WARRANT Guitarist Looks Back On 'Crazy' Tour In Support Of 'Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich'

WARRANT guitarist Erik Turner recently appeared on the "Talking Metal" podcast. The full conversation can be streamed below (interview starts at the 41-minute mark). A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the band's current tour:

Erik: "We're calling it the 'Dirty 30' tour in 2019. 'Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich', our first CD, record, cassette, album, whatever you want to call it — came out 30 years ago, so we're going out and playing... right now, we're playing nine songs [from the album]. There's only 10 songs on 'Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich', so I imagine by the time we get to [the] M3 [Rock Festival], we might be playing all 10 songs in order. We're having a lot of fun doing that, and of course, we still play songs off 'Cherry Pie', 'Dog Eat Dog', [and] we'll dip into some of [2017's] 'Louder Harder Faster'."

On the "Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich" hit single "Down Boys":

Erik: "We worked it out in a rehearsal. From 1984 to 1986, we had a guy named Mad Max [Asher] on drums and Adam Shore on vocals. Those guys quit in '86, and there was a band called PLAIN JANE which Jani Lane and Steven Sweet were in. We invited them to join WARRANT, and they did, thank God. Jani, the first song he brought in was 'Down Boys'. It was the first song we ever played together. It was not demoed — it was not on a tape. He just picked up a guitar and started showing us the riff, and by the time we got out of rehearsal that night, we had our first song. We played our first show, like, a month later. The first show we did was a combination of some PLAIN JANE songs; obviously 'Down Boys' was a brand new song; and then some of our older WARRANT songs that we'd been playing. Eventually, it evolved into where Jani was such an amazing, prolific songwriter. Obviously, by the time we made our first record, there was no stuff left over from the Adam and Max years — it was all new stuff."

On recording the album:

Erik: "I think we had, like, $250,000 to make the first record. We'd never had more than $200 in our pockets to our names before that. We spent all the money on the record. We each got a little bit of cash — Jani got a nice publishing advance, and he shared some of that with us. It was good — we're dirt poor making a record. I remember Jerry [Dixon] had to boil his bass strings, because I guess there was no budget to buy bass strings. Nobody had any money for bass strings, which is kind of weird looking back on it now. But it was a blast. It was good times — we had a record deal; we're making a record; we're living in Hollywood. We were big fish in a small pond on the Sunset Strip, and life was good."

On the touring the band did to support the album upon its release:

Erik: "The first little bit of touring we did was with Paul Stanley for three weeks. That was really cool, and kicked off what turned into 262 shows over a period of 16 months, all over the world. We were ready to be put in body bags at the end of that tour, we had partied so fucking hard. It was crazy."

On the band's rapid rise:

Erik: "MTV just latched right onto [us]. They latched right onto SKID ROW's 'Youth Gone Wild', their first video. We were the two new bands on the block in 1989, and MTV played the shit out of it. Eventually, we went gold on the first single, and by the time 'Heaven' was done, we were over three million records sold worldwide. It was a good run — what I remember of it. [Laughs]"

On whether the band is currently writing new music:

Erik: "There's some riffs going around, but right now, there's no demoing or actual songs floating around. There are a few riffs floating around, though, so who knows? Maybe in 2020 we'll record something and put it out in 2021, [but] who knows what's going to be happening in the music business at that point? I do know we like to make records — full-length albums. More than likely, if we do anything, it will probably be something like that, but you never know. We might put out one song, or an EP if somebody twists our arms. But knowing this band, we're just old-school, and if we're going to record five songs, we might as well record twelve."

WARRANT's latest album, "Louder Harder Faster", was released in 2017 via Frontiers Music Srl. The disc was recorded with producer Jeff Pilson — a veteran bassist who has played with DIO, FOREIGNER and DOKKEN, among others — and was mixed by Pat Regan, except for the song "I Think I'll Just Stay Here And Drink", which was mixed by Chris "The Wizard" Collier (FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, PRONG, LAST IN LINE).

Photo credit: Stephen Jensen / F3 Studios