Sometimes an album lands in my inbox that just instantly strikes a chord and that was most definitely the case with “Turning Time” by The Exiles. It really is a fantastic album! When I read through the e-mail it became clear that “Turning Time” was actually a much-enhanced re-release of an album that first appeared in 1996 as “The Exiles” by Sean Manning & Paul Rafferty.
I was so intrigued that I arranged an interview with guitarist Sean Manning on Zoom on 11th August to talk about The Exiles and the album. Sean is an English guitarist who has also performed with Quiet Riot and Hurricane in the past. We had a great chat about The Exiles, the “re-release” of the album and Sean’s musical journey from his arrival in LA through to his decision to leave the music scene behind in the late 90’s after working with artists such as Kevin DuBrow, Kelly Hanson, Paul Shortino and Neil Giraldo.
It’ll be transcribed and posted here shortly.
It’s also available on the NI Rocks YouTube channel.
Friday NI Rocks Show 14th Aug
THE EXILES – Rainmaker
BLACKLIST UNION – Madame Butterfly
Interview with TONY WEST from BLACKLIST UNION Pt1 (5min)
BLACKLIST UNION & LORRAINE LEWIS – Jackson
Interview with TONY WEST from BLACKLIST UNION Pt2 (7min)
BLACKLIST UNION – DIRTY HALO
BLACKLIST UNION – Mississippi Moonhound
Interview with TONY WEST from BLACKLIST UNION Pt3 (6min)
BLACKLIST UNION – Read Between The Lines
THE SAVIOR COMPLEX - Halo
Promo for KRIS BARRAS BAND album “Monsters We Made” Pt1
KRIS BARRAS BAND – Beautiful Lie
Promo for KRIS BARRAS BAND album “Monsters We Made” Pt2
THE EXILES – Turning Time
Interview with SEAN MANNING from THE EXILES Pt1 (7min)
THE EXILES – Soul Woman
Interview with SEAN MANNING from THE EXILES Pt2 (12min)
THE EXILES – Friend
Interview with SEAN MANNING from THE EXILES Pt3 (10min)
THE EXILES – Richmond Castle Wall
HURRICANE – Heart Made of Stone
FEMME FATALE – Waiting For the Big One
FASTER PUSSYCAT – Poison Ivy
NI ROCKS – Hi Sean, thanks for taking some time to talk to me. I wanted to talk first of all about the album “Turning Point” which has been released by The Exiles. First of all, can you tell us about how you and Paul got together originally?
SEAN - Well, thanks for having me on. Paul and I got together in the early 90s. It was a friend of ours, actually a mutual friend in Hollywood, California, Jon Sutherland, who was a big European music fan and English blues music fan and he knew of my background and he knew of Paul's voice and he thought it would be a really good pairing so he was the one that actually brought us together initially.
NI ROCKS – The name The Exiles was initially used when the band was formed in the early 90’s but by the time the album was released in 1996, “The Exiles” had become the album name and it was released actually under the name Sean Manning and Paul Rafferty. What was the reason for that?
SEAN - Well, when we originally put it out, it didn't come out as a band per se, because it was a number of demos. It wasn't a finalized piece. It hadn't really been completely fully mastered. And at that point in time, we had a number of different drummers and bass players in the rhythm section that were contributing to the material. So, it wasn't really until this last year when I had an opportunity to go into the studio and master everything and make it a cohesive project to release it under the band name.
NI ROCKS – There were some big names involved in the original project, Neil Gerardo of Pat Benatar fame was involved and Myron Grombacher from the Pat Benatar Band and Greg D’Angelo from White Lion. Who else was involved at the time?
SEAN - Back then we had Terry Mascall from the UK. He was a young English drummer who we flew over and an English bass player who was living out in Hollywood, California by the name of Paul Andrew Stanley. And then I brought in Jeff Jacobs from Foreigner and Billy Joel to put keyboards on it on the final product this last year.
NI ROCKS – That 1996 release. Was that only in the US or what was the score there?
SEAN - Yeah, it wasn't really a release, to be honest with you. It happened right around the time of grunge. And so there was probably 1,000 CDs that were printed up. There was no record company behind it per se. There was no marketing. There was no publishing. Nobody really knew that it came out. So for all intents and purposes, this is a brand new release. But we had to call it a re-release because a product had been at least made before.
NI ROCKS - You said that it probably came out at the wrong time. It's a good album, but it probably just came out at the wrong time musically. Grunge was the the rock scene at the time, so just great album, wrong time for it.
SEAN - Yeah, yeah. I mean, stylistically, we'd just gone through everything in the late and mid '80s; the big hair bands and by the late '80s it was getting a little bit ridiculous. And at that point in time, the industry needed to change. And grunge happened, which was the equivalent of the UK punk scene happening in the '70s to change it. And so stylistically, the music at that time, because the record industry at the time, it’s a little bit different now, but they were the ones actually that controlled what the population was going to hear. So, it was the business guys that made that determination.
NI ROCKS – Jumping forward, what prompted the decision to do a re-release of the album 30 years down the line
SEAN - I got a phone call from a friend of mine in Switzerland, Chris (Leibundgut), who'd been on the scene in California in the late '80s and early '90s. He reached out and he'd worked with Leatherwolf and a number of other bands. And he said, this music is too good not to hear. There's a company out here that would like to get in contact with you and kind of re-release it. So I said, okay, great. And then they got in contact with me and afforded me the opportunity not only to re-release the music, but to actually go into the studio here in Dallas at Empire Studios and completely remaster everything, add new tracks to everything, re-record a number of things, add backing vocals to it. So it's a completely - if you have the original and you have the new version and you play them next to each other sonically they sound completely different.
NI ROCKS - I did look online and it's quite a rare album / CD to find. There weren't that many copies pressed at the time so that is quite rare.
SEAN – Probably, honestly Nigel there's probably about 150 or 200 out there; that's it! Of the original version.
NI ROCKS – And who else was involved in this new version?
SEAN - Well I brought Jeff Jacobs in; he's the Foreigner keyboard player, a friend of mine, we played before and he played with Billy Joel too. He added orchestration, he added strings for the orchestration that I was hearing in my head and keyboards, Hammond and Mellotron, D3, piano to all of the tracks. And then Alex Gerst here at Empire Studios in Dallas, who's the owner of Empire Studios. He's also a drummer as well. So he helped me with some drums on some tracks that were not on the original. So “Turning Time”, the album “Turning Time”, which is this product, has five more songs on it that were not on the original as well. So there's five completely brand new songs on this album.
NI ROCKS – We’ll play a track from the album now. Do you want to pick one and tell us something about it?
SEAN - Yeah, actually, if you want to play “Soul Woman”, that's a single that was released actually this last week. That was a song that I had completely forgotten about for 20 years. It was it was drums, vocals, scratch guitar track and bass on the master two inch. And that has now had four more guitar tracks added to it, it's been mastered, Jeff came in and added some Hammond too and I put back in vocals on it. So that's a really hard driving rock and blues track
NI ROCKS - It is a fantastic track.