Seminal punk icons DEAD BOYS were – bar none – the heaviest metal American punk band of the ‘70s. Their Young Loud And Snotty album from 1977 is unarguably a classic (check out OVERKILL’s cover of ‘Sonic Reducer’) and their second and last, We Have Come For Your Children, contained dark ballad ‘Ain’t It Fun’, famously covered by GUNS ‘N ROSES on The Spaghetti Incident?.

Now guitarist Cheetah Chrome is getting out and playing all the Dead Boys classics, with a couple different configurations, but most notably, with Joan Jett’s backing band, THE BLACKHEARTS.

“Yeah, it happened by chance,” begins Chrome, now living in Nashville. “I was coming home from a gig in New York and passing through LaGuardia Airport and I saw a couple of the crew guys sitting there (laughs). I said hey, how are you guys doing, and they said, ‘Well, Thommy (Price) and those guys will be along in a second.’ So we ended up both having to wait for planes. So we got talking, and he said, ‘Hey, why don’t you get the Blackhearts to play with you?’ So I got back and said, you know, I’m going to follow up on that, because we’re going to get some gigs in New York. So we got together, and talked to them about it, and here it is. You know, Thommy I’ve known for years; we worked together on RONNIE SPECTOR’s album. I’m known him for ages.”

In terms of Dead Boys tracks one will hear live, Chrome figures, “Mostly the first album. From the second album, you know, it’s not my favourite one, so, ‘Ain’t It Fun’ is probably pretty much the only one I play on that one. Sometimes ‘Calling On You’. The other ones were always like… that is Stiv’s kind of thing (note: vocalist STIV BATORS died in a car accident in Paris). Stiv enjoyed playing them. I like playing the guitar on them, yeah, but I’m doing the ones I like playing myself. So we are doing ‘Ain’t It Fun’ on this trip, and doing mostly stuff from the first album.”

With respect to recording plans... “I've got a bunch of stuff I've been recording over the past while. I've got a nice little project that I have in my basement and working on all the time. As long as what I'm doing, I thought I'd work away and put enough songs together until I can put out a record. And then I thought, well, why wait? I'll put up a bunch of different stuff on the site as MP3s, maybe sell them as iTunes, maybe do two at a time or something. Maybe get to the point where you can get the whole collection on CD. There are a lot of ways you can market yourself now without having a record company. That's what I'm interested in. I'm not interested in signing to a label, unless it's a one-off deal.”

What kind of guitarist are you? Is what we heard on these records the tip of the iceberg?

“Yeah, I would say so. I mean, people don't realize that I've been playing for 30 odd… no, 40 years. And I can actually play slide and finger picking (laughs). I play acoustic guitar; I can do a lot of things, a lot more than I do on stage. And a lot of the new stuff reflects that. I broke out the acoustic guitars and the slide and stuff, but it still has very much of a punk edge.”

Asked if there was a strong metal current flowing beneath and behind the Dead Boys – after all, the material is pretty damn riffy – Cheetah answers in the affirmative. “Oh yeah, a lot of those bands! BLACK SABBATH - I got their first record when it came out. All those bands… DEEP PURPLE, URIAH HEEP, the English ones, the first wave of metal. The ‘80s was pretty bad (laughs). But yeah, as guitarist, you had to respect that stuff.”

Right now, gigs are few and far between and in and around the east coast – But Toronto is in the cards for later in the fall. “I'm hoping to be up your way in November at some point. Doing a show up there. Probably won't be a Blackhearts gig, probably be THE SCREWED. But there will be more Blackhearts shows in the future. Other than that, watch my website for new photos and MP3s and all that good stuff.”

See www.cheetahchrome.com for more.