Remember the '80s?
If you're a music person, you don't have to remember them, because they're always right fucking there.
Despite the recent resurgence of the New Wave/synth-pop sound, it's really not accurate to say that the '80s are back. They never left. Old Wave nights at dance clubs have been popular mainstays since, well, since Old Wave was new. Radio stations working a format that relies almost exclusively on post-classic rock, pre-grunge programming have been listener favorites for almost a decade now.
And at least once a month, you can head down to St. Pete's Jannus Landing or State Theatre and watch aging former hair-metal icons play the hard rock tunes that made you feel like a badass in your bedroom when you were 14, and nothing felt quite so good as a little vicarious rebellion.
Sometimes those shows are fun, in a very nostalgic sort of way. Sometimes they provide a ghost of the feelings of youth. But for fans who lived and died by their heroes back in the day, mostly they're just sad, liking watching the guy who played the hardboiled detective on a once-beloved TV show signing autographs at a boat show — not his name, but the name of the only character he played that anyone noticed, the one he was never able to outdo, or outlive.
"A friend of mine was on the phone with me the other day and we were talking about this same thing," says Tracii Guns, who co-founded Guns N' Roses before leaving to lead L.A. Guns, a punkier, underrated late-'80s Sunset Strip rock act. "Living in the past is dying in the future. That's the rule I live by. I always try to move forward, expand on my playing or at least try something different."
Around the turn of the millennium, after nearly two decades of pushing forward in L.A. Guns — a great band whose biggest success came back in '89 with the hit "The Ballad of Jayne," from its sophomore album Cocked & Loaded — the guitarist walked away from the group when he realized its future lay in flogging past glories.
"I get bored really fast playing the same stuff over and over again," says Guns, via an extraordinarily modern (and extraordinarily inefficient) interview process consisting of him recording answers to my e-mailed questions, then e-mailing back an audio file of the one-way conversation. "Getting stuck in one sound or time — music's just not like that for me … I like so many different kinds of music that I find it very difficult to stay in one band and just play one type of music forever.
"I was in L.A. Guns for 20 years, playin' those tunes. And they're great songs … but to be able to play with other musicians I admire, that's what keeps me motivated and interested in music, period."
Since leaving the band, Guns has stayed busy and productive following his own instincts and interests. He recorded a couple of solo albums. He conned his way into playing three tour dates as a member of legendary horror-punk outfit The Misfits, by good-naturedly badgering a mutual friend into introducing him to Misfits bassist Jerry Only. Most recently — and most notably — he collaborated with friend and Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx in an old-school sleaze-rock band called Brides of Destruction. Guns had visions of the Brides project becoming a long-running endeavor, but Sixx's Motley Crue schedule interfered, and the group only issued two albums; the second, released last year, features only songwriting contributions from Sixx.
"It was supposed to be a full-time thing, and I really got upset with the way Nikki went back to the Crue," he says. "I mean, it was inevitable that it would happen, but there was supposed to be kind of a schedule, and it got fucked up. It pissed me off. That was the band I wanted to do for the next 10 years, and I only put in three years, and it's over now. Yeah, I'm still bummed about that. I was just watching some videos of our live shows, and it really depressed me."
Now, without a recording schedule on the horizon and having been away from the L.A. Guns material that originally made his bones, Guns is finally looking forward to looking back. He and his bassist son Jeremy have assembled a band featuring a couple of guys — vocalist Paul Black and drummer Nickey Alexander — who did time in the original L.A. Guns before the band's breakthrough, and are heading out on an old-fashioned band tour to perform a set heavy on tunes from his former outfit's heyday.
"We're getting ready to leave tomorrow, and it's a cool fuckin' band," he says. "It's a lot more of that New York Dolls, Aerosmith, Dead Boys, Lords of the New Church vibe, which I feel really at home with right now. I don't feel like I have to be a shred artist or anything like that. We're just playing really raunchy rock 'n' roll, and that's where my head's at right now. I'm really stoked that I got these guys. And also, my son's playing bass, and he's a bigger nutcase than I am, so that's working out."
Though he cites the pressure and monotony of trotting out the same old tunes as major reasons for leaving L.A. Guns in the first place ("I thought I left on good terms, but I found out later I didn't," he says with a laugh over the split), Guns believes that the new/old chemistry of his current lineup will make revisiting the material fun again. He also feels a certain responsibility to give longtime fans what they expect to see from a show with his name on it, but adds that he's honestly excited to be playing those songs again.
"I'm not so much doing the hits as I'm doing the cool songs, like 'Electic Gypsy' and 'One More Reason to Die,' just stuff off the first two records and then a couple we never recorded that I wrote with Paul and Nicky and Mick [Cripps, L.A. Guns' other guitarist] back in the old days," he says. "I think there is some pressure to do that. I mean, we're doing 'The Ballad of Jayne' in the set, but we're doing it a little bit different, a little more country.
"But for now, it's fun again. Ask me that question a year from now."
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2006.