INTERVIEW: Graham Bonnet on Alcatrazz’s first studio album in decades
Image courtesy of the band / Provided by New Ocean Media with permission.
Graham Bonnet, frontman and founding member of heavy metal band Alcatrazz, has lived a storied career in the pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll. From his time with Rainbow in the 1980s to his founding of Alcatrazz, the singer has crafted a career of hard-rocking sounds and catchy tunes, and that streak continues with the band’s new album, Born Innocent, which was recently released.
Today, Alcatrazz features Bonnet on vocals, Joe Stump on guitar, Jimmy Waldo on keyboards, Gary Shea on bass and Mark Benquechea on drums. Their collective output in 2020 is an important next chapter in Alcatrazz’s history, especially since the last original album from the band was 1986’s Dangerous Games. To say that fans have been thirsty for more is an understatement.
What makes Born Innocent particularly special is having Bonnet team up once again with Waldo and Shea, two fellow founding members. The late, great Bob Kulick is also featured as writer and guitarist on “I Am the King.” Other choice tunes: “Polar Bear,” “Something That I Am Missing” and “Warth Lane.” Steve Vai, guitarist extraordinaire, wrote “Dirty Like the City.” Nozomu Wakai wrote and played guitars on “Finn McCool.”
Recently Hollywood Soapbox caught up with Bonnet to talk all things Alcatrazz (with a little Rainbow chat thrown in for good measure). Here’s what he had to say:
On his thoughts now that Born Innocent has finally been released …
It’s always a bit worrying when you try one-upmanship on the last album you did. … You always think it’s not as good, and I think this has turned out pretty well as far as I know.
On how the album came together …
We were not quite sure what to do, to be honest with you. We wanted to make an album that was kind of like a tribute to the original Alcatrazz but at the same time make it something that had a modern sound, and so I think we’ve kind of captured that. But it took awhile for songs to come together because we weren’t quite sure how we should approach it, whether we should be totally different or something similar to Alcatrazz #1, and I think that’s what we decided to do. We got in Joe Stump who plays in that typical 1980s style. If he wants to, he’s really adaptable in all he does actually. He’s very chameleon-like and can play with lots of different people.
On whether he played these new songs on the road …
With the very first Alcatrazz album, that’s exactly what we did do. … We played some stuff live here before we went to Japan now that I think about it, but it’s always a good thing to do. With this, we went straight ahead and hoped for the best. Everybody records at home and sends their parts to each member of the band, so the drums were done somewhere else. And the vocals are done at home and whatever, so it’s all done by mail like everything else. That’s how we did it.
On how COVID-19 has disrupted his career …
We are not doing anything right now because everything’s been canceled. I know people are coming out of the darkness to get on the road and do whatever, however they want to go about it by having an audience that’s in cars or in cages or wherever the hell it may be so they’re all safe but can still do a concert. I wouldn’t do that myself. I don’t want to risk it for anyone to actually go out there on stage and breathe into somebody’s face and give them the virus, which I don’t have, but I might be a carrier. You never know, so you know I don’t know when we’re going to play live ever. It’s probably going to be next year because what I’ve heard is this thing is going on forever and will never be gone. It’ll be like the flu virus. It will come around every year or whatever. … God knows what’s going to happen. We’ll be in hazmat suits in a few years or a few weeks because now it’s come down to masks and the visor. I don’t’ have a visor, but I always wear the mask wherever I go. But it could come to something really serious like that. It’s almost like the bomb has dropped, and we’re trying to escape the radiation fallout.
On how he developed his heavier sound …
What I was doing before was like R&B stuff, anything I liked, jazzy, whatever, which is stuff I love. I love R&B. I love doo-wop. I love jazz music, all that kind of thing, but then this band Rainbow asked me to come and audition for them, I should say. It was totally different from anything I’ve ever played. That’s really where the influence comes from. It’s from Rainbow.
After I left Rainbow, I wanted to put a band together that was similar to Rainbow with the same kind of lineup — keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and singer, of course. That’s what I did with Alcatrazz. That’s how I put it together, and I wanted to find players that were good at doing that or players that were kind of known as well. …
That’s kind of what happened and why my style changed somewhat, but if you look back at the early stuff I sang, I’m singing in the same way just different songs. I was used to singing rock ‘n’ roll, just pissing around when I was a kid, all kinds of rock ‘n’ roll, but at a certain point I wanted to be more sophisticated, if you will, and try anything, any genre of music, which I love to do. But when you’re in a so-called hard rock band or heavy metal band, whatever it is, you’re very limited. … That’s the way it is, but I don’t mind that because it’s a breeze. It’s great to play. It’s exciting.
On how he joined Rainbow in the 1980s …
I went for the audition, and I sang a song called ‘Mistreated’ as my audition piece. I had to research who Rainbow was. I had no idea. I thought it was a folk group. Rainbow? I imagined Peter, Paul and Mary or something. It sounded very hippie-trippy, but it wasn’t. It was Rainbow. …
I went in there. I sang this song with them, and they said, ‘The job is yours,’ sort of straight away. I thought, oh, really. They said, ‘Yeah, sing it again.’ We sang the bloody thing three times, I think it was, twice off microphone and once on microphone because I was singing off the microphone at first at the audition because I didn’t want to screw up. I thought, oh God, if I crack or go flat or sing crappily, they won’t want me anyway, so I sang off-microphone. …
So anyway I [eventually] sang on microphone for the last part, and I just thought I’m not sure about this and went home to London. I told my manager, ‘Well, I don’t fit with this band at all.’ I said, ‘I don’t really know what this music is all about. It’s not the kind of thing I would listen to at all.’ Of course, it wasn’t. I never listened to all the heavy so-called bands at the time. I was more into the Beatles and the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones … music that was on the charts, so to speak. That kind of [heavy] music it was underground music as it used to be called, I seem to remember. It was not very radio-friendly, so I didn’t hear it, didn’t listen to it, didn’t want to listen to it because I wasn’t a fan of that kind of music. When I started to sing with the band and found out how exciting it was to sing in front of this great band without a doubt it turned my mind around to exploring a new dimension.
On recording Alcatrazz’s first album, No Parole From Rock ‘n’ Roll …
I thought I’d try to make up some kind of melodies that are interesting and have a little catchy thing in them to make it somewhere in between a pop song and a rock song or something. I was very nervous of doing that. I thought it was an experiment. … I really thought that the album would do nothing until it suddenly became gold in Japan. We had our first gold record. Remember records? Those vinyl things. Back then there was records and CDs. In fact, CDs came out when we had our first hit over there with this album. I remember going to an office in Japan in Tokyo, and a guy coming out from the darkness saying, ‘This is how records are going to look in the future,’ and it was a CD. ‘What’s it called?’ ‘A CD.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘A compact disc.’ ‘Oh, I get it.'”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Alcatrazz’s new album is Born Innocent. Click here for more information.
