2018.02.21 - Lock In - Interview with Dizzy

Transcript:

Jordan: Hey, hey.

Dizzy: Alright, let's get right to it, I'm hungry.

[laughs]

Jordan: There's pizza in this joint.

Dizzy: Let's get some pizza.  No, actually, I want to eat the fruits of my labor [reaching for a copy of his solo album vinyl and pretend to eat it]

Jordan: Straight to it! So we have Dizzy Reed in the house and we are absolutely stoked to have you down, man, here in the lock-in chair. I think it's been a couple of years since you've been in this here club, however, kind of feels like you've never left because there is a pinball in the house with your name on it.

Dizzy: Right, it's the Guns N' Roses pinball machine.

Jordan: What's it feel like to have your own pinball machine? To feature on a pinball machine?

Dizzy: You know, I think the Dizzy ball says it all.

Jordan: Have you been asked this question before?

Dizzy: No, not really.

Jett: Do you feel that is your highlight of your career when you become a piece of the pinball machine?

Dizzy: No, no, this moment right now, this is the highlight of my career.

Jordan: It's our presence.

Dizzy: Yeah.

Jett: Can I ask you, now, we all - whether we've turned into rock stars or not - we all as children put on some tunes and pretended to be a hero in front of the mirror, who was that for you?

Dizzy: Well, I didn't really go through that period, I actually just went straight to the stage.

Jett: Stop it!

Dizzy: When I was 10 years old I started playing in front of people and I formed my first band and we took it on the road and we started making money and all that by the time we're 11 to 12 years old.

Jordan: Really? What were you playing?

Jett: What was the name of your 10 year-old band?

Dizzy: Well, my first band was called - we went through a few name changes - the initial name was The Hairy Bananas and we had t-shirts and the whole thing, but we grew out of that rather quickly [laughter] and we settled on Bootleg. Bootleg was the name for our band.

Jordan: That's funny because right before this interview, just chatting about bootleg t-shirts and how they're sometimes superior to the official t-shirt [?]

Jett: Are you saying Bootleg is superior to Hairy Bananas?

Jordan: Yeah, well, look, I'm saying bootleg has its place and I don't want anyone to question that.

Dizzy: We took our name from the Aerosmith record [?] because we had paid a lot of money for it [?]

Jordan: Who did you dig, though? As a kid, like, what inspired you to start writing? I'm assuming these were a mix of covers and originals?

Dizzy: We wrote songs, we tried writing songs anyway. I think I wrote a song about Christmas called the Noel Jive. I don't remember how it goes. I'll never remember how it goes, so don't ask [laughs].

Jordan: Something about sitting under mistletoe... placing mistletoe-

Jett: He was 10!

[laughs]

Dizzy: I'm sure it actually... the song probably got a lot of laughs out of the class [?], I wasn't drinking midday beers back then.

Jordan: Yeah, and you said you were touring, this show was on the road?

Dizzy: We would go out on the weekends and play like out in places in Nebraska and Kansas and Wyoming. I grew up in Colorado, up in the mountains. We played Keggers, parties for bikers and stuff.

Jordan: Cuz something I wanted to ask you is how you adapted to, I mean, the first big-ass tour you were on with Guns was obviously the Illusion tour, [?] notorious for running for at least a couple years, riots, deaths, fucking rabid fans, into band craziness, I was gonna ask, how the fuck does one adapt to that lifestyle, but clearly you were versed-

Dizzy: I would just go into my hotel room, turn off the lights and I sit in the corner and go [mimicking praying].

[laughs]

Jordan: Is that a religious thing?

Dizzy: And they'd call me and they go, "Okay, we're going to the next show," and, you know, amazingly we would pass[?]. Yeah, you know, it was quite ride for sure but it was, you know, it was what it was. We're on top of the world and it was cool.

Jett: What was the strangest little-known moment of that tour that you remember?

Dizzy: I actually went into the future and did this program.

Jett: Get out!

Dizzy: I'm gonna go back [?]

Jordan: That's an episode [?]

Dizzy: I folded time, that's why I am here right now. I'm actually still on tour with Use Your Illusion right now. And this [picking up his vinyl again] I haven't even thought of this, yet. I haven't even thought of this, yet, it hasn't come out of my brain, yet.

Jordan: Well, let's talk about this since you are holding it.

Dizzy: I'm gonna get a head start [reading at the back cover] Now I know the song titles.

[laughs]

Jordan: This thing just dropped yesterday, right? And so this is obviously-

Dizzy: This is going to catch on fire [moving the vinyl away from candles]

Jordan: Things do catch on fire in this place, but it's always hair.

Dizzy: We're going to be on fire Sunday night.

Jordan: That's right, that's right, in a couple of days Dizzy's is launching this pièce de résistance live in Sydney. And only one Australian show on this tour, which is interesting, but you can to come back and do a bigger more expansive show?

Dizzy: Does one show make a tour or an appearance? It's a "special appearance".

Jordan: Special appearance.

Dizzy: Special appearance, it's not a tour, it's a special appearance.

Jordan: Special appearance to launch the album. And you dig vinyl or... have you adapted to the new digital space?

Dizzy: Yeah, digital, nah.

Jordan: You don't dig digital?

Dizzy: Well, no, I dig... I have no choice. You know, there is "dig" in digital, but there's not "dig" in vinyl, but I like vinyl. I like vinyl. Because I grew up on vinyl and there's a certain warmth to it, there's a certain feeling, I think the records that I grew up listening to were recorded and mastered to be on vinyl and I don't think they sound the same on, you know, digitally. And just as I think that, you know, when you recording music when it goes to two-inch tape I think there's a certain warmth there that you can't get when it's just straight to digital.

Jordan: That must be beautiful having an actual physical thing that you can hold, of your tunes also.

Dizzy: It is. It's a great thing to have something physical that I can hold that's not attached to me.

[laughs]

Jett: It's like a child.

Dizzy: Yes, more or less. [?]

Jordan: I got it. Cheers, to fumbling vinyl.

Jett: It's purple, as well.

Dizzy: Show them, some people might not believe it but it is purple.

Jett: And some people will be more inclined to buy now that they know it's purple.

[Jordan takes out the purple vinyl].

Jett: Yeah, look at that.

Dizzy: It was wife's choice and she made it, very good choice, thank you, Nadia. Good choice!

Jordan: She appeared on the album also?

Dizzy: Yes, she, definitely she did a great job, she added that texture that it needed.

Jordan: Well, it is one of a kind album of classic proportions that I haven't heard in a fucking long time. Were you sitting on some of these songs since you, like, a little guy? And desperate to get them out?

Dizzy: No, I think it all kind of came together a couple years before before we actually started tracking it, and a couple of them, maybe two or three of the songs we kind of wrote out of necessity, it was like, you know, "We need this type of song, we need a big sort of, you know, grand sort of epic ballad sort of thing," which was the title track. I wouldn't say that its grand or epic, I just like it. And Mystery In Exile, we needed a sort of a punk song which, you know, was the longest punk song ever written. We had to cut it down.

Jordan: It's a seven minute-

Dizzy: It's a mouthful, don't try singing at home, kids, it's a mouthful. So we wrote those sort of on the spot but everything else was demoed out... we just kind of needed to get it out of cyberspace and-

Jordan: Well I'm glad it is what it is because it's a bitchin' album, it truly is and it's now available for all to grab. On vinyl!

Jett: You just want to suddenly transport yourself to some outskirts American bars, "Hit me, hit me again!" and that's like the ultimate compliment.

Dizzy: Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Jordan: You're pretty familiar with the outskirts American bars coming off this latest tour with Hookers & Blow. Did you bring any hookers and blow?

Dizzy: No, it's hard to get through customs.

Jordan: It means unbridled rock and roll. And you're playing classic fucking covers.

Dizzy: We're playing cover songs and I will play the shit out of them.

Jordan: Yeah, and the personnel is incredible.

Jett: Oh yeah.

Jordan: It is really, really great.

Dizzy: Well, the latest lineup we had on this last run, and you have to understand we had our bus wrapped with the logo which is in cocaine font, which I invented, thank you - we're rolling through, like, you know, midtown America with that and we had Johnny Kelly on drums, who was in Type O Negative and Danzig, Alex Grossi on guitar from Quiet Riot, and Chip Z'nuff from Chip Z'nuff, and Don Jamison doing stand-up comedy before us.

Jordan: So keys have obviously always played a major part in classic rock. I feel like they weren't always celebrated as a personality within the band, though, you know what I mean? The guy playing the main riff in Van Halen Jump was not necessarily standing in front of Eddie or Alex Van Halen.

Dizzy: It was in fact Eddie...

Jordan: Okay, well terrible example.

Dizzy: He couldn't do two things at once, so yeah, he... they, I should say, like a lot of bands at that time, had a keyword player behind a curtain or underneath the stage or off to the right of the stage, or to the left, or "out of the spotlight, please."

Jordan: So was it your alliance with whoever were the big dogs in the Gunners camp who sort of said, "Hey, fuck this, let's make Dizzy a bonafide personality in this act, let's give him his own fucking thing on the pinball machine, let's get him up talking, let's get plenty of frames of him when we're filming this live DVD Tokyo 91"? How did it happen?

Dizzy: I gotta give Axl credit for all that, man, you know, he wanted me in band and I think he saw that I really wanted to be a part of the band and - I'm not saying that the other guys didn't want to put me behind the curtains, I don't know that for sure, I didn't say that for sure, we're doing a little bit of talk of possibly me being a little bit like my head poking out of the stage like this, maybe. But Axl I think saw how badly I wanted it and wanted to be a part of the band and wanted to add to it. I give him all the credit for that and I'm happy to be, you know, if not the first guy, one of the first guys to actually be on stage, be a part of the band and hopefully I opened the door for the other keyboard players that came after me. We add to the music when we can and I think it's always an important part of it and that's cool, let's drink more beer.

Transcribed this.