The music world lost another one of its own way too young last week when glam rock poster boy Jani Lane of Warrant fame was found dead in a Los Angeles Comfort Inn with a half-empty bottle of vodka and prescription pills found at the scene. No cause of death has been determined pending a toxicology report, but an accidental overdose is suspected. He was 47.
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| Jani Lane: 1964 - 2011 |
He was in and out of the group during the mid-90s when hair bands were the scourge of the music industry that put grunge at the forefront, but returned to Warrant in 2008 for a reunion of the group's original lineup, back together again for the first time in nearly a decade and a half. It was the beginning of the genre experiencing an upswing, with nostalgic fans and younger audiences coming out to see the likes of Poison and Ratt in droves.
Back then, I caught up with Lane, who was sober, kind and excited to be back with his band after watching them out on the road without him for many years. The interview was extensive and covered a great deal of material - but it was never published.
Why? Because after just a handful of dates that summer - mainly in secondary markets, Lane was back out of the group. Videos that sprang up on YouTube from the performances ranged from below average to absolutely awful, as it was clear that old habits - especially bad ones, die hard, with the frontman forgetting the words, stumbling about and embarrassing the rest of the band.
The reunion tour never made it to the Philadelphia region, the closest was Baltimore, Md. or Clearfield, Pa. - in the middle of the state at a county fair no less and neither were close enough to consider covering or previewing here.
In the wake of Lane's passing, it's only appropriate to revisit a time when he was back at a high point in his life.
Michael Christopher: Why reunite with Warrant and why now?
Jani Lane: “I can guarantee you that I didn’t choose it this time, it kind of just happened. If you had asked me this question as early as last July, I would’ve said, “No way. No way in hell. Not gonna happen; not on the horizon, not ever.” I was still walking around my house going, “Those bastards, they can kiss my ass,” you know? I was pretty upset, I’ve been spending a lot of money on attorneys and fighting them on several different levels – and I knew they were spending a lot of money.”
And I happened to be on tour doing the solo thing in Florida and I was doing some shows – and this is probably August of ‘07, and I got a call from [guitarist] Erik Turner, and I was kind of shocked.
So I answered the phone, and we started talking and it wasn’t aggressive or mean, he was very mellow and we started discussing how all this feuding and going back and forth with attorneys was not just affecting us in a money sense, but kind of having an impact on our lives. It was a waste of energy. We decided that when I got back to L.A. we’d set up a time and sit down in a room and negotiate things contractually between us, without attorneys present and find a way that we could move forward; not necessarily together, but without the feuding, without the bickering back and forth.
It started out as simple as that.
What happened at the meeting in L.A.?
It was a little, um…surprising. I walked into the room and I felt very uncomfortable, I can tell you that. I really didn’t know what to expect from them, kind of a guard up kind of a deal. Everybody was nice and really easy to work with and we came up with an agreement, we had an attorney draw it up, we signed it, and that seemed to release the tension between everybody; just knowing that we had a way to move forward with all the back and forth.
That was it.
And we just started talking after that and I went over to Jerry’s house and heard a couple songs and some of the other guys showed up and we played a little bit and one phone call after another and we talked about maybe doing a show sometime, maybe a Rocklahoma kind of a thing and it just blossomed into let’s get together and do it again.
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| Lane at the height of hair-metal |
And now all the legal wrangling is over with?
Those are in the books. Everybody got what they wanted which was, not to get into specifics, but Erik and Jerry were founders of the band and very interested in ownership of the name, I obviously wanted to control my catalog of songs and everybody had an interest in if we are to move forward, let’s all have equal input. It came down to some what you might call nitpicky things, like if you’re going to e-mail somebody, cc all of us so we’re all in the loop, because that was a problem early on in Warrant was one person speaking for all five. It was pretty simple at the end of the day.
What were those first rehearsals like?
That’s a funny one because I refer to that as having sex after back surgery: not very comfortable. It was strange, it was weird to look around and… I didn’t know what they were thinking of me, or are they comparing me to this other singer they had and what’s going on – you know? And I’m looking at them and it’s been years since I’ve been on stage with Joey [Allen] and Steven [Sweet] and a few years since I had been onstage with Erik and Jerry [Dixon] and it just was really weird.
I can say the end of the rehearsal I started getting into it a little bit and I was like, “Ok – let’s do this again.” And the next rehearsal I walked into, it was like 14 years erased, everybody was on the same page, and it's been comfortable ever since."
How hard was it for you, as the face of the band to many people, see the other guys go out under the name Warrant without you and do all those songs you wrote?
I guess at first it might’ve been a little bit tough, but my whole thing was they’re doing their versions of the songs, I’m gonna go out and do my versions of the songs – and that’s what created the tension. I don’t think the audience was every really happy with either version. They were like, “If I can’t see all five of you live, the guys who did this, then I’d prefer to go home and listen to the CD.”
I don’t think we suffered so much as the audience did, just because they were like, what’s the problem – we just want to see Warrant play.
I talked to Stephen Pearcy from Ratt a couple months back, and he was saying that the music of the late 80s and early 90s never went away, but that it went underground. And I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect that if you wanted the ride to last, you just had to keep working at it. Do you think that’s a true statement?
I don’t know; that’s obviously his opinion. I saw bands disappear for awhile, because they couldn’t play the size venues they wanted to, like Poison, who waited for a turnaround and then came back have done very well.
Bands like Warrant, we weren’t quite that established, we followed them by a few years in getting signed. We didn’t just get cut off by the label or dropped - we were cut off financially, we were sued, a lot of things in having to buck up and deal with whatever the music climate was – which was really, really nasty in the early 90s. We call those the dark years; if you didn’t have flannel on and come from the Pacific Northwest – you sucked.
Tell me about the point where you sent out an album to radio under the “mystery artist” tag and radio started to play it until they found out it was Warrant?
Yeah, that was Ultraphoic, which we did in ’95, and it was literally so bad at that point that anything you sent out that had “Warrant” on it, they were just gonna throw it in the trash. So we said, let’s just leave it blank or put different name on there – I think we put the producer’s pseudonym on there, and it did get a little bit of play until people found out it was us…and then it went in the trash.
You’ve seen the resurgence though in the past couple of years in some of those bands and the success they’ve had. Do you see it as a nostalgia trip, or is the music genuinely coming back?
Personally I don’t think it’s a nostalgia thing, I do think it’s coming back to a certain degree just because what preceded it was so dark and gloomy and let’s face it; the economy is spiraling down, we have a terrible president – it’s not great times. We’re in a war that in my opinion we shouldn’t be in, and I think people want to get back to escapism which is, “Let me go have a good time. Let me go hear something fun.”
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| Warrant in 2008 |
What do you remember most about the height of Warrant’s popularity, and how much of the advent of those dark years had to do with the original tensions and breaking up?
It’s just like any other relationship; if you and your wife both lose your job, there’s going to be a lot of tension at home – same thing with the band. During the good years it was just fantastic because it was such a snowball. It just completely got taken out of our hands and turned into this machine. We were told where to be, when to be and when to play. We kept control over the songs that went on the record – except for “Cherry Pie.”
How much do you think “Cherry Pie” has overshadowed some of your deeper songwriting, like “Blind Faith” and “I Saw Red?”
It’s certainly overshadowed it with the younger generation, they pretty much relate to Warrant as “The Cherry Pie band.” The older group of fans that we have, you went and bought vinyl or a CD and you wanted to read the liner notes and see how this song tied into the next and maybe you could listen to the lyrics and find something personal that was going on in the guy’s life.”
“I still don’t mind [“Cherry Pie”] to this day. I tried to explain this; people are like, “You hated that song,” no I didn’t hate the song. It’s just that when I was young and full of angst and I wanted everyone to listen to my serious songs I was like, “How dare you define me by that kitschy, tongue in cheek sexual innuendo.” Now in hindsight, I’m really pleased that I wrote something that seems to be standing the test of time – at least to this point.”
That song is such a touchstone for that type of music…
“Absolutely! It’s probably in the top five defining songs of the period.”
What about the bands out there that aren’t doing the reunions people want to see, or playing with only some of the original members?
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| Lane in 2008 with Warrant |
There’s a finite window for any opportunity. The bands that don't reestablish themselves while they have the chance to do it may never get the opportunity again. And I just look at it and go, "That's really sad, because I liked that band and I'd like to see the all original members," because it's not like somebody died in the band and had to be replaced. These guys live three miles across town from each other and just don't want to talk.
What was it like doing “Celebrity Fit Club” and having your personal life put out there for everyone to see?
On a personal level that was a very difficult time for me; my mother had just died, going through a divorce, a custody battle, being out of Warrant and dealing with that on a legal and personal end – it was a very bad time to have a camera put in your face. But I survived it, and I’m back in the band.
To be a hundred percent honest, I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I did that, and will probably shy away from any opportunities with reality TV again. Because you go into feeling like it’s going to be scripted and I’m going to be somewhat protected from this, and it’s really not. It’s basically entertainment news casting. It’s just not healthy.
What do you say to the people who saw you on that show and want to know how you are doing today?
I would say to those people: “I’m a single dad who gets up at 6:45 in the morning and I get my daughter to school, I make her breakfast, I take her to soccer practice and to piano lessons. But when it comes time this summer to climb on that tour bus it’s going to be Jani Lane of Warrant so come out and see it because it’s gonna rock.”
What are you looking forward to most with the reunion tour, and after it’s over, do you think it will be time to step back into the studio with the band?
I think it will be time to step back into the studio. We intentionally didn’t slap together some piece of crap greatest hits with a few covers on it. We dug up some old video footage and threw it on a DVD with some of the studio videos. We didn’t want the audience to think they were going to come out this summer hear “Down Boys,” “Cherry Pie” and 10 songs they never heard before, so we said let’s go out and play all the hits from the major releases. I’ll have all summer to write and we’ll sign a deal with a major label in the fall and take our time.
It’s been 14 years since this lineup has been in the studio and we’ve never made a bad record and I don’t want to start now.
The abridged version of this interview appeared in the August 19 Rock Music Menu in The Daily Times
1 comments:
Great interview! Thanks for sharing this with us, Michael. So sad that reunion did not help enough to save him from himself... Let´s just pray he is in a better place, and keep his music and legacy alive.
Richard - Brazil
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