John Corabi has spent over 30 years as America’s premiere hard rock troubadour. Whether serving as the frontman for The Scream, Union, The Dead Daisies, or the self proclaimed “most notorious band in the world” Mötley Crüe, Corabi’s introspective lyrics and soulful vocals have remained the same, boasting equal parts wit and wisdom. Now an independent solo artist, Corabi has released a brand new single, “Cosi Bella (So Beautiful)”. We sat down with John to discuss this song, the changing state of the music industry, and 30 years of The Scream’s Let it Scream.
Greetings John and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing this afternoon?
John Corabi: I’m alright. Just kissing babies, shaking hands, doing interviews trying to make people aware of this song that’s out there. Life is good.
Let’s jump right into it and talk about this song entitled, “Cosi Bella (So Beautiful)”. For those who haven’t heard it, can you tell us how it came to be and the inspiration behind it?
JC: To be honest with you, I was working on the song with Marti Frederiksen. Marti and I got together prior to the writing sessions for The Dead Daisies last record, Burn it Down. We just got together and I was playing some stuff. I had started stockpiling ideas. I played it for Marti and he really dug the idea. We changed the chorus a little bit because the original one that I had was OK. It wasn’t great, so Marti and I worked on the idea. When we all got together in New York for The Daisies, I took my phone, put it on the table, and hit play. In The Daisies’ defense, it was really loose, acoustic, me and Marti just scatting. The Daisies were like, “We don’t know what you’re trying to do here.” They didn’t get it. So I just threw it in my back pocket and put it away.
In 2019, I left The Daisies and I was busier than hell doing shows, acoustic and otherwise. 2020 rolled around. I called Marti and said, “Hey dude, would you help me do a record?” He said, “Yeah, sure.” So we looked at that idea again. Marti and I talked about it and he was like, “What exactly are you hearing here?” I said, “It’s kind of like “Penny Lane” meets “Killer Queen”.” He got it. I was initially gonna do a record and then COVID hit, so that changed everything. One of the things I told Marti was, “It’s a different time now. Radio and MTV and all that shit is pretty much gone.” This now gives me the opportunity to just be musical.
If I can be honest, without sounding pessimistic, I think I’m just being realistic: A guy with my credentials, a guy like me, the chances of me getting regular airplay on radio are slim to none. You know it. I know it. Not gonna happen. MTV’s gone, so now it’s YouTube, but you gotta direct people to see it. I just went, “You know what? Let’s go back to basics. Let’s go back to the late 60s, early 70s and let’s just be musical.” No rules. If the verse calls for a triangle solo, let’s do it. I don’t care. Let’s just be musical. So we went for the Beatlesque, and if you really listen to that song, there’s horns in it, there’s acoustic guitar, there’s electric guitar, there’s piano, there’s organ. We’re just having fun man and just doing whatever because it is a different time.
I could totally hear The Beatles influence. In fact, I’ve heard the Beatles influence in a lot of your work, going as far back as Mötley Crüe’s “Misunderstood”.
JC: That’s the funny thing. In the grand scheme of things, the song is actually getting really positive feedback. People seem to be embracing it, but they’re sitting there going, “Wow, that’s not what I would’ve expected. It’s very Beatlesy.” If you go back and look at the interviews that I’ve done over the last 25+ years, usually people go, “What made you want to play guitar? What are your biggest influences?” I’ve said through the years, hands down, the band that made me want to play music was The Beatles. Second, Zeppelin. Third was Aerosmith. A strong fourth was Queen. I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything that unusual.
Again, if you really listen to the chord changes in “Father, Mother, Son” on The Scream album, or like you said, “Misunderstood”. Moreso, if you listen to the solo song I did for Mötley on the Quaternary record, “Friends”, you cannot get any more Beatles than that. Even with Union, we did a song that was a tip of the hat to The Beatles. It was called “Everything’s Alright”. This is why it’s kind of perplexing to me when people go, “Wow, that’s not what I would’ve expected.” *laughs* I’ve always said The Beatles were a huge influence on me. Whatever. I’m just happy people dig it.
According to the press release, this is the first of several new singles coming soon. Do you find it more effective to release music today through singles as opposed to an album or EP?
JC: Old school me, would I have done it this way? Probably not. But honestly, Marti was really the catalyst for a lot of this stuff. Like I said, we had started a record and Marti said, “Why are you doing an album?” I really didn’t understand his thinking until he was like, “Nobody’s selling any records.” If you really look at things, the percentage of people that are actually buying records, that physically leave their house, go to record stores…even on Amazon, the people that order that stuff, the easiest thing to do is download. They have the option now where it’s not download the whole record. You can hear the whole record and you can download the songs that you like.
So he was saying, “Why would you rent a studio, hire a producer, hire an engineer, hire a mixer, hire a guy to master it, then spend the money on the vinyl, spend the money on the CDs?” There’s all these processes that you gotta go through. He was like, “Dude, just do one song, do a video, and throw it out there. Work it. Let it sit for a couple months and then do another single, another video. Let the audience decide what they like.” How many times have you bought a record where there’s three great songs on it and the rest of it you could care less about?
It happens.
JC: Yeah, so I’m gonna do three, four, five songs this way. Then I will eventually do vinyl and I will do CDs, maybe even cassettes, and I will sell them. The other thing that made me realize what Marti was saying was right is because over the last 10 years, I’ve seen it with my own prior solo records, and even with The Dead Daisies. The majority of the records that we sold were sold through Amazon, via the website, DeadDaisies.com or JohnCorabi.com, and they were sold at shows. So nothing for me changes.
So you’re referring to the absence of physical store sales, which are practically nonexistent these days.
JC: I dare anybody to go into a music store and find a John Corabi record. Not gonna happen. The other thing is, back in the day, everybody was like Tower Records, Virgin Records, Sam Goody. They’re all gone. The ones that do remain, the Wal-Marts, K-Marts, maybe Best Buy, purchase their records based on the Top 20 records on the Billboard album charts. That’s it. Short of me releasing a song and putting a record out and one of the songs connecting with the audience to the point where I sell Justin Timberlake type numbers, I’m never gonna get in Best Buy or Wal-Mart, so what’s the point? Marti was bringing all this to my attention. I talked to my manager about it and went, “Yeah, you know what? Let me just try it this way.”
Nothing in my life changes. I’m still out of work. I’m not doing any shows due to COVID. I’m just releasing music and hoping something connects and clicks with the audience. So far, the streams have been great. Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, all that, it’s kicking ass. But is somebody gonna hear my song on Spotify and go, “Wow, this is killer. I want to download this.”? Are they gonna do that? The verdict is out *laughs*. I don’t know yet. If they want to support the music, then they’ll do it, but if they don’t really care, then they’re not gonna do it. That’s the dilemma and I think that’s one of the things Gene Simmons was talking about when I said “rock is dead”. I don’t think rock is dead, I just think, other than country music and a few rap artists, I don’t think that music in general is in a good place right now.
Compared to the industry models of the past?
JC: Yeah. Like I just said, “Cosi Bella”, I love the song. It’s kicking ass on Spotify and all these different places, but are the people that are listening to it on Spotify actually going to go, “You know what? Let me download this for 99 cents.” Is it gonna translate? It’s like the band that goes and plays live. They sell out all the places, but the record isn’t selling for some reason. It’s not translating into actual numbers. I’m just trying to figure it out like everybody else. I’m moving forward, onward and upward, and we’ll see where it takes us.
Having been in as many bands as you have over the years, do you find it liberating to write and record music as a solo artist as opposed to being in a band?
JC: I do like being in a band. I like creating with other people. It just gives you another set of eyes or another angle to look at something. The one thing that is liberating is that I’m not stuck in the confines of that band. For example, “Cosi Bella”. It works for me as an independent solo artist, but would it have been right for any of the bands that I’ve been in up to this point? Even The Dead Daisies, they heard it and were like, “Nah, we’re gonna pass.” Okay. It doesn’t fit their format, their wheelhouse, their vision. The cool thing about being my own guy now is this is my vision for this song. The next song may have a completely different vision, different time in my life, etc. I do like that freedom of just being able to do whatever.
Again, I’m a little stubborn. I’m a little old school, but that was one of the beauties that a lot of kids or younger folk didn’t really experience. When I was growing up, there weren’t all these boxes you put music into. There’s glam rock, punk rock, alternative rock, prog rock. So it wasn’t unusual for a guy like me to go see a show on a Monday and see Black Sabbath, and then on Wednesday go see Seals and Crofts, and then on Friday go see Yes or King Crimson. It didn’t seem there were as many labels and boxes at the time. That’s the thing that I miss. I just want to be a musician. I don’t want to create for the band. I want to create for the song. What does the song need? If the song needs an accordion, then put an accordion on it for fuck sake. I don’t care. I just want to be creative. This next song that I’ll release could be completely different. It’s still gonna sound like me because I’m singing. John Corabi likes everything from Led Zeppelin to Glen Campbell. I like Dolly Parton. I like Frank Sinatra. I like a lot of different things, and I don’t see the crime or harm in drawing from all of those different things that I grew up listening to.
Absolutely. It’s what made you you and what made us, the fans, check out your music and continue to check it out all these years later.
JC: Yeah, that’s it. For me, I’m just excited about being able to be as creative as I want to be. I’ve always been this guy that’s kinda famous, but not really famous. I’ve been kinda obscure, but not really obscure. I’m just kinda this guy that’s floating around in everybody’s mindset and people go, “Oh man, have you heard the new Corabi song?” Wait, who’s Corabi? Why does that name sound familiar? I’ve always just been trying to figure myself out, figure out where my slice of real estate is in the music business and try to move forward and try to write my, for a lack of a better term, Sgt. Pepper’s, Led Zeppelin IV, Rocks, A Night at the Opera *laughs*. I just want to be musical.
Speaking of classic albums, this year marks the 30th anniversary of The Scream’s first and only album, Let It Scream. What are your thoughts on that album looking back on it today and do you have any favorite tracks?
JC: It’s very hard to say what my favorite song was, I think only for the reason…you don’t really think of it at the time, but later in life, you look back. You sit there and you don’t really think of the importance of it at the time, but when you become an adult and you’re sitting there reminiscing and you’re thinking about that first experience you had with a woman in the backseat of your car. You think of all the innocent positives about it and it’s that first kiss, the first sexual experience, the first will always be with you for the rest of your life. It’s the first. I think that’s what was so eye opening about The Scream. It was a great band. I think we really did a great job as far as writing the music, but it was our first record deal. It was the first time any of us worked with a real producer like Eddie Kramer. It was our first national American tour, first tour in a tour bus, first time hearing a song that we wrote on a regular radio station, and it was our first trip out of the country to England and Europe and all these places. The whole experience was an awesome time for all of us. It’s hard to pick one song or one experience because the whole thing…we were green. We were experiencing everything together for the first time. The whole thing was awesome.
Finally, would you ever consider performing Let it Scream live in full like you have the Mötley Crüe ‘94 album?
JC: Yeah, it’s possible. That’s the beauty of me just going out and doing my own thing now. Even my live shows, even prior to the Live ‘94 thing, I was out doing shows with my solo band. I would just say to them, “Hey guys, you know what? Pick 15 songs from my past and let’s learn them.” But what I did is I told my son, he’s my drummer, I said, “I want you and all my guys to learn everything that I’ve done. All the studio records that I’ve done. Learn as many of the songs as you can.” I want to mix it up.
Not to sound weird, but the guys in my band were fans of the Mötley record. They were fans of The Scream record. They were fans of the Union stuff. Even The Daisies stuff, so I let them pick it. You’re the fans. You guys put a setlist together. I’ll sing it. I wrote it, so I know the words and music. As a fan, what would you wanna hear? Each time we went out, I’d change it up a little bit. I don’t really think I need to go out and do the Mötley ‘94 record anymore. I don’t need to do The Scream or Union or whatever because the guys in my band, they’ll know all the songs. One night we can do “Hooligan’s Holiday” and “Poison Apples”. The next night we can do “‘Til Death Do Us Part” and “Driftaway”. I think that’s the beauty of doing it the way that I’m doing it now because you may see me on this tour do 10 or 12 or 15 songs and the next time you see me, the entire set could be different.
“Cosi Bella (So Beautiful)” is out now on all streaming apps and services. For more information on John Corabi, visit www.johncorabi.com.