Whether you call it hard rock, heavy metal, cock rock, hair metal, melodic rock, pop-metal, AOR, glam or sleaze, this is the place to find out what became of your favorite 80's rock bands.
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Whether you call it hard rock, heavy metal, cock rock, hair metal, melodic rock, pop-metal, AOR, glam or sleaze, this is the place to find out what became of your favorite 80's rock bands. |
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STEELHEART: PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE: RIP Magazine, October 1991 By Merryl Lentz If patience is a virtue, then Steelheart should be candidates for sainthood. Over the course of ten years a band can get signed, vault up the charts, repeatedly circle the globe, and then retire in the cozy company of royalties, certificates of deposit and money markets. Steelheart wasn't so fortunate. They've spent the last decade clinging by their fingernails to their first music-biz opportunity, sowing the seeds of success. And now, with the recognition of a major-label deal, a tour in progress, and songs that are burning up the charts, those seeds are finally sprouting. "It was a long wait, but everything's always better when you wait," philosophizes guitarist Chris Risola from a phone booth outside the Powerstation in Melbourne, Florida. "We had a bit more time to develop every facet of our talent', from the stage presence to the appearance to the songwriting--although it was really more time than we wanted!" The extra time, however, transformed Steelheart from a bunch of high-school buddies into a formidable rock and roll beast. Assembling in 1981 in Norwalk, Connecticut, founding members Risola, singer Mike Matijevic (pronounced Mah-TEE-vich) and bassist Jim Ward initially dubbed the band Red Alert, solidifying the lineup seven years later with the addition of guitarist Frank DiCostanzo and drummer John Fowler. With a compulsiveness that could give the word "codependence" its first positive connotation, the band juggled day jobs with Herculean eight to ten-hour-a-day practice sessions, gigged clubs relentlessly, and became celebrities on the local circuit. When a New York deejay released a compilation disco album under the name Red Alert (he had registered the name; they hadn't), they were forced to change their moniker. According to Risola, the name change was a benevolent twist of fate, though, since Steelheart more aptly conveys the band's essence. "We've gone through a lot, but we never gave up," he explains. "We've endured ten years, and we all have hearts of steel now." Those steel hearts functioned as protective armor through the further trials and tribulations awaiting the band--the first being the closing of all of the bars where they played! "Years ago there was a local scene, because the drinking age was 18," Risola recalls, "but when the drinking age was raised to 21, the bars just started closing down, one by one. It got to the point where there was no place to play. That forced us into a situation where we thought, 'The era has ended. It's God's will.' [Laughs.] When you do songs at local bars, often it's a lot of cover songs; so the bars closing gave us the opportunity to buckle down and focus on writing and recording our songs, to focus on our own musical identity." Minus the ball-and-chain of cover tunes, Steelheart's identity was finally set free--not in a moment of blinding enlightenment they would tell their children and grandchildren about, not in a desperate pilgrimage to a mountaintop guru, but in a place where dreams, nevertheless, flourished--in Risola and Matijevic's bedrooms. With the same unrelenting discipline that ruled their rehearsals, the band recorded their songs in their bedroom studio, and after a gestation period of one month, their demo tape was born. Planning to use the tape as a battering ram to break down doors in the business, Matijevic and Ward journeyed to Los Angeles for several weeks. It was there that a friend of a friend of a friend introduced them to manager Stan Poses (Eric Carmen; the Raspberries; Peter, Paul and Mary), a polyester-and-gold-chain nightmare who later proved to be a dream come true. "At first Stan said he didn't have any time for the tape," Risola says, incredulously, "but it turned out that he was a Manhattan-based manager, so Mike Federal Expressed a cassette to him when he got back there. At that point Stan took the tape home and put it on his dresser with about 50 other tapes--like it was just another meatball in the sauce, as Mike would say. Just by chance, his 18-year-old son grabbed the tape and went out to drink some beer at the beach with his friends. They all loved it, so when he went home, he woke his dad at 2:00 in the morning to tell him he'd just heard the best band in the world. Stan brought the tape to the office in the morning, listened to it at 9:30, called us up at 9:35, and said, 'We gotta talk!'" Initially captivated by the impassioned poignancy of the tape's opening song, the power-ballad "I'll Never Let You Go," Poses refused to let Matijevic hang up the phone until the singer agreed to let him manage the band. Matijevic capitulated, and in a mere two days Poses found Steelheart a niche on the MCA roster. Apparently few bands evoked Poses' enthusiasm, so when he immediately called MCA's Al Teller in a state of delirious excitement, Teller concluded that Steelheart were, indeed, hot stuff. Before he had even heard the tape, Teller had wrapped up the deal with Poses over the telephone. What saved the band from obscurity? Was it talent, or just random luck? "A very scientific blend of the two," says Risola with a laugh. "And you also have to make the right moves. I've seen a lot of bands that have good songs and do good shows, but they don't put the songs on tape. It's like carding someone; A tape proves that you're a musician!" The final, polished product--the band's self-titled debut--is certainly proof positive that Steelheart are, indeed, musicians. From the soaring beauty of the first single, "I'll Never Let You Go," to the flat-out rock ol "Love Ain't Easy," to the provocative blues ot "Sheila," the band frame their songs with tight musicianship accented by Matijevic's diamond-shattering vocals. Although Steelheart's professionalism contributed to the tape's high quality ("We're a very over-rehearsed band--the bio quotes some huge number of hours that we rehearse, but even that's under-exaggerated!"), their affection for the studio was also a factor. "We all love the studio," Risola confirms. "To me, it's almost like I'm playing live in someone's bedroom when I'm recording. When you're playing in the studio, you've got to keep in mind that your music is going to be coining out of someone's stereo speakers in their bedroom a few months up the road." Working with producer Mark Opitz (Divinyls, INXS) also made recording a positive experience lor the band. "He was easy to work with, go-with-the-flow," Risola describes. "We had produced the hell out of our demo tapes. We recorded those songs tour, five, six times to get them right. We changed lyrics, changed arrangements, rewrote the guitar solos, changed the intros--just really tried to refine them. We played producer to ourselves, so it was obvious to the management and the record company that the demo was pretty much exactly what we wanted to put on the record. We needed someone wlio was sensi live to that. Someone who would produce us but, at the same time, let the good things stay. Mark said it best during the production of the album: 'All I have to do is run with the ball!'" Assessing the studio as "fabulous," Risola believes that it only lacks one element. "I think the only thing that doesn't happen in the studio is the adrenaline tradeoff you get with a live audience." On a U.S. club tour at the time of this interview, Steelheart has sampled domestic as well as foreign adrenaline, touring Europe and Japan, appearing at Germany's Monsters Of Rock festival, and opening for Great White. According to Risola. audiences have been very receptive to the band--mainly because Steelheart doesn't give them a choice. "We're very, very active onstage," he describes. "Sort of an out-of-control concept. It's a wild show, and we party with the crowd; we want to connect with them. That's a major priority with our live show. We do so by being relaxed and loose. We've been around for ten years, and we're extremely rehearsed, so we have an autopilot kind of thing that makes playing second nature for us. That gives us a lot ot spare concentration, so I can join the party, but still have enough of a focus to play well. There's got to be that friendliness of wanting to communicate with the crowd. When you play your first bar gig, you can't connect with the audience, because you're too nervous to. For us, that factor is completely gone." This spontaneity borne of experience is complemented by Steelheart's relatively isolated Connecticut existence, which keeps them from being a cookie-cutter replica of other bands. "The whole rock scene has changed over the course of ten years, but that hasn't swayed us much at all," Risola says. "We were sort of isolated in Connecticut, rehearsing and recording, so we weren't vulnerable to fads. They didn't affect us that much. I think we're a little different, and that's a huge reason why We weren't in a major city, where we could follow something that was going down. And that's why we decided not to move to LA. or anyplace else. We want to keep our own roots. We're doing precisely what we set out to do, without much deviation or outside influence." The isolation ot Steelheart's formative years not only contributed to their individuality; it also forged a powerful bond between the bandrnembers. And in an era where few relationships of any kind endure for a decade. that's an accomplishment in itself. "Since we've known each other for a long time, we're all really close," Risola states. "I would say that any turmoil or animosity that went on between the bandrnembers happened during the first few years. You get along great for the first year or two, just like you're boyfriend and girlfriend. When the romance ends, you get in your first argument, and then it's shot for about a year. Then you realize that arguing is a waste of time, and that if you're going to stay together, you might as well have a good time. We haven't argued for a long, long time. If an argument does ensue, we back off. We've endured for ten years, and we don't want any hassles." Steelheart's longevity and camaraderie are also attributable to a personal chemistry that some laboratory might want to investigate further. According to Risola, each member brings particular strengths to the formula. "Mike's strength is his strength in general," he begins. "He has immense mental and physical strength. He's an ass-kicker--and that's a very good characteristic for a singer to have, to be able to get a party started! My strength is that I have a positive attitude, and I have a lot of attention for detail. Little, tiny things that matter, that nobody else wants to worry about, I home in on. Frank, the other guitar player, is a super-nice guy and very quiet--which is a strength to me, because I'm a talker! Jimmy is also quiet, and one of his big strengths is that his lyric writing is amazing. And then there's John, our drummer. Now drummers are characteristically --and I'm generalizing a little bit--drummers are a little nutty. John fits the bill perfectly. He's got the attitude of a teenager. He's a real wild guy." Risola's conversation is temporarily halted as someone in the background informs him that Steelheart has just entered MTV's Top 20. "Killer! Alright!" he yells jubilantly. "We just got on the Top 20! Just today, for the first time! And we came in at #2 on Dial MTV earlier this week. It sent a shock through the whole band. We were laying around the pool on a day off, and somebody ran out of the hotel and yelled, 'Guys, we're #5 on MTV!' It kept going, up to #2. And just today we came onto the Top 20. So we got on both, and we're very happy about that." Steelheart has a lot to be happy about these days. After initially releasing their debut in Japan and eliciting a rabid response, the band released the album in the States in July of last year, and is just now being hit by the waves from that splash. "So far our airplay has been good, and it's still spreading," Risola says. '"Never Let You Go' has gone into CHR, and 'Everybody Loves Eileen' has just been given to AOR. We just released that song for our summer single, and it's a great tune for driving down the street in the middle of summer. When I play 'Eileen,' it gives me a great vibe. It's taking off pretty well." The same can be said for Steelheart itself. Just when every avenue they took dead-ended, just when every sure bet turned out to be stacked in favor of the house, and just when they'd tried on every shoe in the store, Steelheart found the glass slipper that fit. Theirs is indeed a Cinderella story, proving that with talent, perseverance and a whole lot of heart, dreams can transform themselves into reality. "It's a fantasy come true," Risola enthuses. "It's terrific. It's like living in a comic book sometimes." Buy Steelheart CDs: |
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