Christopher Lee of CryptMagazine.com recently conducted an interview with '80s hard rock queen Lita Ford. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. CryptMagazine.com: OK, so after all the years of making records, what made you finally decide at this point in your career to release a live album and what made you decide to record it at The Canyon Club? Lita: You know, live album are things that you just want to do. It wasn't anything that was in my recording contract or anything like that; it's just something we wanted to do. The fans were so great and welcoming me back into the music industry after I had been gone for so many years, and I wanted to dedicate the album to them. It's recorded at the Canyon Club because its an intimate club, it's not a big arena. Like, we had just come off the DEF LEPPARD/POISON tour where they were all arena shows, and we wanted to do something that was intimate and in your face. And that's what the recording is. And when you listen to the album, you feel like you are there. You wanna...you wanna be able to have that feeling when you listen to a live album. You want to feel like you're at a concert. CryptMagazine.com: How does Lita Ford feel about Pro Tools and the technology. I think it takes the personality out of records. There's no mistakes left in there; they smooth everything out until it just sounds fake! Lita: I do too. I do too, and I think that's why our music industry is kind of "lost" right now. There's no real rock direction, and it all depends on how you choose to use your Pro Tools. If you choose to "cut and paste," everything then your album is gonna sound mechanical. But with "Living Like A Runaway", when we recorded that album, Gary Hoey, who produced the album, we never cut and paste anything, we sang everything all the way through the entire song because we didn't want it to sound "digital," we wanted it to sound "analog." We wanted it to sound like a real album, and we dropped the "click track" in certain places where the song actually does get off time; we let it go off time on purpose because that's the feel of the song. Why should a song be perfectly on time!? Because it takes away from the feel of the song, so we
That was one of the first things we spoke about when we first recorded "Living Like A Runaway", was let's go back to our roots and let's go back to the early days and try and record an album that sounds like an album and not a piece of machine, ya know? CryptMagazine.com: What keeps you looking so young, because you look great! Lita: Thank you! Thanks. I, um, I don't know, I don't really do too much, I try to take care of, ya know, my hair. Sleep is really important, especially if aging, ya know, sometimes people don't get enough sleep, so I will go out of my way maybe once a month and sleep. You know, you get that saying when people say, "God, I wish I could sleep for a year." You know, it's like you go into hibernation. Well, I actually do I will take a weekend and I will turn everything off in my house, I won't get dressed and I just sleep. So it helps, and then you come out of it and you look at yourself in the mirror, take a hot shower, and you're like, "God, I look refreshed." [laughs] It really works! CryptMagazine.com: So you mentioned you are working on your autobiography. How far into it are you and when will it be out? Lita: We are, we're taking the holiday season, November/December, to finish up the book, it should be out March 2014, so we are right in the heat of it right now, and which is why we're not out doing shows so I can finish doing this book for HarperCollins. CryptMagazine.com: What keeps you wanting do this when even the live concert experience now has been reduced to people playing with their phones the whole time, illegal downloading, etc.? Lita: It's really weird how people are soooo addicted to their cellphones, which is weird, I mean, you have to be able to turn that thing off sometime and put it away. This is what I'm saying with, you go into hibernation and sleep; it's what I do, I don't answer e-mails, I don't answer the phone, and then when you go to a concert, you are standing on stage looking out into the audience and everybody's texting people and videotaping, trying to capture your performance, so I guess they can take it home with them and watch it once they get home. Or they want to send it to a friend that lives across the country or whatever reason. I don't know. Just put those damn things away The good thing about the cellphones is when you do play a ballad and everyone wants to break out the Bic lighters, they break out their cellphones and wave the light. At least it's not a fire hazard. [laughs] Read the entire interview at CryptMagazine.com.
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