"Both albums are very good; one has a retro feel about it and the Long Shadows Dawn uses all of the new technology and that one is bang on the money and the other is 11 years old and was done 13 years ago but it took me two years to get a deal for it," said a laughing Doogie White about his recent releases, proving that what was once old can easily be new again.
White is perhaps the epitome of tenacity and longevity in a genre which has certainly seen its share of changes and classifications; metal. Sharing stages with some of the pioneers and legends as a front man and vocalist has served him well and even though he may not be the marquis name, he has illuminated many acts with his talent.
Recently, White spoke about his career and the release of an album of material more than a decade old featuring some of the best players ever assembled.
"The album is called, "As Yet Untitled" and it is a two CD set; one is a set of original songs that I wrote with friends of mine," he began with a laugh. "I had left Yngwie Malmsteen's band after six and one half happy years and Derek Sherinian who was in the line-up with me sometimes suggested, "You always go on about these songs that you have; why don't you just do a solo album?" So, I phoned up some good friends of mine that I've played with and known over many years apart from Derek; I've got Greg Smith playing bass who plays with Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper, I've got Tony Carey who was the keyboard player on "Rainbow Rising" with Dio and Richie and Cozy and Jimmy Bain. I have Patti Russo; Patti Russo was the "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" girl for Meatloaf for about 14 years and she was a friend of mine and I asked her to come up and sing on the opening track which is called, "Come Taste The Band." That was a song that I wrote with my friend Alex Dickson who I had been in a band with and he subsequently went on to join up with Bruce Dickinson and Bruce's solo band. We wrote the song for my audition for Ritchie Blackmore when I was auditioning for Rainbow but "Come Taste The Band" at that time was the only Deep Purple album that Ritchie hadn't played on; we thought that was quite funny and thankfully so did he (laughs)."
"The songs themselves are from 1993 up until about 2007 because I've got loads of tunes but the style of rock that I'm known for doing doesn't change much over the generations," he continued. "I was brought up on Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and their offshoots and Uriah Heep and AC/DC and Thin Lizzy; those were kind of my bands. So, what I was doing with the solo album was digging into that well of the past because it was all just rock 'n' roll back then and the only difference was that there was something called prog-rock. You had your Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer but it was all under the same umbrella of just rock music. There was no terminology like black metal, death metal, speed metal; there was none of that. So, the songs remained only because the musical genre has never changed and for me; I wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel, what I was doing was giving a decades worth of songs from over a decade of working with and written with my friends. It was difficult to breakdown the hundred and something songs to these 12 that are on the album but you have to make a decision and you have to make sure that it is a cohesive decision; if it was jumping from one thing to another then it would be all over the place. So, it all sounds consistent, there are differences in the style of the songs but the playing, mixing and the energy and feel of the songs is very consistent."
So, wait; are you saying that you auditioned for Ritchie Blackmore with a somewhat tongue in cheek effort? What was that like?
"Rainbow was my favorite band from when I was a wee boy so it was great; that was exciting times. I would've liked to have done another album with him but these things don't always happen the way you plan them out. So, from there; I had three and a bit years with Ritchie and I did my solo things which is what I'm promoting now."
Faced with the decision of resurrecting songs more than 10 years from their creation date is no easy task, especially in metal which has so many categories and sub-divisions and the instant gratification music climate doesn't help matters but White is confident his releases will do well even though he knows the industry is much different these days.
"I don't think music plays such an important part in people's lives anymore because it's so freely available now. The first album I ever bought was "The Man Who Sold The World" by David Bowie and it cost me two pounds and 99 pence and I had to save my pocket money for a month, to be able to buy that. I consumed that for a month until I could go out and buy the next LP that I wanted to buy. So, you learned to love it and cherish it and enjoy it but I think that today, music is so readily and easily come by that if you listen to something once and it doesn't immediately jump out and smack you in the face; you just move on to the next thing without actually letting it seep into your consciousness because it is all there for you now. I can go from listening to Billy Joel to 10 minutes from now listening to Alter Bridge; it's that easy. People don't place the same value on music that we did; there will always be the bands that people gravitate towards; AC/DC, massive, KISS, massive, Metallica, massive and that is kind of where people will gravitate to in the rock market. There are interesting bands out there but they just don't get the exposure because there is so much now; everybody can put an album out now for 50 pence and a potato (laughs)."
"I think rock music had it; it was always underground and never played. Let's face it, Iron Maiden are one of the biggest bands in the world and they never get played on the radio. The music that they do reaches people and they have a wide reach all around the globe and that's a finger of two fingers up. I used to have a radio show in London once a week and it was called "Don't Give Up The Day Job" because I wasn't very good at it but what I tried to do with my radio show was to play songs from bands that people never heard of before; Orange Sky, Germaphobe and I left because they were bought out and it became a commercial venture and I had a playlist of songs that I had to play. I said, that's not why I'm doing this because I'm going back to the guys that I listened to as a teenager, Tom Russell, Tommy Vance; these guys over here in the UK would play "Three New For You" and they'd play three brand new bands that you never heard of. That's how I heard Michael Bolton before he became the housewives favorite; an amazing singer. Jimmy Barnes the Australian guy was just astonishing and there was so much out there that I would never have heard had it not been for these two gentlemen. What happens now and it doesn't matter if it is Buenos Aires, Barcelona or somewhere in Bulgaria; I get picked up at the airport to do a gig and the guy always has the rock radio on and it is always the same songs. It's always "Sweet Home Alabama," Sweet Child of Mine," "Stairway to Heaven," it is always the same and it doesn't matter because that is what gets played and that is why it remains underground because they are making money for radio stations rather than going out and playing music and letting people hear what is actually out there. The people who would invest in record companies and give someone a million dollars to make an album and it would take them about a year and a half to do it; those days are gone man. The investors took the money out and put them in video games or streaming programs which deny artists the money they would normally get and so what we did was, we decided that we'd go out and tour more. It used to be that you'd tour to support an album, now you do an album to support a tour; it's completely reversed. That is why ticket prices are so inflated and you have 50 things on the merch-table because you need to sell that stuff to keep the wheels rolling so you can do the job that you've chosen to do and what has happened since this COVID pandemic began was; it has completely crushed the life out of live music and a lot of bands won't survive this. They have had no income over the last 16 months; they're certainly not getting it from record companies, they're not getting it from record sales and they're not getting it from being on the road and selling merch."
When one is an experienced rocker such as White who is breathing new life into old while creating new material; how does he find balance? While so much of today's music relies on studio tricks and tends to remove elements of authenticity; how did he adapt?
"That's just progress," he said somewhat reflectively. "I watched something a couple of week's ago on Frank Sinatra and he had to go into the studio with a 75 piece orchestra and they would record it live there and then and he had to do it in one take because there was no room for overdubs. I suppose when Frank was doing that, he looked at a four or an eight- track recorder; look what The Beatles did with a four-track and now we have a thousand tracks; there is even one for the tambourine; it's astonishing what people did and it is so easy now. People can churn it out by numbers whenever they like, that's just the way things go, that's just the natural development of everything because if it all stood still, we'd all still be riding horses; you know?"
With an eye to the future while he re-invents the past, White seems to be truly enjoying his current situation and the ability to bring both old and new together has provided him with new opportunities.
"I have a solo band called White Noise and I was in the lucky position until the pandemic hit and something over here called "Brexit" which has stopped UK musicians, techs, lighting guys and trucking companies; with White Noise I go to various countries whether it be Russia, Scandanavia, Europe or South America and I get together a group of four great musicians and we rehearse and then we play 10 or 12 shows around each one of these continents. I play songs from my back catalog and with this solo album the way it is now; if I get back out to do White Noise again I will play songs from this album which was so buried the first time it was released; I got nothing at all, I think it got two reviews. So, it was buried, if I was playing those songs five or seven years ago; nobody would know the songs. So, what I did was, I went out and played back catalog songs and songs that I've been involved in and written. Songs from Rainbow and Tank and Michael Schenker and I tried to make an interesting set and again because it is the same sounding drums and guitars and keyboards; it all sounded like it was coming from one unit and not five different wells. I sang in August of last year with Frontiers Records who have a massive catalog of musicians and bands on their roster. I recorded an album for them with a Swedish guitar play called Emil Norberg and we recorded under the name Long Shadows Dawn because I thought it would be really funny to hear the audience shouting LSD, LSD (laughs); you can tell how old I am (laughs) and the album is called "Isle Of Wrath" which comes out this month of August and it's a tracking record and because I had no work since before February, six months of doing nothing; it gives you time to sit around and see what is going on. I was watching what was happening with people around me and myself as well to some extent; it's a dark lyrical album in that there is a lot of reflection in the lyrics and on the album. I just go back over old memories and there is a bit of dejection in it as well. There is a song on there about dementia, it's not dark but it's just wondering what it must be like. I know some people who've got dementia and it is such a curse of a disease and so, I did one of them and I have a couple of friends who have been in Alcoholics Anonymous for years and fell off the wagon; there is a couple songs in there about that and then there are songs wondering about old girlfriends as well. Do they remember me? Are their memories of what we had the same as the ones that I have? So, the album covers a lot of subjects but the melodies and the music behind them are superb; I love the album very much, I'm very, very proud of it."
"I mean, you do your best because the investment from the record companies now is so little that if they don't like it they just let it ride because it doesn't matter. There is no more, my God we are giving Doogie White a million dollars to do an album, we need this to be a success; they can just listen to it and say, oh, yeah, wow. Frontiers is behind this record in the same way that they are behind the solo album and I'm doing more press and promotion for an 11 year old solo album than I've ever done for any album in my life. I'm doing two or three interviews a day and that has never happened before and it is absolutely fantastic; I'm really glad."
Never one to sit idle, White has done voice acting and more which at times has caused him to obtain "labels" but he doesn't seem to mind and has no plans on slowing down.
"I was the voice of a guy over here called "Action Man" which is similar to your GI Joe for two years. I've done an Italian beer commercial, Burger King ads for Spain (laughs); that ad was actually done in Abbey Road Studios, Studio One in Abbey Road; can you believe it? I'm a singer who works, that's what I do and sometimes I get labeled as a "Gun for hire" or a "Journeyman" and I'm not really. If I go on the road with Michael Schenker for five months of the year, that leaves me with seven months of doing nothing. So; what do you do? Do you sit back on your laurels by your swimming pool? You sit back and you say, OK, seven months; what can I do? You go and you do something else and that's just how I've been. I was three and a half years with Blackmore, six and a half with Malmsteen, I was four years with Tank and nine years with Schenker; that's longer than a lot of people have been with various bands but because I don't like to sit around and pick my ass; if you'll pardon the expression, I like to work. So, when I'm coming to the end of a Schenker tour I'm looking at six weeks off and I've already got my promoter in Europe or Scandinavia or South America booking me gigs so I can go out for another three or four weeks. It is not that I don't like being home; I like being on the road keeping my energy levels up and keeping my voice in shape. I enjoy my life, I've been very lucky, I've lucked out over the last 30 years. I'm still enjoying it and when I stop enjoying it that is when I'll stop doing it; unless the pandemic brings an end to this."
Doogie says the best way to purchase "As Yet Untitled" is at www.amazon.com or amazon.UK and "Isle Of Wrath" directly from www.Frontiersrecords.it but to discover more about this fascinating talent; please visit www.doogiewhite.com.
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
