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With
his new project Tony Harnell and the Mercury Train riding high at the
moment we catch up with the man himself to find out more about this
project and what the future holds.
MM
- Firstly thanks Tony for taking time out to take part in the interview.
Tony - Sure no
problem.
MM
- Secondly congratulations on the superb album 'Round Trip'.
Tony
- Thank you so much, I really appreciate that.
MM
- So Tony Harnell and the Mercury Train, how did the whole thing come
together?
Tony
- Well it was a very organic way in the way it all fell together.
These guys were
friends of mine in New York City and I’m in a place in my life where
all the hard rock musicians that I had been really really tight with
have either moved on or moved away. They're not playing any more or whatever the case may
be. So as I’m still in the game I hang out with a
lot of different artists and these guys were friends of mine, not from
the Hard Rock community, but a couple of the guys in the band are fans
of my music when they were younger and now they play different things.
Anyway, we just hang out.
It all kind of fell together because I wanted
to do some shows. I was going to see them perform in their band and the
energy and vibe of the smaller venues in New York City, that are mainly
for singer songwriters, very simple bands, and I wanted to see if it could
work for me to strip my songs down. I knew I would have to hand pick the
rights songs, but I wanted to see if it would work, if I could strip them
down, if I could pull it off playing in one of these places, and would the songs
stand up?
So I grabbed these guys and we rehearsed.
I played around
with the songs and I very carefully chose the songs I wanted to do, so
then we did a few shows. Serifino from Frontiers Records heard about the
shows and offered me a deal to do a live acoustic album. I said well
it's
not really an acoustic thing ... yes there is an acoustic guitar but
there’s also drums and an electric guitar, but overall it is stripped down.
It is
completely different. The songs sound very very different. So I said
that I
wanted to go into the studio and do a proper album. That’s how it all
spawned.
MM
- The name Mercury Train, how did the band come up with that tag?
Tony
- I was trying to think of names and I have a buddy Derek Mead who
actually designed the album cover for me. He did all the photos for
the album, the digi pack cover that you see online. He’s a great guy
and been a good friend of mine for many many years, probably 30 years.
He’s great with names and logo’s and ideas so whenever I have
something that I need, I always call on him and he always comes up with
great album titles and band names, and he didn’t disappoint this time.
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We went back and forth quite a bit and I guess he was just poking about
a bit on the web and he found this reference to this project in the
1930’s in New York called “The Mercury Train”.
It was an actual
existing project that was supposed to be a high speed train to take
business men out from Manhattan out to the suburbs. You can look it up
on Wikipedia, there is a real cool picture of the train. It was a really
big project that had a lot of money behind it but for whatever reason it
never happened, but as soon as he said the name I said ... “That’s the
one”!
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MM
- With such a big back catalogue to choose from how did you decide on
the final tracks for ‘Round Trip’? Did you pick tracks that
you thought would be easier to rework than others, or did you pick tracks
that were a little more obscure?
Tony
- It was combination of things. I mean I always feel pressured to do
songs like ’10,000 Lovers’ and ‘Intuition’, but one thing I must
say is that ’10,000 Lovers’ is a load of fun the way that we do it and
that’s the only reason why it's on there. If it wasn’t so unusual and
so different from the original I definitely wouldn’t have had it on
the record.
I really struggle with the pressure I feel to perform those
live and to include those songs when I do something like this. Of course
I respect what those songs did for my career and TNT and so forth, it
was our biggest hit, but if it didn’t turn out the way it did then it
wouldn’t have made the record.
As far as the other songs it was really
a matter of finding songs that would go with this kind of band. There
were some songs that I didn’t need to hear the band play, I just
knew they wouldn’t be right. Maybe I might have been wrong and given
them more to see what would happen. My goal here was twofold, it was
kind of to just put the songs in a different light to showcase the
lyrics and the melodies. I didn’t want to compete with the original
recordings, they're amazing. TNT is just as much about Ronnie as it is about
me and Morti. The thing is, it was a very important sound that the band
had and I
didn’t want to compete with that, I just wanted to showcase the song
writing in its purest form and I also wanted to showcase songs that just
didn’t get the full attention they deserved the first time round, like you
said.
| I went through the catalogue and
a great example of that is with
‘Somebody Told You’. I think on this album it showcases the song
more than I think the original TNT version did. Yes I still think the TNT version is
great, but I think this version captures the essence and the bluesy vibe of
the song much better than the original did. Also ‘Northern Lights’
is another example. Even though it’s an older song, the band
always thought it should have been released as a video and a single.
We
always thought that song could have changed the course of history for the
band, had it been released as a video and a single. So I wanted
to revive that one and get that some attention again, because I thought
it would hold up as contemporary song. I thought the song would stand
the test of time stripped down.
We totally stripped it down to just an
acoustic guitar and a vocal.Yes there were a lot of goals and a lot
of reasons for doing this album, and the interesting thing about it, a
lot of those reasons didn’t really reveal themselves until we were way into
the record. The album was done under extraordinary circumstances, which
I’m not going to talk about at this moment in time, but I will soon.
It was the death of my mother and some really heavy personal things too,
so the album was quite a cathartic and spiritual experience all the way
through. |
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| It really developed as it went along into what it became.
Had it all been recorded all at once very quickly, the way it was
originally planned to, I
really don’t think we would have had the same album as we do today.
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MM
– Is that the reason for the title 'Round Trip', you're rounding off
what you started?
Tony - Yes, it's kind of like
that. Life is full of
circles, I know that’s been said many times, but everything has to
come full circle. I’m moving on. I want to move on to different
things. I still want to play Rock, I still want to play Hard Rock, I just don’t
necessarily want to play it in the same dressing like I did before.
I
want to explore new things.
So this record is just a way for me to
remind people how good the songs were and show them in a different light
by closing the circle. Closing the door on the past in a very positive
way. By saying ... here’s this record, I hope you enjoy it .. and I’m kind
of done with this era of my life. I think of it as time moves
forward. I’m not saying I’m not going to play TNT songs live, I most
certainly am because they are as much my songs as they are
anyone else’s. They belong to the fans as I say in the liner notes,
but I’m certainly not going to base my moving forward on my past.
Yeh
that's a bold statement, some people might say I’m dissing it but I’m
not, I’m very proud of what we accomplished and I’m super proud of my
past. I think we accomplished more than others and I think we’re a
little disappointed we didn’t accomplish more, but we did accomplish a
lot and I’m super proud of what we did. I’m proud of our
albums and our music, but there comes a time when you have to explore
different things as an artist. Yes I might come back to that sound
but for now this is me taking a big chance and moving forward to see if I
can stand on my own merits.
MM
- Yes some people will never let the past be just that. I recently spoke
to Jon Oliva and he gets that with the whole Savatage thing and Jon says
... that was the past, this is what I’m doing now, this is me going forward
... and you're doing the same.
Tony
- Yes, I’ll never be a part of TNT again, those days are definitely
gone. With that in mind I don’t really want to go out and try to play
a TNT show. Even when I played the Norway Rocks Festival recently, I felt
that the audience responded more to one of my new solo songs and I
really regretted having so much classic TNT in my set. It was only
because it was expected of me by the promoter. He’s a great guy and
I
know why he did it and I agreed when he asked me to do it, but after doing
that show I realised that some of classic TNT songs aren’t going to
work with anyone else playing them, except Ronnie and TNT, even though
I’m singing them.
The great thing about
'Round Trip' is that these songs
actually sound more suited to being played this way. So when people
hear them
they’re not expecting all fanfare and all of the same guitar stuff
that you
got with the TNT versions.
MM
- Yeh, take 'Satellite' for instance, that new version has a real bouncy
summer feel to it and the ukulele gives it that altogether different
feel.
Tony
- Yes. It's kind of funny, there are three songs that we didn’t plan on
having on the record. Once again the success of the album and how it
sounds is based on the time I had between the recording of the
music. I took about a year away from it and when I came back to the record
again, that time in-between made all the difference in the world,
because when I listened to the songs we had, I thought it wasn’t quite
right. So I took a few songs that the band had recorded and put them to
one side and I asked my guitar player to do just a simple acoustic
version of ‘Northern Lights’.
I also had this idea for ‘Satellite’
because I love the ukulele and I'd heard this new Train single ‘Soul
Sister’ and immediately I thought about 'Satellite'. I thought the ukulele is
going to sound perfect on that song. He’d never played the ukulele
before so he went out and bought one and then when he started to play it and he
said ... ‘Yeh, you're right, it's perfect on the ukulele!' ... so we recorded the
track and I added some percussion in my studio. I think it gives it a
real old fashioned vibe.
MM
- Sandi Saraya duets with you on 'Shame', how did she get involved with
the album?
Tony - She and I have been friends for
years. We actually met around 1988 or so. We were signed to the same
label and we had the same A&R guy at Polygram/Mercury. She was also
a fan of TNT and when we met we hit it off and became really good friends
and we stayed friends for quite a long time. We sort of lost touch in
the 90’s and Facebook brought us back together as it has for many many
people across the planet. I happened to be taking her on the phone
and
I said ... 'Are you singing?' ... she said ... 'Yeh, I sing in church at the
weekend'. I
said .. 'oh cool, do you want to sing on a song with me?'. I said
... 'I
can't pay
you, I don’t have a budget'. I said I’ll arrange a studio for you,
because she’s living California. I said I’ll arrange a producer so
all you have to do is show up and sing like a duet and I’ll give you
some direction. She said ... 'Absolutely, I want to do it. I don’t care
about the money, let's just do it'. I think it was less than a week
after that phone conversation that she was in the studio singing the
song. It sounds beautiful and she’s singing better than ever.
MM
- Stepping away from the 'Round Trip' album for a moment, you're doing
the Queen Symphonic in November throughout Spain, how did that come
about?
Tony - I was just contacted. I get contacted to do
things probably every week and I’d say 90% plus of them are things I
don’t what to do for whatever reason, maybe its time, maybe its not my
kind of music or the right project, but this was just one of those
things that sounded interesting. All these things are a leap of faith,
you never quite know what you're going to get. I don’t know the people
behind this, but we took a while to hammer out the contract and they were
really great about it. We came to an agreement that’s really good
so hopefully it will all sound amazing. I know there are going to be a
few rehearsals before we start.
I’m excited about it, I love Queen, I
love Spain and it's kind of "in their hands", it's not my
production. I’m
going to go and sing the best that I possibly can. It’s definitely
huge shoes to fill singing Freddie Mercury songs. The best thing about
this project is that it's not a tribute project, we're not trying to look
like Freddie. I’m not going to grow a moustache and wear little
yellow shorts (laughs).
Freddie’s up there as one of my all time
favourite artists along with Paul McCartney. They're big shoes to fill as I said
and I
just hope I can do the songs justice, and with a symphony behind me
that’s really the experience I want to feel, having that power behind
me.
MM
- Another thing I’ve noticed your involvement in is the "Artistshare
for Songwriters", what’s that all about?
Tony -
Sometimes you find things, it was an experiment, with the music business
these days you’re always trying to find new ways to reach the fans. We
have this incredible wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful thing
called the Internet, which is simultaneously doing wonderful things for
bands these days and also destroying music with the free
downloading. But it’s a tool you have to use these days.
So I was approached to do
something with a couple of other songwriters, one was Chris Barron of the
Spin Doctors and a couple of other songwriters. It was basically people
buying into the project and watching the process of writing a
song. They get various updates and at the end of it they get a demo of the song
and it's just for them.
We're just about to present them with the song we
wrote. Again it's an experiment, it was interesting that I don’t know if
I’d do that exact thing again, but I’m glad I tried it, because like I
said you’ve got to be open to all these different ways of reaching the fans
MM
- You briefly touched on your favourite artists and this year saw the
passing of one of Rocks greatest vocalist Ronnie James Dio, with many
vocalists recalling Ronnie as one of their idols, yourself included,
what impact did Ronnie have on you as young vocalist?
Tony -
When I was about fourteen or fifteen my best friend in school was a
guitar player. We used to ride skateboards all the time.
Actually I was
a pro-skateboarder for a short period of time when I was fifteen. I was
very much into that life-style, riding skateboards, surfing, listening to
music, because l lived in California at this time and my friend was into
this music that I hadn’t been exposed to. I listened to the bigger
bands and radio stuff a lot but he was into this stuff that was a little
deeper and off the radar. I just asked him for a couple of albums
that for him really represented the music he was listening to and he
gave me 'Rainbow Rising' and he gave me a Judas Priest album 'Stained Class',
because this was the 70's at the time and I just listened to those two
records over and over and over again.
I fell for both albums and singers
equally and that was when I was at the age where I was taking
driving lessons. I eventually got my first car when I was sixteen and
those two albums were blasting in my car all the time, I was always
singing along to them. So Dio and Halford were my early Rock influences
that actually prompted me to become a singer. So I would say that Dio
was one of the key influences that made want to be a singer for
real. I’ve been singing all my life, I love a lot of different artists like
Queen and the Beatles, but it wasn’t until I heard that music that I
really got prompted to do that sort of music.
MM
- Getting back to Tony Harnell and the Mercury Train, is the your main
focus now, or is there going to be more from Westworld or Starbreaker?
Tony - Well I’m actually working on some new songs right now.
I’ve got a bunch of songs that are real close to being finished so
I’m deciding right now what I’m going to do. We already started
shopping around for a record deal. I did some demo’s a few years
ago
that I never shopped to any labels, because I just didn’t think the
package was ready yet and the songs weren’t ready yet, but I thought
the demo’s were great and I wanted to fans to realise what I was
working on and what direction I was going.
I’m thinking about a lot of
different possibilities. I’m thinking about releasing a single
digitally on the internet. If I do land a record deal that works, if
there is a company that I really make a connection with, then that would
be amazing, but I’m definitely preparing new music and I would love to
take Mercury Train out on the road. I would also love to do an all original
album with these guys.
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MM
- That was my next question, as well as the 13-revamped songs there is
one original song, is this a taste of what we can expect from the second
album?
Tony - You know every song that I do I regard is a
snapshot of a moment in time and I don’t think my future music could
be reflected in that one song. It's just a simple little song I wrote
with Brandon the bass player in Mercury Train, who's a killer songwriter.
It was a song we had lying around and it was recorded a couple of years ago
before we recorded this album. When I was finished with the album I
thought it would be cool to have one original song on the album and it was
a demo we kind of fixed up a bit and put it on the record. It
doesn’t represent anything else other than it was a cool song that I wanted
to include on the album. I think going forward my music is going to
cover lots of different ground. |
| That’s my goal and if that ground is
covered by one record or a couple of records that I put out over the
next few years then great.
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MM
- So you’ve said you want to take The Mercury Train on the road, I
think the band would make a good intimate venue band, maybe in the bigger
pubs and clubs.
Tony - Yes that’s something we’d be open
to those kinds of possibilities. We are a six piece band including
myself so it's not one of those things you could easily take out
there. We could do a stripped down version and not bring the drummer and so
forth, but I think he’s such an important part of the whole vibe,
we’d have to bring him. The whole train has to come.
MM
- Yes you can’t leave the engine!
Tony - That’s right.
MM
- Where does Tony Harnell go from here, do you have a plan or are you
taking things as they come?
Tony
- I definitely have a plan, in this business you have to do a bit of
both. You have a plan and you follow it, but you also take things as the
come along as well. Take the Queen thing as a good example, if I hadn’t got
involved I would be working 100% on my new solo album, which of course I
am, but without having that looming in the foreground that becomes a pretty
big deal. Between now and October I’m hoping to be working full out
so when October comes, I’ll be pretty much working full time on the
Queen shows. That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t released a full
fledged solo record yet, when you're working on things as a full time
musician if something comes along you have to do them, they pull me to
the side.
MM
- Yes with the way the music business is today it’s become a dog eat
dog world and you have to take on more things to make ends meet.
Tony
- Yeh. It’s really kind of sad to see the things that are going on in
this business. A lot of people seem to feel that I belong to this
Melodic Rock genre. I think this whole genre was started off single
handily by this fellow Andrew at MelodicRock.com. It think before him
there wasn’t really a specific genre and it’s a really interesting
kind of world. The fans are very dedicated and there is only a handful
of people running the whole thing. I think we all know who they are,
one of them is in Australia, one of the is in Italy and there is couple
in the UK, and they are all keeping this thing going. You said it was dog
eat dog, what’s sad to me is that as small as this genre is, there is a
lot of in-fighting. There are a lot of unfortunate press releases and
things, someone attacking an artist, or you have an artist attacking
someone from a label or a promoter. It's always back and forth and back
and forth. It’s a shame in such a small genre but it's eating itself
MM
- Yes I know what you mean, I’ve seen those press releases and things.
I try to keep out of the politics of it all and I agree with you
totally, it is
eating itself away from the inside.
Tony - It is really quite
sad
because there are a lot a really talented musicians in there, but
unfortunately the almighty ego takes over sometimes and people get their
feelings hurt. The business is being run by fans at this point and I
think it's great because they’ve kept it alive, that’s a positive, but
the downside is that there isn’t enough professionalism in the genre.
We get these wild and crazy press releases and press fights and all this
kind of stuff, and I think people from outside the genre, let alone those
inside could easily take a peak inside and say who are these buffoons.
MM
- Yes exactly, as you said they are eating the genre away from the inside.
Tony - Yes they
are all complaining, saying that not enough bands are making good enough
albums, or well produced enough albums, or whatever the problem might be.
Then you’ve got all this downloading within the genre itself, then all
the infighting and we sort of look at it and say ... gosh if all this
negatively would just go away, if people could just rise above it, if
only people
could be a lot more professional about it.
Things go wrong everyday in
the music business, things happen, somebody can't do this or can't do
that. An agreement is made. It happens all the time. You fix it, you
handle it privately, you put out a classy press release and move on.
That's
what all the bigger people in the real music business try to do, they
try rise above it.
I’m not trying to beat this little market up but I
think if the people running it were able to step a couple of notches
above and occasionally look a little more professional and try keep
things above board and not to let things get personal and vindictive and
nasty, we'd see this rise up, because
there is a lot of talent in this little pool, there’s a lot of talent
swimming in this pool and it should be a lot bigger.
MM
- Yes, if people put as much energy into the positive as they do the
negatives, things would be a lot more rosier in the scene for sure, it
could be as big as it was in the 80's.
Tony - It may
not get that big but at least it would be very well respected,
instead of looking like a bunch of people who have nothing better to do
than sit behind their computers and ... you know!!! And most of the fans are
lovely. I’d say 95% plus of the fans, the bands and the people that are
trying to make it work are doing an a amazing job and they are awesome,
but there are just a few out there spewing out negative stuff. Like you
said from your lips to gods ears ... “if they put all that energy into the
positives as they did the negatives" ... the whole thing would be a whole
lot better
MM
- Like I say, we try to keep out of the politics of the whole
thing.
Tony - Yes, I’m trying to touch on it without
touching on it.
MM
- Well Tony it’s been an absolute pleasure and thank you for taking
the time out.
Tony
- No problem, thank you so much, it’s been a pleasure talking to you
and hopefully we can get together in the UK very soon.
Check
out these sites for more information on the band - www.frontiers.it and
www.tonyharnell.com.
We'd
like to thank Tony for taking the time out to chat with us today, and
hope that the Mercury Train will come rolling into these shores one day.
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