R.I.P. Survivor Vocalist Jimi Jamison 1951-2014

One of my earliest vocal influences, Jimi Jamison, passed away over the weekend on Sunday, August 31, 2014 (or perhaps the early hours of September 1).

You may not recognize the name Jimi Jamison, because aside from his work with post-"Eye of the Tiger" Survivor, you had to be a bit of a liner notes geek to know his work. As a kid, I happened to be one of those liner notes geeks, and Memphis-based Jimi Jamison happened to be one of the"go-to" guys for backup vocals for many of the artists I heard on the radio.

That statement doesn't do Jimi Jamison's voice justice, though. Pre-Pro-Tools, Jimi's voice possessed all four elements of what I call "The Four Perfect Vocal Attributes Of a Great Studio Singer": Soulful, Beautiful, Powerful, and Blendable. Very few voices have all four elements, and at his best, Jimi Jamison could pull any combination of them out of his pocket to suit the needs of a particular track.

Jimi Jamison's studio work was prolific, but Jimi's backup vocalist work I remember hearing the most as a kid were ZZ Top's Eliminator album (his backup vocals can be heard on "Legs," "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and others) and Krokus's Bob Rock-produced The Blitz album (on which you can most clearly hear him on "Our Love Will Never Die").

Had he never joined Survivor, which gave him a wider audience, MTV video exposure, and a string of hits courtesy of Survivor's Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan's songwriting talents, Jimi Jamison would still have made an OK living as a studio backup and and jingles singer, just as he did before joining Survivor in 1984. When Survivor's lead singer Dave Bickler left the band due to throat problems (long since resolved), Jimi became Survivor's lead singer and found success with the band's Karate Kid soundtrack single and subsequent Vital Signs album and Rocky IV soundtrack single.

Jimi Jamison's lead vocal duties included pre-Survivor stints with D. Beaver, Target, and Cobra. According to a 1993 interview with Deep Purple's Jon Lord, at one point Jimi was asked to join Deep Purple as a replacement for the just-fired Ian Gillian but had to decline, as he was officially still in Survivor.  Post-Survivor, Jimi co-wrote and performed the theme from Baywatch and recorded and toured as a solo artist.

It was always Jimi Jamison's backup vocalist work that intrigued me most, though. It takes a certain kind of singer to be a successful studio singer, and not many can do it. It's not your project, and the meter's running, so you have to be able to not only deliver, but get it the way the producer wants it on a time crunch.

On a personal note, many years ago, Jimi Jamison was one of my first-ever interviews. It was for a school project and was my first full-length interview, and to get it I went through the same proper channels any other journalist had to go through in those days.

Not yet having a clue about the mechanics of touring at that time, it wasn't until much  later that I realized how cool it was of Jimi to even do that interview: it took place outside, after a Survivor show, on a hot June evening--with a show the next day that required travel by tour bus. Not only was Jimi nice about doing an interview during the load-out, he even had fun with it and treated me like I was a professional journalist instead of like a kid.

Moreover, he immediately put me at ease: when I turned on the tape recorder, he leaned in as if he was about to tell me a deep dark secret...

...and recited paraphrased lyrics of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" ("I was born on a mountain in Tennessee, I killed a b'ar when I was three".) I'm sure I wasn't the first person Jimi told that version of his "life story" to, but it was so corny it was hilarious. After a good laugh we did the real interview, and he gave me my first-ever "scoop": he'd just completed backup vocals on Joe Walsh's Got Any Gum album.

Another thing I remember about that evening was the proud smile Jimi had when he mentioned his then little boy, James Michael, whom he clearly adored. Later, Jimi wrote me a kind letter, which I still have somewhere in a box of rock and roll mementos.

Here's where things get a little complicated.I lost track of Jimi's projects for a while, and although I could do the Hollywood thing and gloss over it or give you a "happy unicorns" Hollywood version of why, that would be a lie. Life isn't all happy unicorns. People are multi-faceted. People have faults. No one is all wonderful or all bad. It's part of being human.

There's no pleasant way to put this: in the '90's after Survivor broke up, there was a nasty legal battle over Survivor's trademark between Jimi and founding guitarist/Survivor songwriter Frankie Sullivan. Having liked Survivor's music before Jimi joined the band, and knowing it had been Frankie's band...let's just say I wasn't Jimi's biggest supporter during that time.

Frankie Sullivan eventually won the Survivor trademark, and he and Jimi settled their differences, even eventually becoming Survivor bandmates again. It took them a few attempts, plus a couple of other changes in the band's lineup, but in the end, they worked things out.

Best of all, for their Summer 2014 tour, Survivor added Dave Bickler to the band, with Dave and Jimi switching lead vocal duties and singing backup on each others' respective hits. Candid photos from Survivor's recent shows, including the August 30 show in Northern California the night before Jimi passed away, depict a band having a good time.

In the end, Frankie Sullivan, Jimi Jamison, and Dave Bickler did what's impossible for most of us after a major conflict: they worked it out, got along and respected each other, and had some fun. Given Jimi's ultimate passing, I'm especially glad they did.

The music world lost an amazing singer this past weekend, and the angels got a voice that, at times, sounded like he already was one.


R.I.P. Jimi Jamison.

My deepest condolences to Jimi's Survivor bandmate brothers, family, and friends.








 

Motley Crue at the Hollywood Bowl 7/21/14: A Full Circle Alchemy of Dreams

By Randi Reed

Last Monday night (7/21/14) was Mötley Crüe’s homecoming show at the Hollywood Bowl, on the band’s final tour.

I believe the band means it when they say this is Mötley Crüe’s last tour. Nikki Sixx has spent a large part of the last decade transitioning toward other endeavors, so I’ve been expecting it. I’ve also been dreading it, because it’s hard to say “goodbye.”

I can’t be objective about this show, because I have too long of a history with Mötley. (Get your minds out of the gutter, Dirt fans. Not that kind of history.) So, instead of a review, I’d like to scribble a few thoughts and flashbacks from my keyboard…

If someone had asked my teenaged self, back when I was starting to dream about living in L.A., to close my eyes and imagine what my idea of a perfect Mötley Crüe show would be, it might have looked a lot like Monday night’s show. It was a colorful spectacle of all good things Mötley…Fantastic lights, more pyro than I’ve ever seen at one show, and lots of “atomic fireballs,” as I call them. Kudos to SRae Productions.

There were elements from the band’s entire career span—a pentagram here, Theatre of Pain colors there, the bandshell alternately flashing stripes of Red White and Crüe or playing the role of a glowing red pit of Hell. It all came together into a wonderful version of Mötley Crüe’s Oz…but thrown in a blender and whirled around a bit, and then spit out into something that actually made sense.

As a kid I’d dreamed of going to shows at the Hollywood Bowl, and it’s still my favorite venue in L.A.. Mötley Crüe began their career epitomizing the Hollywood club scene, and I can’t think of a more fitting place for their homecoming show on their last tour. It was the perfect backdrop, and it’s not lost on me that the bandshell at the Hollywood Bowl is shaped like a stylized rainbow. And there was no better place in the world for them to perform “Saints of Los Angeles”.

Somewhere in all that, obscured by their own smoke at times, was the band. Given Mötley’s history, that was fitting, too.

Were they flawless? No. You don’t walk into a Mötley Crüe show expecting flawless. But they delivered, and they were perfect in their own wonderfully, humanly-flawed imperfect way. It was light years beyond the show by a woefully messed-up version of themselves I’d walked out on during the Girls Girls Girls tour, and I’m proud of them.  Monday night’s show was a hell of a ride.

As I write, I find myself struggling to find the right words. I’ve now written, scrapped, and re-written this paragraph six times. (Maybe “six” is fitting, too…)

How do you say goodbye to a band you idolized as a kid, whose members you later came to see as people because you were fortunate enough to have a job that occasionally put you on their periphery?

How do you say goodbye to a band who gave you the dreams that put you there? --And made you realize that maybe, if you worked really hard at them, you could make a lot of them come true?

Mötley Crüe taught me that not only did I have dreams, but to fight for them. Hard. 

I learned it from watching them become rock stars, from afar, from a tiny Southern California town in the middle of nowhere, which I referred to as “Hell”.

My town had no school (it was thirteen miles away) but it had two liquor stores, a convenience store, and a tiny post office that didn’t even deliver the mail. Most of the residents were retirees from Hollywood’s Golden Age, of which I had no appreciation until later. For a kid far too young to drive, it was planets away from civilization, and I was surrounded by “interesting characters” and messed-up people. Did I mention my town also happened be on a Meth Route?

Having moved there from the outskirts of a large Midwestern city, I was really pissed off at my parents. On a regular basis, I accused them of “stranding us in Hell” and plotted my escape. 

A hint of Salvation came when a guy my parents knew found out I liked rock music. He showed me how to connect my stereo’s radio to cable, as you’d do for cable TV. So now instead of just reception for Big Band and Muzak, I could listen to every L.A.radio station. He also gave me a stack of rock magazines and told me where to find the current issues, which were hidden in an obscure rack at the convenience store.

“Hell” was still hideous, but at least now I had something good to listen to, and new décor in the form of rock star wall paper.  

At the end of every week, L.A. rock stations used to read off a list of which bands were at what clubs. I remember hearing Palomino Club* ads for Mick Mars’ band Spiders and Cowboys and Starwood ads for Nikki Sixx’s band, London. London was in a couple of the rock rags, and though I’d never heard them, I was fascinated by them. Nikki Sixx had hair that looked like a cool sheepdog, and to me, he looked like a star. I also heard ads for Vince’s band Rock Candy, and not long after that, ads for Mötley Crüe, with that Nikki guy from London.

Mötley Crüe was even more fascinating than London. In stage gear they looked like cartoon characters out of a nightmare…more so than KISS, who I liked but had never thought of as dangerous (Sorry, Gene). I had no idea what Mötley Crüe sounded like but was dying to see them, because word about Mötley was spreading fast.  But going to shows was out of the question; in those days, concerts weren’t for kids. So when Mötley did an in-studio appearance on an L.A. radio show for Too Fast for Love, it was appointment radio. I posted a “Homework—Keep Out” sign on the door to my room so I could listen in peace.

The Shout at the Devil album and “Looks That Kill” came along just when things were getting really crazy at home. It was primal scream therapy, to the tune of Mötley Crüe, and “Too Young to Fall in Love” could be heard emanating from my room at the back of the house on a regular basis.

How do you say goodbye to a band who gave you a way to cope when you were weighing your options between chaos at home or becoming a thirteen year-old runaway? –-A band whose music provided a mix of "F***k you" angry lyrics and “you can do it” musical optimism just when you needed it most? The irony of living in “Hell” and being “Saved” by a band whose image included fire and pentagrams still makes me smile.

Little did I know, at the time, that learning how to deal with an interesting but troubled assortment of people would become an important skill for my future career in the music industry. And starting from age sixteen, the Mötley guys and I would have a lot of crisscrossing paths as I began to build my resume.

Little did I know, Nikki Sixx would be one of those troubled people. He’s talked about and written about this period of his life, but at the time few people knew he was slipping back into his own version of Hell. Nikki was always nice to me, even giving me badly needed career advice once when I was stuck, and I felt guilty for not seeing how far he’d fallen again. Thank God Allen Kovac did--and is the kind of manager who doesn’t let addicts get away with the tricks they’re known for. And that Nikki stepped up and did what he needed to do to pull himself out of Hell. (Meanwhile, I finally stepped up and set out to learn about drug and alcohol addiction, which had claimed the lives of several people close to me.)

Allen Kovac helped Nikki Sixx and his Motley cohorts find their dreams again—just like the band had helped me find mine as a kid, and probably countless others.

All those things were in my thoughts leading up to Monday night’s show. And when the band hit the stage, I put it all on “pause”. I didn’t even take photos during the show, because I wanted to just experience and enjoy it. It was all a perfect alchemy of dreams coming true, and life, and triumph, and bittersweet joy.

So how do you say “goodbye” to a band who gives you all that? 
 
Maybe you don’t… Maybe you just say, “Thank you.”

Thank you, Mötley Crüe: Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, and Vince Neil.

*The club where Mick’s band played when he met Nikki Sixx has been called the Stone Pony in various sources, including The Dirt and Chronological Crüe, The Stone Pony is in New Jersey and is where Jon Bon Jovi started out--not Mötley Crüe. The Palomino Club on Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood is the club Mick was referring to. The name confusion may have been because Linda Ronstadt’s band, the Stone Poneys, had famously played there. It also may be that perhaps legal clearance to use the Palomino Club’s trademarked name couldn’t be obtained for publication in The Dirt. There were several Liquor stores on Lankershim within easy walking distance from the Palomino, including Circus Liquors, which seems exactly like the kind of place a young Nikki Sixx would have chosen to work.


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A Birthday Candle for Randy Castillo

This morning when I got up I did something I've never done before, for anyone: I lit a candle for Randy Castillo. Today would have been his birthday.

Randy Castillo was best known as the long-time drummer for Ozzy Osbourne, but, cool as that credit is, he was so much more than that. Ask anyone who was part of the L.A. music scene in the early 80's and 90's (or who grew up around it, as I did), and they'll tell you: Randy Castillo was a legend in the very best sense of the word. And people who knew him loved him, with a capital L.

Long before he joined Ozzy's band, when it came to drumming Randy Castillo was the L.A. "go-to-guy"...a fantastic drummer and true pro who was always happy to help out a friend on a session, or even a friend of a friend. Randy Castillo played on so many recordings, I'm convinced the majority of his work remains uncredited...most likely sitting in assorted boxes of long-abandoned demos and unfinished projects of various bands that never took off. Time may have altered my memory on this somewhat, but it seems like until he got sick, Randy Castillo was always either in the studio, or out on tour.

Growing up on the perimeter of the L.A. music scene, and later working in the industry, many people I knew, or their bandmates, or their friends, or their brothers, worked with Randy Castillo, but I never met him until around 1992. Ironically, it wasn't in L.A.; while I was on vacation, a friend who was going out to visit her boyfriend on an Ozzy tour called and invited me to go along, and we were on the road for two days.  I didn't know the band, so as someone who wasn't a relative, a groupie, or working with them, and was ultimately just tagging along, I was extremely conscious of intruding on the band's space. But they were all great, especially Randy Castillo, who treated me like one of the group and made me feel like a welcome little sister.

As there always is on the road, there was much hurry-up-and-wait during those two days, and during that downtime Randy and I usually sat  together, sometimes talking, but more than anything, just observing. For the longest time I wondered why a rock star of Randy's stature would be so nice to someone who clearly wasn't a groupie. It wasn't until after he passed away that I found out he had sisters.

As a visitor to the band's home on the road, it's not my place to invade Randy's privacy, especially since he's not here any longer, so I won't. I'll only say that Randy Castillo was a true gentleman who had the respect of everyone I met in their touring party. He had amazing, positive energy--a rare combination of humble and dynamic presence rolled into one. Around the time I met him I was reading about shamanism, and as I got farther into it, I realized that's the kind of energy he had. His energy was so warm that sitting next to him literally felt like sitting in the sun, even though we were in those cold, hard folding chairs so often found in backstage areas in those days. 

Our paths never crossed again, but because we had mutual friends and later, colleagues, I just somehow thought they would. When I found out Randy passed away from cancer I felt a huge sense of loss, not only for the music community, but knowing how much he was loved by people who knew him far better than I. 

The world needs more sunny energy like Randy Castillo's. That's why I lit the candle at 7:00 this morning. I wanted it to shine brightly, so I chose a votive candle that had maybe an hour or so left on it, in a clear glass holder that would reflect light all around the room.

I lit the candle, then I used the flame to light some Nag Champa incense. I don't know if Randy Castillo was into incense, but I always think of Nag Champa as creative incense (even though it's traditionally spiritual), because it's what I often burn when I write. In addition to being a fantastic drummer, Randy was also an amazing mixed media artist, so I lit it in honor of his creative spirit.

Now here's the weird, freaky Twilight Zone part: The Nag Champa went out, unfinished, not long after I lit it.

And that candle that looked like it only had an hour or two left on it? It's just after noon as I write this, and it's still burning brightly.

Here's hoping every musician who reads this lights a candle, too.

Happy birthday, Randy Castillo, and R.I.P. . 

 


© 2011-2013 Randi Reed and MusicBizAdvice.com. All rights reserved.



 



   

Nikki Sixx's The Heroin Diaries: Recommended Reading for Managers, Aspiring Rock Stars, Addicts, and Loved Ones

Although it's been out for a while now, this week I finally read Nikki Sixx's book, The Heroin Diaries.

Excellent book...It's a very brave book that explains addiction better than anything I've ever read. I highly recommend it for anyone who, like myself, has had friends or loved ones who have struggled with drug or alcohol addiction.

It should also be required reading for every artist manager or aspiring rock star.

If you're unfamiliar with the book, The Heroin Diaries came from Nikki Sixx's personal diaries from 1986-1987, the height of his drug addiction. It also coincided with the height of Motley Crue's career. He had vowed to himself to document everything in his journals...and he did, warts and all.

Nikki Sixx is donating proceeds from the book and his band Sixx: A.M.'s accompanying The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack to a music program he's started at Covenant House called Running Wild in the Night. Very cool.

More info can be found at MySpace.com/HEROINDIARIES, and at Nikkisixx.net.

This post is dedicated to Bob Timmons, who helped many people, including Nikki Sixx, get clean and sober.



Disclosure of Endorsements/Recommendations/Financial Compensation or Business Relationships per FTC Blog Disclosure Regulations in effect December 1, 2009: In the 90's I worked for a concert promotion company that presented many Motley Crue shows. Since that time I've received no financial compensation or free product in direct connection with Motley Crue, Nikki Sixx, or their associated companies. MusicBizAdvice.com (and by extension, this blog) sells products, including books and music, as an Amazon Associate.

Why Are There So Damn Many References to Bon Jovi on MusicBizAdvice.com?

(Written on Sunday, January 22, 2006 but posted Mon Jan 23 due to power outages)

If you go to MusicBizAdvice.com and do a site search, you'll see a lot of references to Bon Jovi or Jon Bon Jovi. Sometimes this irritates managers or fans of other artists, who occasionally send me flame mail. That's OK. Life Lesson #10,049: No matter what you do, somebody's going to be ticked off.

Today's blog entry is actually for those who either genuinely want to know or who say, "You like the 80's or what?" (A question I find a little irritating, because it usually means the person asking it only pays attention to the Top 10 and has little appreciation for album cuts or longevity in the music business.)

The main reason is really pretty simple: MusicBizAdvice.com's readers span 67 countries and three age groups. No matter whom I'm addressing, where they live, or what kind of music they're into, if I refer to Bon Jovi or Jon Bon Jovi as an example of success in one of our articles, that reader knows whom I'm talking about. Given that the average career for a successful recording artist is 5 years, the band's 23 years of high visibility are pretty impressive.

(Sidebar: Bon Jovi is a band, Jon Bon Jovi is a guy. If you're working with or writing about them, it's polite to know this and get it right.)

More importantly, Jon Bon Jovi has the kind of work ethic and attitude I'd love for our readers to follow. Jon's a household name, and is obviously a great looking guy (some would say "stunning" in person). Given that and the way fans react when they meet him, most people expect him to be difficult or unpleasant to work with. But you'll rarely hear anyone who's worked with him say anything but the opposite. Some artists, on the other hand, act like they're entitled to make working together a miserable experience for everyone but themselves.

On a personal level, it's no secret that I've liked the band's music since I heard "Runaway" during Christmas 1983. I heard it long before I knew what Jon even looked like, and it still holds up as a well-written rock song when stripped down to its essence. But my favorite Bon Jovi stuff is well after 1986's Slippery When Wet, and it's the stuff a lot of people other than hard core fans don't know:

Jon's vocal on "Dry County," (Keep the Faith) still gives me chills; if you listen to it on a great system with headphones, you can hear his voice open up on the line "I cursed the sky to open." Richie Sambora does an amazing solo on that track, too.

Jon's version of "Levon" on the Two Rooms CD is still one of the best rock vocals I've ever heard. The engineering and production are so well executed, you can almost hear him breathe. I'm especially impressed by this because it was recorded in Jon's home studio...in 1991, before Pro-Tools became standard.

I often play "Hey God" from These Dayswhen I'm royally ticked off, and "This Ain't a Love Song" (also from These Days) is my favorite wallow-in-it break up song. The first chorus of "Someday I'll be Saturday Night" Cross Road) kept me going during my worst days of a chronic illness ("Hey man, I'm alive, I'm taking each day and night at a time, I'm feeling like a Monday but someday I'll be Saturday night"), and This Left Feels Right's "It's My Life" and "Born to Be My Baby" sound so intimate, when I hear them I feel like I've walked into a room with a closed door.

Do I like the 80's? Yeah, they were OK. But I like the evolution of the band even more. And if you're an artist or songwriter, I wish it for you as well.

C 2006 Randi Reed

Disclosure of Endorsements/Recommendations/Financial Compensation or Business Relationships per FTC Blog Disclosure Regulations in effect December 1, 2009: In the 90's I worked for a concert promotion company that presented many Bon Jovi shows. Since that time I've received no financial compensation or free product in direct connection with the band. I have, however, interviewed their recording engineer for MusicBizAdvice.com, and the MusicBizAdvice.com website sells Amazon products as an Amazon Associate.