Robert Cherry

You Will Know Love

Slash

Welcome Back To The Jungle

Background note: I interviewed Slash on three separate occasions. By the third session I think he finally remembered we’d spoken before. In honor of Guns’ induction into the Rock Hall, here’s my favorite chat with the chill guitar hero, followed by an interview with Guns’ producer Mike Clink, who helped shore up Slash’s memory about the recording of Appetite For Destruction. I originally conducted the interviews for a Guitar One cover story in celebration of that album’s 15th anniversary. Ten years later the rock world still waits to see if the classic line-up that created it will share a stage again. Breath-holding is not recommended.

The Guns ‘N Roses legend is one filled with as many cautionary tales as it is rock-and-roll victories. There’s the time Duff McKagan’s pancreas exploded from prolonged over-indulgence. And the time Izzy Stradlin was arrested after relieving himself in an airplane’s galley. And the time Axl Rose incited a riot because an audience member took his photo. Read the rest of this entry »

Meet Skinny Mirrors

The debut EP from Skinny Mirrors is a compelling paradox—a collection of sugar-in-the-raw pop songs, short in the making yet long in the finishing.

The group, a collaboration between singer-songwriter Robert Cherry and producer/multi-instrumentalist Craig Ramsey, took shape one winter in the basement studio Ramsey had set up in Cherry’s Mid-Century modern ranch home, mere blocks from a slate-and-olive Lake Erie, then ringed with wave-shattered sheets of dirty ice. Read the rest of this entry »

Skinny Mirrors Album Art

Here's a preview of the album art from the forthcoming Skinny Mirrors EP. The artist is the amazing Cherlyn Varga Toth.

David Bowie

Background note: The following interview was conducted on October 23, 2001, for an album preview for Alternative Press, which named Bowie’s Heathen one of 2002’s most anticipated releases. The phone interview left me with considerably more content than the brief assignment required, but since the discussion revolved around probes concerning the sound of a then-unheard album the world would soon hear, the transcription remained spooled away on my hard drive for over a decade. Until now. Read the rest of this entry »

Never Mind the Duty, Here’s Plastic Ants

Flouting the long-simmering tensions between the United States and Canada, Plastic Ants have tunneled through, crossed over, and crawled out—and now threaten to take over the world, albeit with tiny strides. Their first communiqué? The hard-jangle pragmatism of “Tough Girls (Got To Tough It Out),” out now on The All Night Party. Read the rest of this entry »

Introducing Hot Coma

He was sure he could hear the air seeping from the tires of the antique Dodge Challenger. Through the foam earplugs, beneath the mattress, under the cricket choir, audible even through the intermittent whines and scratches of the dog next door… yes, he was certain he could hear the air hissing from the radials (is that what they were?) like cold white noise filling the car port three floors below. Read the rest of this entry »

The Ups and Downs of Hot Coma

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

No Ropes Attached

Background note: A discussion with Anton Newcombe was always a memorable event, but he also holds the distinction of being my first, and thus far only, clothing-optional interview. This piece was first published around 2001, several years before the band earned greater infamy via the film Dig!

Since 1995, I’ve observed via post-show chats, interviews and friendly phone calls as Anton Newcombe first bartered his way out of obscurity, then nearly burned himself into oblivion. The last time I formally interviewed him, he was somewhere in between and, in keeping with his storied eccentricity, wearing nothing but a Cossack-style fur cap, sunglasses and Frye boots.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Birth, Death & Rebirth of Hair Metal

Round And Round

Background note: This originally ran as a cover story for “Guitar One,” in 2004. My inner 13-year-old was totally stoked to interview the era’s guitar heroes.

“Round and round! What comes around goes around! I’ll tell you why… why….” –Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy

Dig. Many thought it was dead and buried. Many even danced on its grave and packed on a few extra shovelfuls of soil by way of coolness-affirming jokes (e.g., What do you call a hair-metal guitarist without a girlfriend? Homeless). Hair metal… poodle metal… glam metal… cock rock… party rock… the names alone are pejorative enough, describing everything about the ‘80s pop-metal sensation except the music itself. What was so wrong about a musical movement that incited us all to have nothin’ but a good time, preferably while soloing along on air guitar, wasted? Read the rest of this entry »