Ex-Alice Cooper/Slash’s Snakepit/Dad’s Porno Mag guitarist Ryan Roxie checks in with Metal Express Radio to talk about his latest Power Pop extravaganza, Happypill.
First things first. Let’s talk about your latest project, Happypill. You’ve just released your first single as a download “This Year.” This has a real up-tempo, positive vibe to it. Are you feeling positive about the project?
That’s exactly it. I think our songs have a real energy to them, that’s why we’re called Happypill. I think it’s what the world needs right now, it needs to take a Happypill. I don’t mean a drug or an escape, it means that it’s whatever makes you happy in your life whether it’s your kids or food or even your job. I’m actually one of those lucky people who loves their job as I’m able to go out and make music and that makes me happy.
You’re doing things a little differently this time by making you’re first single “This Time” available as a free download.
This band Happypill means that I’m allowed to do a few things unconventionally in the way I promote this. It’s the first time in my career where I’ve actually had the time it takes to put a band together and go through the whole process of putting a band together and playing shows and I have a little bit of freedom to call the shots. I want to be able to promote this differently. You and me are the last of the old school set. Our generation were the last to actually buy CD’s and listen to music in tangible form. In fact I still have a record collection. I thought that if I couldn’t beat them then I’d at least make the most out of the download market. As an artist you have to realize that people will share your music, much like we did back in the days with cassettes where one person on the block would buy the album and we’d make recordings of it with tapes. It’s the same thing now but much easier and more global. Now you can download in the UK, The States and all over, but when we were kids you’d just share with those on your block. It’s always existed. I wondered what was the best way to spark the interest of the younger fan that would want to hear I-music.
As well as being available as a free download you are encouraging people to donate to your selected charities. Could you tell me a little about these?
I wanted to make available the “Conscience Free Download”. I’m not expecting them to give the band anything; I just want to give them the best possible quality you can get. It’s available as a 192Kbs download which is a bit better than iTunes. You can get a really high quality download for nothing. The other side of this is if you feel you’d like to contribute something then the other half of the conscience free download is the concept of “Splitting the Profits” and that’s where I take one of three charitable organisations that I’ve worked with personally and know are really good charitable organisations. Whatever money that we make from this “Splitting the Profits” I will split it equally with one of these three organisations.
I’m supporting charities that I’ve worked with before. The Art of Elysium provides entertainment for kids who are in hospital for a long term and are terminally ill. Artists and musicians go to the hospital and spend good quality time with these kids. We’re lucky that we are healthy. If you’re in hospital for a couple of days that’s traumatic, imagine if you’re in hospital for a couple of years. Another of the charities involves a very close friend of mine, Slim Jim Phantom from The Stray Cats and he turned me onto this group called Love Hope Strength or LHS. This was founded by Mike Peters of The Alarm and he was diagnosed with a form of leukaemia a couple of years back and he set up this organisation to help the families of sufferers and give support to them as well as raising money for equipment to fight the leukaemia and hopefully one day find a cure. They arrange these cool events where groups of musicians go to cool places, like the top of The Empire State Building and play concerts there. There was also an event called “Everest Rocks” where they played the highest concert at the first summit. They got a lot of coverage and raised a lot of money doing things like that. They say they are going to do something and they go and do it. I contacted them and said this was one of the organisations I wanted to split the profits with. They’ve been so supportive and we’ve even talked about doing a “North Pole Rocks”.
Doctors Without Borders is the other charity we’re supporting. The thing about them is my wife had gone to Africa last year and stayed at Doctors Without Borders camp and she saw how they worked first hand and she said that these people don’t mess around, they go to where a problem is and they fix it.
I try to pick causes where most of the money you donate goes towards the cause rather than administration. When you give to someone you want to know that most of your money is going to that cause.
So far this has worked like a charm and if people want to donate something you can. If you donate 0.99c for the song you know that 0.50c of that is going towards a charitable cause. If I make 0.99c from a song or 0.50c there’s no real difference for me. I’m gladly willing to split it. They are good causes. Maybe my band won’t change the world, I hope it does, but maybe it might spark off some interest in someone else, maybe a multi-Platinum selling artist and they could raise some serious money by doing this.
I’d like to be a good role model to see if this can work. The music business is changing and I want to be at the front of a world without record stores.
This is your living and all artists need to be paid. How will you receive an income if you give your music away?
The income is going to come eventually. Very few artists on a record label rarely make much money through record sales especially like bands like mine. You tend to make the money through merchandising and touring and through basically placement of songs. Hopefully we’ll get some publicity by giving our music away and if it’s a popular song then maybe some organisation will use the song for an ad campaign. The bottom line is that your record sales aren’t the driving force anymore. Placement in movies and adverts is the way to go. How do you get those placements? You need to let as many people as possible know about you and how do you do that? You need to get your music out.
As far as “This Year” goes it’s got a great Pop Rock feel to it. I can see Jellyfish influences, the more melodic side of Enuff Z’Nuff and Cheap Trick with a little hint of Oasis. Are these reference points that you are looking to?
Well we wear our influences as we wear our clothes!! You mentioned three bands that I totally respect and was influenced by so you get it. Maybe you should write our bio next time.
What has been the reaction to it so far?
So far it’s been phenomenal. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that even though I haven’t been directly associated with Alice for a couple of tours now, a lot of old school Alice Cooper fans that knew me from that and a bunch of Guns ‘n’ Roses fans who’ve known me through my work with Slash and Gilby Clark, a lot of people are following up on what I’m doing now and I really appreciate that. It’s a great foundation for me to build on. They are really good, credible names to be associated with. I’m also still building on every show I do over here and every single TV show I do here in Sweden, we’re building our audience from this. I say that Happypill is taking over the world one Swede at a time.
You’ve adopted a rather different way of promoting the release with your tongue in cheek “Choose Your Own Bio” for the music press so that just about any publication from Rock, Rap and Singer Songwriter can include you. You must have had some fun writing those?
I think this was the case of me and the drummer having a laugh . We were putting together a bio and we asked each other how we should do it. Whether it should be in English or Swedish, what sort of style should it be. We didn’t really want people to categorise us so we thought we’d be ALL of those bands, a Heavy Metal band, a Rap band, a singer-songwriter and a traditional Swedish band. We thought we’d take all the typical elements from other genre’s bio’s and insert our name into the story. They’re entertaining and a bit of fun. Different types of music write their bio’s in different ways so we wanted all of these bio’s to represent us and we wanted people to figure out for themselves what we are.
Who else is in Happypill at the moment?
We have three Swedes in the band, I’m the only American. As I’m the guy that talks between songs, a lot of people perceive us as American Brit Pop. Anton comes from a very high pedigree; his father was pretty much Sweden’s first Rock Star. He plays drums for us and provides the foundation for the band. I really like his personality. A lot of time you hire guys for their talent or their looks. I hired Anton, well I didn’t actually hire him, he joined the band and I think he adds all three aspects perfectly. His talent works perfectly and he has a great look that fits perfectly for us and he has such a charismatic personality as well. Everyone knows him over here.
Our guitarist and keyboard player is Johan and we met, you know this is SO Sweden, we met in Ikea !!! He actually recognised me from a Slash’s Snakepit cover and I immediately congratulated him on being one of the dozen or so people who bought that record!! He said he really liked the album and he told me that he played in bands in Sweden and I said that I was looking for musicians and he said he played guitar and keyboards and that he was into the same sort of music as me and he had a friend who played bass called Magnus and he suggested we jam together to see what happened. We played together and it ended up that these were the only 3 guys I needed to try out as skill wise they were all at the top of their game. It immediately sounded good so there was no need to go outside of the circle. Things just felt right and sounded good from the beginning. We just thought that the music sounded so good and made us feel good inside that I said that it was like taking a happy pill and we looked at each other and went “Ah, Happypill!!” and we thought that should be the name of the band as the music makes you feel good.
Are you the sole songwriter?
Up until this point I’ve co-written a bunch of songs with the Swedish musicians I’ve been working with but I’ve also got some of my own songs that I’ve had for a while kicking around my head but we haven’t had a full band collaboration of song writing yet but it’s the age old thing that I don’t think the material would sound like Happy Pill unless this line-up played it. I’m very, very comfortable and excited about this band and line up and I’m doing my best. Everyone knows it’s hard to be in a successful Rock ‘n’ Roll band but it’s even harder being in a brand new band. AC/DC said it perfectly a long, long time ago, “It’s A Long Way To The Top If You Want To Rock ‘n’ Roll”. No words are more true than that!!
How many songs are finished and will the album be out this year?
I can see us doing another two sets of singles and that should take us towards the end of the year so we might have an album out by Christmas. In the meantime you can experience videos and the next wave of double singles before then. You never know what’ll happen in between and that’s another reason for me only releasing two singles at a time is that perhaps we will write a song between now and then that could be another single and could end up being your favourite track on the album.
Is this going to be a regular CD release or will it be a download only issue?
We actually have it available on the Happypill MySpace site there is a link where you can buy the CD for anyone who prefers to have a tangible product rather than a download. It covers the first two singles that came out plus two bonus mixes. It’s a CD with packaging so it’s basically for my generation or for people who appreciate having a signed autographed copy. I didn’t print a crazy amount of them as I wanted it to be excusive.
I plan to put out two singles at a time over the course of the next 6 to 8 months. They’ll feature extra tracks but not what I would call “B-Sides” as you spend so much time putting your heart and soul into your songs that I think they’re all singles so one way or another they are all songs that I feel are important and I want to put them out. By that time I’ll have enough material to put out an album containing 6 singles plus 5 other songs. It’s an old school way of thinking, rather in the same way as The Beatles or The Stones where they put out singles until they acquired enough singles to be able to put an album out. For me it’s about concentrating on the songs and concentrating on each song instead of putting out an album and immediately people will ask which are the best 2 songs. Well, we think that they’re all pretty darned good!!
Will you still be looking for a record label or will you be doing it yourself from now on?
I’ll still work with a record label if it is as good at what they do as we are what we do. I want to make sure they will put their big guns behind it. I’ve been on a label where they just put an album out to see what happens. I’ve been in a few bands where that’s happened and I’ve been in a few bands where it’s been the priority of the label and there’s a big difference. I want to be a priority act on a label but how do you become a priority act? You have to prove yourself and I hope that’s what we are doing now. If we put all the responsibility on our shoulders doing this now then it’ll be so much nicer when we get onto a label that’s used to breaking stuff. They can see what we’ve done by ourselves and come in and break us and get us out there.
Is this the next step on from Roxie 77 or will you be running both bands side by side?
Roxie 77 were all primarily American and basically Happy Pill is the next step on from that. It’s still my voice and me trying to recreate the perfect Beatles song but because I’m playing with 3 Swedish guys now there’s a way more international flavour to the music. It sounds a bit more Brit Poppy than Roxie 77 but you know what?, put them side by side and you can still see the similarities. My first solo effort, Dad’s Porno Mag transcended into Roxie 77 and that has now transcended into Happypill. The road might be winding but it’s still the same road. It might take a few twists and turns here and there but it’s still going to the same destination.
What about gigs, have you been on the road yet or are you waiting until the album is out?
We’ve got some good gigs booked. The festival season is coming up soon and we’ve got booked onto Sweden Rock and there’s a bunch of others too. I think we’re also booked onto a festival in the UK too. The best way to keep up to date with what we’re doing is check out our MySpace site. We want to do as many good quality supporting slots as we can with bands that we can grab some audience from. There’s some great venues in Stockholm with great sound quality. What I want to do is come across as high quality as possible, that’s why we’re giving away the high quality download. I also want to keep up with the TV work and have a media presence. We’ve just appeared on Sweden’s biggest morning show and you can check out the cut from that on our MySpace site and YouTube. It’s a combination of TV and media and picking the best live shows that we can. We don’t want to just play anywhere and everywhere, we want to play places which get us the most attention.
Talking of previous projects you have just left Alice Cooper’s band in the last year or so. That’s a pretty big act to leave. Why did you end up leaving?
When I was out on the road I was missing the two things that were most important to me, I was really missing my two kids. Alice understood my reasons wanting time off and I understand why he had to continue. The Alice Cooper organisation is a well oiled machine, a well oiled train and that train keeps on moving. The thing is, me having a break from this is something everybody including Alice understood and he gave me his blessing. That’s the thing I always admired about Alice he understood my position. He’s always been lucky as he’s always been able to have his family on the road. I want to be that father who is there for my kids and I want to be able to make music too as that’s always been a part of my life. With Happypill it does seem that I can do both things. I do spend time travelling around for Gibson Guitars doing guitar clinics but I am able to be back at home for the end of the week rather than the end of the year. I always want to remain on good terms with Alice as he’s always supported me and I learned more about the music business and more about Rock ‘n’ Roll from him than from anyone else.
That’s an admirable decision for you to make and put your family first. In this business that’s a pretty rare position?
When it comes down to it there was never really a question of what I had to do, I just think it’s important for my kids to have a father there with them and we are all enjoying our time together right now and that’s what it’s all about.
I chatted with Eric Singer recently and he said how much he missed you being in the band.
Well, that’s very nice, especially coming from Eric Singer. He and I have loved and hated each other over the years. I think we loved each other off stage and hated each other on or vica versa..Ha!!! At the end of the day it all comes down to respect. If people ask me who are the best drummers I’ve played with I always include Eric in my top three or four drummers as technically he is one of the best and that’s the reason why he’s in two of the biggest bands in the world and you don’t get to play with acts like that if you’re not a professional. When I came to see a show recently it’s easy to see how Eric is the foundation of the band.
One of your old band mates Keri Kelli from your days in Dad’s Porno Mag, has taken your place in Alice’s band. Were you involved in choosing your successor?
I introduced Keri to the Alice organisation a long time before he joined back in 2001. Me and Keri have been band mates or two ships passing for a long time now. When Keri came down to play with Dad’s Porno Mag he learned the guitar parts just as well if not better than what was actually recorded. When he came and tried out with Dad’s Porno Mag I was “Hey, man, how did I play that part again?” and he’d show me !!
In fact, didn’t he take your place in Slash’s Snakepit too?
I spent two years or so making that album and then it took another year to come out and I ended up touring with Alice and Keri jumped in.
Talking of Dad’s Porno Mag. Is that album still available?
No it’s not but there are copies scattered around here and there and you have to look around for it. There was two different pressings of it and the first pressing is actually Gilby Clarks’ nephew on the cover and the other one had the band on the cover, it was a bit like something The Rolling Stones would put out.
Will there be a follow up to that album?
I don’t know but the door is always open for something to happen. The good thing about forming bands and doing one album is that it always leaves the door open for a huge reunion tour for me and my several different bands. Dad’s Porno Mag was the start of the journey that has ended up at this point with Happypill. It’s basically Power Pop, what we called Heavy Pop back in the DPM days and we still play Beatles/Cheap Trick Pop songs but they have to have those blaring Les Paul’s coming through the speakers. I’ve been able to reinvent myself now. People used to know me as a guitarist that sometimes sings but now in Happypill I am a singer who plays guitar as well. So I’m a singer songwriter who also happens to play guitar as well.
Last time you were over in the UK you ran a guitar clinic at the venues. What was the standard of the guitarists like who came along for lessons?
Yeah, very much so. I think a lot of people have the will to learn but they just don’t see the guitar the same way as I do until I show it to them. I think if you have the will to play the guitar and an interest in the history of the guitar then you should come to one of my clinics and I will give you a brief history of the Gibson guitar company and how to look at a guitar in a different way. Most guitar teachers make learning the guitar appear to be a harder process than it actually is. Of course they want you as a student as longs as possible so they can keep getting income. Not meaning to be rude or anything but I don’t want to see more than two or three times as I want you to take it on yourself and take what I’ve given you, the ideas and the blueprints that I’ve given you and expand on those yourself so that you don’t need me anymore. What impressed me about the clinics is that people would come in knowing very little about the guitar and me teaching them really quickly and them leaving knowing a song. My idea of a good clinic is for someone walking away knowing a lot more about Gibson guitars than before. I see it as passing the torch of Rock ‘n’ Roll which is part of my mission!!
Do you have a message for Metal Express Radio listeners?
I greatly appreciate anyone that gets turned on and gets another person turned onto the music of Happypill. Like I said before but I’ll say it again, the world could use a Happypill at this point.
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