LIZZIE GREY Talks About Playing With NIKKI SIXX, BLACKIE LAWLESS

Full In Bloom Music recently conducted an interview with guitarist Lizzie Grey (SISTER, LONDON, SPIDERS & SNAKES). A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Full In Bloom Music: How did you meet Blackie Lawless?

Lizzie: "When I was in my late teens hanging out in Hollywood at the Starwood and the Rainbow, I used to see him around. You couldn't miss him in his Elvira get-up while the rest of the city was sparkling glitter and glammed out to the max. The chicks all used to make fun of him, but I still thought he was cool, and eventually chatted him up a few times about rock and roll. It was around 1977 that we started working on SISTER together."

Full In Bloom Music: How did you meet Nikki Sixx?

Lizzie: "Blackie ran an ad in the Recycler for a bass player as we struggled to put SISTER together, and low and behold, Frank Ferrana, newly imported from Seattle, showed up at Blackie's place with girlfriend Angie Saxon in tow. She wouldn't shut up and he was pretty quiet throughout the whole ordeal. She kept telling us what Frank was and wasn't willing to do in a band and basically treating us like we were auditioning for her! Blackie didn't like him or her on sight, but I thought he looked like John Waite from the BABYS and had star potential. I convinced Blackie that we should give him a go. Soon thereafter, Frank and I were good friends."

Full In Bloom Music: It's quite humorous, that Blackie began kicking out members from his band way before he kicked everyone out of W.A.S.P. Why did he kick Nikki Sixx out of the band?

Lizzie: "SISTER went to record a demo down in the South Bay at some funky 8-track studio, and Blackie wasn't happy with the results. He was kind of a control freak when it came to recording, and he felt that Frank couldn't cut it. Soon after he fired Frank, I decided that the real problem was Blackie, not Frank, so I dropped by his house on Mansfield, where he was living with this punk band called the VIDIOTS, and asked him if he wanted to put together an over-the-top glitter/glam band and leave Blackie in his dungeon. It was a little bit after that we decided on the name LONDON for the band and Frank changed his name to Nikki."

Full In Bloom Music: It was in LONDON that the song, "Public Enemy #1" was written. Was the song written by you and Nikki or just you, at the time, and how much did it change by the time it was released on "Too Fast For Love"?

Lizzie: "I wrote the song, brought it into the band to work it up, and it became the centerpiece of the LONDON live shows. The version that appears on the 'Too Fast For Love' album is not very different from the original, except for the 'Oh yeah' chorus parts. To be perectly honest, I was a bit upset when I first saw the Leathur Records album giving me half-credit for my own song. I really didn't think much was going to become of the band or the record, though, so I didn't do anything about it. When I found out that Elektra was re-releasing 'Too Fast For Love', I immediately contacted the label and threatened a copyright infringement suit on the song. Shortly thereafter, I got a call from Nikki, who told me I could accept things the way they were or he could pull the song off the album. I decided that my ego needed to take a back seat to monetary considerations. The rest is history."

Read the entire interview at FullInBloomMusic.com.