Phil Lewis was really frustrated with Steve Riley not enthused about recording new L.A. Guns album

Phil Lewis was really frustrated with Steve Riley not enthused about recording new L.A. Guns album

L.A. Guns frontman Phil Lewis was recently interviewed by Metal Forces and spoke about the reasons why he left the L.A. Guns entity controlled by drummer Steve Riley at the end of 2016 and ended up joining the one spearheaded by guitarist Tracii Guns.

The following is an excerpt from the interview from Metal Forces with Lewis (with slight edits):

“I’ve got nothing bad to say about Steve Riley… We’ve done hundreds of shows together, great shows. We’ve recorded many albums together; the three albums that we recorded together without Tracii we’re incredibly proud of. It was just after that we had released Hollywood Forever (June 2012), one year, two years, three or four years went by, and I wanted to record another album. He wasn’t very keen on it; I couldn’t get him enthusiastic about going back into the studio, and it was like… I like recording, I like writing… I mean, I like the gigging and everything, and touring as well, but I got really frustrated. He was dragging his feet on recording, even before this reunion came about…

I had give my notice in with Steve, saying in October 2015 that I was going to be leaving on December [3]1st, 2016 after the New Year’s Eve show at the Whisky, which is exactly what I did. It wasn’t to jump from one thing onto another, though. As far as I was concerned, I was just gonna go out and put a solo band together, or even just go out and play solo acoustic. I was pretty much done, though, playing with the usual suspects and doing the same old circuit. I was a bit bored, so with this reunion thing, the timing couldn’t have been better.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Lewis at Metal Forces.