L.a. guns just between you and me6/8/2023 ![]() After becoming the darlings in L.A.’s famed Sunset Strip club scene, the band released their debut album, L.A. It soon became clear that he wouldn’t have to move back to England anytime soon, though. The weather, the girls, the food – everything was the polar opposite of cold, rainy, bleak London at that time.” But, as excited as Lewis was about his new home and work situation, he tempered his expectations: “It was a great opportunity for me – but honestly, I thought I might be in L.A. Living in Los Angeles felt “like dying and going to Heaven. Guns and move to the other side of the world. “It was all about Boy George and Rick Astley and Thompson Twins – it was frustrating being in a great rock band in London at that time.” Given that environment, it was an easy choice to take the job with L.A. “The rock scene in London really sucked,” he says. By then, Lewis had played in a few hard rock bands in his native England (including Girl, which also included future Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen), but he had been growing increasingly frustrated there. That chemistry was immediately apparent the moment Lewis auditioned for L.A. Little things like that, I was aware of, and I really enjoyed a lot. Returning to in-person recording was, Lewis says, “really a breath of fresh air, looking at people in the face, being in the same room, and hearing the playback at the same time. But I can’t guarantee that it’s going to sound good on their shitty Android phone.” It would be different if they were going to the same trouble as we are. So I take any kind of criticism like that with just a pinch of salt. “But you’ve got to remember, chances are that people who are bitching about it are probably listening to it on their phone, or at best, the speakers on their computer. “I read some less than kind reviews, people with the opinion that it was horribly recorded,” he says. ![]() Guns album, 2021’s Checkered Past – and which, Lewis says, led to some unfair criticism. It was a great, great summer,” Lewis says, though he admits that it wasn’t always easy to work so intensively: “I hadn’t been on tour like that, six weeks solid, since my twenties – and doing four, five, six shows in a row a week, it was a challenge.”īut that situation was still far better than having each member recording remotely, like they did during the pandemic for the last L.A. God, it just felt so fucking good to be in a band again, and to be on the road and to be constructing new songs. The band members were so enthusiastic about the material, in fact, that they even started recording this album while they were still out on tour last year. Guns Black Diamonds, Frontiers Music Srl 2023 I knew that we were going to deliver another high-quality record of interesting songs,” Lewis says. “I just knew, when I first heard the music, that we were going to knock it out of the park. This time, Lewis says, it was immediately apparent that they were onto something special. ![]() Tracii Guns is also the band’s founding member, and is what Lewis calls “the nucleus of the songwriting,” with the rest of the band members then adding their respective parts. He is, without doubt, the most gifted musician that I’ve ever worked with. There is a certain chemistry that we have – he makes me work harder than any other musician that I work with. The album title, he says, “describes Tracii and me, the relationship between the two of us. ![]() “That’s what I love about this band: it’s not one-dimensional. “ Black Diamonds is an interesting record because we’ve got your heavies, and then we’ve got your ballads, and then we’ve got your sing alongs,” Lewis says, calling from his home in Las Vegas. Guns are releasing their fourteenth studio album, Black Diamonds, on the 14th of April (via Frontiers Music) – and vocalist Phil Lewis promises that it’s everything the band’s longtime fans could want. It seems appropriate that hard rockers L.A.
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