Light ‘Em Up is the brand new album from The Dead Daisies – and it’s an absolute cracker! As a musical collective known for it’s rotating cast of musicians, the latest line up consists of David Lowy and Doug Aldrich on guitars, Whitesnake bassist Michael Devin, Ozzy Osbourne drummer Tommy Clufetus and returning vocalist John Corabi. And it’s John who are meeting today to talk about the new songs and also what it means to be back with the band. At his home in Nashville, John gives us the warmest of welcomes. With his huge smile there’s clearly a strong sense of excitement and anticipation that resides within. With a strong coffee to start his day our conversation begins…

Well it’s a massively exciting time with the new album Light ‘Em Up Set for release in only one weeks time. What sort of thoughts are going through your mind at album release time?

Well I think the hard part is over, writing and recording this stuff. We are looking forward to coming over to the UK. With me, it’s been six years since we’ve been there so we’re all very much looking forward getting over there and seeing everybody again. At the end of the day, when the record comes out, at that point you just kind of keep your fingers crossed and hope that people enjoy the record. Let’s face it, radio isn’t what it used to be as far as support for bands is concerned and there is no MTV – all that stuff is gone. So right now it’s all about the fans, word-of-mouth and just telling everybody. I’m excited to come over there and get a cold pint of Guinness and some bangers and mash! (Laughs!)

It’s interesting that you say it’s been six years, but this is your first album with The Dead Daisies since you returned to the band. The fans reaction to the news of your return was absolutely incredible. How does it feel to be back and to see the outpouring of love from fans?

Well, you know, honestly from some of the things that I’ve done in the past, without diving too deep into it, obviously my time in Motley and some of the negative stuff that I got from the Vince fans – which is understandable – I’ve kind of learnt not to pay attention to comments. Honestly, I just do what I do, though I have to admit that last year when I came back into the band I was a little nervous. I had done my time with the Daisies and then I left for a little personal break but I was sitting there when we made the arrangements for me to come back again and I was pretty nervous about how fans would react to me coming back after having had Glenn Hughes for two or three years. Glenn is a dear friend of mine, he’s an amazing singer, a great talent and obviously a legend, so I was like “Oh, here we go again!“ I kind of painted myself into this corner. I didn’t really pay much attention to comments online but coming back and doing the live shows, all the shows were crowded, they were packed and all the fans that saw us live completely embraced my return. So it was pretty awesome!

Well let’s talk about the new music and I’d like to start with the title track and first single Light ‘Em Up which you released back in May. It’s the perfect song to open this fantastic album, and I love the fact that it was a riff created by Buckcherry’s Stevie D that formed the basis of this song and that just made me wonder about songwriting and The Dead Daisies willingness to collaborate with external writers and contributors. Is this something you’ve done much of or that you expect to do more of?

Well, our management set up a dropbox for us to start putting ideas into. All of us, David, Doug, myself, Michael, there was so many ideas in our dropbox folder that we probably have enough material still sitting in there that we can do another album or two. But it was weird, you hear things sometimes… Marti (Fredrickson, producer) had been working with the guys from Buckcherry prior to working with us and again after. When Stevie found out he was going to be working with us he had written and kind of mapped out a whole song. I don’t mean this in any disrespect, but the part of the song that we liked was the riff. We were just like “Oh man, that riff is great!” and Marti was like “Well Stevie sent it to me in case you needed a song or something”. A lot of artists do this. So we took the riff and we just got in as usual, set up all the gear and sat in a circle. All the amps are blaring and everything is going, and we just kind of worked on the riff and everybody just started throwing stuff into the mix. As it turned out, we were listening to it and we had the working title of Light ‘Em Up, and our manager when he heard it he was like “Oh my God, dude! This song sounds amazing!”. As it turned out, prior to me re- joining, I had been out to LA and Keith Nelson who also used to be in Buckcherry, he’s like a producer and he’s got a great studio now, him and I were talking and he was like “Hey, dude! If you ever want to get together and write, let’s do something!”. So I got together with him and then I had the riff for what became I’m Gonna Ride. I kind of recorded that with Keith at his studio but I never finished it so again, once we started putting ideas in the dropbox, I put that idea in there as well. When everybody heard the riff they said “This is great!” and I explained it was something that I’d been working on with Keith Nelson. So as it turned out, two tracks were written with other people from the Buckcherry family tree. I personally like writing. Obviously I can record and finish a song on my own but I like sitting with Doug, David and Michael, and even Marti, because like I’ll come up with something and he’ll go “Oh, that’s really cool, but what if you did it like this…” And it seems like something that’s like right in front of my face the whole time and I didn’t see it. So I just like hearing other people’s input and usually if it’s something really, really good it will rise to the top and you will just add it to the song. Doug is a brilliant guitar player. I can play a riff and have Doug play it the exact same way but he will just do something that puts a little more stank on it than I would. So I do like writing with other people as well.

One of my favourite tracks is My Way And The Highway. You sing about ‘searching for an answer, running from a cancer because someone keeps driving you out of your mind, and also being steaming and so confused and fed up of being abused, and how basically it’s the end of the line. I love the strength in this track to simply take control. Where did the inspirational for this track come from?

Well, to be honest with you that is a Michael Devin riff. Michael brought that to the table and put it in the dropbox and we thought the riff was great, really cool. When we were doing the vocals we felt that vocally and lyrically it’s got this Draw The Line era Aerosmith vibe to it. In America we’ve got this saying which is ‘it’s either my way or the highway’ but we put a little twist on that phrase and for lack of a better term, like you said, “I’m fucking done with you so it’s my way and there’s the highway and you can use it. Get the fuck out of my face!” (Laughs!) So we took that approach with it and it’s just a great tune!

What’s really interesting is how in the same album we can go from ‘It’s my way’ to perhaps the total opposite with the new single ‘I Wanna Be Your Bitch’ which is released today. This song describes a highly desirable woman with expensive tastes who has such hypnotic powers that result in protagonist surrendering their control. They just want to be with her, no matter the cost. It’s interesting that we can go from being strong empowered men to puppy dogs – and I think that it’s okay to be both! Would you agree with that?

Well to be honest with you, this was a little tongue in cheek. That song is a riff that David Lowy came up with. He had the beginning riff and we started bashing it out and we kind of came up that chorus but there was always something a little punky and snotty about it. We were sat there thinking it’s got this kind of cool punky and snotty side but it’s rock. It’s like ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ by Iggy & The Stooges. So we were sitting there laughing and I was telling Marti that it wouldn’t be the first time that I had an ex-girlfriend who absolutely drove me back shit crazy. I knew it was the wrong relationship, I knew I shouldn’t be there but at the same time she would step out the shower and drop her towel and I would forget why I was fucking mad at her. (Laughs!) Do you know what I mean? Here we say ‘I’m thinking with this head (points to temple) or I’m thinking with this head (points to crotch). Marti was laughing at my analogy where I was so pissed at this girl, I knew it wasn’t gonna work but she could suck a bowling ball through a garden hose. So I was like ‘Ah, fuck it! Just have your way with me!’ (Laughs!)

I’m fascinated by The Dead Daisies’ Dropbox and I love that the band provide ideas this way, and this kind of leads my on to a track that I found particularly powerful which is Love That’ll Never Be. It’s such a beautiful storytelling song and for me it has the John Corabi DNA at its heart. Was this a song you brought to the band’s Dropbox?

Yes, actually this is a song that I had written during Covid. During that time I finally learned how to use ProTools. At the time I was going to try and do a solo record and I got together with Marti and started recording the song, I showed it to him and he thought it was great so we kind of finished the song. I released a song about a year and a half ago called Cosi Bella and then I released another song called Your Own Worst Enemy but with no radio support and no MTV… I don’t know how this streaming shit works and I don’t know how to get people to go and watch the videos that I did for the songs. So I kind of stopped putting songs out until I could figure everything out. So when we put the dropbox folder together I called Marti and said that I was going to throw in the song that we had worked on into the folder, Love That’ll Never Be. So I put it in and all the guys in the band and management were like “Oh my God, dude! This song is amazing!” But when we were working up the songs and getting all the material together for the record Marti felt it was too polished and, for lack of a better term, he thought it was more like Elton John than The Dead Daisies. So at one point we weren’t even going to put it on the record but we all got in the room and I was a little argumentative and I said “Man, we’ve got to get it on somehow”. So we kind of just tore it apart and then let Doug play it the way he would play it – and David and Michael – and we actually took parts out of it. They were like these little kind of pre-chorus parts and we just took them out and then we did a verse and went right to the chorus. Doug also did some amazing slide work on it and we just toughened it up a bit. But that was a song that Marti and I had written during Covid

You’ve mentioned Marti quite a bit today and I did want to make sure we discussed him because of course for Light ‘Em Up, you’ve again chosen to work with him. As a producer Marti just seems to have the Midas touch. What is it about Marti that just brings out such incredible results?  

Some producers are really good at capturing tones and the vibe of a band. I think Marti is one of those guys. He’s got a great ears and he knows tones, he knows how everybody in the band works and he knows how to capture a great performance from everybody, but the thing that I love about Marti as well is that he’s not just a producer, he’s an amazing songwriter. So Marti is like the sixth member of the band. He’s like the secret weapon that we have in our back pockets. If you look back at his history, Marti wrote Jadedwith Steven Tyler. He co-wrote a lot of the songs on the Aerosmith records that he produced. He’s written with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Ozzy Osbourne, and also people like Carrie Underwood who is a country artist. So he’s just really well versed, he’s a great producer, a great songwriter and an amazing singer, guitar player, pianist and drummer. The thing that I love about working with Marti is that even with somebody on the drums, if they don’t understand what he’s saying he can literally get behind the kit and show them what he means. It’s the same with me – I’ll sing something and he’ll go “Hey, Crab, that was really cool but what if you did it like this… ?” And then he’ll sing something back to me and it’s just that “Oh, yes! That’s it!”. He’s just so well rounded and easy to work with. I always kid with him by saying as long as you’ve got a bottle of red wine and some edibles, that’s Marti! (Laughs!) He’s like Shaggy from Scooby Doo: “Yeah, dude! Whatever!” (Laughs!) He’s super easy but he’s so great. I can literally get together with Marti in three hours and have a complete song. I just love working with him, he’s great!

With this lineup of the band and the standard of music that you’ve created in this latest album, it just seems that The Dead Daisies have hit a massive creative peake. To what extent is that a fair thing to say?

Well, it’s funny because when we did this record we kind of checked off a bucket list thing for all of us when we were making this record because we started at Marti’s studio here in Nashville, we wrote and recorded for maybe 10 days, and then we picked everything up and went south to legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals and we did some recording there. But at night, our manager and Marti would wrap things up at around 5.30pm, 6.30pm - dinner time – and we’d have some wine and some Jameson whiskey or whatever and we’d start jamming and working on other stuff. There was 9 or 10 days that we were down in Muscle Shoals and we did 2 albums this go around! So we did Light ‘Em Up but we also recorded for a blues album while we were there. That’s coming next year as well! We don’t have a title for yet but we we’re just so inspired by that room and some of the people that walked through the doors, we just thought ‘fuck it’! We just did this blues record. We did some old BB King, Freddie King and Robert Johnson but we did them our way and we put our spin on them. I’m pretty stoked about everything that we’ve accomplished so far this year. It’s been awesome! Two records in 29 days, my friend!

Let’s move on to The Dead Daisies in a live setting. It’s only a week until you return to the UK for 12 dates. How much are you looking forward to these shows and what can fans expect from this line up of the band?

I’m really not looking forward to the shows at all, I’m really just looking forward to the pub food! (Laughs!) No, I’m kidding! Again, it’s been 6 years and the UK fans have been amazing to us right out of the gate so this anticipation is building up in all of us to get back and just to put on some kick-ass, energetic shows. We’re all being inundated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with bad news and bad shit. All we want to do is get back over there, step on stage and just let have everybody from all political backgrounds, all ‘whatever’ - just get in the room with us and forget about their day for two hours. We’re just looking forward to it, man! I love the country and it’s music history so for us, in some weird way, we just kind of feel like we’re coming home. It’s awesome!

As our conversation draws to a close, we reflect on what an absolutely outstanding record Light ‘Em Up really is and how the forthcoming tour just promises to be something really, really special.

Check out the tour dates below, follow the link to get tickets and enjoy the video for the title track Light ‘Em Up below:-

Light ’Em Up World Tour 2024

THE DEAD DAISIES + The Treatment + The Bites

September 2024

6th BRIGHTON – Chalk

7th TORQUAY – The Foundry

8th SOUTHAMPTON – The 1865

10th HOLMFIRTH – Picturedrome

11th GLASGOW – SWG3

13th NOTTINGHAM – Rock City

14th WOLVERHAMPTON – KK’s Steel Mill

15th NEWCASTLE – Boiler Shop

17th MANCHESTER – O2 Ritz

18th SWANSEA – Patti Pavilion

20th BRISTOL – O2 Academy

21st LONDON – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Tickets on Sale Now:

https://thedeaddaisies.com/light-em-up-tour-2024/

Matthew Isherwood