearn how to play all these songs because we did it in small segments over the last two years, like a week here, two weeks there, in between all the touring. A lot of the guitar parts, I’m on the spot and that’d be the only time I ever played it and then I’d move on to the next song the next day. There’s a lot of listening where I have no recollection of it, which is fun. You can hear it in the songs, it’s a totally different kind of vibe going on for us, and it’s still hard rock and heavy, but it’s loose and it’s a little more raw. It’s a little bit of our personal backlash against this computer music that’s out there. All these hard rock bands, especially these bands that are so big right now, their songs are great and they’re doing great and I love their music and stuff, but it’s all perfect, so perfect. It’s perfectly in time, perfectly in tune. You know exactly how it’s going to go to a bridge, here comes a breakdown and then we’re going to hit that chorus one more time and it’s over in a perfect three minutes and three seconds. I remember human music like made by humans, like we didn’t use a click track on some of it. We have gone with the flow and that’s how we play live. We don’t use any computers or clicks. We just plug in, look at each other and ride, you know. We did that with a few songs. Who knows how it’s going to go over. Hopefully people like it. We love it and I think us being excited is the best thing we can do for ourselves.
You are on tour with Iron Maiden in Europe at the moment. How’s that going? How’s the new material feel live?
We just played Bratislava last night and we’ve never been there before in our lives. We’re getting to go to some places that we’ve never been and played for a lot of people and we’re like, “Hey, this is us! Okay, see you later! Have fun!” It was awesome to play the new stuff live. We’ve been talking about this for years, writing with Arenas in mind and we like the way the sound echoes in a bigger venue.
I might be completely off track here. The album cover reminded me a little bit of “Holy Diver” by Dio, except with a very strong female element. Was there a nod to it?
It wasn’t meant to be a specific nod to it. It was more that we wanted a classical kind of painting instead of a photograph of us or some picture of us or Lzzy. We wanted something that would look cool on like a bedroom wall. Something you might want to hang up when I was a kid, you know? There are a lot of references to the songs in there. I’m down with that being close to “Holy Diver” because we love that record and I love that art!
Lastly, you’re taking part in what will become a legendary Black Sabbath gig. How did that come about and what do Black Sabbath mean to you?
Oh man. You know, we got an email when we were on tour with Evanescence. I woke up to that email. You guys want to? A show. The original four guys are goanna ride one last time. Top secret. Don’t tell anybody. We’re like “Oh My God. Yeah!”. We didn’t know anyone else that was going to be on it or anything. We already knew that we would be in Europe at that point with Maiden. It’s a week after we finish with Maiden, so let’s just extend it and head up to Birmingham. These guys are creators of this genre that we love so much and cherish and respect. You know, we love the Sabbath records and just like reading. It’s such a cool sound and they’re such a cool band. Just to be able to see the original four guys play one more time, even if you know they’re old and beat up. The rock n roll train isn’t always gentle. Sometimes you ride it, sometimes you get run over by it and I know Ozzy’s beat up, but it’s about honouring it to me, and let’s send them off one last time. Then we found out that Metallica and Guns and Roses are going, this is awesome!
Halestorm belong high up there too, as far as I’m concerned. I’m delighted to see that you’ll be taking part. I haven’t got a ticket. Maybe closer to the time, we’ll see.
Good luck, nobody got tickets! We didn’t even get tickets [both laugh].
First published in Norway Rock Magazine #2/2025
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