ZEBRA To Release Long-Awaited New Studio Album, 'V', In November; First Single, 'Walk With You', Was Co-Written By PAUL STANLEY

ZEBRA, the legendary power trio consisting of lead guitarist/vocalist Randy Jackson, bassist/keyboardist Felix Hanemann and drummer Guy Gelso, will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year with the release of its long-awaited new studio album. Due on November 13, 2026 via Flatiron Recordings, "V" will be the band's first release of new material since "Zebra IV" in 2003.

ZEBRA's new album, which was recorded at Jackson and Gelso's home studios, was partially helmed by producer Jack Douglas, who previously produced the band's 1983 self-titled debut and 1984 sophomore effort, "No Tellin' Lies".

"V" track listing:

01. Dog Day Night
02. The Conqueror Worm
03. All Your Love
04. Walk With You
05. Love, Sex
06. I'll Be There Beside You
07. She's Waiting For You
08. Direction
09. Louisiana Way
10. The Last Time
11. Eulalie

Regarding how "V" finally came together after more than two decades, Jackson told Jimmy Kay of Canada's The Metal Voice in a new interview (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Our new manager Dave Rothstein kind of put the fire underneath us, and he suggested that we get back in touch with Jack Douglas. And that made a big difference. Working again with Jack was great and exciting. It's like we hadn't stopped. It's been 40 years now since we [last] worked with him, but it was just like picking up from back then."

Randy went on to say that some of the songs on "V" are older ideas which have finally been properly recorded for the new LP. "There's three of 'em," he explained. "There's one called 'The Last Time', which is actually the first original song we ever performed. There was a lot of songs we started playing along the way that we just threw to the side, but we always kept 'The Last Time'. It always worked. So we had never put that on a studio record, so we wanted to do that. And then there's another one called 'She's Waiting For You' that we put on the record, and it's about as heavy as we're gonna get. It's, like, people say, 'Oh, that band, they're heavy metal,' and that's the song. It's a great song, and people have been asking for it for a long, long time, and I think the version we did, people are gonna love."

Asked if ZEBRA is doing anything differently on "V" that the band hadn't attempted before, Randy said: "Yeah, there's several things. We've got several different writers that I wrote with for the record, even some songs from back when I was doing the CHINA RAIN that were never used for anything, and they were really great songs. And so we put a couple of those on there. I also did a couple of songs with Edgar Allan Poe poems and put them to music. And one of them is called 'The Conqueror Worm', which people may be familiar with, but there's another one that's called 'Eulalie'. And it's a love song. It's strictly a love song. When I first saw it, it was just strange to me — here's Edgar Allan Poe expressing his love for this woman, and there's no horror ending or anything like that. Nothing macabre about it."

He continued: "I usually don't write music around lyrics. I haven't really done that much. So this was kind of a challenge, especially because of the language and the way the sentences were formed and the words that he used, the order that he used them in, were not real familiar. But when I listen to it now, it worked out great — it really, really did. I'm taking the whole thing, 'The Conqueror Worm', pretty much verbatim from the beginning to the end. And the same thing with 'Eulalie'. And that's where the challenge was, to figure out, where's the chorus gonna be? Where's the hook? What do I do? But it worked. It worked. I had done it once before, with just an acoustic guitar for a guy named Dennis Daniel who had done a couple of Poe celebrations, I guess. And he had a bunch of people reading poetry on the thing, and then I just put it to music instead, instead of reading something. I put it to music, and now we got the whole band playing — drums, strings, everything."

On the topic of the musical direction of "V" and how it compares to previous ZEBRA records, Jackson said: "I'm gonna say that as far as ZEBRA records go, it's got a little bit of '3.V' [1986] in it because there's a lot of songs that have great hooks, nice choruses to 'em, but it's heavier than the third ZEBRA album. And I think people are gonna love the album. I really do. It's a variety without being too confusing."

Asked why he thinks metalheads always have traditionally loved ZEBRA's music, Randy said: "I think it's the influences of mine that I wrote. I think you can hear it in the music, whether it's LED ZEPPELIN or THE MOODY BLUES, and because of those influences, I think they notice it, and they like it. And even some of the mellower stuff the metalheads will still like. A good song's a good song, no matter what it is. And I can look back on all the songs that I wrote and be pretty proud that I'm not really embarrassed about any of them. [And it's also because of our] good musicianship. We've always prided ourselves on being technically good and not afraid to do anything or try anything. And our drummer Guy, he's fantastic, and we never have a problem with any timing issues, so we could be as crazy as you wanna be, or we could be as straight and just commercial as you wanna be. And between the two, I think it works. That song 'Direction' I was talking about is really a progressive kind of song. So for the people who are into the progressive side of ZEBRA, that's gonna be something they're gonna wanna listen to."

Randy went on to say that "V"'s first single, which is tentatively due on October 13, is a track he wrote with KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley more than three decades ago. "It's a song called 'Walk With You', and we wrote it back when I was doing the CHINA RAIN [side project] album, but it never made it to the record," he explained. "It was always a great song, but it was just one of those that, 'Well, do it on the next album' or something. And there was no next album. And going through the material that I had, I said, 'This is really good. We should do this with ZEBRA.' So I called Paul, got in touch with him, and he said, 'Yeah, that sounds good.' It was one session we wrote the song in. It was very quick, about two hours. I went to his place in Manhattan and had the song and made a demo of it and everything. That was, like, 1990, 1989, right around then. And, yeah, the song came out great. We did a demo. It was good. I still, of course, had the demo. And we just kind of went off of that. We changed the arrangement a little bit. Jack Douglas produced it. He loved the song. He thought it was great. Jack produced five songs on the record, and that was one of the five he wanted to do. He also did the… We were talking about Edgar Allan Poe earlier. He wanted to do those two songs. He really liked those."

As for how he came to collaborate with Stanley, Jackson said: "Honestly, I really didn't know him [before we worked together]. My manager at the time, a guy named Scott Ross, he put us together. He made the connection. And I don't really remember how he did that, but he put the whole thing together. And Paul knew of ZEBRA. I mean, we had opened up for them at that point down at the Superdome in New Orleans. And, yeah, we were on the local scene and they lived in New York, so they heard TWISTED SISTER and ZEBRA and all these bands. So they were well aware of us. So it was comfortable going there."

Asked by Kay if he was ever approached to audition for the guitarist position in KISS, Jackson said: "Well, I did go audition for KISS. Yeah, it was whenever they were looking for somebody after Ace [Frehley]. Was that '78 or something like that? So they had heard of me, and they flew me out to California, and I went in, and I'm gonna audition, but there's no band. It's just gonna be me playing by myself. And they put me with this little bitty amp. And I did what I could. I had learned a couple of the KISS songs, but they weren't even interested in that, you know? And it was very quick, and obviously I didn't get the call. But it was interesting, and I was flattered that they called me."

After Kay noted that Jackson was "overqualified for KISS", Jackson said: "Yeah, well, you can always play down, but you can't play up. So I think I could've handled it."

Randy also confirmed that ZEBRA has been working on a new documentary that will feature new interviews and performance clips from recent tours plus a lot more about the band's history. The documentary, tentatively titled "Tell Me What You Want: 50 Years Of Zebra", will feature never-before-seen footage from the band's birth in Louisiana, to spreading new roots and reaching legendary status in Long Island, New York.

"Yeah, we've been working on one for a couple of years, and I don't know that it's coming out," Jackson said. "It's not coming out this year, that's for sure. But hopefully it won't be 20 years."

Asked if the documentary will basically cover the entire history of the band, Randy said: "Well, no, we did one like that. It was called 'Zebra: The DVD'. And that came out years ago [in 2007]. And what we did this time, we just got different people now to be interviewed. And some of them are people we couldn't access last time. And we're doing interviews with people that were actually there at the beginning, friends of ours. And I think those are the most interesting of all because you get a real feel for what the band was like in the beginning, as opposed to us just saying, 'Oh, we had a great time,' blah, blah, blah. They'll tell stories. The stories are the best."

ZEBRA galloped out of New Orleans in early 1975. The trio concocted their moniker from a 1926 Vogue magazine cover and soon won over the South and East Coast.

ZEBRA's self-titled debut album, released on March 21, 1983, went gold, and at that time was the fastest-selling debut album in Atlantic Records history, thanks to the radio and MTV airplay of "Tell Me What You Want" and "Who's Behind The Door?"

In 2010 ZEBRA was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame and is acknowledged as Louisiana's No. 1 rock and roll band by the Louisiana Music Commission. On October 18, 2012 ZEBRA was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall Of Fame.