WARRANT's ERIK TURNER On 'Cherry Pie' Reaching New Generation Thanks To Hit Series 'Off Campus': 'We're So Stoked'

In a new interview with Australia's Today show, WARRANT guitarist Erik Turner spoke about the fact that the band's hit song "Cherry Pie" is reaching a whole new generation thanks to the hit Prime Video series "Off Campus". A college soap based on Elle Kennedy's bestselling book series, "Off Campus" follows an elite ice hockey team, and the women in their lives, as they grapple with love, heartbreak, and self-discovery — forging deep friendships and enduring bonds while navigating the complexities that come with transitioning into adulthood. The first season, which follows the sexy and fun "opposites attract" romance between quiet songwriter Hannah Wells and Briar University's all-star hockey athlete Garrett Graham, is reportedly now the third most-watched debut series of all time on Prime Video, with a combined 36 million viewers in its first two weeks. In the show's episode three, Hannah's karaoke performance of "Cherry Pie" becomes one of the show's most talked-about moments.

Asked if he knew "Cherry Pie" was going to be used in "Off Campus" before the episode aired, Erik said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I did not know they were gonna use it. My wife's phone started blowing up. All her friends were texting her. They're, like, 'Oh, we just heard 'Cherry Pie' on this TV show 'Off Campus' and all that, so we started watching it. It's a good show, and, of course, when we got to episode three, that's where she sings 'Cherry Pie' karaoke style, and it's great… But it's great. I'm glad that the producers and the actors and writers are having fun with it. It's awesome that they're not scared to get a little edgy, push the boundaries, and it's working. It's great entertainment. Everybody's having fun with it. We're having fun with it, and we're so stoked."

Asked if WARRANT is seeing a huge spike in streams and downloads due to the song's appearance in "Off Campus", Erik said: "I think so. We normally put out a video or something, maybe it gets 20, 40,000 streams. These streams we're putting out are, like, two million streams. So, yeah, that's really a big difference. And our Apple, our Spotify, everything's blowing up. So we're really grateful and we're really excited, and it's so cool that a younger generation is hearing our music. It's cool."

Erik was also asked if he sees "Cherry Pie"'s inclusion in "Off Campus" as "part of a resurgence in hair metal" now. He responded: "I don't know if it's a resurgence. We play, like, 50 shows a year. That's still happening. Definitely, with the Internet stuff, online stuff, there's definitely more interest in the band and the song, which is great. We had something similar happen with 'Guitar Hero II'. It's a video game, and all of a sudden all these kids are coming out with their parents asking us to sign their controllers. So this whole new generation, in 2000 — whatever it was, '07 or '04; I'm not sure — we saw a similar thing, but not nearly as big as this."

Back in 2018, Turner told Green Bay, Wisconsin radio station 94.3 Jack FM that he never gets tired of performing some of WARRANT's biggest hits, like "Cherry Pie" and "Heaven". "We always play it in a different place, [in front of] different people," he said. "If there's a lot of people there having a good time and you're having a couple of beers, it never, ever gets old watching people sing your songs and lyrics and scream and shout when you're done playing that song ['Cherry Pie']. Now, that said, if we rehearsed a lot, it would not be fun to play those songs in the room by ourselves — no, absolutely not. But you put yourself in that atmosphere and you get a response to, say, 'Down Boys' or 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', 'Sometimes She Cries'… we've got a bunch of songs… 'I Saw Red' and 'Cherry Pie' and stuff like that. So it never gets old, no."

During an interview that aired in May 2006 as part of VH1's "Heavy: The Story of Metal" four-part documentary tracing the evolution of heavy metal music and culture, original WARRANT singer Jani Lane stated about "Cherry Pie", "I hate that song. I had no intention of writing that song. The record was done. The record was called 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. And Donny Inner [president of Columbia Records] called up and said, 'I don't hear the single. You gotta give me a fucking single like 'Love in an Elevator'. I need something like that.' So that night I wrote 'Cherry Pie'. Sent it to him. He lived with it over the weekend. Then all of a sudden the album's called 'Cherry Pie'. The record's called 'Cherry Pie'. I'm doing cherry-pie-eating contests. The single's 'Cherry Pie'. Right? If I'm lying, I'm dying. And my legacy's 'Cherry Pie'. Everything about me is 'Cherry Pie'. I'm the 'Cherry Pie' guy. I could shoot myself in the fucking head for writing that song."

Speaking to the "Taz at Night" show on Kalamazoo's 92.5 WZUU radio station in November 2007, Lani dismissed his "Heavy: The Story of Metal" comments, claiming, "They [VH1 producers] just caught me on a bad day. It was a bad moment — I was going through a divorce, my mom had just passed away, all this stuff was going on — and they sit me down in a chair and wanna start grilling me with questions, and I didn't wanna be there, so… You know, push that interview to the side, I'm happy as a clam to have written a song that is still being played and still dug by so many people. It's hard enough to write a song, let alone one that sticks around."

Lane recorded several albums with WARRANT in late 1980s and early 1990s but left the group several times. The band's seventh studio LP, "Born Again", was released in 2006 and featured Jaime St. James as the lead singer. In 2008, Lane returned to WARRANT temporarily and toured with the group. In September that year, WARRANT announced that Jani had left again. The band replaced him with Robert Mason.

Lane died in August 2011 at age 47. Paramedics found his body in a Comfort Inn motel room in Woodland Hills, California, which is near Los Angeles. Lane had battled alcohol abuse for years.