BraveWords.com's Mitch Lafon recently spoke with LITTLE CAESAR vocalist Ron Young. Read the interview below:

Q: What happened to Little Caesar? The band vanished as quickly as they hit the scene. Was it simply bad timing or record company politics? Tell us the Little Caesar story...

A: "It was record company politics. We were the classic example of everything that could go wrong did. First the Kalodner and Bob Rock got into a tiff and we had to wait a year to record the album and went way over budget. Then 6 weeks into the release the label manager got fired because of a scandal with his secretary. Then our manager Jimmy Iovine got into a fight about his new start up label Interscope. Then the label got sold and they switched distributors and while we got on MTV heavy rotation, you could not buy the albums in the stores because they had not been shipped to the new warehouse at the new distributor. Then they let accountants take over to clean house and stopped supporting a lot of artists on the label. At this point all the egos got involved pointing fingers and they forgot there was 5 guys lives at stake. At that point the financial bleeding, politics and ego battles got overwhelming and we knew we were toast."

Q: Before splitting the band recorded an album or two of material that remains unreleased to this day. Are there any plans for that material?

A: "Actually that's not true. All we had recorded was some song demos that the label rejected for release. Everything else had pretty much seen the "light of day"."

Q: What led to the band reforming and recording Redemption? Is this a one off event or do you plan or re-establishing the Little Caesar brand? (More albums? Touring?).

A: "The band took a few years off years off after it all imploded. I had some personal demons to exorcise and we all had to scramble to recover from the debacle. We were family and never lost our love and respect for each other and were very much a part of each others lives. After awhile we started itching to make music together. We got into a cycle of rehearsing a bit, doing a few shows and going back into exile. We finally got tired of playing the older songs and started writing new material. Finally in 08 we decided to go back into the studio to lay it all down. We hope to keep the time shorter between records now and we are really enjoying just making music for music's sake. There are so many more outlets for releasing new music, we don't have to be at the mercy of a large corporation any more. It's great. We hope that the interest level will rise with the new release that will allow us to take it out of LA. The realities of touring financially are that it's damn near impossible to tour unless you are willing to travel with all your gear in a van, sleep 5 guys to a room, hump your own gear and do really shitty connecting dates, it wouldn't be fair to the fans or us. We are hoping we can run out and do better shows, in better venues, under better circumstances if the record can gain a bit of steam.... we aint 22 no mo!"

Q: What have you been up to the last 10 or so years? Did you stay in the music business or did you 9-to-5 it for awhile? If so, doing what...

A: "For 7 years I was the Production Manager for the Key Club in LA. I had the fortune to work at a great live venue with great owners and gear and being able to apply my experiences from performing into facilitating other acts creativity. I had a blast. I got burnt on that and decided to take my passion for metalwork to start a business. I design and fabricate metal and functional art pieces as well as build custom cars. I absolutely love what I do. It's incredibly creative and rewarding."

Q: Any plans to record solo material?

A: "I have no plans to do any solo stuff. The band is pretty busy now with the new release that is just about to be released through Rock Candy's new label called Grind That Axe records. We are the first release along with ENUFF Z'NUFF for over in Europe.

Q: Tell us a little bit about Redemption. Tell us about the writing and recording process.

A: "Redemption was an absolute pleasure to make. We took the songs that came about very organically over time and got ready to record. One good that seemed to hurt us in our early career (which is still odd to me) was that we were just a classic hard rock band. No teased hair, no make up, no frills or bullshit. At that time the music seemed out of place with the scene being dominated by pop based metal. There was very little blues influenced bands making a real mark. Even though that's the true roots of Rock, it seemed to go away. The fact that we can stay true to that on this record actually gave us freedom by not having to "reinvent" ourselves in order not to make a record that sounds dated. It's a fine line between "dated" and "rootsy". The fact that we are more of a classic rock with roots in the late 60's-70's bluesy genre allows us to be "nostalgic" rather dated. That's the upside to never being an innovative band LOL.

As far as the recording process, for the first time in our career we were able to do the kind of record we always wanted. We went into the studio with a nice compliment of analog and digital gear, where the room just naturally sounded good. We put up mics and started to play. We just wanted the listener to be able to close their eyes and see the band. We just wanted you to truly hear us. We didn't want to hide behind effects with performances that were made sterile because the focus was on the "production values". Back in '90 when we recorded the forst record, that's what we never had the chance to do. We kept telling the label that changes were coming in the music business. We said kids wanted and "alternative" to slickly recorded records that sounded like they went through a bombastic sterilizer. We lost that battle and while we were having our political and business nightmares, lo and behold here comes Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana getting to make that kind of record.

We also had a great Co Producer with Robin Holden. He's a great Engineer, a talented musician, and a really nice guy with a twisted sense of humor just like us. His input was invaluable on many levels by keeping us focused, being a good critic, getting great sounds quickly, and making us laugh."

Q: In 1998 - a Little Caesar album called This Time It's Different was released. Was that an official release if so, what can you tell me about it and will you make it available again for fans that may have missed it the first time out?

A: "That record was put out on Earl Slick's label. At that time he wanted to put a label together were he and other musician friends had an outlet to release material with more of a understanding of the musicians needs. We had a bunch of demos, live tracks and alternative versions of stuff laying around, so we decided to release them. I need to check on getting those tracks available for release. I owe Slick a phone cal, so this would be a great reason to retouch with him."

Q: You appeared in Terminator 2 with Arnold Schwarzenegger... Tell me about that experience. Have you done any acting since?

A: "In about 1990 Jim Cameron was in my circle of friends. I had done some music for his wife at the time Kathryn Bigelow's film in NYC a few years back and we became friends. When he did Terminator 2 he called me up and said he had a part for me. I think he just wanted to see me get thrown through a window and lay on the hood of a car for a few days with sticky movie blood all over me. I had a blast. I got to hang out with Jim and Arnold viewing dailies and screw around. Arnold is really nice and watching Jim work is really a sight. He's a perfectionist and a visionary."

Q: You played a small part in the history of KISS. Little Caesar opened for them back in the '90s. Tell me about that. Any great Gene or Paul stories?

A: "Right before everything imploded we got to tour with KISS for a coupla months. Gene and Paul have such a long relationship with each other and it's like watching a married couple interact. The love, the squabbles... especially the 2 larger than life personalities go head to head.

I'll always remember Gene coming into our dressing room after a few shows with them and he critiqued every aspect of our show. He had been watching off stage for a few nights. He did impressions of all our traits that he felt needed work on playing an arena stage. I really appreciated it. He was dead on the money. Here was the guy that invented arena rock helping us out to try and fill the stage. The fact that he took the time to watch and then council was was really appreciated."

Q: What's next for Ron Young?

A: "Doing interviews, shoveling shit from my horse corrals, and finishing up the welding on a chopped '41 Buick Super that I'm building."

Q: Time to plug - what's you web site.... how do fans get the new album.... etc.

A: "You can get a hold of us at Myspace.com/LittleCaesarBand... and look for the record on Grind That Axe Records in Europe or iTunes here in the States."