Guitarist Larry Gillstrom recalls Kick Axe being asked to write songs for Black Sabbath during Ian Gillan era

Larry Gillstrom recalls Kick Axe being asked to write songs for Black Sabbath during Ian Gillan era

Kick Axe guitarist Larry Gillstrom was recently interviewed by Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon for Canada’s The Metal Voice. Kick Axe were formed back in 1976 and ending up releasing four studio albums — Vices (1984), Welcome To The Club (1985), Rock The World (1986) and Kick Axe IV (2004).

Incredibly, Gillstrom explained that the Kick Axe band members were asked at one point to write songs for Black Sabbath during the latter’s Ian Gillan era. Gillan fronted Black Sabbath from 1982 to 1984 during which time the band released the studio album Born Again (1983).

Gillstrom indicated (as provided by The Metal Voice with slight edits): “… while we were doing [the] Vices album, we got the keys to the studio to go in and record some songs that were supposed to go to Black Sabbath with Ian Gillan singing. That was kind of what was going on at the time. [Producer] Spencer [Proffer] was going to be involved with that and he needed some songs and he asked us to try to write some. So we went into the studio with Hans [Huber] who was the the second engineer on our Vices album. We were just on our own and we we put together four songs and two of them were songs we wanted to actually do on our second album if they didn’t get picked up by Black Sabbath. And they didn’t get picked up because the whole Ian Gillan, Black Sabbath kind of didn’t work the way Spencer wanted it to work.

So we wrote the songs “Hunger”, “Piece of The Rock” and two other songs “Running Wild In The Streets” and another song that really wasn’t worth mentioning. But those three songs are all recorded. We did eventually release “Hunger” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stand On Our Way” which is a song we recorded with Randy Bishops. But “Hunger” and “Piece of The Rock”, we thought they’d be on our second album but when I went to LA and talked to Spencer, he said, ‘No, they’re already on King Kobra‘s album so….”.

You can listen to interview with Larry Gillstrom on The Metal Voice below:

Black Sabbath‘s “Zero The Hero” video (from Born Again video):

Kick Axe‘s “On The Road To Rock” album (from Vices album):