Published: Friday, 22 July 2022 22:45 | Written by NI Rocks |
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Steve Mann is probably best known to many as a founding member of Lionheart and as part of Michael Schenker’s band, whether it be the McAuley Schenker Group, Michael Schenker Fest or Michael Schenker Group. He has, of course been involved with numerous other bands and projects and it was actually the release of a new album with singer Chris Ousey that led me to have a chat with Steve via Skype on 19th July.
We chatted for about 35 minutes about the Ousey Mann album, working with Michael Schenker, a new project with Robin McAuley, the recent re-release of the Liar albums and, of course, Lionheart. You can hear that interview on the Friday NI Rocks Show from 22nd July along with tracks from Ousey Mann, MSG and Lionheart. That Show is available from our MixCloud page -
THE PRETTY RECKLESS – And So It Went (ft Tom Morello)
LEE AARON – Soul Breaker
OUSEY MANN – I’ll Tell You When To Stop
Interview with STEVE MANN Part 1 (11 min)
OUSEY MANN – Brave New World
Interview with STEVE MANN Part 2 (11 min)
MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP – A King Has Gone
Interview with STEVE MANN Part 3 (3 min)
MCAULEY SCHENKER GROUP - Anytime
Interview with STEVE MANN Part 4 (9 min)
LIONHEART – Still It Rains on Planet Earth (Lacrimosa)
LIONHEART – Declaration (Pre-release mix)
ROSCO’S RIOT – Deceitful Gaze
WILD HEAT – Wild Heat
NORDIC UNION – This Means War
ALTER BRIDGE – Pawns & Kings
FOZZY – I Still Burn
MARCO MENDOZA – New Direction
INCH HIGH – Ask For More
NI ROCKS – Hi Steve, thanks for taking some time to talk to Rock Radio NI. There are quite a few things I want to chat about, but we’ll start with your latest release which is the album “Is Anybody Listening” by Ousey Mann. That sees you working with vocalist Chris Ousey. First of all, we’ve just played “I’ll Tell You When To Stop” from the album. What can you tell us about that track?
STEVE - Well, I just woke up one morning and went to the studio and just started playing; doodling around on my guitar as you do first thing in the morning over a cup of coffee, and I just had this kind of, what I thought was a bit of a Doobie Brothers riff, that everyone's told me since is more of a Pink Floyd riff. But it had that kind of nice, very light kind of feeling to it; a very happy feeling. And when I write songs, I write a lot of ballads and a lot of sad songs. So, whenever I get the idea for a happy song, I'm actually quite pleased. And I just kind of developed it from there. And I thought actually this is sounding quite good. The whole thing just seemed to kind of almost write itself, to be honest. I put a backing track together, sent it off to Chris and what he came back with, I thought was just fantastic. The whole thing just kind of really, really worked very well. I kept hearing this idea in my head on the chorus, and I thought, what is it I'm hearing and, in the end, I decided it was a banjo. So, I put a banjo on the choruses and that just kind of gave it the icing on the cake. And with a little bit of a kind of Queen guitar solo in there as well. And my son did some of the backing vocals on that. Chris did the main backing vocals and on the second or third choruses I thought this would be really nice if we had a kind of answer backing vocals. So I called Jason in, my son, and I said why don't we just kind of put some answers in here. So we went into his studio, which is Studio 2 next door to mine, which is Studio 1 (laughs) and we just put down these ideas and the whole thing just came together and worked out really well.
NI ROCKS – I believe you were approached by Khalil from Escape Music about making the album with Chris and I read an interview you did just a few weeks ago in which you said that you still hadn’t met Chris yet. Is that still the case?
STEVE - Yes, unfortunately that is. We would have loved to have met and done things in a more traditional way if it hadn't been for COVID, but everybody was in lock-down and it was really because of lock-down that we were able to get together and start writing some stuff because we couldn't do anything else. I was supposed to go to Japan with MSG and that was cancelled and then a whole load of shows that were coming up after that were cancelled. And so rather than sit at home and twiddle my thumbs and think what am I going to do; which actually I never do; I just thought, this idea from Khalil from Escape Records to put myself and Chris together seems like a good one. So we started working together, but of course we couldn't actually physically get together because we couldn't travel. And so far we haven't actually met each other face to face. But we've talked many, many times. (Laughs) And he's a lovely guy. I get on with him very, very well. And I know that when we finally see each other face to face it will be a really warm meeting.
NI ROCKS - Yeah, that way of working is becoming more and more common; not just because of Covid, but where people are recording their stuff in different areas. Do you like working that way?
STEVE - Absolutely. To be honest, I do, because it makes the difference between working or not working. Obviously, I'd much rather get together and fly to a studio somewhere and book a studio out and actually work with the musicians. But the budgets are so small these days, that you're really working on a shoestring, putting an album together. There's two things you can do – one is time in the studio because you don't have enough of a budget to buy enough studio time to do the album properly. Or you do it over the Internet, and you each have…. I've obviously got my home studio here, so that acts as the base and Chris has got his. In fact, most singers that I work with have their own little recording set up. They have a little vocal booth that they use, a decent microphone and a decent mic preamp. That's all they need. They put their vocals down and then send their vocals over to me and I put everything together. So, for me personally, it works very, very well and it means the difference between putting an album together or not putting an album together. I would much rather work that way and just keep putting music out.
NI ROCKS – Had you worked with Escape Records before or what was the connection with Khalil?
STEVE - I've known Khalil for a long time and I think we first got together about, it must have been a good ten years ago, and he was, or he is, a Liar fan and Liar is the first professional band that I was in. I joined them back in 1977. They were a fantastic band. It was technically a mixture between Status Quo and Queen I think. Basically, the rhythms of Status Quo put together with the harmonies of Queen and everybody in the band basically was a very good singer. And it was a great band happening at the wrong time, because when that got together, Punk came along and just wiped the floor with all the rock music that was happening at that particular time. And so we worked for about two years together and eventually gave up the ghost because there was just no market for our music at that point in time. That was just before the New Wave of British Heavy Metal started, which we missed. And anyway, Khalil went to see - we did a tour with UFO when UFO released “Strangers in the Night”, and we did the UK tour of them promoting that album. Which was the first tour that Michael Schenker didn't do with them, and Khalil came to see us and he was absolutely knocked out by Liar and became a massive Liar fan after that. His whole life, I think he'd spent just saying I have to have something to do with this album, with this band. We recorded three albums, the third of which was recorded for Bearsville in Los Angeles, and they shelved it and it never got released. And so Khalil, the last couple of years or so has ended up releasing “Set the World on Fire”, which was originally released by Blairsville and also he's released the unreleased American album which was shelled by Blairsville. So that's basically sat on the shelf for 40 years and it finally came out last year on Escape Records. So it was very, very nice to see that being released and that's really how Khalil and I started our working relationship.
NI ROCKS – You mentioned working with your son on the new album. Apart from that you’ve Clive Edwards from Lionheart on drums and your wife Angela playing bass. Was there any particular thought behind those decisions?
STEVE - Clive, he's my go to drummer and you know if I need drums, I'll go to Clive and say Clive, right you're playing on this and Clive is so laid back, you know, he just says yep, great, whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. So I love working with Clive. Very easy guy to work with. Has played with everybody and a great drummer. And with my wife, it was a bit like Jason really. I could have started phoning around and looking for a bass player and Angela was downstairs in the kitchen and I just thought, well I'll ask her and see if she's got time between cooking meals. (Laughs) She's a great bass player. She came in on the project and did the business - great feel, fantastic sound. And what more can I ask for? It just seemed the logical thing to do. And you know, if we needed to change bits, she was there on hand and she could just come up and play a chord differently or play a fill or whatever. It just made life very easy and it sounded great. So that's why we did it that way.
NI ROCKS – I know you haven’t met Chris yet, but is there any chance that you might get together at some stage to do some tour dates. Obviously, you’re all very busy but is there any chance of some gigs?
STEVE - We haven't really discussed it to be honest. The project came about just as a recording project, but we've had such good feedback. I don't think we really expected this kind of positive feedback and I don't think we expected to come out with such a good album to be honest. I think we just thought let's work together, write some songs, record them, see what comes out and we'll put it out on Escape. It came out so well that it kind of took us by surprise and the reviews that we've got and the comments coming back I think have taken us by surprise as well. There has been a few people who have said to us, can you see this being a touring band? And, why not? I mean we can certainly use the musicians that were on the album and so that's something that maybe, time permitting, we could actually look at in the future. I'm a very busy man, unfortunately. I've got a lot of things going on and we've got some Schenker tours coming up. And I've got the Lionheart album to finish, so it's really a question of finding the time to do it. But absolutely, I mean, why not that? That would be great.
NI ROCKS - Maybe a second album sometime too?
STEVE - We have talked about that and I think that's definitely on the cards, yes.
NI ROCKS – We’ll play another track from the album “Is Anybody Listening” now. Do you want to pick a track and maybe tell us something about it?
STEVE - Maybe “Brave New World” wouldl be great. That's one of my favourite tracks. This was, again, one of those backing tracks that just almost wrote itself. In fact, to be honest, most of them just kind of wrote themselves. I really liked what Chris did with this. I just thought it was a really, really great melody and I was very, very happy with the guitar solo that I did. It just, allowed me to kind of express myself as a musician in a way that I love to do. And the whole thing just kind of came together very, very well. Very powerful chorus, great verses. I like what Chris writes about. He has a very good conscience about his lyrics and that kind of sits well with me. So, I would say that would be a good one to play.
NI ROCKS – You’ve had a long association of course with Michael Schenker – from the McAuley Schenker Group in the late 80’s and early 90’s, through Michael Schenker Fest and now the new Michael Schenker Group. As a musician do you look at those three separate projects very differently or are they all part of one journey?
STEVE - They're both I would say. They're very different, but they are part of one journey. I've been very lucky that I've been able to follow the progression of Michael Schenker as a musician and as a person. And he's changed a lot over the 30 odd years I've been working with him - 40 years, whatever it is. He was, I think, not in a particularly good place back in the 80s; with the McAuley Schenker Group, Robin was in because Michael needed to share the responsibility. So it was very much a partnership between him and Robin. And I think we were all developing as people and developing as musicians. When Michael Schenker Fest came along, which was 30 years after the McAuley Schenker Group first started, it was a completely different feel, but the whole idea that Michael wanted to do was to go back over his whole past history, starting with Gary (Barden), with the first MSG and then going obviously through Graham (Bonnet), Robin (McAuley) and Doogie (White). And I think that that worked very, very well. There were a lot of people in the band and it was, I think, quite a difficult project to manage. And I think Michael did exceptionally well to be able to handle all of that. I think we all did exceptionally well to be able to handle all of those different styles of songs with different singers. It almost kind of got to a point in the end where we said, OK, that's run its natural course and COVID started and so it seemed to be destiny's way of saying, OK, that's it for that particular project. And then we went back to the whole idea of just having a five piece, which was MSG obviously. Which I love. I think this current version of Michael's band is my favourite because I like the idea of it being a kind of more compact unit. It's easier to manage, easier to handle. There's less people on the tour bus when you go on tour; much as I love everybody, it can get quite crowded (laughs). I love all the UFO songs, I love the set. When Michael sends a set list through and says this is what I'd like to do, my reaction nearly always is wow, that's great, I'm really, really looking forward to playing that set live. And so, I think it's really over the last 30-40 years, been a progression and I think what we're seeing now with MSG going out now is very much the maturity of that progression. Michael's in a very good place right now and I think he always will be. He's gone through his bad stages in life and he's come out of it and he's playing like he's never played before. Some of the melodies and the scales he plays; even now having been back with him for six years, I will listen to his solo on “Rock Bottom” and think that is amazing. So yeah, it's been a whole journey, a whole progression and I think where it's ended up now is a really great place.
NI ROCKS – You’ve played on Michael’s last four studio albums – the two Fest albums and then “Immortal” in 2021 and then “Universal” which was earlier this year. For you, how does that recording process differ compared tp doing Lionheart or something else of your own?
STEVE - The main way that it differs is that Michael does all the guitars now. Back in the McAuley Schenker Group I was sharing guitars with Michael as far as rhythm guitars were concerned and doing some lead stuff. Now the way we do it is slightly different, but Michael tends to work with Michael Voss, the producer, and put down all of his ideas. And then Michael Voss whips them up into a kind of really good backing track because these days you tend not to do demos followed by the album. The demos then become the album. And so it's a different way of working in that sense and that's exactly how we do it. Originally I was going to go down to Michael Voss's studio and then put down all my keyboards, but I said that that means bringing all my computer stuff down and setting it all up at your studio. Why don't you send me stems and we'll do it over the Internet. I will do the keyboards here, send them to you and then you can put them in and then you just tell me if that's working or if it's not working or what else you need. We found that actually works very well. So, Michael goes to Michael Voss's studio, I think Barend (Courbois) does and I'm not sure about Bodo (Schopf), whether he actually goes there or whether he does that in his studio, but it's a kind of half and half. Whatever works best. It's a little kind of mixture between how we would do the Lionheart stuff and how we would do things traditionally actually meeting in the studio. And it's very much a question of whatever works best. We'll just do it that way.
