Jack Starr: Keep the metal burning! (pt. 2)

Here is the second part of the interview with Jack Starr (read the first part here) in which we discussed so called classic period of his solo band Burning Starr (1985—1989). 

After coming back from Paris you decided to found Jack Starr’s Burning Starr. Is it correct that the first line-up which played a few shows February, 1985 in L’Amjackour East and Stage Door consisted of Joe Hasselvander and Ned Meloni? Was Frank Vestry the singer?

Yes after the Paris show I decided to start Burning Starr. Our first singer was not Frank Vestry but someone that Ned and Joe met named Tony. We did a few shows with him and though he was good, it seemed that we were into different musical styles and perhaps Tony liked the West Coast vocals styles of Poison, Motley Crue etc., who were very popular at that time but not what we were looking for.

And how did you find Frank Vestry? Did you audition other singers?

Long Island is like a small town where everybody that plays music knows everybody else and so we met possibly thru John Rodriquez who was a bass player and recommended Frank Vestry and also Mike Edwards another bass player who worked at Sam Ash. So we jammed with Frank and he sounded great and was also a very good frontman.

Jack Starr's Burning Starr MK I

Joe Hasselvander quit to join Savoy Brown and why didn’t Ned stay to record the first album?

Ned and Joe were very good friends and lived in the same house and Ned didn’t want to stay in Huntington where I live without Joe. I would have loved to have both Joe and Ned on “Rock the American Way” but they had already left so I had to find other musicians

And again, could you tell me how did you find John Rodriguez and Tony Galtieri who helped you to record “Rock the American Way”?

John and Tony were great musicians with a great look and when we met we found we had a lot in common and the most important part was that they were both very dedicated to their playing

Greg D’Angelo, George Tebitis and Bruno Ravel also contributed their bits to the albums. Why did you need their help?

Greg was playing in the group White Lion and he was known as one of the greatest drummers and I thought it would be a good idea to have some guests on the album that people knew, Bruno Ravel was in Danger Danger and George was playing in the Good Rats at that time, For me and this is really the important reason is that Greg and Bruno understood how to make great radio friendly music and for the “RTAW” album I was hoping to get on the radio

Once you said “Rock the American Way” was too commercial but I think it was a great record, heavy but yet melodic metal. How do you see this album today? Was it a search of direction or was it a step into MTV’s territory?

It was my hope that this could be something that MTV would play but our record label did not have the power or the influence to make that happen, so it did not become a big hit like we all hoped it would be.

Why did Vestry, Rodriguez and Galtieri quit after the album? I know that Frank has released a few records after that but what happened to Rodriguez and Galtieri

All musicians have dreams and ambitions and they wanted to have their own bands and I understand that, of course if Passport Records had done more for the album and it had become a big success I am sure that they would have stayed and put their plans on hold, there is an old saying “Nothing succeeds like success”

We already discussed how David Defeis became the producer of “No Turning Back!” but what was his input in the final result? Did he tell you to re-arrange some songs, use different gear in the studio or something like that?

Dave had some great ideas and they were all used. One of them was the cool keyboard sounds at the start of “Light in the Dark” another idea was the start of the song “No Turning Back” and also he made some suggestions to add harmony guitar in the solo for “No Turning Back”. I think Dave liked working with Mike Tirelli in the studio. Maybe he saw in Mike something that reminded him of himself at a younger age

French version of "No Turning Back!"

There is a rumor that Keith Collins of Savatage fame was a member of Burning Starr for a brief period in 1986. Is it correct? If yes, could you tell me this story please?

Yes Keith Collins, an original member of Savatage, was the bass player for Burning Starr and appears on the front cover of the French release of “No Turning Back” where he is seen wearing a T-shirt that say “ Thumper Who” this was a little joke because Thumper was his nickname and that means one that hits things and Keith played the bass very hard like he was hitting it. He didn't really quit, but he didn't have any money at all and I couldn't provide all his needs, since he lived very far away in Florida and at the time I was living in New York. He decided he needed to go back to Florida where he had a home and a job at Thoroughbred Music in Tampa. Keith and I got along great and I thought he was a very skilled musician who played in a very heavy metal style. Keith was not interested in playing or showing to me or everyone how diverse or eclectic his playing was .He was proud to play metal and liked that I came from a similar background as he did and he saw some parallels between my first band Virgin Steele and his first band Savatage. And he was right in fact around the time of “VS 1” I had thought how cool it would be to adapt the music of “Hall of the Mountain King” and make it a metal anthem and several years later that is what Savatage did. He played on the live demos and helped create some great bass lines, so I thought he should be mentioned because of that. Also and this is the most important, Keith was in the band when “No Turning Back!” first came out, so when we had the photo session for the French album, he wanted to be a part of it.

How was it to work with Mike Tirelli in the studio? He had recorded an album with his first band but still was relatively young. Was his way of recording different comparing to Rhett’s way of doing everything in one take?

That is a great question because it made me think about the two and their differences and I realized that Mike is very much like Rhett and likes to do things in one or two takes and loves to improvise in the studio and take chances.

The band recorded “Fire And Rain” song by James Taylor. Was it your decision or was it your label and management decision?

This was my decision because I thought that it was a great song and it would show that Burning Starr was a very capable band that could play anything and make it sound heavy and intense and included a very mellow and soft song called “Fire and Rain”.

By the way, there is a video for “Fire and Rain”. Did it help you to promote the album? Was it shown on MTV or channels like that?

The video was shown on MTV and also for the MTV Sundance commercial which would play on “Headbangers Ball, Sundance was the biggest metal club on Long Island and it was owned by Frank Cariola who also became our manager, This club just had a big reunion and Frank was there and there were big pictures of all the bands that played there. It was the epicenter of the whole metal scene on Long Island and even now there is a Facebook page called Sundance Remembers.

For many people “No Turning Back!” is the essential album of Jack Starr’s Burning Starr. Would you agree with that?

Yes, and one of the reasons why that it was because I felt that I had to prove to the world that the music of “Rock the American Way” was not who Jack Starr was. I wanted to show that I could make epic metal like Dio and Queensryche and I was very determined to show the real me.

You re-recorded a lot of songs off the Phantom Lord albums on the first two Burning Starr records. Why was that? Were you short of material or did you want to give these songs a second life so to say?

I wanted more people to hear the songs but in a better studio and I felt that if I could re-record some of these songs than people would hear what they really sound like.

“Kerrang!” put the cover of “No Turning Back!” to their list of 50 worst metal covers. Were you upset with that?

No, I wasn’t upset with that. I didn’t really understand why they did that because the American cover that they chose was a picture of me playing the guitar and there was nothing really strange or weird or tasteless. So the only explanation I can think of is that maybe the writer that did that story was a fan and was looking for a way of putting Jack Starr in Kerrang that his editors would be okay with.

How did you get in touch with Alex Thubeauville from U.S. Metal Records who released this and a pair of your next records in Germany? Why didn’t bigger labels like Combat Records, Music or Nations or some majors show an interest in you?

We were on bigger labels like Passport and Roadrunner and “Virgin Steele `” is also Music for Nations One (it was the first album ever released by Music for Nations, the majors thought we were too heavy and maybe they didn’t hear any hits). I got in touch with Alex because I started to see that the real metal fans and labels were starting to come from Germany and I was getting a lot of fan mail from Germany and write ups in the German Metal Hammer where Mike Tirelli and myself were the poster one month that had Anthrax on the cover. We were also in Crash magazine — another big German metal magazine.

Did you play any shows with the line-up which recorded “No Turning Back!”?

We played a lot of show with that line-up, and we played as opening act for Motorhead, Cinderella, Manowar, Warlock with Doro and many many more. Some of the clubs we played included L’Amours in Brooklyn where we did a show with Anthrax and we also played L’Amours in Queens where we headlined our own show. We also played in clubs all over New York including the legendary Limelight and the infamous Cat Club.

You already mentioned manager Frank Cariola. Was he good in managing the band or would you prefer to work with someone more experienced in that field?

Frank was a very nice guy and helped us out a lot. He also financed my solo instrumental album “A Minor Disturbance”, when Mike and I were not playing he would pay us a salary because he never wanted us to have to work regular jobs, he wanted us to rehearse and write songs and pursue our art. I think that if a bigger manager had wanted to take over Frank would probably have worked out a deal with him. Frank was friends with a lot of very important music people.

The band with Frank Cariola

By the time of “Blaze of Glory” you finally found a stable line-up with William Fairchild and Jim Harris. How did you find them? And how did William get his nickname “Free Bass”?

During the time of “Blaze of Glory” it was our most stable lineup and we played the most concerts ever. Jim Harris was a friend of Mike Tirelli and lived in the same town. And as far as Free Bass he was a cool guy that hung out at Sundance and had great talent and stage presence. Sadly he got his nick name from the drug free base and also because he played bass and had a very freedom loving personality. I considered William Fairchild a true friend even though I do not like or use drugs but despite that he still respected and trusted me. One day he came to our sound check for the show we were going to do with Yngwie Malmsteen and he brought an ice cream for me and so I asked him, ”Why are you bringing me an ice cream?” And he said because I heard that Ritchie Blackmore said that, “You were the boy that never got his ice cream”, and he looked at me and said, “I wanted you to finally have that ice cream that you deserve”. I thought that this story showed what a great spirit he was and his love and respect for me and it touched me very much.

Was “Blaze of Glory” an album with anti-war message?

Yes, the whole album is an anti-war message album, especially the song “Blaze of Glory”. I thought that it was important to speak of things that matter and I wanted to touch on those themes. I didn’t want to write silly songs about girls in black leather with blonde hair driving fast cars, I wanted to make our fans think about the world and their place in it and how important the need is for countries and different cultures to appreciate and respect each other

CD-version of “Blaze of Glory” had two additional songs which also appeared on the next record. Can you comment on that? Were “Tear Down the Wall” and “New York Woman” recorded during “Blaze of Glory” sessions?

Yes, that is the reason why and “Tear Down the Walls” also was a nod to the Berlin wall and all the walls that people build to keep themselves separate and estranged from each other.

Why did you decide to resurrect “Go Down Fighting” from Virgin Steele’s EP “Wait for the Night”?

This was always a fan favorite at our live shows and I thought that Burning Starr played it with more fire than the original. I also thought in the years between the two recordings I had become a much better guitarist so I wanted to show the world what I was capable of doing.

JSBS during the Orange album times

Your next album was softer with prominent role of keyboards. Did you feel tired of power metal or was it a pressure from the label?

Yes, the album which we call the Orange album was softer but it was also quite melodic and powerful. It really has grown on me and now its; one of my favorites,

I guess that the band wasn’t gigging actively during 1987—1989. Why was that? Did you prefer writing and recording songs to playing them live?

No, that is incorrect. We played a lot in those two years, we were very active and I still have many of the posters and ads for shows that took place in those two years. In fact Burning Starr even played in Chicago at the famous Metro in 1988. This was during the time that we were getting a lot of radio on Z Rock and Chicago was one of the 16 big American cities that were receiving the Z Rock satellite signal.

What happened to the band after that? Did you lose your faith in Burning Starr and decided to do something else with other projects?

What happened is that I started to lose faith when this new music called Grunge came out and overnight it seemed that no one was interested in us anymore. So of course this was not good news and it made me reconsider what I wanted to do. And on a personal note I got divorced and threw my life into an upheaval. So I knew I had to make a change and wait and hope that maybe one day the music that I love would come back into style and it did. The last part of the 90’s saw a great new interest in metal and the musicians of the 80’s of which I was considered one. New labels in the U.S. were being born like Metal Mayhem and the great Sentinel Steel and also new fanzines were coming out and I was getting record contracts again. What was old became new again, a new age of metal was starting and again I was part of it.

To be continued.

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