When discussing the 80s glam metal boom, most metal historians set their focus on Los Angeles. However, they seem to forget all the other regional scenes across America that spawned bands of this ilk, some of which became genre staples. Cinderella and Poison both hailed from Pennsylvania. Enuff Z’Nuff came from the south Chicagoland suburb of Blue Island. And Lillian Axe quickly became the pride and joy of New Orleans. Although they never achieved superstar status, their first few albums have collectively sold over a million units, and they’re widely regarded as one of the finest acts of the genre’s second wave. This cult status has led to a nearly 40 year run. Spearheaded by founding guitarist/songwriter Steve Blaze, the band is on the verge of releasing arguably their heaviest and most ambitious album yet, From Womb to Tomb. We sat down with Blaze to discuss Lillian Axe’s creative evolution, the glorious 80s, and the brilliance of Alice Cooper.
Greetings Steve and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Steve Blaze: I’m doing great Joe. How are you doing buddy?
I’m doing great myself. We’re a few weeks out from the first new Lillian Axe album in a decade, From Womb to Tomb. For a lack of better terminology, what took so long?
SB: *laughs* It’s funny because I’ve always told people if I could do a record every year, I would. This 10 years has not been for a lack of material. I have enough material to write 20 more records. It was business timing, some personnel timing as well, and more than anything, trying to find the right situation for us mechanic wise, the machine behind us. This is our ninth deal. We’ve had major label deals. We’ve had independent deals. It’s crazy out there to watch labels come and go. You’ve got have X amount of support to be able to spend all this time and money on records and put them out there and for it to sit on a shelf somewhere. It’s not fair to the world or the bands.
So we waited for the right situation. The label we were on went through some financial stuff, so we had to find other ways, which we did, to finance doing a record. We also had a couple member changes. The attitude was let’s take it slow and easy, because this record was going to be an epic record. It’s got to be done correctly. I don’t wanna rush it. I wanna do it and let it flow correctly. In the meantime, we’re constantly playing. We put out a double live acoustic CD and DVD documentary together, One Night in the Temple. We signed a new deal and put out an anthology record. I wouldn’t call it a “best of”, but more a time capsule of our last 30 years of existence, all of our other records other than the new one, which was a great intro with our new label. So there was doing that and getting the new band. Obviously, as you know, we had a year or so of COVID silliness, that kept everybody from doing anything other than surviving. Now we’re back. We’ve been working on this record for 3 years. It comes out 2 weeks from tomorrow.
You make an excellent point about having that support system. I don’t think enough fans, especially of this music, take into consideration the effort that needs to be made. It’s easy to go on Facebook and ask, “When’s the new album? When’s the next tour?” Well is there a label that will put out the new album? Is there a booking agency that will put together the next tour? Is there a promoter or venue in your city that will buy said tour? As we know, not every band of this era is Def Leppard or Mötley Crüe, who has the privilege of being spoonfed by Live Nation and whatever other powers may be. Fans should be grateful that Lillian Axe is even out there and still doing this, thanks to a label like Global Rock.
SB: Yeah, Global Rock is doing it. It’s label that was just created, but it’s a division of The Store For Music in the UK, which is one of the largest labels for reissues and live albums. When they got in touch with us, they not only assigned us with this new label under their umbrella, but they reissued our catalog. It’s kind of a resurgence for us, but you’re 100% right about that. I laugh about it a little bit because, people are guilty with it, even going to movies or getting records or whatnot, any kind of entertainment. What do you pay for a download of a new record, $10? For the fans who are complaining, “Oh, I don’t want to spend my money on that. It’s no good. I’m not a fan of this.”
Do you realize how many people and how much time and money and sweat and effort went into creating this movie or this album or what this band has put into things? For you to diss it and complain and not want to pay your $10…I buy albums from bands, even if I don’t think I’m really gonna be into the new record, just to support them because I’m a fan of the band! That’s how the fans start. We would love to play everywhere. I see that a lot of times. Fans are like, “So and so won’t come to my town.” It isn’t up to the band. It’s up to there being a promoter or venue in the area that is capable or wants to bring so and so to that area. Is there a market for it? We can’t just go, “OK guys, we’re gonna go to Egypt tomorrow because there’s 10 people there who are really big fans. They’re gonna be mad if we don’t go, so let’s just go.” It doesn’t work that way unfortunately. The support of the fans, from merchandise to buying the record, is crucial for the bands to keep going. You have to understand that.
You mentioned there have been some personnel changes in the last few years. Who plays with you in this current incarnation of Lillian Axe and how did this lineup come together?
SB: It’s still Sam Poitevent playing guitar with me. He’s been in the band about 23 or 24 years. There’s Michael Maxx, who was the original bass player for the band, but he wasn’t in the band from the first album up until about 8 years ago. He’s the original bass player, but he’s back with us now. Our new vocalist is Brent Graham. He took Brian Jones’s place about 2 or 3 years ago. I was in other side projects with Brent. Actually, he sings for my side project, Sledgehammer. When we put that together about 8 years ago, Brent was the singer, so that’s how I got to know him.
Wayne Stokely from Pretty Boy Floyd, we met touring together about 8 or 9 years ago. We got along so well that when Ken Koudelka, our other drummer who was in the band for 20+ years, decided he was tired of the travelling and touring, Wayne stepped right on in. It was smooth transition with people who have always been part of our family in other ways. They were the right people. I think God put the right people in this situation at the right time. It’s been wonderful.
This upcoming album is very different from Lillian Axe’s early output, having more in common with bands like Fates Warning and Queensrÿche than 80s hard rock. What do you credit the band’s creative evolution to?
SB: Even on the first couple of records, let’s take the first album for example, we had songs like “Waiting in the Dark”, “Hard Luck”. On the second album, we had “Ghost of Winter”, “The World Stopped Turning”, “Letters in the Rain”: Songs that were a little bit…I don’t know. It’s funny because there are a lot of bands like this, Saigon Kick was one of them, where it’s not about having to write a 3 or 4 chord rock song. The uniqueness and trademark of a band comes in those intangible things, like the melodic movements, the playing of the instruments, the voice, the harmonies, those things. Even though we have a song like “Show a Little Love” on a record, we’ll have “Ghost of Winter” too and it still sounds like the same band, even though the essence of those songs may be uniquely different.
One thing about Lillian Axe is every record has sounded unique to itself. They don’t sound alike. The recordings don’t, the mixes don’t, but they all have that redline of the Lillian Axe sound going through it. I attribute that to the fact that I write all the material. I write the material, but the individuals in the band form its unique flavor. This is just a growth. I honestly don’t think at all when I’m writing songs, “Where will I go with it?”. I write what I consider to be the best song I can write. The band comes in and their flavors, it’s like cooking something: All the different textures and seasonings. You put it together. If one of those little things changes, the song’s still gonna be great, but it changes the way it’s presented.
With this album, I’ve had people that have been with the band for 30+ years say, “Yeah, this sounds like Lillian Axe…and it doesn’t sound like Lillian Axe, but it sounds like Lillian Axe.” I just go, “OK!” Let’s just take it as an album. Let’s just take it as, “Do you like the record?” Don’t sit there and listen to it and say, “I hope it’s like “Show a Little Love”. I hope they got “Crucified”. I hope there’s “True Believer”.” It’s new stuff and it’s unique. On this album, there’s baby heartbeats, tubular bells, grand piano, chorus, 108 voice choirs, maggots, dragons, timpanis, gongs, wooly mammoths, flies. There’s so many things put together on this album and it’s because the approach was create a soundscape that’s wide and beautiful and amazing.
There’s so many layers of different things on this. I’ve had several people say, “Man, I’ve listened to this and it’s so well recorded.” Ted Jensen did a great mastering job and Ken Bruce did a great mix. We textured it and layered it and mixed it in a way that you’re listening to this 360 degree soundscape. The sounds are wide and comfortable and powerful. That’s what we wanted to do. We didn’t create an album that had to be like this. Every one of our studio albums are unique to each other. We grow up and get older. I wouldn’t say we change, because I’m the same person I was when I was 4 years old, but we evolve so to speak. We grow and add on to what we already have.
That’s why, if you’ve only heard the first two records and you hear this, you might think, until you absorb it, “Is this the same band?” I like that. The great bands of our time have done that. Look at Queen. Those first few albums, Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, are nothing like what they did in the latter half of their career, but it was still amazing and still Queen. Look at the evolution of Pink Floyd from where they started off. Everybody evolved. Even if you’re AC/DC and have that same sound on every record, they’ve still evolved a lot more than people realize. I write, the band creates, and this is what it is.
Did the world events of the past few years impact your songwriting in any way and did it impact the band’s recording process?
SB: It impacted what goes on in my head. It impacted my ideas and how I view life and human beings and the human condition. That’s a fact. As far as getting in the studio, we recorded during that. We recorded this album over the last 3 years, but we didn’t do it like many albums we’ve done in the past, or like most people who lock themselves up for 3 months, do their record, and that’s all they do for 3 months. I record a song at a time. I don’t do all drums and then all bass and then all guitars and fly in this person and that person. We do it one song at a time until it’s finished, so we can concentrate on just that piece.
I also recorded and for the most part wrote this in chronological order. The first song we recorded was “Breathe”, and then “I Am Beyond”. Then “Neverending Me”. The order of the album is how we recorded it. That way, as I wrote, my mind was putting me in that place chronologically where the theme of this record is. I just dove into that. “Breathe”, which is about the birth of the child and the creation of a soul. I put all of my mindset into that. We just concentrated on that until it was where we were happy with it. Then we moved on. What’s the next element in this album and the story we’re trying to tell? It’s the child’s first awareness that he is an entity, a living human being, the earliest memories of childhood. That was “I Am Beyond”. Then we went onto the next part, all the way to the end.
There were a few songs on the album that I had written prior that I knew would fit this mold, but that’s about 1/3 of the record. The rest of the songs are brand new, written at that time when it was time to go to the next song. It’s a little different than usual, but COVID didn’t do anything. We were recording. We were going in. We were averaging about a song a month. Things got spread out because we’d be doing shows or things would be holding us up. We did not rush this at all because in the meantime, we were doing our new deal with the new label. That is the one thing I can say that this thing was recorded and cultivated very carefully and not rushed. It was done how it needed to be.
You talk a bit about the concept of the human lifecycle, hence the title, From Womb to Tomb. When I first heard about the album and checked it out, I thought to myself, “Wow, this is very ambitious.” But I’ve always been a fan of ambitious music, and as much as I am a metal guy, I’m a prog guy too. So for me, this was the best of both worlds, hearkening back to those classic concept albums. What are some of your favorite concept albums and rock operas?
SB: A couple of people have labelled this latest album “heavy metal Andrew Lloyd Webber”, with all the light and dark changes and movements in these songs. I thought, “That’s pretty cool! Phantom of the Opera and Cats have been around for quite some time.” Whenever I think about conceptual records, that I think have been amazingly done, I always go to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The reason I love that record so much is because the flow followed what was trying to be portrayed. There were things between the songs, interludes, like we have on this record, that musically joined the pieces together. It felt like you were reading a novel.
When I listen to this album from beginning to end, which I recommend people do, sit down for 1 hour and 7 minutes and let it take over, I get it. You move through the human condition and you move through all the lessons and things that we learn in life. Once people hear this, they’re gonna get that. At the end of the record, the last song, “Ascension”, I always look out of the corner of my eye to see how they’re reacting. The majority of the time there’s tears flowing from peoples faces at the end of the record. I’m like, “Yep, I want this to be a religious experience when you hear this thing.”
But The Wall is the epitome of conceptual perfection in a record. When I think about approach, I want that, but I want it hard rock. I talk about all the things that are in this and how many special moments and things we put in there: mellotrons, tubular bells, gongs, whistles, cuckoo clocks. They all work in their spot. They’re supposed to be there, but by the way, we’ve got these immensely thick guitars and giant drums *laughs*. We’ve got a rock band in there too!
Ambitious is a great word. I never shied from being ambitious. I just don’t shy away from being how I feel. Like it, love it, hate it, adore it, it is real. It is what comes from my heart, my mind, and these guys hearts and minds. That’s what you get. We don’t put it out because we’re trying to fit a mold. We don’t create what we do because we’re trying to make sure we get this genre of people to like us. I want Lillian Axe people to like this. I want everyone, I don’t care if you’re a 3 year old or 83 year old. If you like music…you don’t even have to be a rock music fan.
I’ve got friends of mine whose mothers and grandmothers like “Migrating North” and “No Problem” because there’s no big heavy guitars. It’s piano and acoustic guitars for the most part. They like that and they get that. I want lovers of music to like this. We’re not trying to fill out any form or fit in any kind of mold. It is what it is. We’re a rock band. That’s always gonna be there.
Expanding upon that, what music did you gravitate towards growing up? Who were your favorite bands and was there any one guitarist in particular that inspired you to pick the instrument up?
SB: No because on my 6th birthday, my parents gave me an acoustic guitar and a cardboard box. I went right into lessons, but I took classical and flamenco. I started at school and within a couple of months, the teacher said, “He’s outgrown the class already. You need to get him in private lessons.” I went right into that and did classical and flamenco up until high school when I got introduced to the radio in the early 70s. I was listening to Don McLean and Bread and Simon and Garfunkel and all the great songwriters. Then I was introduced to Alice Cooper and it was over with. Alice was the start of my rock sensibilities, so to speak. My dad got me into them.
Songwriting has always been the most important thing to me. It’s because I started listening to great songwriters of the 70s. Alice Cooper was all about songwriting. I used to do all these guitar talent shows as a little kid playing classical pieces and winning them. Everybody told me I had a gift for guitar playing and I was like, “That’s cool, but I wanna write great songs.” I wanna be in a great band, write great songs, and move people. I got that and started listening to Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath and King Crimson, all the while listening to the radio. There were all these great songs throughout the 70s. I realized these are great songs and asked, “Why can’t hard rock bands write great songs beyond this simple 3 chord mold?”
I listen to everything. I listen to soundtracks. The only thing I don’t really listen to is rap. But even though I’m not a big fan of jazz or whatever may have you, I listen to all of it because I learn from all of it. I find beauty in all of it, whatever form it is. That’s what it was at first. I wasn’t even into rock. I knew how to read and I played with my fingers, so when I found out about rock n’ roll guitar, I was like, “How does this work out? I never held a pick before. How does that work?” I just taught myself the rock stuff and jumped in bands head first. The rest is history.
Alice Cooper could definitely play and write. They could do an “Under My Wheels” or “School’s Out”, something simple. But they could also do “Halo of Flies” and “Ballad of Dwight Fry”, these epics. I don’t think Alice Cooper gets enough credit as songwriters.
SB: You’re 100% right. I like Welcome to My Nightmare, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, and all the albums since then, but nothing is as exciting to me as those first 7 albums. Muscle of Love, Billion Dollar Babies, Killer, Love It to Death, School’s Out. We toured with Alice a couple of times. I got to talk to him a little bit. My dad brought me to my first concert when I was 13. It was Alice Cooper on the Welcome to My Nightmare Tour. Years later, when we toured with Alice, my dad had passed away young and I was really upset because he would have loved that. If he would’ve seen me when he got me the first School’s Out record with the lady’s panties on the record, and that I could’ve gotten him to meet Alice all these years later when we were touring with him, it would’ve been a great moment. But that’s where it all started. Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith, and Glen Buxton, those guys were just amazing. You can’t top those songs.
Bands like that are the bands that I have in the back of my mind when I think about things like “Dance of the Maggots”, songs like that which are epic. You gotta make epic songs really interesting. You can’t make them boring. Unfortunately, a lot of people like 3 minute songs. If I’m gonna write something, I don’t think about how long it’s gonna be. I think about the fact that I’ve gotta get the message across and musically, where does it go? At the end of it, it just happens to be 7 minutes long, but I listen to it and go, “Is there anything slow or boring in there?” There’s not. It moves and it changes. One verse is never the same as the next, whether it be melodically or layer-wise or musically or whatever. I look back at songs like “Halo of Flies” and “Dead Babies”. I use those songs as reminders of, “You know what? Just do what you’re doing. It’s fine.”
Now I had read that around the time Lillian Axe signed their record deal, Jani Lane of Warrant almost joined the band. How close did that come to happening?
SB: It wasn’t really like that. I think that’s a story that morphed a little bit via word of mouth. What happened is Marshall Berle had contacted us asking if we could open for Ratt. We were an unsigned band, but we put on these shows because we were a huge draw. We were doing clubs in the middle of the week and we were drawing 500 to 600 people everywhere we went. So they put us on these shows and after 2 shows, Marshall called me at home and said, “Hey, would you like a record deal? Robbin Crosby loves the band and he wants to produce your first album.”
We started talking and he said, “Look, MCA’s gonna come see the band.” They did. They only wanted to sign me. They wanted me to make some changes. Marshall says, “There’s this kid Jani Lane. I’m gonna send him down to hang out with you for a few days. He’s got a band that’s real close to a deal at the moment, but I think the two of you guys together would be monumental.” Jani came down and spent 3 or 4 days hanging out. We actually had a few shows. He came down to the shows. We got along great, but at the end of the day, he had his thing and I had mine. It’d be like 2 chiefs running the same tribe.
It wasn’t like, “You’re all gonna be in a band. He’s joining you. You’re joining him.” It was, “Let me see if you guys musically could work together.” We probably could’ve worked together very well, even though our styles were a little different or whatever, but we both had our own thing going. We were both about to sign our own deals for bands that we had worked so hard for. That’s how that came about and is the honest to God truth about where it was. We wound up becoming friends and respecting each other, but we both had our own thing and both lived in different parts of the country. We both had different paths and different bands.
Speaking of Robbin Crosby, today would’ve been his 63rd birthday. What are your favorite memories of working with Robbin and did he have any distinct production approach on your first album?
SB: It was his first time doing it. We were always very well prepared. What happened is we did a few days of pre-production. I was living in Jackson, Mississippi and that’s where the whole band had come down. We were staying together. We had picked 11 or 12 songs we were gonna go do. We wanted to pick 10 out of those. We did pre-production and it was pretty much all ready. He and I had talked a little bit. We already made the changes we were gonna do. He came down and they had rented us this abandoned building in the middle of hell, in the worst neighborhood in Jackson. We risked our lives just showing up there. We went into this abandoned building and spent 3 days recording.
My funny Robbin story is he claimed he was a vegetarian. He didn’t eat meat. We went to eat Mexican food on the last day. He had some nachos, but evidently, a bit of meat may have gotten into the nachos. That’s what he said later on, but after we finished the last song, he took a bottle of Crown Royal, which is what Ron Taylor and Jon Ster and Rob Stranton, the guys in the band at that point, loved. Robbin guzzles about half a bottle. The next thing I know, he steps off into the other room. We’re like, “Where did Robbin go?” I step in there and he’s just throwing up everywhere.
I’m like, “Dude! Are you OK? What can I do for you? Let me help you out!” He goes, “Oh man. I think my nachos had a little bit of meat in them today.” *laughs* So here he is, after drinking half a bottle of Crown Royal, blaming it on maybe a piece of meat in his nachos. I always laughed about that and teased him for it forever. He was a great guy, a very warm sensitive soul. He was one of those guys that no matter how good he was or how great he was, he always felt a little unsure of himself. He would ask me many times, “You think I’m any good?” “Dude, you’re fantastic! Not only are you in one of the biggest rock bands in the world, but you’re a great guy, a great player, and you’re doing well. Stop second guessing yourself.”
That being said, we got to be good friends and he did great. He would never let anybody pay for food when we went to eat lunch and dinner. He always took care of everything. He wouldn’t let anyone else foot the bill. He was just that kind of guy. It’s a shame that we lost him. He’s one of the ones we shouldn’t have lost.
And he definitely proved himself as a producer on that album. I just revisited it again a couple nights ago and sonically speaking, it sounds fantastic. Like every Lillian Axe album, all of those elements are there for the listener to digest them however they may do so.
SB: Well the engineer on that album was Paul Winger, Kip’s brother. Paul and his brother, Nate, I believe Nate passed away a few years ago, the two of those sang a lot of harmonies on that first album. You’ll see them in the credits. Those guys could sing like Kip. If you listen in certain places, you’ll almost think, “Wow, those sound like Winger harmonies!” Well it’s because it was! It was the other 2 Winger brothers, but Paul was the engineer on that first album.
I didn’t know that!
SB: Yep!
Next year marks the 35th anniversary of that album. Are there any plans to commemorate this occasion?
SB: It seems like every few weeks, somebody’s going, “It’s the anniversary of this record or that record!” *laughs* I’ve put a lot of records out there. We haven’t really thought about that. We celebrate those records every show because we play songs off pretty much every record. We play a lot of songs off the first 4 records because those are the ones that are more reminiscent to people. Those are the ones that put us on the map, but we play stuff from every record. When you have 10 records to pick from, it’s really difficult to not do a 3 hour show. We still play about 8 of those songs from the first album here and there. Not every night. We usually play 3 a night from that album.
In a couple weeks, Lillian Axe will embark upon their first UK tour in nearly 30 years. How does that feels and what was the last album you toured behind there? Was that Psychoschizophrenia?
SB: Well about 10 years ago we did a festival there. We’ve been to Europe a couple of times since then, but the first time we actually played throughout the UK was probably ’95 or ’94. I know we did a festival in the UK. We might have been over there a couple times for one-offs, but not a string of dates throughout the UK. We’re excited about that. It’s gonna be a fun 7 straight days in a row, Scotland, Wales, and England. Already all the eastern European people are mad at us for not going over there, but it’s like, “OK, we’re coming! Just give us a break!” *laughs* Last time we were we did the eastern part of Europe, but I’m sure we’ll wind up going back over there.
I know here in the States you did the Monsters of Rock Cruise and the M3 Festival. Are there any plans for extensive touring in here?
SB: Yeah, we actually are gonna be doing, the day before we fly to the UK, Monsters on the Mountain in Gatlinburg. The day we’re playing it’s Extreme, Tom Keifer, Yngwie Malmsteen, Kip Winger. There’s about 7 or 8 bands, and the next day which we can’t stay for, it’s Night Ranger, Kix, and the usual host of rock bands for a festival of this nature. It’s a great 3 day festival ran by the same people who do the Monsters of Rock Cruise. We play Friday, August 19.
That’s awesome. Anything else going on in the Lillian Axe camp?
SB: A week from tomorrow, Friday, August 12, we’re gonna be debuting the video for “I Am Beyond”. People can look on our website and Facebook page, the Global Rock page, etc. It’s a mix between Game of Thrones, The Matrix, and Tron. I also have a brand new signature guitar pickup for all you guitar players. It’s called a Blazebucker. The company is Carondelet Pickups and it’s smoking. The best pickup I’ve ever played on! I’m fortunate to have my name attached to it. Look it up if you’re a guitar aficianado looking for good pickups. Other than that, we’re just getting ready for the 19th. You can preorder the album on Global Rock’s site, Amazon, and it’ll be available everywhere. I recommend you get a hard copy because the booklet is great. It’s got lyrics and was really well done, but you got to get the digital download for your phone as well. So there you go, for the price of a happy meal, you get this amazing record *laughs*.
The new Lillian Axe album From Womb to Tomb, comes out Friday, August 19 on Global Rock Records. For more information on Lillian Axe, visit www.lillianaxe.com.