When a lighting rig fell on a Denver stage in 1992 whilst Steelheart were performing live, the band dissolved as its frontman, the talented Michael Matijevic, was badly injured. Eleven years later, a new album, ‘Wait’, was released in the UK and now in 2008, retrieving his original Croatian name, Milijenco Matijevic – or Mili – resurges again with a fantastic new album that is injected with fresh energy and which finished copies were being manufactured as we spoke. Still under the name of Steelheart, this fourth studio album ‘Good 2B Alive’ is mainly one man’s work and features the amazing voice he’s delivered on the previous three Steelheart albums and on the soundtrack of the Rock Star movie. From his studio in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the end of August, Mili discussed past, present and future affairs in a most interesting phone conversation with me. With so much positive energy in him, he shows he is a fighter for and a lover of life. Let’s hear what he had to say.

After 1997’s ‘Wait’, which was only released in the UK in 2003, Steelheart is back with a new inspiring album, ‘Good 2B Alive’, bringing a modern sound to the table. Tell us about the album and the challenges you have encountered on the way.

First of all, just to set the record straight, the ‘Wait’ album was supposed to be only released in Asia. Z Records released it in the UK andEurope when they were not supposed to, illegally. The artwork and everything on that copy is wrong. It’s awful. It’s unfortunate, but at some point StillHard Records is going to re-release it properly with some other songs because it really didn’t have its proper release over there. This business is really crazy. I think it’s because there’s so much energy. I don’t know what people are fighting for, the ego or the energy part of it. As far as the new album, I feel it’s my best work yet. It was a hell of a journey to get back to this stage where I am at right now. Since my accident in ‘92 it’s been a constant uphill climb to get back in this position. On this record I also went through a lot of different labels and every time I got closer to somebody it just didn’t seem like it felt right. Times have changed, the music business is changing and I felt I’ve been doing all the work and paying for it and I didn’t feel like giving it to somebody else, them giving me a small percentage and not giving it the love that it deserves. I thought it was a perfect time because I wanted to do StillHard Records for a long time, which I had it since 2000 but now I finally have distribution worldwide. So I thought ‘What the hell, it’s time to build StillHard in all different areas.’ This has been a hell of really crazy journey. Making this record was like one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, three steps back. It was unbelievable. I even tried to get the band together and every time it started getting there, somehow I ended up mostly working by myself on this record. Basically I did all the rhythm guitars, all the acoustic guitars, all the twelve-string guitars... I did not do the guitar solos and I didn’t do the rhythm guitar on ‘Shine A Light For Me’. Everything else is Mili in the studio, as producer, engineer… An unbelievable amount of work that I don’t recommend to anyone, but it is just the way life presented it to me.

So on this album, you don’t have lead guitarist Chris Risola, from the original line-up?

I have him for the live shows. It’s interesting because I’ve asked him numerous times to come to the studio and make the record, put it all back together and rebuild the ship. I asked him to come over, hang out, play guitar and get these songs done and somehow it just didn’t work out. He was busy doing his thing and didn’t come over. I’m a person who doesn’t like to wait on other people. If I’m going to do it, just let’s get it done. It’s life, time is ticking. So I just didn’t feel like waiting. I said, ‘What the hell? I gotta keep going here’ and so I did. One thing led to another and I did it. This is some of my best work yet. I really feel good about this record. There’s so much emotion in life and we don’t make records like that anymore. I mean, there’s great artists and great records out there, but not like the old days. It took bands a few years to make a record because they needed to live life. Now the record companies make assembly lines, which is kind of concerning because it’s made the music business not as real. The rock star is no longer a rock star. It’s more like ‘Let’s make money’, whilst I think music is a key to the soul, it’s a key to love and the key to a lot of answers. Us as artists have different visions, different things that are coming through us or speaking through us, and we are channels. But it doesn’t seem like a lot of us have become channels anymore. It’s just more like ‘Let’s do what people think they want, make money and that’s it.’ I don’t know how to make records like that. I do the old traditional way, which is giving my heart, my soul and my life.

Can you tell us who played bass and drums?

Kit Woolven recorded the bass and drums on six songs. He originally came over to help me on this record. Kit’s an old friend of mine and I said ‘Why don’t you come over? Let’s make this record, give me a hand and we’ll take it from there.’ When he came over we recorded six songs and he had another engagement that he had to finish in England recording another band, so he went to England to record and said he was going to be back in two weeks. Unfortunately he couldn’t come back right away, so again Mili said ‘You know what? I haven’t got time for you. I got to get it done.’ So then I became engineer boy and I finished recording the rest of the album, the whole thing.

So you play drums as well?

Yeah, everything: all the guitars, the rest of the drums, the bass, the vocals, overdubs, the choir, everything. I even made coffee [laughs].

As on ‘Wait’ there are a number of orchestral instruments. Did you play those too?

No, we recorded the orchestra at Sky Walker Sound, which is a very famous studio here in the United States where they do all the movies and all the big orchestras. That’s where they edit the stuff for the movies. I had Barbara Christmann, who is an orchestrator and a conductor. She’s an awesome and very talented lady and we connected. She put together some players at Sky Walker and I went there and we recorded it. It was magic. You can hear it on the record.

The album seems to present you in a happier place and I guess you have lots of experiences to draw from and inspire you.

It is. You know what, Mónica? I wrote the acoustic song ‘Good 2B Alive’ at the most down point of my life. I had it for a long time. I wrote it when my mother and my brother passed away in the same year and I went through a difficult moment. I went through a divorce, had no money, was sleeping on the floor... If life could kick your ass, that’s where I was. But at the same time it was amazing. No matter what, no matter how you look at it, I’m still alive. No matter how difficult things are, I am still alive and I enjoy it. And I wrote that song that it was good to be alive, no matter what position you’re in. And that’s what this whole record is. You have moments that life beats the hell out of you and I don’t care who you are, it’s going to get you at some point. And the bigger the dream, the bigger the challenge. So it is from a happy moment. It’s taken a long time to put together and it’s a positive album. It is patience, love and angry at myself for making mistakes. It truly is a journey.

Where do you get the drive to go through life? I mean, your life seems to be a roller coaster: you had the accident in 1992, then your mother died, followed by your brother, then a close friend of yours, a few years later your father and in March this year, Steelheart’s original drummer John Fowler succumbed to a brain aneurism. Is music your inspiration to keep going?

This is life and life keeps going. It doesn’t wait for you, it doesn’t stop and time keeps ticking. I feel that it is my job to keep going. Life has gifted me with a voice, a talent to write, produce, create this that gives pleasure, comfort or power and strength to other people. And knowing that just makes me keep going. It is a respect to life that I give and I just learned to do it. I accepted the job a long time ago and so I have to do my job. As far as when people that are close to me pass away, I’m beyond saddened, but at the same time they’ve given me so much strength in a crazy way. When John passed away something came to me ‘Go Mili, go, go. Just keep going. Go. You have to do this.’ Whether I’m making it up in my mind or is something else, but that’s what it is. That’s why a lot of this kept going me that way.

‘Buried Unkind’ is my favourite track on the album. It has such an incredible energy and it appears to be a celebration of your achievement of happiness and freedom. How far from the truth am I?

I think you’re right there. Basically it’s just me moving on. I’d rather be alone than be with people that don’t have good souls and good hearts and don’t wish me or anyone else well. I’d rather be alone and move on. And yes, I am free. That’s in the song ‘Good 2B Alive’ when I say ‘I’m free’. We all are free, aren’t we? We just have to set ourselves free.

I really like ‘Twisted Future’ too. What can you say about that track?

Well, ‘Twisted Future’ is a twisted intertwined song. I think that this record has so much going on that what I’d like is to let every person interpret it the way they hear it when you have the lyrics in front of them, instead of me telling them what it is. Because it is everything. In the verses I sing ‘I’ve come so far alone, I can’t believe I’m still alive’ and just that line alone sums up the whole picture from what I’ve gone through. Then I sing ‘And the lights are getting brighter as I go deeper into life.’ This is my story, but I really would love that the people and the fans read the lyrics and see what they get out of it. Because there’s so many meanings in the lyric that it’s wide open. So I don’t want to screw it up for anybody. If you had this incredible feeling or meaning to what it means to you and it really does something for you and I tell you something completely different, it may change what your interpretation of it is. And that is the beauty of music. It’s interpreted in so many different ways.

Recently you performed at Rocklahoma, where there were very heavy storms. Did that bring back the accident in Denver in 1992?

No, it just made me more and more alive. Both times we performed at Rocklahoma were awesome. The audience response was incredible. This last time we had an encore and we were the only band to have an encore. People were losing their minds and booing the staff. I tell you, I feel so connected when I’m on stage with people, with the audience. I feel that I can feel them, I can hear them. As far as bringing the accident back, that was then and I look back and say it’s what it was. This is what turned me into the man I am today. And I can’t think of the past and constantly go to the past because that would just slow me down more.

You were in London recently. What brought you here?

I went to Germany first to meet Wolfgang Rott at CMM Marketing because they’re marketing the CD for Europe. I wanted to meet him because I’m rebuilding my world here and I’m a person who likes to look at people in the eye and talk to them in person. Steelheart was a well-oiled machine before and now rebuilding it is an enormous amount of work. I also went to Wacken and met the owners of the festival for us to perform there possibly next year, and I did some interviews there. Then I went to London to meet John Dryland [Cargo Records], my distributor for the UK and Europe, and we did some interviews. It was a little quick and ideally I would have loved to spoken to you face to face. If things go right I may come back again and do a real promo tour.

Are the tour dates still in the making?

Still in the making. We’re trying to figure that out or we’re going to wait until next year and do a whole tour because we’re just waiting for the album to come out and promote it more. Right now we’re contemplating a possible tour, first of all Puerto Rico and then India.India is very interesting. And then we’re looking to do October, November and December in the United States. Next year I’d love to do all of Europe, all the festivals, clubs, whatever.

Who will you have in the band?

Right now I have the original guitar player Chris Risola. I think it’s great that’s he’s with me. One of the guys from the past. I have Rev Jones playing bass, who played with Michael Schenker for about two years and then I stole him [laughs]. Well, I didn’t steal him, he was moving on. I met him around 2001 when I was living in Los Angeles. He was having a band and I went to see them to possibly do some vocals over some of their music and I really connected with him. I didn’t like the band, but I really liked him. So when I put this together, I called him up and said ‘Hey, what are you doing? Would you be interested in coming and checking this out?’ and he did play bass on two songs: the heavy version of ‘Good 2B Alive’ and ‘Show Me How To Love’. The other songs is Ziggy [Sigves Jursen] from Powerman 5000. The drummer is Michael Humbert, who is a good and quiet person with a good soul. He’s a big guy and he’s a really talented drummer, he’s got it. He didn’t do anything really big or anything famous but a friend of ours put us together four years ago and we started doing demos. He came from Pennsylvania, a six-hour drive, and it was funny because he came out of the car looking like a normal guy, not a big rock star, and when he came behind the drums it was amazing. On the rhythm guitar we have Bill Lonero, who played the last Rocklahoma concert. I met him at a friend of mine’s house, Neil Zlozower who is the equivalent to Ross Halfin in the United States. We clicked and I said ‘Play some guitar, let’s get out of here, jam out and see how this comes out together’. Right now things seem to be moving forward very nicely and strong and we’re just gonna keep going to see where it takes us.

What happened to the rest of the original members, apart from Chris and John, i.e. bassist James Ward and guitarist Frank Di Costanzo? Were they not interested?

Jimmy is writing and doing a band with his brother and that’s what he’s into. Frank has become an IT guy. And John was in five different bands. But Mónica, I have to tell you they were somewhere else. I met with John in Connecticut when I was doing this record. I told him ‘Let’s go in and see if we can work together’. So I hired a studio for the day and we went in and I played him the new songs, the new energy, the new vision, and it didn’t work. I was somewhere else and his style was somewhere else. That’s why I had to venture and completely move on. I like the future, I like to move forward in the future and I like to live life. I don’t like to stay where I was, like the old SteelHeart. That was great, we had an incredible time, we lived, loved and rocked. But that music is what it was. Now give me something new.

My last question. Together with Jeff Scott Soto, you recorded some amazing vocals for the soundtrack of the movie ‘Rock Star’. Will you be doing any more similar work in the near future in terms of soundtracks for movies.

I’d loved to and my eyes and ears are open to anything that works and is real. If it’s real I’ll sing on it. As far as music, right now I’m working with Dana Altman, whose grandson is Robert Altman, the famous movie director who now took over, to do a project with fighter jets. On myspace, www.myspace.com/steelheart2 you can see a little video clip with me flying on a jet with Captain Dale Snodgrass, who is the top gun pilot of the US. Also I’m going to be doing the music for three of Dana’s full feature movies.

Mili, do you have anything else you want to talk about or add?

When I hang up with you I’ll probably remember about 30 things, but all I can say it’s I’m lucky to be back here. I really feel lucky. To be able to do this again it’s unheard of, it’s a gift. And I try to say this to a lot of other artists too: ‘If you’re making a record, it really is a gift’ because there are so many things that have to come together to make it happen. I’m happy to be back, I hope everyone enjoys the record and there’s a lot more music to come.