Today’s tale is one of a father and son. The father: The frontman for one of the most beloved ’70s hard rock groups to come out of the east coast, Good Rats. His son: A hotshot guitar prodigy with all the makings of a future superstar. And yet for the better part of nearly 40 years, the younger Marchello, Gene, has wallowed in obscurity, largely unknown outside of devout old school melodic rockers online who keep tabs on such lost treasure. While his father, Peppi, the man who wrote and produced his son’s oeuvre is sadly no longer with us, Gene was gracious enough to sit down for a rare, exclusive interview off the heels of both of his albums being reissued by High Roller Records, 1989’s Destiny and 1991’s lost album, The Power of Money. In this interview, Gene reflects upon being the son of a Good Rat, the pros and cons of the major label metal era, and a couple of chance encounters with the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne.
Greetings Gene and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Gene Marchello: I’m doing good. How are you?
I’m great! Thank you for taking the time to do this interview.
GM: It’s good to be here.
Your story essentially begins with your father, Peppi Marchello, who was the lead singer and songwriter for Good Rats. What was it like growing up in such a musical household? I imagine becoming a musician yourself was almost unavoidable.
GM: That’s true. I was always into music when I heard my dad’s music growing up. Then, I got into other stuff. When Van Halen came out with Eddie Van Halen, I heard and was like, “I would like to do that.” *laughs* I joined my father for a little while in the studio when I was 15. I played some songs on guitar with him in the studio and did some background vocals. He was making an album I believe for Atlantic Records at the time, but something went wrong with the deal and they didn’t go with him. Anyway, CBS came along. They and my father were thinking, “You know, maybe he’s a little on the old side to be starting off, if we’re going to nationalize this.” He gave me a chance to sing the songs that he wrote, so I got to sing and play. I co-wrote a few of them, but not much. CBS wanted me to do a demo. I did the demo and they liked it. We did a showcase and then, they signed us.
Did the demos for that aborted Atlantic album ever see the light of day?
GM: No, some were released later on, on the Good Rats’ Blue Collar Rats (The Lost Archives) record. It’s maybe 5 or 10 years old already. Some of those songs are on that record now.
Besides Good Rats, what other bands were you listening to as a young musician? I know you mentioned Van Halen. Did you always gravitate towards guitar, or did you start out on another instrument?
GM: I started out on drums when I was real young. No, actually piano! I did a couple years of piano when I was young. Then, I did a year or two on drums. Then, I figured, I didn’t want to play guitar, but when I heard Eddie Van Halen play, I was like, “I wanna do this!” I was into Black Sabbath. Ozzy came a little bit later for me. His solo stuff was what I grew up on, a little bit more than Black Sabbath. I fell in love with Ozzy’s solo stuff with Randy Rhoads on guitar and Jake E. Lee, so that was a big influence too.
I’ve heard it said that every musician tries their hand at drums at some point. On the flip side, every drummer subsequently tries their hand at other instruments as well!
GM: *laughs* Yep, exactly!
Your namesake band first assembled and started playing shows under the moniker Popzarocca.
GM: Yes, I forgot to add that in! Popzarocca came after the Atlantic thing didn’t work. My dad said, “Why don’t we call this band Popzarocca?” It was me, him, and a couple of guys. He would let me sing some of the songs that he wrote for me. I sang 3 songs that he wrote for me and people were into it. There was a showcase for that also, but that didn’t pan out. I’m not sure who that was for. I forget. It might’ve been…no, I don’t think it was CBS yet. Like I was saying, shortly after that, my dad was writing songs and said, “Why don’t you try with CBS?” That’s when I tried and he got the deal.
So in this initial incarnation, it’s primarily you on guitars and your father on vocals?
GM: Yeah, for Popzarocca.
One legendary story from that era goes that Ozzy Osbourne came out to a Popzarocca show to check you out, as he was scouting a new guitarist. There are varying accounts of this event, with some even saying the band covered “Crazy Train”. What are your recollections of that evening?
GM: That evening for me was crazy, but it’s true: Ozzy did come all the way to Long Island to the Sundance Club to see me play because he heard a demo of me playing. My manager, Walter Winnick, hooked it up. He came all the way there with Sharon and his whole entourage. I’m the only one who didn’t see him! Everyone else saw him. I was just playing. I overheard that what happened was Ozzy was by the soundboard and people were saying, “Bring up the guitar! More guitar! Louder!” He was there and someone interrupted in the middle. I’m not gonna name any names, but someone interrupted, showing him (Ozzy) his resume and saying that he taught me some lessons, which is true. He did. I’m not gonna mention his name, but that annoyed me a little bit. Ozzy was there to see me play and he was being interrupted.
Anyway, it turned out that Ozzy was pretty drunk that night, as usual. I don’t know if he was on anything else, but Sharon called my manager the next day or two. According to my dad, my manager said that Sharon said that they’re going with Zakk Wylde, so I would’ve been replacing Jake E. Lee, or I was hoping to. He ended up getting Zakk Wylde, who was a little older than me and had much longer, really blonde hair. At the time, my hair wasn’t blonde; it was a brownish red color and it wasn’t as long. In the Marchello days, my hair was long and blondish. That’s when I ended up going more blonde, during Marchello. What the hell. Everyone was blonde anyways back then.
Yeah, that was the era where if you weren’t naturally blonde, you went blonde for MTV!
GM: Exactly! *laughs*
So everybody else sees Ozzy, but you never make any contact with him that night.
GM: No. There are rumors that he actually wanted me, but I can’t get into why or why not. It’s pretty funny.
Eventually, the band signs to CBS and rebrands as Marchello. Your father steps back to produce and write while you take over vocal duties. Did any other labels show interest in the band prior to CBS? Did you have any apprehensions about singing and playing guitar, or did it come naturally?
GM: I loved to sing. When I was younger, I was pretty happy to sing and play guitar, although some of those parts are pretty intricate on the guitar, and singing them live at the same time was challenging. When I did it in the studio, of course, I did the vocals separate from the guitars. I think people know that’s how it works. I had a big responsibility to handle during the live performances, but I did pretty good. I was pretty natural at it. I had it down naturally, but there were some things that had to suffer once in a while. Being the singer and the guitar player, sometimes in the live performance, I had to give the guitar a little more notice, and sometimes I really had to work on my voice. That’s probably getting into too much!
Not at all! We love getting into the technical aspects here. I think the biggest shock for me, upon discovering Marchello, was learning that you laid down the vocals and guitars. What an anomaly, especially in an era that was dominated by the archetypal golden god frontman and guitar hero. Much like Gary Moore and John Sykes, you were both.
GM: Sammy Hagar, maybe? He was doing it earlier though.
Yeah, Sammy could crank out some great riffs, but when it came to leads, he left it to Eddie (Van Halen) or Ronnie Montrose.
GM: Yeah, true.
You had those super wild leads, at times bordering on neoclassical.
GM: Well, I gotta admit: I was an Yngwie fan. I still am! I don’t know if that’s good or not, but I was pretty into Yngwie too before we recorded this stuff. I had a little influence from him, but I didn’t want to totally rip him off and try to be exactly like him. I combined all my influences and made it my own.
Who were your biggest vocal influences besides your father?
GM: Well, my father, yeah. I liked Van Halen when they had David Lee Roth, believe it or not. He wasn’t technically a great singer. He sang simple blues lines. He wasn’t very melodic all the time. In fact, the background vocals were more melodic than him, but I liked him. I liked the way he performed. I thought Sammy Hagar was a good singer, but I wasn’t as into Sammy with Van Halen as I was into David Lee Roth with Van Halen. Maybe because I was young. Other singers? On the record, you might hear a little bit of Steve Perry on the ballads, but a little heavier than Steve Perry, obviously, and more of myself. There’s probably other singers that I’m forgetting that might’ve influenced me. Right now, I’m drawing a blank, but there are other ones out there.
By now, you’d already had this relationship with your father as a musical and writing collaborator. What was it like working with him as a producer, and what memories stand out to you from the recording of Destiny?
GM: It’s kind of hard to remember back then, but the Destiny album took a little time. I was still young. I was only 18 when I started recording Destiny, doing guitars and vocals. My father was producing and mixing. It took a little while, a year or two, like a normal record. It came out when I was 20, so I was singing around 18, 19 years old. They were mixing and mastering it afterwards and put it out in March of 1989.
So the whole process took a couple years.
GM: Yeah, it took a couple years, as well as with The Magic Comes Alive afterwards, which is now known as The Power of Money. It took a few years, but The Power of Money was never released by CBS because they had then decided they wanted to drop us from the label. I don’t know what exactly had to do with it. It could be a lot of things, but I think a lot of it had to do with what was coming in. Grunge hit and CBS was taken over by Sony. They had to drop a few bands to make some room. They were going onto grunge, and other companies were doing the grunge and alternative rock thing. So not to repeat myself, but when The Magic Comes Alive was coming out, they dropped us.
Sometimes, my dad and I didn’t get along with the other producers *laughs*, I must admit, but we worked it out. They came out with good productions. We went with another guy instead of the guy we were using. Finally, we went with one guy who we still had arguments with over sounds of snare drums and stupid things like that. We still worked it out and it sounded pretty good. It was mastered. It was all ready to go and that’s when CBS was like, “No, we’re not gonna release this.” It broke my heart, of course. It was really a downer.
Off the heels of Destiny’s release, Marchello played a series of shows, even opening up for Ozzy Osbourne on his No Rest for the Wicked Tour. Did you finally meet Ozzy upon supporting him?
GM: Yes, I did meet him! We didn’t say much. There weren’t many words. It was weird. They were in the middle of dressing in their dressing room, and I felt a little funny being in there while they were dressing. Zakk Wylde was sitting down on a chair, practicing his guitar. He was playing his guitar and I watched him a little. I was like, “Wow, that’s pretty good!” I talked with the other guys in the band. I talked with Geezer (Butler) for a second, the bass player. I overheard Ozzy talking to them about current stories, news, information. He was like, “Oh, this world is so fucked up! You know what happened here?” It was great to meet him.
Ozzy is one of my favorite singers too. Ozzy was one of my heroes growing up as a songwriter and singer, and he knew how to get guitar players. He knew how to surround himself with great musicians. I’m definitely a fan, always have been, and am still a fan of Ozzy. We did two shows with Ozzy: One down in Baltimore at a big club called Hammerjack’s and one in Poughkeepsie at the Chance Theatre. They both turned out pretty well, surprisingly, except one time there was a beer can thrown at our heads that just missed our drummer at Hammerjack’s. The crowd was a little rowdy at times. There were a couple of guys that were a little impatient. They wanted to hear Ozzy, but I knew that would happen. Otherwise, the crowd was pretty reactive to us.
Did you guys ever play outside of the east coast?
GM: We did a midwestern tour. We played a bunch of cities and states which I’m not remembering now, but we did about a month and a half of a straight tour there. That worked out pretty good. It was fun and exciting. I was young. I was only and it was my first time doing a tour. I got to learn the hard way about certain things, drinking a little too much at times and stuff like that. Aside from that, it was really cool. I appreciate my dad getting me into this, and I also appreciate CBS Records for signing me and doing Marchello, Ozzy for letting me open for him and coming down to see me earlier on when he was looking for a guitar player. I appreciate all of that. I didn’t think any of that was going to happen. I thought I was going to play guitar in my room and that was it *laughs*.
You mention touring the Midwest. Did you make it to Chicago?
GM: Yes, we did play Chicago. That, I do remember. We also played Milwaukee. I’m not remembering anything else right now. It’s a big blur.
I had to ask because I’m based here.
GM: Oh! I’ve played Chicago twice, first with Marchello and later on with a tribute band. I did a tribute band to U2 called 2U. I just sang. I also did another tribute band called Almost Journey which I also just sang on. I didn’t play any guitar. We had another guitar player, as did the U2 tribute band. The U2 tribute band played Chicago and did a nice club there. It was really cool. It is pretty windy there, it is true! That’s what I remember *laughs*.
When people think of the ’80s hard rock scene, the focus almost always goes to L.A., specifically the Sunset Strip. Being based on the east coast, what was that scene like? Did you find yourself amongst like minded bands and fans of this music?
GM: It wasn’t like it was in California, but there was somewhat of a scene. It never really jolted out much the way it jolted out in L.A., and later on in Seattle, how that became a huge scene for music.
Fast forward some 35 years oater and both Destiny and The Power of Money have been remastered and reissued by High Roller Records. How does it feel to have both albums back in circulation? Looking back, which Marchello songs are your favorite?
GM: It feels really good. For a while, as the years went by, I was a little depressed about the Marchello thing, feeling like, “Well, whatever. Maybe it wasn’t even as good as I thought.” *laughs* I got into other stuff later in, as an older guy. AOR Heaven first released both CDs in 2012. That was pretty exciting to me. The excitement carried on for a while. Later on, in 2024, both CDs were released by Arkeyn Steel Records. That was nice too, but when High Roller came, they released the CDs and the vinyl, which was really exciting for me. They remastered it too and it came out really good. I’m really happy with it. I’m glad that it came out on vinyl.
Both Marchello albums, Destiny and The Power of Money, are out now on High Roller Records. For more information on Marchello, click here.
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