The past 10 years have been quite the journey for James Durbin. He brought metal to the masses on American Idol, eventually reaching the Top 4. He filled the shoes of Kevin DuBrow better than any other Quiet Riot singer. Now Durbin assumes his new status as the “Prince of Metal”. He holds his sword in one hand and raises his torch in the other; A torch that’s lit by the flame of Ronnie James Dio, Mark “The Shark” Shelton, and all other true metal warriors before him. These legends, now eternally resting in Valhalla, guide Durbin as he begins the next chapter of his quest. He discusses all of this and more in this brand new interview. Prepare for battle because things are going to get epic.
Greetings James and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
James Durbin: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me.
Thank you for taking the time. This is a very big week for you. We are two days away from the release of your new album, The Beast Awakens. It’s described as “the album you always wanted to make”. I know your previous albums were more hard rock oriented. Coming off the heels of American Idol, was it hard to convince a label that it was a good idea to make a full blown metal album such as this?
JD: It definitely was, especially coming off of American Idol and the nature of the demographic of that show. My references that I gave different songwriters was, “I want something that sounds like Too Fast for Love era Mötley Crüe meets Dreamin’ in a Casket era Hardcore Superstar.” They were like, “Uhhhhh…here. Maybe this.” In that way, I was still getting to record kickass songs and still getting to put together a solid album to be my debut, but not necessarily to meet the expectation of what I thought it could’ve been.
Leading up to this album, you’ve released a few singles, the first being “Kings Before You”. This song has a dark, doomy Dio era Sabbath vibe. What does Ronnie James Dio mean to you?
JD: Everything. Absolutely everything. When I listen to Ronnie, it’s just the way that he commands whatever he’s singing. Usually what he’s singing about is fantasy based. It’s mystique. It’s magic. It’s stuff that you wouldn’t think you’d be able to sing about with a serious face, and yet he does. He sings about these things with such conviction. Before I wrote “Kings Before You”, I had the idea to write the song, but before I trusted that I should do it or that I could do it, I had a dream that Ronnie James Dio approached me. I had already written “Sitting high atop the mountain over all there is to see.” I was trying to decide where do I take this? What form does this song take? Is he high above on a mountain? No, it turns out that he was *mimics smoking* pullin’ back on a little old toby, the devil’s lettuce *laughs*. So he’s sitting “high” atop the mountain.
I was thinking maybe in the realm it’s some really good shit. Maybe it induces some sort of hallucination. But I had this vision, this dream that Ronnie came to make on the dark side of a rainbow. He held out the sacred heart and said “Take it. Write this song. Write this album. You’ve got the record deal. This is the album that you all agreed on to make. Just do it. Don’t be afraid.” I took that and ran with it. That inspired the next lines: “Sitting high atop the mountain over all there is to see. The dark side of a rainbow touch the earth beside me. From the sky descends the wizard as he spreads his hands apart. Manifesting right before me as he holds the sacred heart. He says YOU, you are the defender of the land. From the hills to the horizons, from the holy to the desperate and the damned.” And so on and so forth.
These songs just poured out of me. Any time I hit a road block, I thought, “What would Ronnie James Dio do right now? What would Rob Halford do right now? What would Bruce Dickinson do right now?” I was using them as the 3 main staples of what I should do. Then there were other influences. I had always heard of Blind Guardian but had never really listened to them. So then it became, “What would Hansi Kürsch do? What would he write?” It was this amalgamation of all of them and dipping back into Tolkien, reading those works and such, and video games. I started playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It was stuff like that which made me feel like, “Yes! I’m in it! I’m here!”
You fully immersed yourself.
JD: Yes, exactly.
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say the Dio era lineup of Black Sabbath got back together: Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Vinny Appice. And they approached you to be their new singer. Would you be up for the task?
JD: Of course! Absolutely. I’m not afraid to take on any opportunity or any position like that, as I’ve done in the past. I’d definitely be cautious about it, but always respectful. When I was standing where Kevin DuBrow stood, I was always very respectful. I was always thinking, “What would Kevin do?” Kevin would throw his mic stand in the air and try and catch it with his teeth. Back bends and knee slides and screaming at the audience and whipping that mic stand around like it owed him money. I always tried to do that in honor.
The second single, “Prince of Metal”, is this epic, battle ready track that reminds me of Iron Maiden and Manilla Road. To expand upon what you said earlier about immersing yourself in the imagery, how important is it for you as a singer and songwriter to bring these images to life in the listener’s head?
JD: It’s really important, especially writing this album and recording it in the year of our Lord Voldemort 2020. We don’t know when we’re gonna get to go back on tour. I don’t know what the tour’s gonna look like when it’s able to happen. It could be another year. We really don’t know. I wanted to make an album that was visual in an audio sense. When I put on Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell or Judas Priest’s Defenders of the Faith or Sad Wings of Destiny, I’m there. I’m listening to “The Sentinel” and I’m there seeing this flesh eating monster. I listen to Sad Wings of Destiny and by the time it gets to “Epitaph”, I’m crying. I feel it and I can see it. The lyrics just unfold before my eyes, whether they’re opened or closed.
I really wanted to write songs that could put you in that space, especially if you start the album from the beginning. It starts with “The Prince of Metal” and the album tells a story. We get introduced to “The Prince of Metal” and he doesn’t know he’s the prince. Then he’s standing on the mountain for the “Kings Before You”. He gets told by the wizard to go on a quest “Into the Flames”. “Behold the Sacred Mountain” pulls back and gives you a back story, a further idea of the realm, where we are, and what’s going on. Then there’s his eventual encounter with the beast and his own awakening, as we see on the album cover. “Evil Eye”, “Necromancer”, “Riding on the Wind”, “Calling Out for Midnight”, “Battle Cry” is another great example of that. “By the Horns” pulls you right into that battle with the Balrog and the demon. And then “Rise to Valhalla” is this epic of this battle. It’s more like a promise to yourself that you’re not just going to accept to die. There’s more than that. I wanted something that had body, something that had meat.
I’ve made albums in the past that sometimes I look at them and I’m just like *shrugs* well, that’s an album, but this is an experience. I really wanted to write something to really, really give myself a fucking hard time to follow up. I’ve been writing some songs. I’m trying to write some stuff lately and I’m just like, “Ah damn.” *laughs* I really set the bar high for myself. This is gonna be tough, but I’m up for the challenge. It’s great.
Is the plan from here to do more large, conceptual pieces like The Beast Awakens where there’s this thread from beginning to end?
JD: I definitely hope so. Right now I’m kind of writing an outline of what that could look like. I wrote The Beast Awakens as a standalone, so there’s a lot of stuff in one. It does this overarch of the prince and the things that happen to him. Fortunately and unfortunately, one of the tracks that was originally tacked on at the end of “Battle Cry”, we took it off and made it the bonus track for the Japanese release. What I’m thinking I might do if the label is up for it is for the next album, have it start with that previously released bonus track as a “missing chapter” to allow it to continue. There’s a lot of detail in that song. It’s called “Return Me to the One”. It’s very important to the story.
You mentioned earlier the potential tour that may or may not happen this year. Is there already a band in order to bring this music to life?
JD: More or less, yeah. My drummer Mike Vanderhule and bass player Barry Sparks are both very much like, “Let me know when it is. We’ll be there. We can’t wait to play these songs.” There are guitar players I’ve got in mind that played on the record. One of them knows he’s going on tour whether he likes it or not. The other one is for me to decide. I’d love to have it be a nice group setup: drums, bass, maybe two guitarists. I’d love to do two guitars. Maybe a keyboard player, but if we need the keyboard player, we’ve gotta sacrifice a guitar player. I played rhythms on the record, but I don’t foresee myself playing guitar live. I’d just much rather command the stage, do the Dio thing and give people the horns, point them out and do all that shit. That’s what’s fun.
When the videos came out, I had to do a double take. I didn’t know that was Mike (Vanderhule) on drums at first and I’m a huge Y&T fan. When I realized it was him, I thought, “Wow this is awesome!”
JD: Mike is so killer. I opened some shows for Y&T back at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020. It was the last five shows of their 45th anniversary tour, just up and down the coast of California. The last show was here in my hometown Santa Cruz. I was in the back parking lot of the venue talking to Mike. He was like, “Man, I love your voice.” During soundcheck and even during our set, it was just me and my guitarist. It was one of my guitar players who appears on the record, Mark Putnam. He plays on “Sacred Mountain” and “Battle Cry”. He joined me for these shows. It was just me on acoustic and him on electric, this little fun duo thing we’ve done a bunch of times. We just play covers and warm up the crowd. It’s just fun. “How long do we got? 30 minutes? That’s like 3 songs! Alright.” And I talk too, but it’s tons of fun.
We were able to get the Y&T guys out of the dressing room just based on the sound of it. “Wait, that’s coming out of those two?” I talked to Dave Meniketti and he’s just like, “Yeah, normally we’d just be in the dressing room having a glass of wine before, but it was great to have an opener that we really wanted to get out there and see what you’d do next.” Mike was like, “Hey, if you’re ever making a record, I’d love to play on it.” “I just signed a record deal. You’re the first person other than my wife I’ve told.” “Oh shit! Seriously?” “Yeah! I’ll send you some songs in a couple months.” “Wow, cool!” We’re doing an album listening party on Saturday. He’s gonna be there with a bunch of the guys that played on the record, as well as our producer, mixer, master. Everyone’s gonna be there. But it’s great.
Mike’s a killer player. Watching him play live is where I really got it. He just beats the shit out of those drums. It is something to watch. He’s got this little bit of John Bonham vibe, but a little more like Vinny Appice when I was watching him and writing these Dio type songs. I was like, “Oh my God! He’s like Vinny! I gotta have him!” So when he approached me, it was like “Yeah this is perfect!” He also studied under Steve Smith of Journey, so he’s got that side stick technique that really gets that extra whack on the snare. It’s just something to behold. It’s great.
I want to go back in time to my introduction to you, and I think most of the country’s introduction to you, and that was American Idol. In your audition, you sang Led Zeppelin’s “You Shook Me” and Aerosmith’s “Dream On”. Having Steven Tyler sit no less than 10 feet away from you, what was going on through your head at that moment?
JD: I had just convinced myself I was gonna ask him that. I was gonna ask him that if I felt like they were gonna let me sing a second song. That day was crazy. I was sitting in a hallway behind a curtain with one other person waiting to audition before the judges. This is like a 2 or 3 month process from the first audition to the time that we actually saw the judges. I think they do it differently now, but back then it took a lot longer. That was 10 years ago. It’s crazy.
So we’re sitting there and I’m waiting for the producers to call my name to go audition. I’m supposed to audition in like 2 minutes, and then they say, “We’re gonna break for lunch.” I had to wait another hour and 15 minutes. I was almost there! I was hyping myself up, watching this little video of Aerosmith on my old flip phone. Listening to it, it was all crackly like *makes crackle noises*. The producers walk over and say, “You guys just wait here. We’re gonna get you back to the holding room in just a minute. We just gotta get the judges out first. Out walks Jennifer Lopez and she just waves hi. Then out walks Randy Jackson and Steven Tyler right in front of me. I’m just *jaw hanging open* “This wasn’t part of the plan! This wasn’t supposed to happen!” Steven’s like, “Wow! Look at that smile man! Look at you!” Ahhh this is crazy! Then he grabs my arm. I had one tattoo at the time. “Wow look at that! That’s beautiful man! What does that say?” “It’s my son’s name. It says Hunter.” I was 21, just like *high pitched voice* “Woah!” *laughs*. I was this fresh faced little boy. “Man that’s fucking beautiful.” And then he just walks away.
Half an hour later, my wife and I are sitting there and I’m telling her that this happened. Out of the corner of my eye, there’s this door and I just see this *staring with duck lips*. It’s freaking Steven Tyler and he’s peeping on me! He’s peeping around the corner at my wife sitting on my lap. I was just like, “Hei…Heidi. Steven Tyler’s spying on us!” By the time it was time to go and do the actual audition, I was like, “Oh I got this.” I’m stoked. I’m psyched. I’m really excited. I’m just really ready for this moment. But then the emotion returns and the producers are on the side poking you for questions and whatnot and getting those emotions out and letting it stew. Then the time came to ask Steven, *whispers* “I was wondering if I can sing…”Dream On”? Can I get your blessing?” “Sure man! Sure!” I can’t watch it back because watching it and seeing myself struggle through that song in front of him, just struggling through the emotion. It’s kind of cringey, but it happened, so it’s okay.
And it was authentic.
JD: Yeah it was definitely authentic. It’s crazy to think that was 10 years ago.
Yeah it is because when you were 21, I was 11 and watching you. I was a young metalhead thinking, “Wow! Here’s this guy singing Aerosmith and Judas Priest!” It was the coolest thing to see amidst a sea of, as you said, pop singers. It was something else to see metal represented on national TV like that.
JD: I was inspired. I was watching YouTube videos before my auditions and found these videos of a singer named Erik Grönwall. He was on Swedish Idol and he ended up winning. One of the songs he sang was Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills”. I was just like, “You can sing Maiden on Idol?” Swedish Idol mind you. All of my favorite bands at that point were Scandinavian: H.I.M., Hardcore Superstar, Crashdïet, Reckless Love, Backyard Babies, Michael Monroe. I’m just inundated with all this. I thought, “That’s so cool you can do that there!” So I took that idea with me and that was the inspiration behind doing it.
I don’t know how it happened, if I manifested it from that moment, but when I was looking through the list of cleared songs before choosing “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'” on the Top 12 night, I looked through that list 3 or 4 times. I didn’t find a song that really jumped out like “This is that song that you can sing.” I looked at it one more time. The producers were bugging me like, “You’ve gotta pick your song.” I had to pick something that somebody else didn’t pick also. That song just jumped out, out of nowhere. I took it to the producers and they were like, “What the fuck is a Judas Priest and how did it get on our list? We’ve never had this song appear on this list. You sure you wanna sing that? Well we won’t be seeing you very long!” They were making fun of me and I was like, “I’m gonna sing this!”
That’s what happened. It’s just great that it happened that way. I remember after I picked it, one of the female contestants was like, “Oh you picked Judas Priest? I was gonna pick that song.” Oh my gosh! Thank God I didn’t wait any longer because then I don’t know what I would’ve sang. Probably Bon Jovi or Aerosmith or something.
Going from American Idol to Quiet Riot in the latter half of the 2010s, what was the biggest lesson you took away from being in that band?
JD: I don’t know if there is one. I feel like everything I knew before that experience was everything I knew after. I don’t think anything really changed, but I’m really grateful for the experience. I wish those guys the best of luck continuing. I think it’s great.
I read that you’re a big wrestling fan. If you could make a theme song for any wrestler, who would it be and why?
JD: I think Dolph Ziggler could use some new music. He’s always playing into the Mötley Crüe gimmick. He plays real hard into that Vince Neil gimmick, real hard lately especially. Although his music is synonymous with him, *sings* “I’m here to show the world! I’m here to show the world!” You know it’s Dolph. I’d say if they were gonna give him a good brother push, then he could definitely use a “Dr. Feelgood” or *imitates the “Kickstart My Heart” intro*. Maybe something like that Kevin Owens thing. Different guys have this really big cool thing, but his (Ziggler’s) music is a product of when he debuted. It’s still that Jim Johnston era of music. So yeah, maybe him. Maybe Baron Corbin. I think Baron Corbin can use some new music, but anyone really. I think it’s cool that these different producers and musicians get these gigs to do music for Impact Wrestling or AEW. Then you just get to sit in your room or your studio and write all this stuff. Turn on the TV on Tuesedays, Wednesdays, Mondays or Fridays and catch this stuff. I think it’s rad.
It’s funny because growing up watching wrestling, I knew all the music. Then you’d go to the stores and they’d have the compilation CDs with all the songs on there. It wouldn’t be until recent years where I’m listening and, I’m forgetting which song it was, but Savatage did one for somebody in the late 90s. I’ll realize who these artists are and the next thing I know it’s like, “That’s Savatage?”
JD: That’s so random. I just remembered I got asked to sing the entrance theme for one of the divas at one point. I turned it down because it wasn’t good. I think it was for Eva Marie. She didn’t last very long either. *laughs* Knowing now that nobody liked her in WWE, I’m glad I didn’t sing on that one. My wife didn’t want me to. She was like, “You’re singing what lyrics for who? No, that’s not happening. For how much? No, that doesn’t pay enough.”
Finally, if there was a Mount Rushmore of metal singers, who would be the four faces?
JD: Of course Dio. Of course Halford. I’d say Bruce Dickinson would be on there. Maybe Ozzy.
He was the first.
JD: Yeah. I think it’d have to be that.
People don’t give Ozzy enough credit. While he doesn’t have the Dio or Halford crazy range and theatrics, he still has one of the most distinct voices ever and as I said, was the first metal frontman.
JD: Yeah, he’s a crooner in a way. He’s crazy. He’s legitimately crazy, which also helps. I put him in that category with Jim Morrison. For the time, everybody had these beautiful voices. He was a barker sometimes, but with a soft, droning voice. I consider Ozzy in that group. When I listen to Ghost, I listen to Tobias (Forge) and it’s the same thing. Tobias is a crooner. It’s very theatrical, but it’s not putting too much force or too much training. I was just reading a Tony Iommi interview with Loudwire. Tony was saying the distinct difference between Ozzy and Ronnie is that Ozzy was just an entertainer as a vocalist, whereas Ronnie was very trained and very technical. Ozzy was just the complete opposite. They were complete polar opposites, but it’s amazing that Sabbath could work as the same band with a completely different singer and a completely different style performer. It’s inspiring.
For more information on James Durbin, visit www.jamesdurbinofficial.com.