After almost ten years in the musical wilderness, Kane Roberts has finally followed up his classic "Saints & Sinners" album with the release of "Under A Wild Sky", the debut album by his new band/project, Phoenix Down. The CD contains quite a contrast in musical styles, and seems to have split the opinions of the melodic press quite drastically. Wolf Gant gets the low (phoenix) down...

What got you started in the music business and who were your main influences?

I think that what it was, was that I heard Led Zepplin and I was freaked out by Jimmy Page and the whole thing. So I said "Yeah, I can do that!" I was kinda like 8 years old.

That surprises me as a starting point because I don't hear what I consider to be Led Zepplin influences in your music.

Yeah, well I just realised how great Jimmy Page was, just in terms of his rhythm playing - to me, he writes the best rhythms I've ever heard, and of course his guitar soloing started that style of rock guitar. I think that I don't imitate them out of deference. I've never been somebody who if I respect something or really admire it or love it, that my first indication is not to do a tribute album or start a cover band playing that material and try and sound like them. Granted, I did stay at home and learn all these songs and try to play like them, but when it comes to playing in front of people or doing originals I stay away from those sounds. To me, there are influences in there, but they're maybe not so evident to people who hear my music.

Which came first - the debut solo album or the Alice Cooper job?

Actually, I had been playing in New York with a band called Criminal Justice. We started off playing in punk clubs, and rock clubs - we would take whatever we could, even strip clubs on rock night. I know we opened up for people like Joan Jett...we actually opened up for Alice Cooper before I even met him. Then Alice came in and saw me playing one night. It was in this really dumpy club - I have no idea what he was doing there, and he got in touch with me and I went and met with Bob Ezrin, Alice and Shep Gordon - the bizarre triumvirate that runs that whole part of Alice's life, you know...the show and the concept and all that stuff, and I hit it off with them. That's how it started with Alice. After we began writing with Alice I got a record deal at MCA and I put out that album which probably has the goofiest album cover in the history of music.

Yeah, that was one of my questions. I gather you weren't too happy with that cover.

I was on the road with Alice at the time. My album was done and I would get these little black and white polaroids of the album cover, and I was looking at it and they'd written in flame "KANE ROBERTS", but it looked to me like "KAKE ROBERTS", and to everyone I showed it to. So I wrote the artist back and he fixed it, but now it said "HANE ROBERTS", so the K had turned into an H. And the motorcycle! They'd put together this weird scene in an alley, like I was supposed to come flying in on some kind of hog and blowing up the city... and there's a helicopter looking for me… and they had me on this little green Vespa scooter!! You see, I couldn't tell any of this stuff cos I was on the road, so it was kind of a nightmare. But the picture of me was taken by one of my favorite photographers, Peter Cronin. He actually took photos of me up in Canada with two strippers... but I don't want to go into that (laughs).

So are you still in contact with Alice Cooper?

Yeah, I'm writing with him for his new album as a matter of fact. He's in town, and we go to the movies and stuff. He's doing a new album with Bob Marlette, and of course Bob Ezrin's working on it. It's coming out good and we're writing a song called "Hexed In Texas" which is kind of a weird, industrial, heavy, cool song.

Would you consider playing with Alice again or is that all in the past?

I think when stuff like that ends, it just ends. Alice and I didn't even notice that we weren't playing together, that's how far we were removed from the "separation". I was into what I was doing and was into what he was doing. He says "Hey, we're starting to rehearse for the new record" and I say "Yeah, really? That's cool!" We really avoid that kind of music business stuff when people get to thinking that what they do is precious or what they did before is precious - that every situation has to stay the same and music can't evolve. He and I are both out of that loop completely. But he actually asked me to play with him a couple of tours ago, but then we both started laughing and didn't do it.

Moving onto the "Saints & Sinners" album, which is very popular over here, what are your personal thoughts looking back on that album?

What I think about is that I really surrounded myself with amazing musicians - I really had the luxury of working with some amazing people, and I got my buddy Michael Wagener to mix it. So for me it was an all round positive experience. I would have liked to have done some other material which was a little too edgy for the record company at that time. Other than that it was great, and I thought Geffen was a great record company at the time. To me, there wasn't a downside to the whole experience.

You had a Top 20 hit in America with "Doesn't Anybody Fall In Love", and then nothing. What happened? Did you feel let down by Geffen after that?

I think what happened was... that song came out and it was a hit, things were going really well. But there was a change coming in music styles, and I think that some of the business aspects were changing. It was basically out of my control so I didn't sweat it out. I wasn't sitting there staring at the charts holding my penis! I figured if things were gonna work out they would. What happened to me after that was we were getting ready to do another song and another album, but just internally I had lost interest in the music business part of things - that kind of voracious, obsessive need to have an album come out. So I took myself out of that, and people would ask me to write with them or play on their records, but I graciously said "No, I'm not into it anymore. It's not what I want to do right now." I mean, I kept playing music and I kept writing and hanging out with friends and stuff, but I got out of the music business. You see, to play music and have people listen to it, and get into it, there's nothing really greater that happens in my life, other than live shows which is my other favorite thing, but if the business is getting in the way of what's finally being put out, image-wise and musically, then I have no fear of just yanking myself out of it.

So, 9 years later and Phoenix Down. Why the wait and what have you been doing during those years?

Actually, I started getting into selling artwork that I did, and then I started doing computer graphics, and then making CD ROM games. I think I had kind of a mild, nervous breakdown. I don't know what it was... I kinda went a little crazy a couple of years ago. In the midst of that I was still writing - music was still inside of me, was still evolving. Then the guys at Now & Then e-mailed me and they asked if I wanted to do an album and my first answer was no, but thank you. But they persisted, and then as I got to know the guys I was thinking I'd never run into anything like this in terms of a really clean approach to wanting to make music and put it out. There wasn't that kind of 500 levels of deceit and weirdness that usually comes with record companies, or most big businesses. So after speaking to them on the phone I agreed to do it. And I was into it and they were into it, and so now we have the Phoenix Down CD.

So who actually plays in Phoenix Down?

Well, my mother plays tuba...(laughs)... No, I have Steve Deboard playing drums, Mike Davis on bass, Gene Allen playing guitar, I play guitar and there's some great stuff by Vinny Burns, who played some incredible guitar on it, and Mike Slamer played on it, and Sam Blue sang backing on it... one of the things when I finish a project like this is that I can never express as much appreciation for what everyone did, because it really adds to the final project. So again, I was really lucky to surround myself with some great musicians.

There is a distinct variation in styles on the album. Is this deliberate?

Well, in the course of the time I took off, I was writing and there's a lot of stuff that was going on at different times. It's tough to pick and choose through nine years of writing. I didn't want to sit down and think "Okay, well, somebody may not like that but they'll love this", I just put on what I felt like I wanted to say, so you get kind of a wide arc for what's going on. But since this album there's been more writing and the Kane Roberts/Phoenix Down sound is evolving, and I think it's going to get more and more powerful as it goes on. If I'd been recording every year, then maybe each record would have had that one style, but for me I thought it was kind of cool to put on what represented more of a wider range of time, of writing and playing, and different emotions and stuff like that.

Yeah, I think that definitely comes across. I've heard some tracks described as the best AOR songs people have heard this year, while others, like "Neverland", are compared to Metallica. So what are your future plans for Phoenix Down? Do you have more songs you have written in the past, or will it be new songs?

We've been writing and we have some new material that will probably not have so wide a range of styles, but the focus is getting clearer as the band plays more. So we're ready to keep playing and put out some really great music. To me, in a lot of ways, the Phoenix Down record kicks the shit out of "Saints & Sinners", and we plan to do that for the next record. We just wanna keep getting better and better.

Do you have any plans to do live shows - like The Gods for instance?

Yeah, we're dying to play live. If the situation is right and they want us to come over, then yeah, that would be a total gas. We would like to play. Some other places as well, but I'm really anxious to hear how this album is received. It's all about what people think - if the need and desire is there to see us play, then we're really hungry to do that.

You're doing some solo material which is supposedly in a harder, darker vein. What can you tell us about that?

Yeah, that's a new project which I've been working on for about three years. It's called 'Flesh FX' and is a collection of musicians and songs and drum loops and feels as opposed to the European scale of notes. This is more sounds that have impact. The rhythm section sounds as if you were driving by some huge gravel pit and you can hear the machines going and somehow they hit a groove for, like four seconds......and that's kinda the way it sounds. It's cooler, darker and more visceral in terms of what it's trying to express. It's a completely different thing, and one does not stand in the way of the other. I'm excited about both projects, and hopefully we'll get the Flesh FX project out in the first half of 2000.

The bonus tracks for Japan, "Walking On Shadows" and "You Always Want It", are original versions of songs that appeared on "Saints & Sinners", but are very different. What's the story there?

Those songs are actually tracks recorded a while ago and I wanted to put that stuff on because the songs and performances really mean a lot to me. "Walking On Shadows" is a song I wrote about this Hiroshima victim I knew, a woman, and she told me stories about how at 11 years old she looked up and the sky was on fire. Her relatives used to go down by this river and watch bodies float by, looking for her parents or people that they knew. And so I wrote this song - when bombs are made and dropped, the powers that be don't even think about the smaller stories that take place, which for me are as important as any big political issue. So I wrote that song and it's been an important song for me. The sound, of course, is quite a bit different from everything else, but the record company and myself felt that it would be cool to have those on an bonus tracks.

I agree that "Walking On Shadows" is an emotional song, but on "Saints & Sinners" it mutated into "Too Far Gone" and the chorus totally changed.

Yeah, both of those songs were redone and the original spirit was removed. You see, that's what happens. I was writing with Desmond Child - and by the way, Desmond is one of the most prolific individuals. He heard those melodies and he loved them, but we decided to create slightly different versions for that album, but I always had in mind how much I wanted the originals to be released. So the versions that are on the Phoenix Down album are actually more meaningful to me than the ones on "Saints & Sinners", just in terms of their innocence of approach.

Most of your work seems to be produced by Michael Wagener, so what is the relationship there?

What happened was, when I started my first record I wanted Michael to do it on the strength of some of the things he'd done with Metallica, Dokken etc. And then we became really good friends. He's very patient, his feel for capturing a good performance, especially vocally, is something I've never really come across. After that, I kept trying to factor him into whatever I did, be it Alice Cooper or solo, and then I had him starting to mix my stuff. And part of that comes from my devaluing of what the actual production process is. If you notice, on Phoenix Down there is no producer listed because basically me and the band put the thing together, and I just kind of oversaw the project. I'm really into devaluing those titles like 'producer' or whatever. I mean, if a band is ready with their material, and they've been rehearsing and playing live, and they walk into a studio, a producer just has to hit 'play'. Beyond that, it's gonna be very difficult to see actually who's creating the sounds. In my experience there's been one or two real producers that I've met - Bob Ezrin is without a doubt one of them. You run into guys like that, and of course, credit is given. But since I "put this together and produced it" and the band was involved and everything, I'm not into shoving my name up everyone's ass for everything I do - I just wanna play music and have people hear it.

And hopefully Kane will get the chance at a future Gods show, where a set comprising of monsters from "Saints & Sinners" and the debut Phoenix Down album would constitute a real treat for this journalist.