By Andrew Bansal
Known and regarded for his great work in Whitesnake and Dio along with various other collaborations, projects and solo efforts, guitarist Doug Aldrich has now decided to resurrect one of his older bands Burning Rain, with a new album called Epic Obsession that came out on May 21st via Frontiers Records, the first Burning Rain album after a long 13-year period of inactivity. The album presents a different facet of Aldrich’s musicianship. Recently, around the release of the album, I had the pleasure of talking to this purist, old-school musician over the phone to discuss the comeback of Burning Rain, his Whitesnake and Dio days, guitar playing and gear setup, among other things. Enjoy mydetailed conversation with the humble and down-to-earth Doug Aldrich below, check out a song from the album, and visit Doug and Burning Rain online using the links at the bottom.
First of all, can you tell me how this comeback of your original band Burning Rain came about?
It’s funny, man. I signed a deal for Burning Rain in 2004. Well, first let me back up. I started Burning Rain in 1998 and we did a record that was mainly for Japan at the time. It got released in Europe a little bit in certain areas where we were somewhat known. We did the second record called ‘Pleasure To Burn’ in 2000. Then I ended up joining Dio and Whitesnake, and I got caught up in all that stuff. But around 2004, Frontiers Records asked me if I would be interested in doing a third record. And I said, absolutely, but I would have to work around Whitesnake’s touring schedule. They said, no problem. But I started getting really busy with David [Coverdale]. We started getting prepared for tours and I was helping him with song riffs. There were some medley things I suggested to David, like we should do ‘Burn’ and put a piece of ‘Stormbringer’ in there too to make it like a Deep Purple mini-set going on. There was just a lot of stuff that he and I were working on to basically make the tour successful. And before I knew it, we had two more records out that we had co-written and co-produced together. Burning Rain was like a monkey on my back and I felt bad about it, but I did explain that it was going to be during when I was free from Whitesnake. Finally in 2012, David told me that Whitensnake were going to take a couple of months off. At this time, Whitesnake was also with Frontiers. So when David told this to Frontiers, they called me and said, ‘Hey, we want our Burning Rain record! We’ve been waiting. Let’s go, man!’ (laughs) So I did. I’m really appreciative of their patience. That’s when the singer Keith St. John and I sat down. We had a few ideas but we banged out the rest of the stuff. We spent a couple of months doing that, and finally at the end of 2012 we had the album. It was just down to recording it at that point.
That’s awesome, man. So for people who know Burning Rain for the two older albums, how does the band lineup compare to those times?
It’s the same singer Keith St. John. Keith and I are like brothers who like to fight. We poke each other in the ribs all the time, and that’s kind of our thing. As a comparison, when I write with David, him and I have written 30-plus songs together that have been published and released. With me and David, it’s very harmonic, very organic, natural and super easy. He trusts me, I trust him and we just get on with it. If one guy doesn’t feel right about an idea, we’ll push it aside and move on. But with me and Keith, we have this very aggressive chemistry that tends to somehow work. It’s not the same lineup on bass and drums though. We brought in a bass player named Sean McNabb, who’s always been a very sought-after player with great reputation. Very solid and old-school guy, plays with his fingers mostly. He came and played on some of the demos. He was great, and we decided to ask him if he wanted to join us. He was, and at that point we had a couple of demos so we decided to go out and play a couple of gigs to see what the response is to some of these songs. Sean suggested that we get Matt Starr as the drummer. He played a bit with Ace Frehley and some other guys. He’s kind of an undiscovered talent. So with him and Sean, this is exactly the kind of rhythm section we needed. So yeah, that’s the new Burning Rain lineup.
This new album ‘Epic Obsession’ which came out on May 21st in America, where would you put it musically? Is it just another extension of your bluesy hard rock kind of style?
Well, Burning Rain has a little more of a metal side. It is blues-based, and there’s a lot of that stuff on it, but what I really wanted to do was to try and maintain the focus that we started with, which was a band that’s kind of influenced by the 70s blues hard rock bands like Zeppelin and Whitesnake but then has a little bit of metal like Van Halen, Ozzy, Sabbath or even stuff like may be early Foreigner. So that was the focus of the band originally. By the way, the first and second records were also released on May 21st as well, so all three Burning Rain records are out there in the market now, which is pretty cool, 30-plus songs. The first record has a very youthful vibe to it. It’s very aggressive and very raw. I think that the transition from that to the second record was that we went a bit deeper with the music and the lyrics. That one actually got a little bit of action in Europe. So, even though the third record has come 13 years later, it really does sound like it’s only 2 or 3 years later. But it’s a big progression songwriting-wise, and that’s down to obviously my luxury of working with David Coverdale for ten years. He’s an amazing songwriter and I’ve learnt a lot from him. Keith also has grown a lot as a songwriter and a singer. I feel like his lyrics on this record are a huge improvement and really interesting because they’re not like Whitesnake. David has his own thing, and Keith has something that is may be slightly more twisted and dark in a lot of cases. He also writes about love and things like that, but it all feels real. It’s not contrived or anything. Anyway, to answer your original question, I would say it is blues-based hard rock with a taste of metal in there, but there’s also a melodic side that is slightly different from anything I do with Whitesnake.
I was going to mention the fact that the first two albums also came out as reissues along with the new one. So that’s like pretty much the whole dose of Burning Rain for people who might not have heard the band at all.
Yeah, I would probably prefer people to check out the newest one first and hopefully if they like what they hear, they’ll go back and listen to the old stuff. For guitar players there’s a lot of insight and interesting things you can hear, in terms of how I’ve changed over the years. I feel like with Epic Obsession there’s definitely a shred factor but I also really had the ‘first-take’ vibe going a lot. Whereas with Whitesnake or even with other projects I’ve been involved in, I would try to develop the ideas and work them into solos that were more structured. With this record, I wanted to keep it raw and do something different, and also time was really limited. Right when Keith and I got done writing the record, David decided that he wanted to have me come up and mix a live DVD with him. When I’m working with Whitesnake, it’s full-time. I really only have one-and-a-half days off in the week. I would slide back on Friday night, would have Saturday and may be Sunday off but then I’d have to pack and get ready to go back by Monday. That was my time to work on Burning Rain and that’s how we recorded the album. So I left a lot of raw, first take stuff on there and I think it suits the record good.
You mentioned earlier that working with David Coverdale has made you learn a lot. Working in bands like Dio and Whitesnake, how much has that developed you as a guitarist?
A lot. Working with Dio was a huge thing because there’s a lot of pressure that comes in. I started at the end of 2001 and we were recording this album called Killing The Dragon. I had known Ronnie for 11 years before that. He asked me once to be in the band and I didn’t because I wasn’t ready to do it at the time. But when I eventually did, we had a great time making Killing The Dragon. It’ll always be a great memory for me, just creating guitar parts. I actually co-wrote a couple of songs on that record and it was a really humbling experience to do that with Ronnie. We did the record and the tour, and during the tour I really started to feel like I was gaining a huge amount of confidence, because Ronnie would basically put me on the spot and be like, ‘OK, show me what you’ve got. This is your time, you’ve got to take this and run with it.’ He believed in me and really made me ten times what I was. If it wasn’t for Ronnie, I wouldn’t have gotten the call to be in Whitensnake. I thank him for that.
David happened to be looking for a guitar player right at the time when Dio was wrapping up the tour. I talked to Ronnie about it, and he told me to go for it. It was initially a two-month tour, but to be honest Andrew, working with David was like a match made in heaven. Me and him hit it off from the word go. He had such a good time with that particular lineup, he wanted to keep touring. So two months turned into nine months. Little by little, David and I started to bang around ideas. I spent so much time writing with him and learning about how he would approach melodies and arrangements. He would take time to develop the vocals so that when the chorus hit, it would be twice as potent. So these are things that I was able to bring back to Burning Rain. The time spent with David and with Ronnie definitely helped not only my playing but my mindset of how to compose music, and what works.
For the sake of guitar enthusiasts I would like to ask you what you’ve done differently in Burning Rain as compared to Whitesnake and Dio, in terms of your guitar tone, amp settings and stuff like that.
I always say this. You can give any guitar and amp to Jeff Beck and it will sound like Jeff Beck. The same goes for Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughan. It doesn’t matter what they play, it always sounds like them. If you talk about any guitar player, after a while he develops his own style that he always does. I think that I kind of have my thing which is comfortable for me and I always go to it. When it comes to guitar amps, I tend to set amps so that they sound exactly the way I want. It’s always been the same since I was a kid. It’s a Marshall thing. I would say my rhythm sound is kind of a heavy AC/DC-ish type or something like that but for solos I need a little bit more gain so I generate that with a pedal. I love the wah-wah, so a lot of times I use that. But a lot of the sonic differences between the latest Burning Rain and the latest Whitesnake is not so much the guitar and amp, it’s mic placement and mixing. I record the guitars in the same place, I use the same amps and the same guitars, but I am always trying to improve and I wanted to see if I moved the mics a little bit, what I could achieve in terms of clarity. In some cases on Epic Obsession I think it’s successful, and then there’s other cases where I felt I could have done better. But overall, I’m a tone chaser. I’m always trying to make it better. So it wasn’t really too much different from Whitesnake but I did try to make a few changes.
Is that something you would recommend to other guitarists as well, to try changing the mic placings to get a range of sounds?
Mic placing is super important, so yes. Nowadays, a lot of guys are doing stuff using pro-tools, plugins, amp farm and stuff like that. That’s what’s going on a lot now, but for those guys that are still recording with an amp and a mic the old-school way, if you move that mic an inch, it’s a big difference in tone. Like for example, there was stuff I did with Guitar World online. I think it was called ‘Bet You Can’t Play This’. The tone was a little buzzy, and I was like, ‘Oh man, it didn’t sound like that at all when I was recording!’ It was a real fat tone, but if the mic is a bit too much in the center of the cone, it gets a little buzzy. If the mic is too far off, it gets woofy. So it’s really a matter of just experimenting and finding the right placement, to get the sound you’re looking for.
I’ll end this interview with one final question about Burning Rain. What plans do you guys have now that the album is out?
Well, we have to work around the Whitesnake schedule. That’s my day gig. It’s a great day gig though (laughs). But we’ve already gotten some very nice offers for Burning Rain in Japan and Europe, and I hope that we can get something in the US as well. I would definitely say that we’ll be doing some touring, and new music as well. It’s a fun thing for me because I’ve been so focussed on Whitesnake for all this time, I haven’t done anything else, really. I did an occasional fill-in with Dio when he needed somebody for a tour here or there, but other than I haven’t really done anything else. So it’s been really fun to get back into a kind of young band situation. I’m excited about the future, working more with Keith St. John, and playing some dates. He’s a great singer and performer, and there are sure to be some fun times.
Links:
DougAldrich.com
facebook.com/DougAldrich.Official
twitter.com/Douglas_Aldrich
BurningRain.net
facebook.com/BurningRain
twitter.com/Burning_Rain