NOTE: this interview was done in 2020.
An in-depth interview with Jack Starr was something I wanted to do for a long time but didn't know how to. The man together with David DeFeis founded (once) mighty Virgin Steele and helped to forge epic and power metal. With VS, his own band Burning Starr and other projects he has released about 20 albums. How to not get lost in this ammount of records and not to miss something important in Jack's biography? Well, that wasn't an easy task, but I like such challenges! In result I got a list of around 100 questions and was thinking that Mr. Starr would tell me to go to hell with this list. But he was so kind to answer them all! Here is the first part of the interview where we spoke about Jack's first steps in music, his journey with Virgin Steele and everything else before the founding of Jack Starr's Burning Starr.
Could you tell me briefly about your musical influences? Were they typical for the guitarist who grew up in the 70’s (Page, Blackmore, Hendrix) or were there some less known musicians who remained overlooked but influenced your playing?
I have had many many influences Page, Blackmore and Hendrix were some but more importantly I was influenced by some of the same musicians that influenced them .I listened to BB King, Muddy Waters and lots of blues records but I also liked a type of music that is called garage rock. Bands like the Seeds,Music Machine,the 13th Floor Elevators etc this kind of music morphed into heavy metal and punk and much of it originated in California .When the Kinks came out with the song “Your Really Got Me’ I loved the heaviness of it and later I found out that it was Jimmy Page who was playing the guitar on that song. One of the lesser known guitarists that had a big influence on me was Sean Bonniwell of the Music Machine I loved his sound and his image and their song Talk Talk is still one of my favorites.
The New York state metal scene in the early 80’s looked interesting: Riot, Manowar, The Rods, Twisted Sister. Were you friends or rivals with any of these bands?
At the time in the early eighties when these bands were coming out I was starting Virgin Steele in 1981, I didn’t know the members of these other bands personally but after Virgin Steele came out with our first record in 1982 I got to know many of them and we did shows with Riot, Manowar, the Rods etc. We never played with Twisted Sister and my only connection to them was I had some friends that knew Mark Mendoza and one time he came over to my house and we jammed in my garage. He is a very nice guy but that was the only time I talked to him. As far as Manowar we did some shows with them at the Paramount theatre for three days, these concerts were called World War 3 and it was one of the first epic metal concerts ever. Later we did some shows with them at a club called Sundance which was owned by Frank Cariola who became the first manager of Burning Starr. The Rods I got to know a little bit when we played a show at the Calderone theatre with Motorhead, the Rods and Virgin Steele. Later I had their drummer Carl Canady produce my first solo album “Out of the Darkness”, and Riot we played some shows with them at a place called My Father’s Place and I was impressed with them because they sounded more like European metal which I was into at the time.
I heard that David Defeis and Joey DeMaio had some tough conversations. What caused that?
Well I have heard the same things, I was not there so I can’t say for sure but I do think that it’s quite possible. Both David and Joey have very strong egos and sometimes that can create tension. Also after I left Virgin Steele it seemed that David went into a similar direction like Manowar and maybe Joey felt that they were copying him? The funny thing is that in many ways they have a lot in common and a love for much of the same music.
We started to record our demos in 1981 and they also became part of our debut album. One of the first songs we recorded was a song I wrote which David contributed some parts also. The song was called “Children of the Storm” and it was the start of the style of music that Virgin Steele would stay with and a style that is now referred to as Power Metal or Epic Metal. After this song was recorded I sent a copy to Mike Varney who had his own label called Shrapnel Records.I knew about him thru Guitar Player Magazine and in the magazine I read that he was looking for America’s best unknown guitar player and two weeks later I was very surprised when he called and said he would like to use our track for the next Shrapnel release which called Guitar Hero’s Volume 2. After this album came out it made it much easier for doors to open for Virgin Steele and the album we recorded started to gain a lot of interest because of the endorsement of Mike Varney.
Were the songs on the first album written especially for this LP or were they a collection of songs which you wrote over previous years. To me the album sounds a bit eclectic (or shall I say diverse?) — from 70’s hard rock to the early 80’s metal.
That is very true and interesting that you noticed that the songs I wrote did not all sound the same and were not all cut from the same cloth or in the same mold. The songs on “Virgin Steele 1” were a very diverse group of songs, some were very 1970’s sounding like the song “Drive On Thru” and others had a metal sound like “Danger Zone” which had a very heavy riff and a classical intro. So yes the songs on “Virgin Steele 1” were not especially written for that album but they were some of my best songs from the previous ten years and I was very happy to have Dave and the guys from the original lineup contribute their musical knowledge to them and make them even stronger.
Could you tell me about the making of the first VS album? As far as I understand it was self-financed and self-produced. What were the biggest problems/technical issues you were forced to deal with during recording process?
The recording of the first Virgin Steele album if I could give a name for what we endured to make it, than I would call it the”Triumph of the Will” because that is what it was. It was four young guys with no money and no connections in the world of music believing that somehow they would be able to make a great album. To begin with the only ”recording studio” we could afford was not really a studio but it was a small shack by the side of the road with no windows or heat or ventilation. The recording console was very old and only four tracks so most of the album is live and there was a lot of pressure to not make mistakes because we were paying by the hour and mistakes would cost us more money so we knew we had to deliver the goods .The luxury of having many takes did not exist for us but the interesting thing is that some of my best solos were done live in one take like in the song “Still in Love With You” which has a very long guitar solo and was done totally live. The other problem was that everyone in the band liked to play loud and when recording in a very small studio this is hard on the ears (especially on the ears of the engineer who didn’t always understand why we needed to be so loud).
How substantial was Al Falcon’s help in the studio? Was he experienced enough for this job?
Al Falcon was a big help and he had great ears, I would trust him to give us good input and let us know when something did not sound right. He did not try to placate us or lie to us so that we would like him but instead he told us the truth and he was very critical and did not want anything that was out of tune or out of time to have his name on it. A funny story about Al is one day when we were recording “Guardians of the Flame” in his new studio in Freeport and I was trying very to get the solo correct for the song “Hell or High Water” and Al looked at me and said “You need to be more like Richie Blackmore”. At first I did not understand and I said. I don’t want to copy anybody and he said he didn’t want me to copy Richie’s style but instead be more relaxed like him and that when Richie would come to the studio he would bring a bottle of wine or some brandy and not try so hard, and he would let the music create itself .That is what I began to do and I learned that sometimes in life when a person wants something very strongly the desire for that thing creates unhappiness and stress and that contentment comes from the lack of extreme desire. A writer that was talking about Prince said that music flows out of him and I think that it is the same with me .Music is flowing out of me and I love that it is a part of who I am.
Who is Odile Starr who was credited for graphics on the first LP? Is it the same person from the instrumental track off “Out of the Darkness” album?
Odile was my wife and she had studied graphic arts in Paris and did the layout and the logo for the first Virgin Steele album. “Odile”, the instrumental on my first solo album, was named after her and I am happy that even though our relationship did not work out at least I have given her a great legacy of a beautiful piece of music.
Yes, the second VS album “Guardians of the Flame” was a big improvement in every way, the sound was much better and now we were in a real studio with 24 tracks and it had all the latest equipment and microphones and we didn’t all have to play at once so we had better sound separation. David loved being able to layer the sound and create textures that were not in our live sound and he looked to bands like Queen and Rainbow for technical ideas. I was more interested in bands like Mountain and Black Sabbath which had a more direct organic sound. I also really liked another band from Long Island called Blue Oyster Cult of which I got to know a couple of the guys in the band. In fact when I was 18 years old I did a show with BOC when they were called Soft White Underbelly and at that time they were still playing some covers alongside their originals and I heard them play the song “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin and after they came back in the dressing room I asked their guitar player Buck Dharma if he would show me how to play it and he was nice enough to show it to me until I had it .Now I think that both Buck and myself are able to play much complicated riffs than “Whole Lotta of Love” but it’s nice to think about those days.
Could you comment on the situation with record deals for the first two albums? Were you signed directly to some label or did you license the albums to labels?
The first album came out on our own label and it was licensed to Dutch East India (Napalm Records) and in England it came out on Music for Nations. In fact “Virgin Steele 1” was the first album on MFN Records, some of the very next records from that label included Metallica and Manowar.
By the way, did you try to reach Shrapnel Records who were the best label at the time for such music?
At that time Shrapnel was not doing full albums but instead compilations and we wanted a full album.
Once you described David as a tyrant who wants to approve every note on a record. Was it like that from the very beginning or was there a certain moment when he started being like that?
David was probably always like that but as time went by he started to feel that only he had the answers and he did not want to listen to other people’s input, working with him became harder because he was a trained musician and that made him think that his ideas were better or more musical . I was not trained and still cannot read or write music but that is okay for me and most of my favorite musicians like Hendrix, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Django Reinhart etc. also cannot, so I think I am in good company.
Was David’s tyranny the reason of your falling out with him? Is it true that you discovered that you was fired from the band through some waitress?
Yes, this is a true story. Rhett and I were coming back from the recording studio where we were recording my first solo album and we went into a restaurant and a rocker looking girl came to our table and she looked at Rhett and said “Rhett, why did you leave Riot you were so great in that band “ and then she looked at me and said “Weren’t you the first guitarist in Virgin Steele?” I looked at her and said “Is there another guitarist now?” and she looked at me weird and said nothing, but I understood that in my absence I had been replaced.
When you quit (or was fired), you started a dispute over the name “Virgin Steele”. Why did you lose it as you were the founder of the band?
First of all I was married at the time and I had two baby boys and I needed money. I knew that David’s new manager Zoren Busic who I had contacted about managing Virgin Steele wanted the name that I had made well known all over the word, so I accepted his offer and agreed to give him the name. I did not give the name to David but to Busic and Corcoran (they managed a band I like called Saga). I made the contact with them and it ended up hurting me.
In the same time you went to Paris to play at Breaking Sound festival under the name of Virgin Steele. Who was in the band with you?
The band was me, Rhett Forestter, Carl Canady, Paul Kayen and Neil Turbin the singer from Anthrax, but there was a problem and Rhett told me he would not sing if Neil sang. so it put me in a bad position with two great singers who did not get along. It was not a good show for me, at least that is what I thought, but since then I have had fans tell me that they thought the show was great (laughs).
I believe that the trip to Paris was a lot of fun including drinking with Venom and walking naked in the hotel. Any memories about those events? Why did you say that this festival almost ruined your career? Was it because technical issues you experienced during the show and later revealed in the interview of Carl Canedy for Metal Forces magazine?
The trip to Paris was fun and the promoters treated us great and put us in a beautiful hotel with Dio, Ozzy, Metallica and many others who were on the bill. But the second night we were there I saw the guys from Venom outside the hotel and they were sitting on the sidewalk with their luggage, because the owner of the hotel did not want them in the hotel. So one of them asked me if I could store some of their things in my room. Some of the other guys said be careful Jack maybe there are evil demons that will get you from their luggage. I just laughed because Venom were no more evil than Ozzy or Dio or any of us. it was just a part of the gothic image they were putting on. As far as technical problems for me the main problem was that the Marshall amp that I was given to play on was a bass amp! And I did not know this until it was too late and of course the sound was too clean and the notes could not sustain and it was very hard to sound like Jack Starr on that amp (alughs). But I did the best I could and a few months later when I went to Texas to be interviewed by Z Rock (a new satellite radio station that was playing our album) I was still thinking of my performance at the festival and I asked Mad Max Hammer, the DJ, if I could play a live guitar solo over the air. He said yes and I played a great solo that went out live to 16 American cities. This made me forget what I thought was a bad performance at the festival and I haven’t looked back since.
Did Virgin Steele use any of your ideas on “Noble Savage” beside the title which was your idea?
“Noble Savage” was my title but more than just a title of an album. It had great meaning because it was my concept of Virgin Steele and that was the heavy and the soft, the light and the dark, and the irony of being a Savage and a Noble at the same time or a Romantic and a Barbarian. This was something that interested me. But this concept had already been used by Iron Maiden and even Iron Butterfly had the concept also before Iron Maiden. As far as the music , there were no actual Jack Starr riffs but I think that the riff in the song “Noble Savage” sounds like me or something I would play.
I always wondered about your relationships with David DeFeis. You quit Virgin Steele in 1984 but still David sang on your solo record and then played on the album “No Turning Back”. So can you comment on that situation?
My relationship with David really has not been good, maybe it never was. I think that David is hard to get along with and I am sure he would say the same about me. I think that we were musical partners more than friends and for a while that collaboration yielded some great results. I think that even musically it was difficult because I am not a trained musician and I play more spontaneously and I try things that are not correct sometimes and I break the rules because I didn’t know the rules. Now of course it is almost 40 years later and I know the rules and I would never play out of key but back then sometimes I would. There is one song which I am glad was never put on the first album called “The Lesson” and I am sure that I am playing out of key. I was trying to play “outside the box” meaning I was experimenting and sometimes that can lead to great things but sometimes it can also fail miserably. I think that David despite our differences liked to work with me and I did as well so when I set out to make my “No Turning Back” album I had no problem asking Dave to produce it and he was gracious enough to accept and we made an incredible album.
Have you ever been asked to join some well-known band after your departure from Virgin Steele? I can’t believe that bands didn’t want to recruit such a top class musician.
I have never been asked to join any well-known bands but I think that my bass player Ned was asked to join a couple of different bands. Any band that needs a great bass player that sings and has good stage presence would want him and I am very grateful that he has been loyal all these years. He became the partner that I never had with Dave and now we have started to write together and plan the direction of the band together so it has become even more of a band.
In 1997 you tried to work with David once again and even wrote some songs which later was released on “The Book of Burning” in re-recorded versions. Why did that collaboration with David fell off again? And why did you decide to not give David permission to use the songs?
Once again David and I worked together and I thought it sounded very good, I never told Dave not to use those songs but I did not own the recordings of the 4 songs which came to be known as “The Sacred Demos”. That session was paid for by Micheal Capuano who also played the drums on some of the songs.
By the way, don’t you want to record your own versions of these songs?
I don’t know about that but I do think that “The Chosen Ones” is one of the most epic songs that I have ever written.
As far as I understand you also was against re-issuing the first two Virgin Steele records. Was it because the deal you were offered wasn’t fair enough?
Well the problem that I had with those reissues back then is that I was never consulted about any of it even silly things like what pictures were to be used or what bonus tracks so I felt left out.
In 2018 both albums were re-issued by Greek label No Remorse Records with bonus material. Are you aware of that and were these re-isses approved by you?
I was aware because I had some records reissued by them and our friend and sometimes promoter and unofficial manager Bart Gabriel has a lot of business dealing with them.
Are you in touch with your former band mates Joey Ayvazian and Joe O’Reilly? Do you know whatever happened to them?
I am really not in touch with them at all but Joey the drummer was the one that actually started Virgin Steele with me and he was there the day we met and auditioned David. They are all great guys and I don’t know what they are doing musically or even if they are still playing in bands.
Were you still in Virgin Steele when you recorded the albums with Devil Childe, Hasselvander and Phantom Lord? By the way, how did you get in touch with Joe Hasselvander?
I was not in Virgin Steele when I recorded those albums and I met Joe Hasselvander because Ned Meloni my bass player was friends with Joe and had been in a band with him.
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| Devils Childe |
What was the idea with these albums and why did you decide to step in?
Those albums were meant to be a vehicle for me and Ned and Joe to play music that at the time we weren’t playing. In the early eighties a new kind of music called thrash was coming out and it was exciting to hear the energy of this sound and we wanted to be a part of it but our labels at the time Music for Nations and Passport Records did not want us to go in that direction and I had already done an album which was classic metal style that had done very well sales wise so would not let us record in another style of music. So I came up with the idea of inventing a new band name and new identities and make our thrash records and that is how Phantom Lord and Devil Childe came about. It is still amazing that so many people liked those albums that would have never liked a Burning Starr or a Virgin Steele album. The other interesting fact is because of the fact that we were on a different name it gave us freedom to do what ever we wanted, Its cool that some of our best songs started their life as a thrash song like "Evil Never Sleeps", "Call of the Wild", "Road Warrior", "Path of Destruction" and many more.
Some sources say that the albums of all the three bands were recorded with 12 hours on the $200 budget. Was it really like that? I can’t believe that it was physically possible…
Yes, they really were. We went into a studio and jammed and did it live ,with very little overdubs. The only thing that was planned is that we had an idea of the main riff and the words to the choruses.
Would you say that all the three albums were recorded by the same project or were they absolutely different and it just happened that they were recorded by the same people?
The first and only Devil Childe and the first Phantom Lord album were recorded by Ned and Joe H and myself, the second Phantom Lord album was done by different people and in a much better 24 track studio also my friend Steve Price who was the guitar player for Thor played on the record.
Could you explain the situation with the label which released all these albums? Metal-archive.com says that they came out on Pentagram Records while other sources mention Dutch East India Trading...
Pentagram and Dutch East India were they same label but they put out different kinds of music so they called themselves Pentagram and also Napalm when they put out our thrash album and when they put out the first Virgin Steele album they called themselves Dutch East Trading Company. They also put out the first Queensryche album thanks to me playing the demo I received from their manager,after one month on Napalm(Dutch East ) EMI bought contract and put out the first album.
Why did you use strange pseudonyms for these records? Were you under contracts with other labels?
Yes, I was, plus I thought that it was cool to do that and it is like when a person puts on a costume and goes to a party and can pretend that he is someone else in America we have this holiday called Halloween where people do this.
Were the albums of Devils Childe, Hasselvander and Phantom Lord properly promoted and distributed back then?
The albums were promoted in the underground and quickly developed cult followings. It is also important to know that back then in the early eighties there were not a million heavy metal bands and the competition was not as strong as it later became, so it was easier for a band to make a name for themselves in the metal fanzines and in Kerrang. And if the metal fans saw a band that they thought looked cool or had an interesting name they would sometimes be willing to try the music and buy the album and if they liked it than the word would spread.
Among these projects my favorite is Phantom Lord. Could you tell me a bit about this band? How did you get in touch with Steve Price?
I went to high school with the drummer of Thor Mike Favata and we stayed friends ever since and we are still good friends today. I knew that Mike was making great music with Thor and I asked him about Steve Price who was also in the Thor band and he put me in touch with Steve.
Phantom Lord had another album 2 years later with a great singer John Leone. What was the purpose of this album considering the fact that you re-recorded some of the songs off the album on “Rock the American Way” and “No Turning Back!”?
I loved John Leone’s voice and it was a great opportunity to work with him and I was hoping that maybe we could start a band together and he also liked that idea but he lived very far away and back than it was impossible to send files back and forth on the internet, so we could not overcome the problem of distance. He could not move to Long Island and I could not move to New Jersey. I miss John. he as a great guy and an awesome vocalist.
John Leone had an awesome voice! Didn’t you want to ask him to join Jack Starr’s Burning Starr?
Yes, I thought about it, but then I met the young Michael Tirelli who was singing in an original band called Last Lix. I was blown away, and than one week later I went back to the club and I heard him sing a Dio song and I knew I had to have him in my band.
Beside all that you also recorded an album called “Out of the Darkness” under Jack Starr moniker with stellar line-up which consisted of Carl Canedy, Garry Bordonaro and Rhett Forrester. How did you get in touch with all these gentlemen?
I called up Greene Street Management when I found out that Rhett was no longer in Riot and they were nice enough to give me Rhett’s telephone number. We talked and than he came to my house in Huntington Long Island when my wife was visiting France to see her family and that is when I really got to know Rhett. I liked Rhett right away because he was larger than life and when he walked into a room everyone noticed him and wanted to talk to him, the guys wanted to be like him and the girls all wanted him. I had never met anyone like that before. He was also very kind and I remember one time we were at a club and a very large unattractive girl came up to our table and Rhett was very kind and spoke nicely to her and signed an autograph and even kissed her on the cheek. This girl probably still has the autographed napkin (laughs). But in that moment Rhett’s humanity shone through.
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| Jack Starr and Rhett Forrester |
Rhett was pure rock star and as far as I understand he preferred to record everything in one take. Were you OK with that?
To be honest at first it scared me because I had been used to working with David who was very organised. When I saw Rhett come to the studio with some ripped up pieces of paper I was afraid that he might not be able to remember the lyrics and confuse the different songs since he had sometimes two songs on one piece of paper. But as soon as he started to sing I understood that what ever he decided to do and however he would change my melody would only make it better. He as amazing.
The album was recorded in two different studios — Music America (where Metallica recorded their debut album and The Rods did some recordings too) and Bolognese Studios. What was the reason for that? Couldn’t you record everything in one place?
Yes ,we recorded it in two studios because I wanted to finish the overdubs closer to my house and not have to sleep in a different town plus my wife was coming back. I really liked Bolognese studio, it was a very nice well run studio and Twisted Sister had just finished doing some recording there and it had a good reputation, just like Music America in Rochester which was a state of the art studio. Those were great days for me working with Carl Canady and Rhett Forester and that is also where I met Ned Meloni who played on the track "Odile". I also met Gary Driscoll who also played on the album and one day told me that he really liked my playing which I considered a great compliment since he had played on the first Rainbow album and one of my favorite songs was "Man on a Silver Mountain", so of course hearing those words from the drummer of this iconic album was very cool.
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The album had different album covers because back then if you did not sign a worldwide deal with a big company than the labels could each do what they wanted and the French label did not like the American cover for "Out of the Darkness". They explained to me that the photo where I am on the cover wearing a white hat was not heavy metal looking and that it could confuse fans who might think that the music was country music. So they decided to put the picture of me with the three girls one of whom was the baby sitter for my son Julien who was two at the time. I am not sure it was a good idea because I think that maybe that is something that Poison or Motley Crue would have done. and "Out of the Darkness" was more like Dio kind of music and should have had a more serious album cover.
In 2013 the album was re-released with a lot of bonus tracks. Why did you decide to add tracks off your later albums?
The record company thought it would make it more sellable and more commercial if they did that because very often fans like to feel they are getting a more complete package. I do think that Limb Music did a great job with the CD insert which had quite a few pictures. I also like the new album cover which feature Rhett more prominently. In fact I think that if that had been the original cover in 1984 it would have sold twice as many copies!!
Why didn’t you continue to work with Rhett on the next album which came out under the name of Jack Starr’s Burning Starr?
I met Mike Tirelli and he really blew me away and I felt that I could do something in a more epic style with him and Rhett after the Paris concert became more interesting in making his own solo albums.
By the way what is the difference between Jack Starr and Jack Starr’s Burning Starr? Why did you decide to switch the titles? Were they different projects or was it just a matter of marketing?
There are differences Jack Starr’s Burning Starr is a band, other albums that I have done under just my name are solo albums. The reason I put Jack Starr’s Burning Starr album comes from the lesson I learned when I was asked to leave Virgin Steele which I had thought was my band. I didn’t think it was possible to get kicked out of your own band but it happened so after that I thought I will always have my name in the band name that way I can never get kicked out again (laughs).
Second part of the interview is here.
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