INTERVIEW: Quiet Riot are ready to bang heads in NJ
Photo: Quiet Riot will descend upon New Jersey Friday, May 5. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by New Ocean Media with permission.
Quiet Riot, the popular heavy metal band that rose to skyscraper heights in the 1980s, are having a historic year in 2023. The band is celebrating the 40th anniversary of their seminal record, Metal Health, which features the hit tunes “Let’s Get Crazy,” “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” and their cover of “Cum on Feel the Noize.” They are also simultaneously honoring the 20th anniversary of a demo that was almost lost forever; that song is “I Can’t Hold On” and is part of the album Rehab: Relapsed and Remastered. Both the legendary album and this new/old song will be celebrated at the many concerts that Quiet Riot have scheduled for the coming weeks and months, including a show with Vixen Friday, May 5 at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey.
Alex Grossi has been with the band for 20 years (another anniversary to celebrate this year!), playing his heart out as the guitarist for this well-respected metal outfit. He plays alongside bassist Rudy Sarzo, vocalist Jizzy Pearl and drummer Johnny Kelly, and collectively they carry on the legacy of this band and its deceased members. Actually, “I Can’t Hold On” was written by the late Kevin DuBrow and Grossi in 2003, and the song serves as a tribute to the beloved members of the band who left the fans too early.
“Rehab came out originally in 2006, and it had started with Kevin DuBrow and I writing the songs,” Grossi said in a recent phone interview. “And then other people got involved. It was really a record that both Kevin and Frankie [Banali], who are no longer with us, were really proud of. It’s not your typical Quiet Riot-sounding record, and one of the songs that demoed for it but never made it on was a song called ‘I Can’t Hold On,’ which I had completely forgotten about until 2021 when I found it on an old iPod. We extracted the vocals off it and the guitars and everything and put the whole thing together, added some stuff to it, and we finished the track up. And if you watch the video [see below], you’ll see the whole process of how it came about, paying tribute to our fallen band members.”
Grossi has high praise for DuBrow, the legendary lead vocalist of Quiet Riot, and Banali, the equally legendary drummer of the band. “Kevin and Frankie together were great,” Grossi said. “They were an unstoppable force, and Frankie on his own was a really great mentor as well. Now that they’re both no longer with us, I feel pretty confident about carrying it on, utilizing what they taught me.”
The guitarist called it an honor and a privilege to carry on Quiet Riot’s legacy for fans in 2023; however, the day-to-day job of being in the band is not easy. In 2022, for example, Quiet Riot played something like 70 shows, all of them fly-dates in which the band flies in, performs a few gigs and then flies out. That’s a lot of travel, but Grossi’s committed to the music.
“People like what they know, so we do most of the Metal Health album and some of the Condition Critical album,” Grossi said about the set list. “And that’s pretty much the two main albums that sold really well, so we kind of stick to those really. … I always hate when people change up their songs, whether it’s the original guys or not. Metal Health sold 10 million copies, so I want to try to stay true to those recordings.”
Grossi was 7 or 8 years old when Metal Health was unleashed on the world, and he remembers that time in his life. He was a little young to become a Quiet Riot fan (he admitted to being obsessed with the music of Michael Jackson), but he couldn’t escape Quiet Riot’s music videos on MTV. These were the early days of MTV, and there weren’t many videos in rotation. So “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” came on, and then it came on again, and again, and again.
“I picked up the guitar for the first time I think in 1990 when I turned 13 or 14 and just started getting into a garage band and playing the high school talent shows and whatnot,” Grossi said about his own evolution as a musician. “I never stopped. I went through my baseball phase, sports phase and everything, but I definitely found my home playing guitar. And I stuck with it thankfully.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Quiet Riot and Vixen will play Friday, May 5 at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
