METALTALK • OCTOBER 2021
IN MY OWN WORDS
My new album, Sunbomb:
When Frontiers asked me if I wanted to do my record, I said yeah, but I had no idea what I would do. I could have done something mellow, but as a guitar player, my thing is Metal.
Tracii Guns, co-founder of Glam Metal pioneers L.A. Guns
So my wife and I were doing Sunday drives up the coast listening to only Metal and discovering different things. No matter what I was listening to, it was all influenced by The Scorpions and Randy Rhoads. You can’t get away from those influences. So I started demoing stuff, and I had three or four tunes, and I thought this is great, but who’s going to sing this stuff? I’d recently met Michael Sweet and seen him play live at The Whisky, so I sent him a demo. He asked me, “What’s this?” and I said, that’s me. Do you want to sing on that? He said yeah. I said, ok, what about eleven of these? (laughs). He said, “I’m in”. It took me another year to finish all the music, and then it took him another year to write all the lyrics and record it. I never even heard a demo of what he was doing! When songs started coming back, it was like Christmas! We did a successful collaboration, and I couldn’t be any happier with it.
The future of the music industry: I think that things will go back to some sort of normal, but I don’t think they will ever be the way they were before the pandemic. Right now in The States,
for example, you can play half-capacity shows or full capacity if you’re in the south where they don’t care about the pandemic. We won’t partake in that. We have a responsibility to our audience.
The creative comeback of L.A. Guns: The element of creativity and having a good time with it is what fuels authenticity. As long as we’re enjoying it, it is going to show. That’s the benefit of having a band of guys and a crew that are like family. It’s interesting why the new live re8
cord, Cocked and Loaded Live, is coming out. We had a deadline to turn in
“We’re proud of how we sound, and I think Phil has taken care of his voice. We still care. We have to be L.A. Guns.”
PHOTO: JOHN INGLIS
TRACII GUN
