If you’ve been a follower of melodic rock in the past 20+ years, chances are Alessandro Del Vecchio plays on at least a handful of CDs in your collection. With talents ranging from singing, songwriting, producing, engineering, and being a virtuoso on essentially every instrument, Del Vecchio has established himself as one of the most prolific names in his field, collaborating with the heroes of the past and mentoring the superstars of the future. Despite his ever busy schedule, Del Vecchio has never lost focus of his musical pride and joy, Edge of Forever: a melodic metal outfit that combines bombastic musicianship, earworm hooks, and unadulterated heaviness. We sat down with Del Vecchio to discuss Edge of Forever’s latest album, Seminole, as well as his musical inspirations and ongoing activities with Frontiers Records.
Greetings Alessandro and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Alessandro Del Vecchio: Hi Joe! I’m very good! I’m very glad that we’re here to talk about Edge of Forever because that’s where my heart really is. That’s my baby. That’s the band that I’ve been holding for myself for so many years, so I’m very happy we can investigate into that instead of the gazillion other bands that I have.
Before we get into that, how did you first get into music? Which instrument did you pick up first and who were your favorite bands growing up?
ADV: I’ve always been surrounded by music because my family was always listening to Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles and Jethro Tull and Genesis. I was raised in a very musical environment. One day, I heard for the first time “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and I shifted from soccer to music. I decided I wanted to be a musician. Since that day, I always had this dream of making music for the people. In the beginning, I didn’t even know you could make a living out of it. I only thought it was music just for the art and just for music itself.
I started with keyboards. A relative of mine, who was the son of an orchestral director, wanted to give me lessons, which I didn’t want because I wanted to play Queen. He was like, “You gotta learn the scales first.” As a kid, I was like, “I don’t wanna do scales. I wanna play the songs.” I started to learn the songs by air. After one year, I discovered Yngwie Malmsteen and Dream Theater. All my friends were astonished because I could learn the Dream Theater songs without being able to be read, only with my ear. I made a name for myself for being the guy that could play Dream Theater songs as soon as they came out.
For years, I was the virtuoso guy. Then I discovered Toto. When I was a kid, I thought they were a little too light for me. Then one day, I listened to the right songs in the right moment and it totally changed my perception of music because I realized there was so much more than just being a virtuoso in terms of speed. There was pace and the right chords and everything. With keyboards, I always sang. For years, I was just being the keyboard player that could do backing vocals and trade lead vocals. The first time that I could really understand the value of my voice as a backing vocalist was when I was touring with Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple because I was doing all of David Coverdale’s parts with him. It was the first time a musician that was playing with Glenn could sing that much.
Everybody was always like, “Why don’t you front a band?” At that time, Edge of Forever had an American singer. We wanted to tour. 20 years ago, international flights were super expensive, so we couldn’t find a way to make it work. I was like, “OK, I’ll just take the role and sing and see what happens with Edge of Forever.” I’ve done three albums as their lead singer, but I’ve been singing on so many other records and I’ve been doing backing vocals for mostly every great singer in the metal and rock world. I’ve been writing songs for them. I’ve been blessed with a great career for sure.
It must’ve been a bit nerve-racking to be put on the spot with Glenn Hughes, because those Coverdale vocal parts are iconic.
ADV: I would like to say I was ready for the job because Burn, and especially the video tape of California Jam, I wore them out. They were my favorite band of all and to me, Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, in that particular show, were rockstars. They were guys I was dreaming of playing with. I was ready for the part and I knew all the words, all the harmonies. In some of the songs, Glenn was doing David’s parts and I was doing his parts. We were making jokes. He was like, *laughs* “You can do the whole thing!” because of every time we were shifting. For Glenn, I was ready. It was the same thing for Ian Paice, because it was around the same time, especially during those years, that I probably knew all the songs that Deep Purple did. I was always ready on spot. We were changing songs and I was always the one that knew all the songs and inversions and everything.
Having made your name in the scene during those formative years, from there, how did you become involved with Frontiers Records?
ADV: So Frontiers distributed my records for 6 or 7 years before I decided to just write them and ask them if they were looking for songs or needed an extra producer. At that time, they had Dennis Ward as inhouse producer. I just threw a stone at the universe and asked them if they needed somebody that could do what I was doing. I was asked to write songs, which I didn’t have when I wrote the email. I said, “Well, I can write them now on the spot and just send them to you in a few hours.” In a matter of probably a week, I wrote two albums for them. One of those was the Hardline record, Danger Zone. It was after probably 6 or 7 songs that I wrote for them, which were meant to be for Find Me with Robbie LaBlanc on vocals.
Serafino Perugino, the CEO of Frontiers Records wrote me an email asking, “Would you like to work with Johnny Gioeli?” I was like, “Oh my God! Double Eclipse is one of my favorite records! I’m ready for that!” He said, “Write a few songs and send them to me so I can use them as a presentation to Johnny and we’ll see what happens.” Hardline version 2.0 was born that day. One of those songs was “Fever Dreams”, which has been one of the greatest successes of Frontiers in the history of the label. As I said before, in my opinion, you gotta be ready for the occasion. You gotta be prepared for war. I was prepared for the occasion when they came to me.
We touched a bit on this, but Edge of Forever formed nearly 20 years ago now, back in 2003. This new album, Seminole, is the band’s second since reforming with a new lineup in 2019, following a 10 year hiatus. What inspired you to restart EOF and what separates this current lineup from past incarnations?
ADV: Yeah, it was almost 10 years simply because with our third album, Another Paradise, I felt that I gave everything that I had at that time and I couldn’t evolve the band into something better, simply because I felt I needed to dig more into the art of writing, singing, and creating something that could put the band better on the map. It really took years of, also understanding what I wanted to do, because at some point I was like, “I’m OK with being behind the scenes and being the guy that people want to work with, but I’m not taking too much responsibility. I’m OK with playing and singing backing vocals.”
Frontiers was vital to igniting the fire again for Edge of Forever, because at some point they were like, “Ale, we would like to do a record with you on vocals. It’s a shame you’re just doing backing vocals. We hear those demos every month with your voice and nobody can hear it anymore.” I said, “OK, let’s do another Edge of Forever album. I don’t wanna do a solo record and I don’t wanna start a new band, because I already have a band that I could use as a vehicle for that.” They said, “Let’s sign Edge of Forever and let’s see what happens.”
That’s how Native Soul was born. The lineup was still the old one, but then at some point I knew that lineup and that combination of people got to a point where we gave everything we had. I need some new energy in order to be inspired to do better. I felt that I needed to raise the level of the people that I had around me to raise my level in terms of performance, and also to feel inspired by the different life plot and new situation now that Aldo (Lonobile) and Marco (Di Salvia) got on board. Nik Mazzucconi was already with me on the third album, and I’m glad that he stayed because he’s one of my favorite bass players.
We did Native Soul right before the pandemic. We were about to embark on a tour with Harem Scarem from Canada and do some solo shows, but then the pandemic hit. Four days before we were supposed to start the tour, the borders were closed and we were put on lockdown, so we couldn’t go and tour. Long story short, during the pandemic, we always waited to get back on the road, but last year we were like, “We don’t know when that’s gonna happen.” Frontiers said, “What are your plans? Do you wanna wait to go back on the road or do you wanna do another album?” I already had the concept of Seminole ready in my mind, so when they said that, I was like, “You know what? We’re gonna do a new album so that when the time is right, we’re going out on tour with some fresh music. We’re not bringing on the road songs that I wrote four years ago, that had to wait two years. We’ll give the fans some new music.”
It all started like that. We didn’t know that we could create such a great feedback. Thank God we did because as soon as the album was out, we’ve been asked to do shows pretty much every month up to the end of the year, so we’re very grateful we could do another album and show the band in our genre during the pandemic. Promoters would know we were ready to go on tour because we had new music to promote.
That’s an interesting point you make that I don’t think enough fans grasp. Whether it be Edge of Forever or many other bands hitting the road this year, some of you now have two albums to tour behind because there were bands who put out albums in late 2019, early 2020. Then the pandemic hit and they put out another album.
ADV: Yeah, especially for the setlist it’s been challenging because some of the songs on Native Soul, our previous album, could do great live, but we also have a new album, so we wanna showcase that more. We’re trying to balance, but it’s kind of tough because we only played one show during the whole pandemic. Most of our fans never heard the songs from Native Soul live, so we’re trying to bring as much as we can from our previous albums as well.
You mentioned going into the pandemic that you already had the ideas for Seminole. What were these ideas and when did the ball get rolling on creating the new record?
ADV: When I realized things were not going the way we all wanted them to go, after the summer of 2020, we were supposed to do some shows and we couldn’t. For me, the pandemic has been a blessing in disguise because I realized all the optional things that I was surrounding myself with before the pandemic. When we were stripped away from all the things we wanted to have and all the luxury of going out everyday and owning the super coolest car in the world, but then you cannot use it, you realize that we’re running around trying to get a better life because of the things we have and not because of who we are.
One day, I had to change the way I was looking at the pandemic because I was getting into a negative place. Music was taken away from me, and the thing that I love most about touring is the travel. I happen to see the world and we paid for that, but I couldn’t do that anymore. A part of my identity was faded away before my eyes. I had to change the way I was looking at the world. That process really put me in the position of understanding that the same negative whirlpool could’ve happened to somebody else. I wanted to plant a seed of positivity in the world instead of pointing out what everybody could see just looking outside of their windows. I decided that I wanted to be the constructive part of the pandemic and not the destructive.
I had this concept during the first lockdown, because I was living in Florida at that time. I’ve been in love and attracted by the Native American culture for all my life. In Florida, it’s the land of the Seminole. I knew the story of the Seminole. I was like, “Wow, what a great, strange, haze of fate that I’m here and I’m having these positive thoughts when everything in the whole world is crumbling down.” That’s what the Seminole did. They fought a very tough war against their oppressors, but still they were able to have compassion because they welcomed slaves from the north, and from Georgia, they saved other Indian tribes, while fighting the toughest of the worst of the Indian wars.
I was like, “That could be a great story to tell.” Something completely different in these times where we should’ve gotten to a better place, but we became more selfish, more divided. The mainstream and the government all seemed to create a coalition to separate us. We became even more divided. I was like, “That’s not the world I want to create.” The tool that I have to create a better place is music, so I decided that I have to something. That’s why I wrote this story of resilience and perseverance, the fight for the good cause and the good of others.
During the pandemic, we isolated. We became divided. The human contact wasn’t there anymore, so we forgot that our nature is to become social. We’re pack beings. We’re not solitary wolves. We’re pack animals. The pandemic revealed a side of the human nature that I didn’t like, so I was like, “Nah, I gotta do something completely different.”, also to send out a message of hope. Every time you were turning on your social media or TV or talking to a friend, all we were talking about was the pandemic and vaccines and restrictions and lockdowns and masks. Now it’s even worse because we’re basically in a war. I never realized that I could write an album that could really translate so perfectly and fit perfectly to these strange times we’re living in. Seminole is an album of hope and of a constructive message to send to the world.
It’s always seemed to me with Edge of Forever that the lyrics are equally as important as the music. Those themes of positivity and motivation are unfortunately very lacking in these times. I really appreciate what the band has done incorporating those in that respect. Don’t get me wrong. I love the doom and gloom of Black Sabbath, and the blatant evil of Mercyful Fate, but sometimes I need to listen to Survivor or Stan Bush or Edge of Forever because it boosts my morale. As you said, it’s a very timely album.
ADV: I’m like you. Sometimes I don’t even care about what some of the songs are talking about. For me, obviously a great song is a great song. I don’t know how old you are. I’m 43 in a month, but getting older and getting more mature into my musical path, I realize that every musician has to have a purpose. Sometimes even the most satanic lyric is more about the show than about the reality. Manowar are not going around dressed in leather underwear in their houses. KISS are not dressed with makeup everyday. Also, lots of people believe in their idols. Sometimes we just idolize the wrong words or the wrong aspects of the music business and show business.
We take for granted that everything that somebody says is basically their truth and I really felt the urgency to really make it clear that we’re a positive band. The whole band is embracing my philosophy of positivity and positive mental attitude and the stoic teachings. Every time we open our eyes outside our own body, it’s all BS, it’s negativity, it’s death, it’s destruction, it’s exploitation, it’s all wrong. We live in a world unfortunately ruled by money, oppression, power, control. I really wanted to create an island of positivity and feelgood aura around the band. I’m not Christian, but in a sort of way, *laughs* we became more Christian now than ever before because the message is universal wellbeing and respect for life. You don’t have to be a Christian or Buddhist or any other religion to understand there are some basic rules we forget about. We’re in these rolling times of trying to survive through the punches. We’re trying to roll with the punches.
I also want to plant a seed of trying to see a different truth, trying to see a different reality. We’re surrounded by negativity. I’m here to say, “Well, it’s not like that.” That’s the way they want to keep us grounded. It’s easier to ground somebody that’s unhappy because we don’t have the last iPhone or the last super amazing car or we don’t look like the Greek statues that we see on Instagram everyday. It’s just wrong. The message that we’re getting everyday is we’re not good enough, and I’ve been there. I’ve been there thinking, “Maybe I’m not good enough because this guy’s doing this, or this guy’s rich and I’m not.” Happiness doesn’t live in objects. It lives in the way we see things.
I had to learn that over the years, but especially during the pandemic because I was stripped away of my identity. I was like, “I’m home. I’ve never been home for such a long time.” Even when I stopped touring, I was still gigging, but it’s never happened to me in the last 30 years that I didn’t play at least one show a month. I really felt lost in this whole process of the pandemic. I had to understand how to be happy because obviously during that time, you couldn’t reinvent yourself 100% because we were all stuck home basically. The only way that I know to complete my purpose is to make music. I want to make it positive so that I can be a signal of change for the world.
I can’t praise you enough for that. Just a quick side note though. You mentioned Manowar and in roughly an hour, I’m gonna be interviewing Ross the Boss right after this.
ADV: *laughs* Ask him if they were leather underwear! He’s great! I saw him live 5 or 6 years ago at a festival. If I’m not wrong, I think he had Mike LePond on bass from Symphony X. I have memories from the show, but it was great.
There’s so many great songs on Seminole, my favorite being “Wrong Dimension”, which very well may be the greatest Tony Martin era Black Sabbath song never written. What was the inspiration behind this song?
ADV: First of all, thank you very much because in my opinion, The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, and Tyr are some of the best heavy metal, but music in general without any genre, albums ever made. To me, Tony Martin is a vocal god, great lyricist, great writer, great singer, and the band was, in my opinion, doing something unique. The inspiration for that song was to write something beyond our genre. I didn’t want the band to be seen as a melodic rock band because we’re not. I said, “You know what? We’re gonna put our pedal to the metal and go extreme.” I wanted to write something that was a little Rainbow, a little Tony Martin era Black Sabbath, a little Dio, and to combine it with lyrics that could be epic and a metaphor for the times we’re living in.
I feel, but I guess I can share this feeling with everyone, sometimes I feel like I live in the wrong dimension. Every time that I try to analyze what’s happened and try to understand why it happened, it feels like we’re taking all the wrong decisions and, to quote my lyrics, we’re “worshipping false heroes”. We feel like we’re left without hope. We played our first show on Friday and we have “Wrong Dimension” on our setlist. I made an introduction saying that it’s the strangest feeling for me to write a song that’s so actual, because every time I see what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine, I feel like we’re in the wrong dimension. There must be a place in the creation, in the universe, where human values are actually humane and not material. Everything is happening because of, as I said before, money, power, control, exploitation. It’s all wrong.
I wanted to write a song that could be epic, but could be cool and have that apocalyptic feeling of the times we’re living in, yet plant a seed of trying to see things from another perspective. What we see is in our eyes. If we become the change, we can see what’s wrong and revert the process by doing the opposite ourselves. If you don’t like what Russia’s doing or what NATO is doing, try to be outside of that process. Sometimes, that’s the teaching of the past. The stoics sometimes were misunderstood because as a stoic, you see somebody go to war, it’s their decision. You cannot do anything about it because it’s too big. You just let it happen because that’s the course of universal law of the million destinies tied together. But, you can decide to take a stand by not being part of it. That’s already a big choice.
That’s how I feel. I don’t wanna be part of the debate, especially now. I have fans and friends in Russia and Ukraine. Obviously, I’m trying to be logical and stay on the “right side”. I feel bad for my Russian friends because we cannot even understand what it feels to be in a country where your government decides to go to war with a neighboring country and you cannot do anything about it. I hope that songs like “Wrong Dimension” can really help the oppressed to seek another way out, as difficult as it can be, especially now, but there’s always a way out. I really hope that in their homes and in their private lives they can really live a happy time, no matter the circumstances, because of music. That’s what music should do, especially in these times. I really hope that our music can cross the borders and help people to at least find some relief in these times.
And when it comes to you, there’s no shortage of new music. As we were still digesting the new Edge of Forever album, it was roughly a month ago that another album you were involved in creating came out, and that is the debut effort from Zadra, Guiding Star. Could you tell us a bit about the making of that record and what it’s like collaborating with August Zadra?
ADV: August is the nicest, most humble guy in the business. There’s no ego. He’s a great musician. I remember the first time I heard about August. It was because I saw some live videos of Dennis DeYoung. I thought, “Who’s this guy singing Tommy Shaw like Tommy Shaw and playing Tommy Shaw like Tommy Shaw?” Then one day, Frontiers asked me if I wanted to touch base with him and try to showcase his voice the best we could. So we started to go back and forth with ideas. Then Jeff Scott Soto got involved as a mutual friend.
Basically the idea behind the album was to showcase August as the great guitarist he is and the great singer he is, without being confined into the cover world of singing Tommy Shaw like Tommy Shaw. He reminds me of Fergie Frederiksen of Toto. He’s got great high pitch and power, and he’s great on guitars. I don’t know how old August is, but to me, he’s been one of the best kept secret musicians of all time. He’s so good. He should’ve done this 20 years ago.
It’s funny you say that because with me it was the same thing. I think I was in junior high. My dad and I went to see Dennis DeYoung and I had to do a double take because here comes out this guy that looks EXACTLY like Tommy Shaw.
ADV: He looks and sings like him! You’re lucky you got to see Dennis DeYoung live!
I’m actually based in Chicago, so I’ve been very lucky to see Dennis on multiple occasions.
ADV: Oh cool!
When you write, do you predetermine which songs are going to be for which project, or do you just have an ongoing arsenal to choose from?
ADV: I would like to have a drawer full of songs ready to be used, but I don’t function like that. I need to write for the artist. I need to have a specific target. It’s strange because I’m very prolific only if I have a target. I’m not one of those guys that when they’re travelling they have a notebook and they write songs or lyrics. I’m completely not like that at all. I’m the laziest songwriter in that section of the job, but if I have a target, that’s what triggers my inspiration. For August, I wanted to write something than all the other acts because I wanted to go back to a more Styx meets more 70s rock and more progressive stuff. I had to study his vocal range to find a starting point. Even if I write for Jorn or for anybody that I’ve been writing for, I really need to have a target.
Also, I’m a music lover. I’m not a genre guy. For me, if a song is good, if it’s pop, if it’s death metal, if it’s whatever genre, I don’t care. If it’s good, it’s good. If you put me on a piano, I might end up writing one song from a genre or one from another because that’s what I love in music. It’s the variety. Having a target really helps me focus. That really created a habit so I can trigger my inspiration as soon as they ask for a song. Boom, I sit down and write, but I’m not one of those writers that write everyday. I write everyday because I have, thank God, lots of requests, but during my holidays and tours *laughs* I don’t write. I know some writers that I see when I tour. They’re always writing things. I probably wrote two songs on tour. I need to be in my writing studio and I need to have my instruments and my pace. I need to be home to write, so it’s all different.
You’ve collaborated with so many legendary bands and artists over the years. Who would you like to work with that you haven’t worked with yet?
ADV: Wow. Paul McCartney? *laughs* Probably guys outside of our genre. Besides (David) Coverdale, (Yngwie) Malmsteen, and (Ritchie) Blackmore, I’ve been working with mostly everybody. Paul McCartney would be the greatest achievement, simply because to me he’s the best living musician ever. I love The Beatles, I love his voice, and I love the way he writes. He’s such a smart musician, and he’s a vegan fellow, so that would be awesome *laughs*. Besides him, probably Brian May, simply because of the fact that Queen really meant everything to me and still do to this day. In my opinion, Queen are the best, simply because they could write in any genre, live in the same bubble, and still be them within 20 different genres. That is the highest definition of genius for me musically.
It’s funny you said McCartney, the reason being I’ve asked this exact same question to Jim Peterik and Jean Beauvoir. Both of them answered McCartney.
ADV: Really?! Wow. Honestly, if I look at the world of songwriting, he’s the best. I’m very glad to be in the same opinion of my dear friend and mentor Jim Peterik and Jean Beauvoir. Coming from such legendary songwriters and musicians, it says a lot about Paul McCartney.
Finally, what release do you have coming up that fans should be on the lookout for?
ADV: Well we have the reissues of the first three Edge of Forever albums coming out this coming Friday, March 11. The collection is released as a three CD box set called The Days of Future Past. It’s all remastered with bonus tracks featuring Jeff Scott Soto and Bobby Barth. We wanted to have our first albums out digitally. Lots of our new fans only know the last two albums because the first three were released almost 20 years ago. Some people knew them, but some others didn’t. That is really important for me because I’m locking the door of my past, Edge of Forever 1.0, and now we have the new version.
Then March, 9, we have a new single from The Big Deal, a Serbian band I’m playing with. It’s very exciting because it’s two girls sharing lead vocals and one of the singers is also a virtuoso pianist. I’m only playing bass. This time, I have no other responsibilities. It’s been exciting to be with them. There’s a new Jorn album coming out in June. There’s the Iconic album, which is a band featuring Michael Sweet, Joel Hoekstra, Tommy Aldridge, Marco Mendoza, and Nathan James, that we brought together. That’s coming out in June as well. *laughs* Every month there’s a record coming out where I’m involved, but honestly, I think the Iconic album is gonna be a gamechanger in the genre because it’s so good. I’m very excited about that. Jorn’s album is great too. We really topped everything we’ve done. I’m very glad we’re back with Jorn. We had the new Giant album that just came out last month too. I’m keeping busy *laughs*!
So busy that I’m surprised you found time for this interview!
ADV: My pleasure! I wanted to thank you for the great review, which I saw literally before you wrote me. Thank you very much for digging into the album. It really means the world to me because I really want to make music that means something and has weight in this world. To see a person that can dig into the album and dig the lyrics, understand the depth, and understand the purpose of the album is so great. Sometimes you write and during the process I was like, “Oh wow, maybe I’m getting a little too preachy or too motivational or too positive.” But I wanted to be true to myself. I was like, “OK, if they don’t like it, at least I tried.” To see that it’s appreciated and understood means a lot to me. Thank you very much.
The new Edge of Forever album, Seminole, is out now on Frontiers Records. For more information on Edge of Forever, visit www.edgeofforever.it.