Night Ranger
Hole In The Sun
(VH1 Classic Records) Interview with Brad Gillis - Guitars
           
    When the San Francisco, California-based quintet Night Ranger burst onto the scene with their 1982 debut Dawn Patrol, I have to admit I was almost instantly hooked.  Armed with a batch of fresh, radio-ready tunes that wisely intertwined a distinct metallic ‘…punch…’ with enough melody and unabashed commercial flavor to appeal to the masses as a whole, the group spent much of decade’s waning years atop the Billboard charts whilst incessantly touring in support of a succession of increasingly popular releases.  Following an embarrassing, Damn Yankees-fueled mutiny in 1990, the group (or what remained of it), faded into obscurity before returning in 1997 with the oft-overlooked gem Neverland and it’s equally ignored follow-up Seven.  Now, eleven inexplicably long years later, the group has once again returned to kick our collective asses.              
    On the stellar Hole In The Sun (2008), an expertly assembled fourteen song collection of deftly-executed Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, each track, beginning with the wryly-titled “Tell Your Vision”, and the refreshingly blistering “You’re Gonna Hear From Me”, immediately commands the rapt and undivided attention of even the most jaded and unimaginative of listeners, myself most definitely included.  Undoubtedly concerned with the arguably significant damage suffered during the course of the group’s curious nine year absence, each key focal point is accentuated with an efficient enthusiasm that, while reminiscent of the group’s past glories, offers even the most uninitiated of would-be fans the opportunity to become ‘…musical acquaintances…’.        
    Continuing with the oddly Rap-tinged (!) “Rockstar”, and the impressively swaggering “White Knuckle Ride”, the newly rejuvenated combination of vocalist/bassist Jack Blades (Damn Yankees, Shaw/Blades), guitarists Brad Gillis (ex-Ozzy Osbourne) and Jeff Watson (who has since been replaced by ex-Hurtlocker axeman Joel Hoekstra), keyboardist (and Great White alumni) Michael Lardie (who has also been replaced by Christian Matthew Cullen), and drummer Kelly Keagy (Scrap Metal), steamroll ahead like the well-oiled machine they have obviously become.  Effectively reminding us all of their more than considerable technical prowess, the group seamlessly blends their deliciously hook-laden brand of quasi-Pop Metal with enough face melting riffs and solos to leave even the most discriminating of ‘…shred…’ enthusiasts only wanting for more.
    Co-engineered and mixed by a less than likely--albeit highly effective--combination of the acclaimed Juan Urteaga (Hostility, Skinlab and Testament) and Matt Cohen (Ted Nugent, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Talking Heads, to name only a few), other standouts, including the haunting, emotionally-charged “Revelation 4 AM”, and the soaring, acoustic-tinged “Being”, only further solidify the group’s already undeniably well-deserved reputation as some of the genre’s most talented and prolific musicians.  Thus, even the arguably inescapable presence of a completely unnecessary (if not outright atrocious) acoustic ‘…reworking…’ of the already obnoxiously overplayed, Velveeta-encrusted warhorse “Sister Christian”, and a disappointing overall lack of the group’s trademark keyboards fails to subtract from the decidedly festive mood contained herein.
    Easily one of the improbably long-running groups most thoroughly enjoyable releases to date, what ultimately separates the mighty Hole In The Sun from the majority--if not all--of the later-day efforts of their few remaining contemporaries is the fivesome’s uncanny ability to consistently deliver relevant new material without sounding forced or dated.  The end result, as you may have already guessed, is a maddeningly infectious collection of lastingly memorable material seemingly custom-tailored for the survival of yet another painfully long and hot Summer.  Not surprisingly, if you’ve once again found yourself growing increasingly disillusioned with the latest ‘…bumper crop…’ of hopelessly bastardized Classic Rock acts currently flooding the market, then this, my friends, might just fill the proverbial void.  Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Recently, acclaimed Night Ranger guitarist Brad Gillis (ex-Ozzy Osbourne), always a man of many words and interesting stories, was kind enough to take a break from his decidedly hectic schedule to speak with us regarding the release of the group’s latest Melodic Rock masterpiece Hole In The Sun…

Todd: What was the primary catalyst behind the group opting to wait nearly a decade between release new studio albums?  Was everyone just too busy with their own individual projects to devote the necessary time? 

Brad Gillis: “Well, we had been touring for quite a while and had released a few live records, so we all just felt it was time for a new record.  We waited ten years, but we all had a lot of great ideas, so we didn’t want to be throwing them out every year or two.  We wanted to make this one special.  We took out time.  It actually took us a couple of years to put it together.  It’s already been released in Japan and in Europe and we’re really looking forward to the VH1 Classic release over here…  …(Signing with VH1 Classic Records) kinda worked out really well (bassist/vocalist) Jack (Blades) had a good little marriage with them doin’ the whole Shaw/Blades thing.  They ended up getting a lot of ads on TV and they had the record in the stores, so we felt it would be a good label to go with.”

Todd: What are your current touring plans?  I would assume you’ll be touring in support of Hole In The Sun as much as humanly possible…

Brad: “…We’ve got quite an extensive touring schedule this year.  In fact, this is the best the band has done touring since we were together with the original band in 1989.  Singing with the William Morris booking agency has really helped us out.  They’ve added a lot of great shows.  We’re gonna be out doin’ some mini festivals with Boston, Styx and Foreigner…we’re gonna be doing Rocklahoma, we just got back from Japan and we’re heading to Puerto Rico, so we’ve got quite the little schedule.  …This band is all fired up now.  We ended up getting a new guitar player Joel Hoekstra and a new keyboard player Christian Cullen, who are both just great players.  The band is just smokin’ right now.  We just toured Japan with Firehouse with them and we’re looking forward to touring the rest of the year with these new guys.  The nucleus of the band, Kelly Jack and I, plus the two new guys, are sittin’ pretty for this year.”

Todd: Overall, as a group, have you considered participating in one of the proverbial Summer package tours or have you been purposely avoiding them in an attempt to avoid being lumped into the dreaded ‘…‘80’s Nostalgia…’ subgenre?

Brad: “Well, in one sense, the band isn’t really looking forward to going out for weeks at a time.  We’ve kinda gotten used to and have been lucky to have these weekend warrior shows, which is what we’re mainly doing for the rest of the Spring and the Summer.  Everybody likes to be home during the week.  Everyone has different projects they’re involved with and it gives us time home with our families.  It really gives us time for other projects.  I’m tryin’ to finish up ten cuts for ESPN for SportsCenter…so it actually works out better to do the weekend warrior thing than it does to do the three or four band package thing where we’re out for a month or two at a time.  …Actually, we are in that subgenre…because we’re a Classic Rock band now.  …Some of these weekend warrior shows that we’ve been doing are kinda successful packages too with all the bands I just mentioned.  So we are doin’ a bunch of packages, just mainly on the weekends.”

Todd: What type of set list will you be working with?  Am I correct in understanding the group will be augmenting the ‘…typical...’ Night Ranger set with some lesser known material?

Brad: “Yes.  …We’ve been doin’ the same old set since ’95, so this year, because we have a lot of dedicated fans, we went into rehearsal and learned a dozen old tunes that we haven’t played in a while and a few of the new ones off of Hole In The Sun to add to the set.  So now we have a little over thirty songs to be able to trade around and change things up with for this year’s tour, which is really exciting because we’re playing songs we haven’t played since the early ‘80’s like “Can’t Find Me A Thrill” and “Passion Play” and a few others.  It feels good to change things around and be able to move the set around for this Summer.  …Another one that we pulled out is “Call My Name”, which is kind of a heavier ballad that Jack sings that came off really well in Japan, so we’re pretty excited to be playin’ a bunch of this new stuff.  Plus, we’ve still got stuff like “This Boy Needs To Rock” and “Eddie’s Comin’ Out Tonight”…and a lot of twin guitar harmony stuff that’s really fun to play live, so…  It’s a pretty exciting set and we got to go over to Japan and try out all these new old songs and gauge the audience’s reactions.  We think it’s gonna go over pretty well here in the States.  …It’s kinda cool for us, too because we can see the audience diggin’ it because we haven’t pulled some of these songs out of our hats since the early ‘80’s (laughs).”

Todd: What was the main motivation behind the group wholeheartedly embracing an increasingly commercial, Pop-based sound during the late ‘80’s? 

Brad: “…It all came down to the release of “Sister Christian”.  After that became a big hit, MCA, our record company, decided that maybe we were just a Power Ballad band.  So they ended up releasing “Sentimental Street” and “When You Close Your Eyes” and we just ended up getting pigeonholed with the Power Ballad syndrome, which was too bad because it kinds ruined the band’s reputation as a Rock band.  Towards the late ‘80’s, after seeing the male quotient of or audience disappear because we had released so many ballads, we realized we needed to take a break and try some other things, so we broke up in ’89 and everyone went off to do other things.  …We took six years off from ’89 to ’95…and we reunited in ’95 and started touring again and have been hittin’ it heavy ever since, tryin’ to rebuild everything.  Now, in 2008, we’re sitting pretty with two new records coming out (Live In Japan and Hole In The Sun) and a major weekend touring schedule for the rest of the year.”

Todd: What ultimately led to (original co-lead guitarist) Jeff Watson’s departure from the group?  Overall, would you describe the split as amicable? 

Brad: “…There were some creative difference a while back and things got a little outta hand.  Instead of the band breaking up, we instead decided to part ways with Jeff and move on.  That’s where we stand.  …Let’s just leave it at that.  …So we hired the new guy Joel, who as a matter of fact is a great guitar player and actually learned Jeff Watson’s finger technique when he was a kid (laughs), so he fit in real nice.  …Jeff actually recorded on the record.  It was after we recorded the album that we started to have a few problems.  Jeff is definitely all over the record.  All of the twin harmonies and trade-offs…Jeff is on all of those.”

Todd: Considering how talented both you and Jeff both are, as a group, did you ever find it difficult to decide who would record a particular riff or solo?

Brad: “…As far as the vocals and guitar solos are concerned, they were always divvied up depending on who the band felt best fit the song.  On songs like “Sister Christian” and “When You Close Your Eyes”, Jack and Kelly were like ‘Brad, why don’t you take the solo on Sister Christian” and then Jeff can do the solo on “When You Close Your Eyes”.  We always made sure that things were split up fairly evenly and that everyone got a chance to do their very best on that particular song.  Sometimes, I would go in and play something and then Jeff would come in and play it better, so he’d get the part, ya know?  It was just like auditioning for something, ya know?  We just wanted the best for each song, so it took a little trial and error and a little of us bangin’ each other up, ya know?  (laughs)  But it always ended up being what was best for the song.” 

Todd: Looking back, how would you describe the group’s Gary Moon era?  It’s a shame Feeding Off The Mojo gets overlooked by so many alleged die-hard fans.

Brad: “Great!  Gary was a fabulous singer and a great songwriter.  While Jack was out doin’ the Damn Yankees thing, we wanted to keep Night Ranger together, so we did the Feeding Off The Mojo record and toured a little bit.  But you know, it just wasn’t the same.  We were a three piece for a while, we had (guitarist/keyboardist) David Z join up a little later on and we were doin’ a four piece thing…  It was fun to do, it was a little different.  I’m hopefully going to get back with Gary real soon so he can maybe sings some songs on my new solo record.  We’ve actually already got a song that’s in the can called “A Thousand Bridges” that’s a great song that Gary sings.  Hopefully that’ll be on the new record.  I miss playing with Gary because he’s such a showman, had that look and had just a killer Rock voice.”

Todd: At what point can your fans expect a new Brad Gillis solo effort?  

Brad: “Oh, gosh.  I’ve been workin’ on some stuff at home, but I’ve been so overwhelmed with touring with the band and finishing this record and finishing the Live CD from Japan that we did with (Winger/ex-Dokken guitarist) Reb Beach on guitar…  Plus, like I said, I’m doin’ some stuff for ESPN, some movie stuff and I’ve been producing this sixteen year old girl named Grace Leer that I’m looking for a major release for, so until I finish all of that…  …I actually have a bunch of tracks in the can that I can’t wait to get started on.  I’ve just been overwhelmed, but that’s a good thing (laughs).”

Todd: Personally, I’d love to see you release something in the vein of (1993’s) Gilrock Ranch.  That’s such a fun record to listen to…

Brad: “…And I had a lot of fun working on it, too.  I worked a lot with (ex-Dream Theater keyboardist) Derek Sherinian.  Derek’s on like eight of the ten cuts on that.  His keyboard playing is heavily influenced by guitar players like me, Jeff Beck and people like that.  His keyboard playing is phenomenal and the way we got together to do harmonies on the Gilrock record was a lot of fun.  To have met Gregg Allman, and to have him over for at my house for a barbeque one night and then have him come into my studio, hear a track and then want to sing on it was pretty exciting.  The tune “Honest To God”…we wrote that at the end of the barbeque.  I wrote the music and Greg wrote the lyrics.  He came back a day or two later and finished it off.  We ended up with a little AOR hit with that, so it was fun to do.  …At one point, I remember seeing a royalty statement that showed how many plays it was getting in the United States and it was tens of thousands of plays, so I was happy to hear it was getting a lot of airplay.”

Todd: In hindsight, how would you describe you time working with Ozzy Osbourne?  Did you find it difficult to walk away from such a high-profile opportunity?

Brad: “My time with Ozzy was great.  It was kinda like a dream.  …After headin’ out to New York and sittin’ around for three or four days learnin’ the material and then goin’ out and playin’ on the fifth day for a sold-out audience of eight thousand people…that was one of the biggest days of my life.  It was a little scary from the get go, but after movin’ along and having a few weeks on the road, I ended up settling in.  We did a King Biscuit Flour Hour from Memphis, Tennessee…  Once I got past that, I started to get a little respect for my playing.  That was the hardest part…getting the respect from the fans.  Once I got past that, the more I got settled in and the more than fans got to know me.  It turned out to be a great tour.  We toured for about ten or eleven months all around the world…Japan, Europe, the States, we went in and recorded the live Speak Of The Devil album at The Ritz in New York and that’s right when Night Ranger ended up getting a record deal.  The Ozzy tour was winding up and I kinda had to roll the dice and decide to either stay with Ozzy or go back with Night Ranger.  I decided to go back with Night Ranger because with them, I was part of a band and with Ozzy, I was just a sideman.  I just chose to be in a band where I would have publishing and writing with my buddies who I had spent the last two years with tryin’ to get this record deal. The stint with Ozzy was great, but I just felt like I needed to get back to the situation where I was.  We has just landed a record deal, MTV was getting strong and sure enough, we released our first record with “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” as the first single and the video ended up in heavy rotation on MTV.  We started opening up for Black Sabbath, ZZ Top, Cheap Trick and all these big bands in ’83.  …There’s a publication out there call Album Network…it’s a trade publication for radio stations.  On the very bottom of the front page, they do a feature called the Album Of The Week and Speak Of The Devil and Night Ranger’s Dawn Patrol were both released around the same time and were both picked as the Album Of The Week…so that was pretty exciting (laughs).”

Todd: So you have no regrets?

Brad: “No. Not at all because we’re still together and still touring, ya know?  There’s definitely longevity in this band, so I felt like I made the right choice.  Since I left Ozzy, he’s been through three or four guitar players, so who knows what length my stint with Ozzy would have been.  I felt like I made the right choice.”

Todd: How many overdubs were ultimately done on Speak Of The Devil?  To me, portions of that album, particularly Ozzy’s vocals, have always seemed more than a little doctored…

Brad: “For Speak Of The Devil, we recorded both nights and there were no band overdubs at all.  Everything was recorded from both nights and they picked the best songs from each night.  Believe me, we sat and rehearsed for five days at SIR Studios in New York learning all that Black Sabbath stuff so we wouldn’t have to do any overdubs.  The whole natural effect of that night was it being live, ya know?”

Todd: How big of an impact did the use of “Sister Christian” in the movie Boogie Nights have on the group’s resurgence in popularity?

Brad: "...Any time you get a movie where one of your songs is on the soundtrack…  It’s such a pivotal part of the movie, with that huge drug deal, that everyone remembers that song.  Everybody remembers the drug deal pounding his hand and going ‘Man, I love this song!’ and singin’ along, so that definitely helped with the band getting our faces back out there again.  We also did a commercial for Best Buy with “Sister Christian” and that led to major TV time…everything helps.  When you quit doing it for a while and you don’t have anything goin’ on with TV or movies, people tend to forget, so little by little, we had things come out that helped regenerate the excitement for Night Ranger, ya know?  Now, with Hole In The Sun being released, we’re hopefully trying to get one of those songs in a movie or maybe a cool TV commercial or something to keep things moving…to keep up public awareness.”      

Select Brad Gillis Discography
Hole In The Sun (2008) **
Alligator (2000) ***
The Millennium Collection (2000) **
Seven (1998) **
Neverland (1997) **
Feeding Off The Mojo (1995) **
Gilrock Ranch (1993) ***
Live In Japan (1990) **
Greatest Hits (1989) **
Man In Motion (1988) **
Big Life (1987) **
Seven Wishes (1985) **
Midnight Madness (1982) **
Dawn Patrol (1982) **
Speak Of The Devil (1982) *

* with Ozzy Osbourne
** as a member of Night Ranger
*** as a solo artist

nightranger.com