“A little bit different, huh,” remarks L.A. Guns guitarist Tracii Guns, talking about his band’s 15th studio album, Leopard Skin, due April 4th via Cleopatra Records. Forever aligned with the Sunset Strip sound, L.A. Guns perfectly straddle the insurmountable musical horse with one foot planted firmly in their roots, and the other delightfully exploring new ground.
The initial appetizer of the new L.A. Guns album, Leopard Skin, came in the form of “Taste It”. That video harkens back to the glory days of MTV and MuchMusic in the ‘80s, when these promo spots had a storyline with outside actors; they were just so much fun. Tracii says he enjoyed filming it as much as LAG fans have enjoyed watching it, judging by their comments online.
“Yeah. I think that’s kind of representative of our personality as well. We had a lot of fun working with the two directors, the camera guy, and a couple of assistants. We had some conference calls talking about it, and it’s really two videos. The next one, for the song ‘Lucky Motherfucker’, it’s fucking great man! But yeah, part one with Mark (St Pierre), the actor, was just hilarious! We shot with him for two days, and he’s like a really, hardcore ‘80s rock fan. He had so many questions and so many insights. He was more captivating to us than we were to him, I think. A really cool guy!”
The first round of shots in the video for “Taste It” is Johnnie Walker, and the second is Pepto Bismol; the look on Tracii’s face is absolutely priceless! “Well, that would be reality if I was actually a drinker,” laughs Tracii. “I’ve always been a very light drinker, and the times when I’ve gone in heavy, it always ends up with Pepto Bismol the next day. Not as soon as in the video, but that pink stuff is your friend.”
That statement, taken on its own, serves up a sexual innuendo, much like Phil’s lyrics in “Taste It”. It’s classic L.A. Guns. Phil and Tracii came out with “Sex Action” in 1988, and they’re still getting down and dirty with “Taste It” in 2025. “Well, there’s nothing grosser than old men singing about ‘tasting it’, is there? We don’t want to jeopardize the personality of the band just because we’re still around, know what I mean. Cause we could be really boring. We could be in jazz odyssey land by now, but we’re not.”
The video for “Taste It” accurately showcases L.A. Guns’ sense of humor. “Oh yeah, you have to. We’ve been through some turbulent water over the past 35 years. When we got back together in 2017, it was the beginning of the parting of the clouds in the sky. We’ve become closer as a family, the whole band. Just having really good times, and we really appreciate it. I think that’s the one thing that’s a lot different now. Particularly Johnny Martin (bassist) and Ace (Von Johnson, guitarist) and Shawn (Duncan, drummer), who have been in the band a relatively shorter amount of time than Phil and I. They make us realize how cool it is to be in this band. So, Phil and I, being the older guys, we’re trying to impress them. Like, ‘Hey, what do you think of my shirt?’ It’s hilarious.”
The guitar solo in “Taste It” is spectacular. It’s signature Tracii Guns. There’s no mistaking who’s playing that. And it really opens the song up. Instead of increasing the energy like a lot of solos do, Tracii slows it down, thereby letting the song breathe, tremendous job. “Thanks, man. You know, the one thing I’m good at in this life is the god damn guitar. I’ve got a handle on it, kind of, by now. That’s why we keep making these records, I’m still trying to figure it out.”
The aforementioned “Lucky Motherfucker” goes down a different musical path. That song has some serious funk to it, approaching Sly And The Family Stone territory. “Almost,” admits Tracii. “When I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I started listening to James Gang, and I just loved Joe Walsh’s playing in that band. That was kind of the beginnings of Zeppelin just being massive too. Joe Walsh and Jimmy Page, they had a really good friendship back then. It was kind of like a healthy, competitive – ‘What are you doing?’ ‘No, what are you doing?’ kind of thing. So, I really wanted to study Joe Walsh. What was he doing? What was he thinking? And that led down a rabbit hole, all the way down to disco. All the way up to ’78, ’79 where I just didn’t want to do the same thing. I remembered when we were talking about doing Hollywood Vampires a long time ago. It was like, ‘Am I going to have to write this style every time?’ The first album and Cocked & Loaded – those are great! They’re probably our fans’ favorite records.”
“But as a musician, I just want to explore all my influences. I always have. If it’s something new that influences me, I’ll steal it right now. I don’t care. It’s all about taking the things you learn and applying them to what you’re doing. But when we talk about something like ‘Lucky Motherfucker’, yeah, it’s straight up all the great elements from the ‘70s funk era. It’s almost Aerosmith-y in a way. The guitar tone is slightly different. We’ve got kind of a modern vocal breakdown in there, which to me, it’s almost melancholy in a way, but it just cracks me the fuck up when I listen to it. We went from ‘70s funk to 2024 disco in a heartbeat; and that’s what I’m looking for in the music. I’m looking for these changing gears, shifting. So, extending beyond that song, I’m really happy with all the different things that we did on the record.”
“Runaway Train” is incredibly unusual for L.A. Guns. A bluesy slide guitar is coupled with a train whistle, and thoughts abound – this could be old Aerosmith, maybe even Tom Keifer or Cinderella; then it gives way to an almost country music vibe! “Yeah, I was watching that show Reacher, and that guy’s obsessed with blues in the show. And there’s a Blind Blake song that came on that I hadn’t heard in years. And I’m like, ‘Ah, man. Blind Blake – that guy was so cool.’ So, I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube and I learned one of his tunings. I was just playing with that tuning for a week or two, and I came up with all those little bits. So, it’s like half Blind Blake, half Jimmy Page. But nobody sings blues better than a British guy, right? There’s something about a British guy with all their Southern Black influences, when they do that kind of stuff, it sounds so cool. Like a Mick Jagger kind of thing. We had so much fun putting that song together. I remember sending it to Phil (Lewis) the first time; ‘Well, here’s this one.’ He’s like, “Wow! Ok. What am I going to do?’ I don’t know. Him and his writing partner, Mitch Davis, they put that together in the studio, and it just turned into something else man.”
After four albums on Frontiers, L.A. Guns has a new home on Cleopatra Records. “Yeah, it was a weird split. I had tried to get out, like two years earlier. Frontiers is strange. It’s two guys – Serafino and Mario, who’s the attorney for the label. Mario’s the good cop, and he knew how to get on my good side. That’s why I ended up doing so many projects for them. They didn’t like L.A. Guns music. I don’t know what they’re into – Journey, or something, which is great. But L.A. Guns is certainly no Journey. But then they had me working with other people. Maybe they were trying to get me to write AOR with the other people, but it seemed every time I’d do a new project, they’d get more pissed off. Especially the thing with Michael Sweet (from Stryper); I went full Satanic metal. And of course I did, Michael’s like a Jesus guy. I wanted to make that the biggest dynamic kind of thing. All the lyrics are about Jesus and shit. So, to me, that’s what sets that project apart. You have Guns N’ Moses, which is hilarious. But those records are fucking slamming! They’re just so kick ass!”
“Then the thing I did with Todd Kerns, Blackbird Angels, it’s so good. But they don’t want to get that deep. They want slick-sounding stuff, slick writing. Even the Jack Russell stuff I did, I thought was pretty cool. But it was time to get L.A. Guns with a label that really understood the music first and foremost. Brian Perera, the owner of Cleopatra; he’s been with me and L.A. Guns from day one. He was making our t-shirts back in ‘83, ’84, ’85. So now, between our agent, our managers, Brian, and all the cool guys at the label, and the band and the crew – it’s just a party! Everybody’s into it. No idea is too extravagant. We just move forward.”
Besides what’s already been mentioned, there’s another bit of history between L.A. Guns and Cleopatra Records. The album Hollywood Forever – released in 2012, which Tracii did not play on – was released on Deadline Music, and that’s a division of the Cleopatra Label Group. “Right. I think there were a couple things. We did our Greatest Hits with them, which was kind of a sort of weird reunion for a minute there; I’m happy with that too. I like those recordings. But yeah, Cleopatra has always had L.A. Guns’ back, come hell or highwater, whatever’s going on. Brian’s always stayed real neutral between all parties involved.”
Hollywood Forever was the last L.A. Guns album to feature a truly different and unique album cover. All the Frontiers album covers were a variation of the band’s shield logo, which is reminiscent of the Whitesnake era on Frontiers, where every album was the same WS stamp, just on a different background. Thankfully, there’s a slightly different take on it this time, with a painting of a woman with the L.A. Guns logo as a tattoo on her chest. It’s good to see that it isn’t the same old rinse and repeat which Frontiers was notorious for.
“Right, yeah,” agrees Tracii. “Kayla, Phil’s wife; she does all our art. She even did all the art for Frontiers. So, when we got here, we had kind of an AI rendering from the label, of that artwork. Then I sent it to her, and she did a hand-painting; she’s amazing. Everybody saw that and went, ‘Wow!’ It looks like an old Aerosmith album cover, it’s really cool! It’s nice when the whole artistic point of view is what’s first and foremost with all these people that are working on L.A. Guns stuff now. Everybody’s kind of like a weird, old hippie in a way.”
The album title, Leopard Skin, refers to the old saying, ‘A leopard can’t change its spots.’ But, to add to that, all those spots are slightly different on the body of the animal. And that’s like the songs on this record. They’re all L.A. Guns spots / songs, but they’re all different.
“Right, they are,” agrees Tracii. “The one thing that’s always tied L.A. Guns together is Phil’s voice. Phil’s voice is unmistakable, and that’s always given me the freedom to do whatever I want. Cause I know, no matter what style is going to come out, Phil’s going to sing on it, and it’s going to be an L.A. Guns song. There’s going to be no question. That’s kind of the luck – what makes a guitar hero? A great singer! That’s just the reality. Those songs are so important, and that chemistry between the guitar player and that voice, and whatever the style of the singer is. That’s what really props up a guitar hero. I grew up in the age of guitar heroes, you know what I mean. My goal was always to write stuff that inspired other guitar players. You do that by using what inspired you, and hopefully you get lucky enough to have a singer like Phil Lewis. That’s a solid recipe.”
Tracii says that L.A. Guns did not try to write a title track for Leopard Skin. “No, because we always title our records after the music’s done. What does this record sound like? What are the lyrics representing? Like, Checkered Past, that’s so obvious. The Missing Peace, that’s so obvious. But, Leopard Skin, was a totally selfish thing. I just binge that British kind of style from the late ‘60s and ‘70s. When you get stuck for an album title, it was like, we could call it The Black Album, or The White Album. Let’s get fancy and call it The Purple Album. I was like, ‘No, man. No one’s ever done a Leopard Skin album.’ It’s just going deeper into what Leopard Skin is, and how it’s associated with rock ‘n roll – Keith Richards, and Johnny Thunders, The Dolls, and Aerosmith… and obviously rockabilly. I just really liked it. And we can really make a gimmick out of this. People send in pictures of them wearing leopard skin already, the album’s not even out. It should be a fun album title and inspire a little bit of thought stylistically. I’m expecting people in the audience to be wearing some leopard skin. It serves a little purpose.”
Tracii produced this album, which is nothing new for L.A. Guns, as he produced all the Frontiers albums. But, Leopard Skin wasn’t recorded together. The vocals were done at Pull Studios in New York City. Tracii did his recording at Dee’s Joint Studios in Hollywood. Is it a less impactful role, being a remote producer, compared to when L.A. Guns had a producer for the first few albums, and everybody was in the studio together?
“Well, it’s just a complete opposite way of doing things. When you have an outside producer come in, there’s a lot of pressure. You’ve got to do the rehearsals, the pre-production; and that creates really good times and really bad times because, inevitably, every musician feels very strongly about their opinion. Then the producers feel very strongly about their opinion. One thing I learned from Rick Rubin, very early on, was that a great producer really shouldn’t do much. A great producer should trust in the project they’re working on, and let the talent do what the talent does. That’s how I approached these records. I know that I have to push myself a little bit and not be complacent with what I’m writing. Not settle for things that I’m recording just because, ‘Oh, that’s good enough,’ So, I know that I have to push things and that I have to open up my mind if I’m going to take on the production role. The other things, back then, the producers from our time were also budgeting huge amounts of money. They’re taking a million dollars and showing the label where that money’s going. It’s not just like, ‘Hey, you’re getting ready to do a record, here’s a million bucks, go have fun.’ It was never like that. It’s all about budgeting, hiring the right engineers, the right studio. There was a tape budget, and then there was a secondary tape budget. Then there’s a mastering budget; all these things. Then your business manager gets a cut, your manager gets a cut, producer’s fee, the musicians – we get a salary at that point.”
“But now, it’s more like, ‘Here’s 50 Grand, have a good time.’ That’s what it’s like now. So, the records essentially cost about between 10 and 20 Grand to make now. Adam, our studio drummer; he records the drums in his place. I do my stuff here, which is free of charge; I should be charging myself though. Mitch Davis in New York, the guys come over to overdub their parts here. The way that it’s done now is, I come up with a complete arrangement, and I send it to Adam; I email it to him. Then he sends me one drum track, and then we kind of pick it apart a little bit. Once the drum track is done, I just go to town on that song! It’s almost a song-by-song thing. I never start recording a record after writing 15 songs – and that’s what we used to do. We’d write 15 songs, beat them into the ground, then go in the studio and record them. And that’s a great way to do it. But for me, this is a much greater way to do it! It’s because I’m a guitar player. I can sit there and tweak the fucking microphone on a speaker for a week before I hit record, and nobody’s going to say anything. Nobody’s going to be like, ‘That sounds fine.’ Then I’ll be, ‘Ah, I don’t know man.’ All the luxuries of basically working from home are great for anybody that’s artistic. You’re in your own environment; you’re in your own space. I can record in my underwear if I want to – and I do. It just makes life easy. We don’t have to impress anybody but ourselves. That’s the most important thing for any band – if you love what you’re doing, you’ve already won.”
Getting back into a couple more of the songs from Leopard Skin, “Hit And Run” has a vintage surf rock feel to it. Again – different avenue, different flavor for L.A. Guns. That sound, that song, is certainly unexpected.
“Right, yeah. Johnny brought that song in. Oddly enough, the song is called ‘Hit And Run’, because while he was up here, somebody ran into his car, and ran! That was the working title of the song immediately. But Johnny had the cool chord progression, and it just felt so surfy to me. I don’t even know if surfy’s the word – Chris Isaak meets The Cult meets… I don’t know. But I was so excited when we got the drum track back. Then Johnny came and played bass; he put down a rhythm guitar first, and then he went home. So, I got to just play with it. It was such a great, fun challenge to put all those sounds together, which are different than everything else, and anything else in our entire catalog. I actually had a SilverTone amp from the ‘60s with its reverb and its tremolo, and a Gretsch. The little melody part, I put that on later, with a late ‘60s MusicMan amp and a fuzz pedal, and a Stratocaster. There’s so much going on, but the song is so good. The song is so fucking good!”
Do you see any parallels between “Ice Cream Man” – originally recorded by bluesman John Brim in 1953, then famously covered by Van Halen on their 1978 debut album – and “I’m Your Candy Man”?
“I never did before, but now I certainly do. That’s such a weird song, isn’t it. And it’s the one that Phil really, really wants to do live. That’s where you notice that your band members have different tastes. It does have that very tongue-in-cheek kind of swagger mixed in. It’s stupid, but it’s also sexy at the same time. But I always thought that it had some Van Halen-ish edge to it. Maybe it’s just the chords I chose? I think Adam had sent me the drum track before I wrote anything, and it was named after a Van Halen song. I cannot remember what it was. So, I think it always was implied that it was supposed to have some Van Halen feel. I think you nailed that. It doesn’t sound like Van Halen, but it’s definitely reminiscent of Van Halen.”
(Photos by Joe Schaeffer)
The post L.A. GUNS – “That Pink Stuff Is Your Friend” appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
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The initial appetizer of the new L.A. Guns album, Leopard Skin, came in the form of “Taste It”. That video harkens back to the glory days of MTV and MuchMusic in the ‘80s, when these promo spots had a storyline with outside actors; they were just so much fun. Tracii says he enjoyed filming it as much as LAG fans have enjoyed watching it, judging by their comments online.
“Yeah. I think that’s kind of representative of our personality as well. We had a lot of fun working with the two directors, the camera guy, and a couple of assistants. We had some conference calls talking about it, and it’s really two videos. The next one, for the song ‘Lucky Motherfucker’, it’s fucking great man! But yeah, part one with Mark (St Pierre), the actor, was just hilarious! We shot with him for two days, and he’s like a really, hardcore ‘80s rock fan. He had so many questions and so many insights. He was more captivating to us than we were to him, I think. A really cool guy!”
The first round of shots in the video for “Taste It” is Johnnie Walker, and the second is Pepto Bismol; the look on Tracii’s face is absolutely priceless! “Well, that would be reality if I was actually a drinker,” laughs Tracii. “I’ve always been a very light drinker, and the times when I’ve gone in heavy, it always ends up with Pepto Bismol the next day. Not as soon as in the video, but that pink stuff is your friend.”
That statement, taken on its own, serves up a sexual innuendo, much like Phil’s lyrics in “Taste It”. It’s classic L.A. Guns. Phil and Tracii came out with “Sex Action” in 1988, and they’re still getting down and dirty with “Taste It” in 2025. “Well, there’s nothing grosser than old men singing about ‘tasting it’, is there? We don’t want to jeopardize the personality of the band just because we’re still around, know what I mean. Cause we could be really boring. We could be in jazz odyssey land by now, but we’re not.”
The video for “Taste It” accurately showcases L.A. Guns’ sense of humor. “Oh yeah, you have to. We’ve been through some turbulent water over the past 35 years. When we got back together in 2017, it was the beginning of the parting of the clouds in the sky. We’ve become closer as a family, the whole band. Just having really good times, and we really appreciate it. I think that’s the one thing that’s a lot different now. Particularly Johnny Martin (bassist) and Ace (Von Johnson, guitarist) and Shawn (Duncan, drummer), who have been in the band a relatively shorter amount of time than Phil and I. They make us realize how cool it is to be in this band. So, Phil and I, being the older guys, we’re trying to impress them. Like, ‘Hey, what do you think of my shirt?’ It’s hilarious.”
The guitar solo in “Taste It” is spectacular. It’s signature Tracii Guns. There’s no mistaking who’s playing that. And it really opens the song up. Instead of increasing the energy like a lot of solos do, Tracii slows it down, thereby letting the song breathe, tremendous job. “Thanks, man. You know, the one thing I’m good at in this life is the god damn guitar. I’ve got a handle on it, kind of, by now. That’s why we keep making these records, I’m still trying to figure it out.”
The aforementioned “Lucky Motherfucker” goes down a different musical path. That song has some serious funk to it, approaching Sly And The Family Stone territory. “Almost,” admits Tracii. “When I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I started listening to James Gang, and I just loved Joe Walsh’s playing in that band. That was kind of the beginnings of Zeppelin just being massive too. Joe Walsh and Jimmy Page, they had a really good friendship back then. It was kind of like a healthy, competitive – ‘What are you doing?’ ‘No, what are you doing?’ kind of thing. So, I really wanted to study Joe Walsh. What was he doing? What was he thinking? And that led down a rabbit hole, all the way down to disco. All the way up to ’78, ’79 where I just didn’t want to do the same thing. I remembered when we were talking about doing Hollywood Vampires a long time ago. It was like, ‘Am I going to have to write this style every time?’ The first album and Cocked & Loaded – those are great! They’re probably our fans’ favorite records.”
“But as a musician, I just want to explore all my influences. I always have. If it’s something new that influences me, I’ll steal it right now. I don’t care. It’s all about taking the things you learn and applying them to what you’re doing. But when we talk about something like ‘Lucky Motherfucker’, yeah, it’s straight up all the great elements from the ‘70s funk era. It’s almost Aerosmith-y in a way. The guitar tone is slightly different. We’ve got kind of a modern vocal breakdown in there, which to me, it’s almost melancholy in a way, but it just cracks me the fuck up when I listen to it. We went from ‘70s funk to 2024 disco in a heartbeat; and that’s what I’m looking for in the music. I’m looking for these changing gears, shifting. So, extending beyond that song, I’m really happy with all the different things that we did on the record.”
“Runaway Train” is incredibly unusual for L.A. Guns. A bluesy slide guitar is coupled with a train whistle, and thoughts abound – this could be old Aerosmith, maybe even Tom Keifer or Cinderella; then it gives way to an almost country music vibe! “Yeah, I was watching that show Reacher, and that guy’s obsessed with blues in the show. And there’s a Blind Blake song that came on that I hadn’t heard in years. And I’m like, ‘Ah, man. Blind Blake – that guy was so cool.’ So, I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube and I learned one of his tunings. I was just playing with that tuning for a week or two, and I came up with all those little bits. So, it’s like half Blind Blake, half Jimmy Page. But nobody sings blues better than a British guy, right? There’s something about a British guy with all their Southern Black influences, when they do that kind of stuff, it sounds so cool. Like a Mick Jagger kind of thing. We had so much fun putting that song together. I remember sending it to Phil (Lewis) the first time; ‘Well, here’s this one.’ He’s like, “Wow! Ok. What am I going to do?’ I don’t know. Him and his writing partner, Mitch Davis, they put that together in the studio, and it just turned into something else man.”
After four albums on Frontiers, L.A. Guns has a new home on Cleopatra Records. “Yeah, it was a weird split. I had tried to get out, like two years earlier. Frontiers is strange. It’s two guys – Serafino and Mario, who’s the attorney for the label. Mario’s the good cop, and he knew how to get on my good side. That’s why I ended up doing so many projects for them. They didn’t like L.A. Guns music. I don’t know what they’re into – Journey, or something, which is great. But L.A. Guns is certainly no Journey. But then they had me working with other people. Maybe they were trying to get me to write AOR with the other people, but it seemed every time I’d do a new project, they’d get more pissed off. Especially the thing with Michael Sweet (from Stryper); I went full Satanic metal. And of course I did, Michael’s like a Jesus guy. I wanted to make that the biggest dynamic kind of thing. All the lyrics are about Jesus and shit. So, to me, that’s what sets that project apart. You have Guns N’ Moses, which is hilarious. But those records are fucking slamming! They’re just so kick ass!”
“Then the thing I did with Todd Kerns, Blackbird Angels, it’s so good. But they don’t want to get that deep. They want slick-sounding stuff, slick writing. Even the Jack Russell stuff I did, I thought was pretty cool. But it was time to get L.A. Guns with a label that really understood the music first and foremost. Brian Perera, the owner of Cleopatra; he’s been with me and L.A. Guns from day one. He was making our t-shirts back in ‘83, ’84, ’85. So now, between our agent, our managers, Brian, and all the cool guys at the label, and the band and the crew – it’s just a party! Everybody’s into it. No idea is too extravagant. We just move forward.”
Besides what’s already been mentioned, there’s another bit of history between L.A. Guns and Cleopatra Records. The album Hollywood Forever – released in 2012, which Tracii did not play on – was released on Deadline Music, and that’s a division of the Cleopatra Label Group. “Right. I think there were a couple things. We did our Greatest Hits with them, which was kind of a sort of weird reunion for a minute there; I’m happy with that too. I like those recordings. But yeah, Cleopatra has always had L.A. Guns’ back, come hell or highwater, whatever’s going on. Brian’s always stayed real neutral between all parties involved.”
Hollywood Forever was the last L.A. Guns album to feature a truly different and unique album cover. All the Frontiers album covers were a variation of the band’s shield logo, which is reminiscent of the Whitesnake era on Frontiers, where every album was the same WS stamp, just on a different background. Thankfully, there’s a slightly different take on it this time, with a painting of a woman with the L.A. Guns logo as a tattoo on her chest. It’s good to see that it isn’t the same old rinse and repeat which Frontiers was notorious for.
“Right, yeah,” agrees Tracii. “Kayla, Phil’s wife; she does all our art. She even did all the art for Frontiers. So, when we got here, we had kind of an AI rendering from the label, of that artwork. Then I sent it to her, and she did a hand-painting; she’s amazing. Everybody saw that and went, ‘Wow!’ It looks like an old Aerosmith album cover, it’s really cool! It’s nice when the whole artistic point of view is what’s first and foremost with all these people that are working on L.A. Guns stuff now. Everybody’s kind of like a weird, old hippie in a way.”
The album title, Leopard Skin, refers to the old saying, ‘A leopard can’t change its spots.’ But, to add to that, all those spots are slightly different on the body of the animal. And that’s like the songs on this record. They’re all L.A. Guns spots / songs, but they’re all different.
“Right, they are,” agrees Tracii. “The one thing that’s always tied L.A. Guns together is Phil’s voice. Phil’s voice is unmistakable, and that’s always given me the freedom to do whatever I want. Cause I know, no matter what style is going to come out, Phil’s going to sing on it, and it’s going to be an L.A. Guns song. There’s going to be no question. That’s kind of the luck – what makes a guitar hero? A great singer! That’s just the reality. Those songs are so important, and that chemistry between the guitar player and that voice, and whatever the style of the singer is. That’s what really props up a guitar hero. I grew up in the age of guitar heroes, you know what I mean. My goal was always to write stuff that inspired other guitar players. You do that by using what inspired you, and hopefully you get lucky enough to have a singer like Phil Lewis. That’s a solid recipe.”
Tracii says that L.A. Guns did not try to write a title track for Leopard Skin. “No, because we always title our records after the music’s done. What does this record sound like? What are the lyrics representing? Like, Checkered Past, that’s so obvious. The Missing Peace, that’s so obvious. But, Leopard Skin, was a totally selfish thing. I just binge that British kind of style from the late ‘60s and ‘70s. When you get stuck for an album title, it was like, we could call it The Black Album, or The White Album. Let’s get fancy and call it The Purple Album. I was like, ‘No, man. No one’s ever done a Leopard Skin album.’ It’s just going deeper into what Leopard Skin is, and how it’s associated with rock ‘n roll – Keith Richards, and Johnny Thunders, The Dolls, and Aerosmith… and obviously rockabilly. I just really liked it. And we can really make a gimmick out of this. People send in pictures of them wearing leopard skin already, the album’s not even out. It should be a fun album title and inspire a little bit of thought stylistically. I’m expecting people in the audience to be wearing some leopard skin. It serves a little purpose.”
Tracii produced this album, which is nothing new for L.A. Guns, as he produced all the Frontiers albums. But, Leopard Skin wasn’t recorded together. The vocals were done at Pull Studios in New York City. Tracii did his recording at Dee’s Joint Studios in Hollywood. Is it a less impactful role, being a remote producer, compared to when L.A. Guns had a producer for the first few albums, and everybody was in the studio together?
“Well, it’s just a complete opposite way of doing things. When you have an outside producer come in, there’s a lot of pressure. You’ve got to do the rehearsals, the pre-production; and that creates really good times and really bad times because, inevitably, every musician feels very strongly about their opinion. Then the producers feel very strongly about their opinion. One thing I learned from Rick Rubin, very early on, was that a great producer really shouldn’t do much. A great producer should trust in the project they’re working on, and let the talent do what the talent does. That’s how I approached these records. I know that I have to push myself a little bit and not be complacent with what I’m writing. Not settle for things that I’m recording just because, ‘Oh, that’s good enough,’ So, I know that I have to push things and that I have to open up my mind if I’m going to take on the production role. The other things, back then, the producers from our time were also budgeting huge amounts of money. They’re taking a million dollars and showing the label where that money’s going. It’s not just like, ‘Hey, you’re getting ready to do a record, here’s a million bucks, go have fun.’ It was never like that. It’s all about budgeting, hiring the right engineers, the right studio. There was a tape budget, and then there was a secondary tape budget. Then there’s a mastering budget; all these things. Then your business manager gets a cut, your manager gets a cut, producer’s fee, the musicians – we get a salary at that point.”
“But now, it’s more like, ‘Here’s 50 Grand, have a good time.’ That’s what it’s like now. So, the records essentially cost about between 10 and 20 Grand to make now. Adam, our studio drummer; he records the drums in his place. I do my stuff here, which is free of charge; I should be charging myself though. Mitch Davis in New York, the guys come over to overdub their parts here. The way that it’s done now is, I come up with a complete arrangement, and I send it to Adam; I email it to him. Then he sends me one drum track, and then we kind of pick it apart a little bit. Once the drum track is done, I just go to town on that song! It’s almost a song-by-song thing. I never start recording a record after writing 15 songs – and that’s what we used to do. We’d write 15 songs, beat them into the ground, then go in the studio and record them. And that’s a great way to do it. But for me, this is a much greater way to do it! It’s because I’m a guitar player. I can sit there and tweak the fucking microphone on a speaker for a week before I hit record, and nobody’s going to say anything. Nobody’s going to be like, ‘That sounds fine.’ Then I’ll be, ‘Ah, I don’t know man.’ All the luxuries of basically working from home are great for anybody that’s artistic. You’re in your own environment; you’re in your own space. I can record in my underwear if I want to – and I do. It just makes life easy. We don’t have to impress anybody but ourselves. That’s the most important thing for any band – if you love what you’re doing, you’ve already won.”
Getting back into a couple more of the songs from Leopard Skin, “Hit And Run” has a vintage surf rock feel to it. Again – different avenue, different flavor for L.A. Guns. That sound, that song, is certainly unexpected.
“Right, yeah. Johnny brought that song in. Oddly enough, the song is called ‘Hit And Run’, because while he was up here, somebody ran into his car, and ran! That was the working title of the song immediately. But Johnny had the cool chord progression, and it just felt so surfy to me. I don’t even know if surfy’s the word – Chris Isaak meets The Cult meets… I don’t know. But I was so excited when we got the drum track back. Then Johnny came and played bass; he put down a rhythm guitar first, and then he went home. So, I got to just play with it. It was such a great, fun challenge to put all those sounds together, which are different than everything else, and anything else in our entire catalog. I actually had a SilverTone amp from the ‘60s with its reverb and its tremolo, and a Gretsch. The little melody part, I put that on later, with a late ‘60s MusicMan amp and a fuzz pedal, and a Stratocaster. There’s so much going on, but the song is so good. The song is so fucking good!”
Do you see any parallels between “Ice Cream Man” – originally recorded by bluesman John Brim in 1953, then famously covered by Van Halen on their 1978 debut album – and “I’m Your Candy Man”?
“I never did before, but now I certainly do. That’s such a weird song, isn’t it. And it’s the one that Phil really, really wants to do live. That’s where you notice that your band members have different tastes. It does have that very tongue-in-cheek kind of swagger mixed in. It’s stupid, but it’s also sexy at the same time. But I always thought that it had some Van Halen-ish edge to it. Maybe it’s just the chords I chose? I think Adam had sent me the drum track before I wrote anything, and it was named after a Van Halen song. I cannot remember what it was. So, I think it always was implied that it was supposed to have some Van Halen feel. I think you nailed that. It doesn’t sound like Van Halen, but it’s definitely reminiscent of Van Halen.”
(Photos by Joe Schaeffer)
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