Guest writers on Quiet Riot’s new album ‘Hollywood Cowboys’ include Jacob Bunton and Neil Turbin

Guest writers on Quiet Riot’s new album ‘Hollywood Cowboys’ include Jacob Bunton and Neil Turbin

Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali was recently interviewed by Jimmy Kay for Canada’s The Metal Voice in order to promote the band’s latest studio album Hollywood Cowboys, which will be released via Frontiers Music Srl on November 8, 2019.

Yesterday, it was announced that Banali was diagnosed with and battling stage four pancreatic cancer. In terms of the responses since that announcement, Banali advised (with slight edits): “It’s been overwhelming the amount of love and prayers and support  that everyone has shared on my Facebook page and via text messages, emails, private messages and everything. I’m incredibly fortunate and incredibly grateful to have this much support from fans and Friends so thank you.”

With respect to whether his cancer diagnosis had a positive or negative impact on the production of the new album, Banali indicated: “When I had my diagnosis I was scheduled to start mixing that record with our engineer Neil Citron. Two days after the diagnosis I went  right in and sort of mixed the record. As dire as the prognosis was, to give you an idea of my mindset and my strengths is that two days after I did one of the rounds of chemo I was on the Western video set in the desert, really hot in wardrobe for 12 hours. And a month later three days after another round of chemo I was on on the set for the final day of shooting at a different location, so I just I just kept moving forward as business as usual. Unfortunately you know my doctors were very adamant to make sure that I wasn’t flying to show dates and that’s one of the reasons that I was unable  not able to do the shows with Quiet Riot.”

In regard to the guest writers on the new record, Banali stated: “What happened with the situation is that Neil Citron and I wrote the music to all the songs and I sent demos to our previous singer James and he found a comfort zone on five of the songs but the other seven he wasn’t comfortable. So I reached out to Jacob Bunton who’s an incredible singer and songwriter and he actually wrote the lyrics and melodies to, “Don’t Call It Love” and “In The Blood” (which is the video song), “Heartbreak City” and “Devil That You Know.” Oddly enough those four tracks were  the tracks that I had in mind to open up the record .

“Change Or Die” and “Insanity” were a little different than what you might consider the norm for Quiet Riot and there were a little heavier so I immediately turned to another friend (former Anthrax singer) Neil Turbin who wrote the lyrics and did the background vocals. Then there’s there’s an odd track on there which is uh a blues bass track that’s not like Led Zeppelin blues but more like a Robert Plant solo and the first person that came to mind is another really talented guy August Young, who wrote the lyrics and melodies to. And one of my fellow bandmates Jimmy Sakurai, he also contributed, I’m really happy with all  their contributions they’re they’re great songwriters, they’re great people and they also did background vocals to the tracks. I then sent those demos with their vocals and lyrics and melodies over to James and then he basically copied that.”

You can read other excerpts from the interview with Frankie Banali at The Metal Voice‘s website or listen to the interview below:

Quiet Riot Frankie Banali Interview- Talks New Album ‘Hollywood Cowboys’ & Health Status RIP

Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Quiet Riot Leader and drummer Frankie Banali. Banali spoke about his current health issue, his new…