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by Ryan Sparks, April 2008
When the band
Starz burst onto the scene with their infectious blend of power
pop and hard rock in 1976, all the necessary ingredients
required for superstardom seemed to be firmly in place. The
group was not only signed to a major label in Capitol Records,
but they also had a respected producer in Jack Douglas at the
helm of their self titled debut record, and the heavy clout of
Bill Aucoin and Rock Steady Management, who’s stable of clients
at the time included Kiss. So how then did this quintet out of
New Jersey which included guitarists Richie Ranno and Brendan
Harkin, bassist Peter Swevel, drummer Joe X. Dubé and vocalist
Michael Lee Smith (the brother of pin up star Rex Smith) end up
crashing and burning in only three short years, after four
stellar records? According to Ranno, it’s pretty clear that a
changing of the guard at Capitol, coupled with their inability
or unwillingness to successfully promote the bands records
ultimately did them in and denied them their shot at stardom.
Starz would hit
the road, and for the next three years, began an endless cycle
of recording and touring which saw them supporting such big time
acts of the day as Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Rush and ZZ Top. Their
sophomore album Violation (1977) released the following
year is seen by many fans to be their creative pinnacle and
actually yielded them a hit single with “Cherry Baby”. The third
Starz album Attention Shoppers (1978) was another solid
slab of radio friendly material, however this record would also
be the last to feature both Harkin and Swevel who left shortly
afterwards. Coliseum Rock (1978) would see the band
hunker down with new members Bobby Messano (guitar) and Orville
Davis (bass) respectively and it seemed like the infusion of new
blood actually gave the band a bit of a kick in the ass. This
would unfortunately turn out to be their last stand, at least
until 1990, when both Ranno and Smith tried their luck one last
time, with Harkin back in the fold on bass replacing Swevel, who
passed away in the late 80’s, and drummer Doug Maddick, who had
previously played with both Ranno and Smith in their post Starz
outfit Hellcats in the early 80’s. However Requiem
couldn’t have been a more appropriate album title as this time
the band appeared finished for good when they were unable
generate interest in the new material.
Over the years
Richie has kept himself busy both writing music and playing with
his own group The Richie Ranno Allstars, and the new millennium
even found him unintentionally resurrecting Starz. The band
continues to gig infrequently and while Ranno confirms that a
new Starz offering is in the works, he insists that this time
around it’s strictly for fun.
Ryan: Tell me a
bit about the upcoming Starz shows. You’ve got some gigs coming
up in California as well as bookings in and around the New York
/ New Jersey area
Richie: That’s
right. We’ve got 3 shows on the East coast; we’re playing on
Long Island with Derringer, the original line-up. Then we’re
playing up in Massachusetts, and then we come down to play the
Kiss Expo. We’re a five piece band, so Bobby Messano is missing
the two California shows, but he’ll be at the two East coast
gigs. At the Kiss Expo gig we’re actually using Bruce Kulick on
guitar, so that should be a lot of fun because Bruce has been an
old friend for so many years and he’s a great player.
Ryan: The
California shows are also special because you’re on the same
bill as a band you used to play in, Stories.
Richie: Yeah
that’s true. That’s how that happened. I was talking to Michael
and he was looking for another band, and I told him that Ian
(Lloyd) has a new version of Stories and that he wants to get
out there again.
Ryan: Are you
doing double duty and playing in Stories as well?
Richie: No
[laughing] I have a feeling he might bring me up for “Brother
Louie” but that’s about it.
Ryan: What’s the
status of the new Starz record, is there still one in the works?
Richie: Yeah we’re
still working on it. We’ve got some songs that we wrote in 1979
that weren’t quite finished, so we want to finish those up and
record them, and we’ve got some new stuff as well, so it s
combination of both.
Ryan: This will be
the sixth studio album?
Richie: I guess
you could say that. The first Hellcats album was almost like a
Starz album. Then there was Requiem which had five new
songs it. We were really happy with those songs which came out
really great, so yeah I guess this would be the sixth studio
album.
Ryan: A few years
ago you were quoted as saying why bother recording new material
because no one would be interested in it, I’m curious as to what
changed your mind.
Richie: Just the
fact that we felt like doing it. It’s really that simple. I
still think the same way and I don’t think anybody really cares,
but we’re doing it anyway [laughing]. It’s for us.
Ryan: What’s the
age group of your audience these days?
Richie: We always
get those people that were fifteen to eighteen when we were
making records, so those people are like in their mid forties
now. Then we get younger people who are in their thirties, who
are music fans that maybe heard of us because they were into
bands like Motley Crue or Bon Jovi, and heard that those groups
were into us. We get young people, but not a lot, people in
their early twenties who are still into the 70’s and 80s’ thing,
the retro kids. We need more of those because those are the
people who spend the money and go out. People in their forties
will go out on rare occasions but a lot of them have kids.
Ryan: They’re
weekend warriors I guess.
Richie: I don’t
even think they’re weekend warriors and I understand that.
That’s what happens.
Ryan: You’ve also
been keeping busy with your own band The Richie Ranno Allstars.
Richie: Right. The
line-up has changed since I started in 2001, and in the last two
years its been George (DiAna) and Dubé , so it’s three of us
from Starz.
Ryan: You were
also playing in a Creem tribute called Wheels of Fire too right?
Richie: Yeah we
stopped doing that. We did maybe ten shows. Playing that Creem
stuff was a lot of fun though.
Ryan: Is it
somewhat bitter sweet when fellow musicians such as Jon Bon Jovi,
Nikki Sixx and Lars Ulrich have come forward in the past saying
how influential Starz were to them when they were growing up? I
imagine it would have been nice to have this peer support back
in the bands heyday.
Richie: Well at
the time no, because everyone was in competition back then.
Nobody liked each other; no matter what you read, nobody was
friends. Aerosmith was worried that we would be the next
Aerosmith, so nobody was friends I can tell you that. The only
two groups that were friendly to us were the guys in Rush and
Foghat. Ted Nugent was kind of friendly, but then again he took
my riff and made “Catch Scratch Fever” out of it [laughing].
Ryan: Starz toured
endlessly with a lot of different bands and it was just a
whirlwind cycle of record, tour, record, tour.
Richie: That’s
exactly what it was.
Ryan: Looking back
now in hindsight. Do you think you would have benefited from a
break somewhere in there?
Richie: No. We
would have benefited from just having signed with a better
record company from the beginning, that’s all. It was just a
really lousy record company.
Ryan: Everybody by
now probably knows the story of your relationship with Capitol
Records and Bill Aucoin.
Richie: I guess
Bill Aucoin did the best he could under the circumstances. When
he signed us Kiss was nothing basically, then he had to take
care of them as they got bigger. The thing with Capitol wasn’t
so much that they were an awful company or anything, it’s just
that we got signed by a group of people at Capitol who left the
company by the time our album came out. There was a whole new
regime and it wasn’t their baby. They did all right with us but
they didn’t really care to take us over the top and they didn’t.
Ryan: By the time
of your third album you were left to produce yourselves.
Richie: Well I
think that’s the way Aucoin made it sound in that one interview
but that’s not really true, that’s not what happened. What
happened was Aerosmith was running over on their album (Night
In The Ruts) with Jack Douglas and Jack said “Just give me
another 6 or 8 weeks and I’ll be ready to produce it”, which I
thought was the right idea but everyone else in the management
office was gung ho saying “We gotta get that album done, lets go
do it somewhere else” and “You guys can produce it”. I think it
was a big mistake, I knew it when it was happening. You can’t go
to an inferior studio, with an engineer who was less than
capable, and then the producers were the band themselves,
instead of Jack Douglas, and expect to get the same results. So
we really should have waited.
Ryan: However
those four albums that you did put out, even with all the stuff
that was going on behind the scenes, you put out four really
excellent albums that still stand up and sound great today.
Richie: Thanks.
Ryan: I think the
fact that people are still name dropping Starz as being
influential to them has got to be a great feeling.
Richie: It is
really nice. They could have just said Starz who? It’s kind of a
numbing feeling when I hear that all the time. When you get
befriended by people like Nikki Sixx and Rikki Rocket and all
these different people, it’s real nice. It could be worse.
Ryan: What stands
out for you? You mentioned touring with bands like Rush, Ted
Nugent and Aerosmith. Do you remember that initial feeling of
standing onstage and hitting that first chord in front of all
those people?
Richie: Oh yeah
absolutely. I remember that feeling.
Ryan: Did you feel
at that particular moment that the band had made it?
Richie: No not
really. It’s all about perspective. For us we thought that we
should have been, at the time, as big as Aerosmith. By the 2nd
album we couldn’t understand why we weren’t headlining arenas.
We weren’t angry or anything, we were just pushing the
management and saying “Let’s get this thing going, we’ve made
two phenomenal albums, we’re doing ok but we’re not doing as
well as we should be doing”. They were telling us “Don’t worry,
do the third album and then the first two will sell more” and
stuff like “It all comes in time” and that’s what everybody told
us and we just said “Oh ok”. By the fourth album music had
started to change and America had that real fad thing going on.
How old are you?
Ryan: Almost 40.
Richie: Ok so then
you’re real aware of what happened when Nirvana and Pearl Jam
came around.
Ryan: For sure.
Richie: Well the
same thing was going on in 1979-80. All of a sudden groups like
Talking Heads, Blondie, The Police, Joe Jackson, bands which
were the antithesis of Starz, Angel, Kiss and Journey, those
groups were based on being rock heroes from the late 60’s, that
same influence. These new groups were based on how far away
could you get from that. When it caught on, the only two groups
that really survived were AC/DC and Van Halen. I don’t know why
but they appeared to be the only groups that survived. The
groups that made it big later like Scorpions and Judas Priest,
they were European groups and they hung out in Europe and stayed
strong. Maybe if we had gone to Europe and made albums over
there, we might have been able to withstand it and keep going.
By 1984 when that music started to get popular again, I couldn’t
have given two shits about music or the music business. I look
back and think that if we could have just hung on, but I’ve got
to look back and think how I felt about everything back then,
and back then I just felt like I didn’t really care. I was doing
other things and music just wasn’t very important to me, and
being in a band was even more unimportant.
Ryan: When you
guys were in your prime, you had not only the new wave bands to
contend with but I imagine disco as well, which was also just
coming onto the scene.
Richie: Well disco
was its own thing. It was bigger than rock in some ways but then
again I don’t thing it really was bigger, because every arena
was selling out every day of the week for rock groups. Rock
music was just ignored by the radio because, for some stupid
reason radio decided to play disco and not rock, but rock was
gigantic. Whereas if you go to the early 80s’ Kiss was playing
small places and nobody was playing the big places anymore
except for AC/DC and Van Halen.
Ryan: You didn’t
get over to the UK the first time around in your careers but
didn’t you get an invitation some years later?
Richie: We did but
it kind of fell through. This was in 2003 I think. I don’t think
it will ever happen, we do have fans over there but I don’t
think we’ll ever get there. I don’t know, things can change but
unless some promoter decides that he wants to bring us over, we
probably won’t be going there.
Ryan: After the
break up of Starz you and Michael formed the band Hellcats and
issued a mini album in ‘82, what happened to that project?
Richie: The
record company went out of business and that was really the
final nail in the coffin for me. I just couldn’t pursue it
anymore.
Ryan: Did you just
decide at that point to leave the music business all together?
Richie: Yep. I
still played music in my house and I had friends that I’d play
music with, and record the songs that I would write for them. I
did a solo album around ’84, like a five song EP and then I put
a second version of Hellcats together which was me and the bass
player and two new guys. We recorded and albums worth of stuff
which came out on an independent label, I think it was just
called Hellcats, which was around ’87. Every few years I would
just sit there and write songs, I shouldn’t say that music
wasn’t important to me, but the music business wasn’t after
that, and it still isn’t. I’ve always loved music and I never
stopped playing the guitar. When nothing would happen it
wouldn’t matter to me either. Then we put RRG, or the Richie
Ranno Group together, which was named that simply because I paid
for the recordings [laughing]. I told them “If you pay for it
then you can call it after your name”. We put that RRG album
out, which was a really great album, with Pete Scanlon who was
the bass player on the two Hellcats albums, and that album did
nothing as well.
Ryan: How did
Starz come about again?
Richie: I never
had any interest in putting Starz back together again actually.
It sounded like it could be a good thing, but everyone was
spread out and doing different things and it just didn’t seem
viable. Then this guy from England started e-mailing, telling me
he wanted me to do these 4 or 5 dates. I told him I didn’t know,
I had to find everyone and I hadn’t talked to a couple of the
guys in awhile. I told him to give me a few weeks and I’d try to
track everybody down and see what they thought. They all said
yes and thought it was a good idea, so we booked three shows in
the US to warm up for it, then we’d go, what the hell. It didn’t
work out over there, but we had such a good time doing the three
shows over here, that we’ve been pursuing it ever since, because
we’re having fun. We really do it now for fun. People drop in an
out from time to time. Brendan has dropped out and Bobby is back
in, even though he can’t make the two California gigs that we’re
doing, which is fine. Brendan missed a gig that we were
recording live in 2004, so it was the three of us and Michael,
and we recorded it anyway and ended up getting a licensing deal
for it with Sony. Then Sanctuary called and said they’d like to
put it out here and we told them we had a double albums worth of
stuff so they said “That’s great we’ll do that”. It was just a
three piece and Michael singing, and I know it’s a two guitar
band but those CD’s sound great, so it’s not that big of a deal.
I can go either direction and play with one or play with two, it
doesn’t matter that much to me.
Ryan: How did
Brian Slagel from Metal Blade get involved with the Starz
re-issues?
Richie: The story
that he tells me is that he went to this store called It’s Only
Rock ‘N Roll in New York City, which is a really cool store. He
found some vinyl there, bought one of our records and he to the
guy behind the counter who was a friend of mine “This is my
favourite band in the world” and he said “Oh I’m good friends
with Richie” and Brian said “You’re kidding! Can you get me in
touch with him?” So Brian contacted me and said he wanted to
license this stuff and get involved, so the first thing we did
was we did a live album which we had recorded in the 70’s.
Ryan: Which was
from Louisville right?
Richie: It’s
partly Louisville, the first five songs are technically from
Cleveland. It’s not the full Louisville show, so that came out
as Live In Action. He did really well with that and it
sold quite a few copies which was nice. Then he licensed the
four studio alums and I tried to get him interested. I said look
“We’ll get back together” which we did at that point and we
recorded those five songs, but for some reason he had no
interest. I told him that he had five CD’s on his label and that
we could do an album fairly inexpensively and then he’d have
six, which would bring more attention to the band and stuff. It
was an effort to regroup at that point in 1990 and he said “No”.
So we just put some odd tracks together and made a whole CD. The
reason it was called Requiem was because now it was
really the end [laughing]. It was the last shot.
Ryan: You’ve been
the keeper of the stuff from the vault so to speak, having
issued various live recordings in the past few years from the
bands peak period.
Richie: I did keep
all the recordings. Everyone would give me the recordings at the
end of the night and I’d keep them in this big box. I never paid
attention to them for years until, really just a fan and friend
Henry Prentiss said to me “C’mon give me all that stuff and I’ll
transfer it to CD, we’ll listen to it and we’ll see what we can
do with it”. So that’s been great, Henry has really contributed
a lot of positive stuff to the band.
Ryan: Can we
expect to see more stuff in the future?
Richie: Yeah
there’s actually a phenomenal radio show that we did in
Rochester that I’m just holding on to. We just found it about a
year ago.
Ryan: I know you
played on Gene’s solo album in 1978 and considering your style
of playing and knowing the guys in Kiss, were you ever
considered as a replacement for the band when Ace left in the
early 80’s?
Richie: No I was
never asked.
Ryan: Looking back
what are you the most proud of with in terms of what you
accomplished with the band?
Richie: Not the
level of success or anything, just the music. Playing with both
of those line-ups, those 4 albums really do stand the test of
time. After not listening to them for years and then starting to
hear them again at one point, I thought “Wow these are as good
as Pink Floyd”. I hate to say it but now when you look back at
it, we were doing music as good as music was back then, but it’s
funny that we’re not in the same category as those bands. We
missed some kind of boat somewhere along the line but it doesn’t
matter. I’m talking about it because you’re asking me, but
ultimately life is what it is.
Ryan: When you
were growing up who influenced you the most to want to pick up
the guitar?
Richie: To pick up
the guitar was probably The Beatles and The Beach Boys, but to
really play the guitar was Clapton, Hendrix and Jimmy Page.
Ryan: That’s the
trinity of rock guitar right there.
Richie: Music was
so exciting once The Beatles hit. Then you had that whole
British invasion, and then right after that you had the guitar
revolution where guitars went to another level of sound and
technique. I was a teenager so I was listening to everything
that came out. I was learning everything as it came out. I
wasn’t the innovator who created it but I was certainly able to
learn it.
Ryan: Were you
self taught?
Richie: Yeah. I
had some lessons for three months. I don’t think it hurt, it was
a good way to get started, but I wanted to play rock. I didn’t
want to play jazz and swing and all that stuff and I still
don’t, but that’s all my teacher could play. After he actually
taught me how to play the guitar, I wanted to learn rock music.
He told me he couldn’t teach me rock, so I had already put a
band together after three months and was playing with other
guitar players. I would watch T.V. and guitar players would come
on, I would watch their fingers and I would listen to every
record constantly. That’s how you learn, that and playing 8
hours a day.
Ryan: Were your
parents supportive of your decision to make a career out of it?
Richie: Yeah. When
I was in Starz they would come out and see us every time we
played New York and I said “You know these New York gigs suck”,
because we were opening all the time. I said “You want to see us
when we headline and that whole crowd is there to see us”. They
said “Really?” and I said “Yeah the opening gigs are good but
the headlining gigs are phenomenal” so they flew down to see us
in Louisville where we were headlining a 5,000 seater and the
place was packed. They were thrilled and really into it.
Ryan: Last
question. If you could go back and do anything differently would
you change anything?
Richie: I wouldn’t
have signed with Capitol Records.
Ryan: Somehow I
knew you were going to say that.
Richie [laughing]
That’s the key to the whole thing. If we had signed with
Atlantic or Columbia or Warner Brothers or something like that,
I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you, I’d be having a
different one. These groups that are going out and making a
$100,000 a night with only two original members that would be
us. Maybe it would be me and Michael I don’t know. In a lot of
ways we got cheated out of our due, so in that sense I know we
did, but nobody’s bitter. I don’t want to come off sounding
bitter because that’s not where it’s at. I’m just saying what
could have been and what should have been wasn’t, that’s all.
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