Ron Perry (China Sky) – Interview

Ron Perry (China Sky) – Interview

16 Febbraio 2015 1 Commento Iacopo Mezzano

Interview by Iacopo Mezzano

italian version

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INTERVIEW

MR.IT: Welcome Ron Perry. It’s a pleasure to interview you for Melodicrock.it website!

RP: Thanks so much for having me!

MR.IT: Let’s start with your career as a singer. Who are your main musical influences?

RP: As a kid, I always tried to learn from the guys on the radio that I felt were very expressive vocalists…Steve Marriott, Burton Cummings, Roger Daltry. When I was old enough to sneak in to bars to see live music in my hometown of Detroit, I discovered a local guy that sang with a band called Mugsy. His name was Tommy Farless, He was, by far, the greatest rock singer I ever saw. I was awestruck. He had more power and attitude than anyone I had heard anywhere before or since. He made a tremendous impact on me, and much of what I do today, I owe to him (RIP Tommy).

MR.IT: How did your passion for music begin?

RP: Music has always been a part of my life. My grandfather played banjo and ukulele, and passed his love of music on to my mother, who sang to me every night as a child, bought me my first guitar, and encouraged me to take up music. It wasn’t really a hard sell

MR.IT: Did you play with any other bands before starting China Sky?

RP: Before joining China Sky in 1986, I was in a glam/punk/metal band in Detroit called “The Nasties”, which had some success locally. The highlight of working with that group was that we recorded a song that featured Rob Tyner, lead singer of the legendary MC5.

MR.IT: What do you remember about the early years of the band?

RP: When I came in to the picture, Richard and Bobby had been working together for several years with another group of guys, mostly writing and recording, but weren’t having much luck getting a record deal. I had auditioned for another band that was managed by the same people that were handling Richard and Bobby, and they suggested that I would be a better fit for the band that would become China Sky. From there it was another two years of writing, recording, and just concentrating on making a killer album. We did very few live shows, as we considered that a distraction from the task at hand.

MR.IT: How do your songs usually take shape?

A: For me personally, it varies. Sometimes I’ll have a riff in my head, and I’ll write the music and add the lyrics afterward. Sometimes I’ll have a catchy phrase, or several lines for which I have to find the proper musical mood. Sometimes it all hits at once, and I’ll have a finished song in 20 minutes. Once the song is written, we get everyone in a room and just start banging it out to see what happens. Sometimes they end up as originally written, and sometimes they start to morph and take on a completely different character.

MR.IT: Did you expect your first album to be considered as one of the masterpieces of the melodic rock genre?

RP: I had no idea that anyone even remembered that album, let alone that it had gained a “cult following”. I spent twenty five years believing that it had been relegated to the “dustbin of history”. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would be talking about it in 2015.

MR.IT: Did you get any offers for a reissue of the first album?

RP: Khalil Turk from Escape music called me around 2009 to ask if we owned the masters for that record, or had any unreleased material that we would be interested in putting out. Unfortunately, we do not own the masters to the first album, and the only unreleased material we had were some crude demos, but at that point Khalil suggested that maybe we would be interested in making a new record…

MR.IT: Why did the band break up that early?

RP: Our guitar player bailed out six weeks after the release of the record, to join a more established band whose name I won’t mention, and in those days, you were dependent on tour support from the record label to get the band on the road and promote. Once the word got out that there was a defection, China Sky got relegated to the back burner at CBS, and the money and promotion dried up. This was also right about the time CBS was bought out by Sony, so the execs who signed us were on the way out, and we were essentially orphans.

MR.IT: How did you come up with the idea of re-starting the band?

RP: I started to get messages in the late 2000s from all over the world asking me about China Sky… things like “where can I find a copy of the record?”, “would you sign my CD?”, “would you be interested in doing a reunion show?” Then Khalil called and said “what about a new record?” It took about two and a half years of thinking about it before we decided that we might actually be able to pull it off.

MR.IT: How did you choose the new line-up?

RP: Bruce Crump, our drummer, had actually discussed joining us in 1988, when the original members of his band at the time, Molly Hatchet, were on the way out. When it came time to do the new album, he was the first one we thought of, and luckily, he was willing and available.

Guitarist Steve Wheeler is a hometown guy that we’ve also known for years, and had some success in the early 80’s with the Molly Hatchet spin off project, “The Danny Joe Brown Band”.

Keyboardist Tim McGowan is a transplanted Scot who already knew the melodic rock genre very well. He was a perfect fit.

MR.IT: What should the fans expect from China Sky II album?

RP: I think the new album has much more depth than the first. In the 80s, we were kind of forced to operate within the parameters of what the record company thought was “commercial”. Now, we have no such constraints. We wanted to make a more meaningful and intelligent record, and make it rock a little harder as well.

MR.IT: Are there any outtakes from your debut on the new LP?

RP: Everything on the new record is new material. We wanted this album to be “of the present” and not just a throwback to the 80s. It has a direct correlation to the first album, but there are some more contemporary elements as well.

MR.IT: Last but not least some questions I always like asking the bands I interview. What do you think about the music scene in your region and in your country?

RP: In the U.S. the music scene varies by region. It tends to be better in the industrial cities of the north, where people take to live music to let out the frustration of living and working in factories and doing other demanding blue collar jobs.

MR.IT: What do you think about music business these days? What about Internet?

RP: In general, I don’t think that young people are as connected to music as they were in the 60s, 70s, and 80’s. There are too many other distractions. When I was a kid, music was what connected you to your peers. We talked about our favorite bands, and waited with baited breath for new music. It guided our lives. We listened for the message. It was important to us.
I don’t think music is that important to most kids now. They’re bonding over video games, the internet, and other technological pursuits. Of course, there will always be some kids who are rabid about music, but its now a “niche” thing. There are a million different styles and genres, and you have to search hard to find the good stuff. Its not like it used to be, where everyone you knew listened to the local rock station and were exposed to the same things. I don’t think you’ll ever see the kind of mass appeal superstars we had back in the day. There are positives to music in the internet age, though. There is much more freedom in the music, and you are no longer dependent on a record company to get your music out there, but cutting through the crowd is a monumental task. if you can find your audience, however, getting your music to them is now a breeze.

MR.IT: Thank you very much for your time. If there is anything else you want to say, please say it!

RP: I would just like to say thanks to everyone who has kept the music of China Sky alive for the last 27 years. You are the reason we made this new record, and we appreciate each and everyone of you for giving us this opportunity!

© 2015, Iacopo Mezzano. All rights reserved.