Donnie Purnell has not talked to anyone in Kix since the band reformed without him
Donnie Purnell has not talked to anyone in Kix since the band reformed without him
Kix guitarist Brian “Damage” Forsythe was interviewed by Hall Laurel for her book Soundtrack of Our Youth: History of Hair Metal Music, which was recently released and is available in Kindle and paperback formats.
Forsythe was asked a number of questions regarding Kix‘s reunion without main songwriter and bassist Donnie Purnell. Forsythe stated: “I talked to Donnie about six months before Steve initially called me. I hadn’t talked to him in 10 years, we talked about old times and it was cool. Then when Steve and everyone were talking about putting the band together, no one wanted Donnie involved so we went with Mark. Donnie hasn’t spoken to any of us since except Taylor who he sent a scathing email to for his involvement in our new record.”
In regard to what prompted Kix‘s reformation and the release of the critically acclaimed album Rock Your Face Off, Forsythe advised (with slight edits): “Steve’s band Funny Money and Ronnie’s band The Blues Vultures were doing shows together back east and at the end of the night Ronnie would jump up on stage with them and play a few Kix songs. It went over so well that the club owners were offering them a bonus to continue doing it. Steve then called me to see if I’d be interested in making a surprise appearance at one of these shows. That never came about but it got us talking about actually putting the band back together for a few “reunion shows”. That went so well that we continued on and the rest is history.
The new record came about through the Live In Baltimore DVD. We signed with Frontiers Records in Europe to have them distribute it and as part of the contract we were supposed to deliver a new studio record. They messed up on the handling of the DVD which turned out to be a good thing. It allowed us to get out of the contract and sign with Loud & Proud Records instead.”
In terms of how was it doing an album without Purnell who was the group’s chief songwriter back in the day, Forsythe stated: “That’s why it took us so long to finally decide to do a new record. We were worried about doing it without Donnie and weren’t sure we could pull it off. Luckily Mark had written some good songs. Some were on the heavier “metal” sounding side but we worked them out and got them sounding like Kix songs. My main concern was keeping it sounding like Kix so by bringing Taylor Rhodes in to it, it made it a lot easier to achieve that.”
You can read the rest of the interview with Forsythe at the Hair Metal Music‘s Facebook page or the book Soundtrack of Our Youth: History of Hair Metal Music.
Amazon describes the book as follows: “More than 450 pages celebrating the history of the hair metal / sleaze rock music era. Book includes more than 50 interviews with superstar musicians like Billy Sheehan and members of bands from Warrant, Twisted Sister, Winger, White Lion, L.A. Guns, Dokken, Danger Danger, Tora Tora, Junkyard, Dangerous Toys, Autograph, Pretty Boy Floyd and several others. We’ve done an extensive year-by-year breakdown of each year between 1981-2017. Also included are rankings of the top 1,000 songs of all time and the top 350 albums of all time. As well as several other features stories on the hair metal / hair band genre.”