Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Quiet Riot leader and drummer Frankie Banali. Banali spoke about his current health issue, Quiet Riot’s new album Hollywood Cowboys, and plans for writing another album.

When asked about his current Health Pancreatic stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis:

"It's been overwhelming the amount of love and prayers and support that everyone has shared on my Facebook page and via text messages, emails, private messages and everything.  I'm incredibly fortunate and incredibly grateful to have this much support from fans and Friends so thank you."

When asked if his Cancer Diagnosis played a role either positive or negative in the production of the album:

"When I had my diagnosis I was scheduled to start mixing that record with our engineer Neil Citron. Two days after the diagnosis I went right in and sort of mixed the record. As dire as the prognosis was, to give you an idea of my mindset and my strengths is that two days after I did one of the rounds of chemo I was on the Western video set  in the desert, really hot in wardrobe for 12 hours. And a month later three days after another round of chemo I was on the set for the final day of shooting at a different location, so I just I just kept moving forward as business as usual. Unfortunately you know my doctors were very adamant to make sure that I wasn't flying to show dates and that's one of the reasons that I was not able to do the shows with Quiet Riot. "

When asked about the guest writers on the new album:

"What happened with the situation is that Neil Citron and I wrote the music to all the songs and I sent demos to our previous singer James (Durbin) and he found a comfort zone on five of the songs but the other seven he wasn't comfortable. So I reached out to Jacob Bunton who's an incredible singer and songwriter and he actually wrote the lyrics and melodies to, ‘Don't Call It Love’ and ‘In The Blood’ (which is the video song), ‘Heartbreak City’ and ‘Devil That You Know’. Oddly enough those four tracks were the tracks that I had in mind to open up the record. ‘Change Or Die’ and ‘Insanity’ were a little different than what you might consider the norm for Quiet Riot and there were a little heavier so I immediately turned to another friend (former Anthrax singer) Neil Turbin who wrote the lyrics and did the background vocals. Then there's an odd track on there which is a blues bass track that's not like Led Zeppelin blues but more like a Robert Plant solo and the first person that came to mind is another really talented guy August Young, who wrote the lyrics and melodies to. And one of my fellow bandmates Jimmy Sakurai he also contributed, I'm really happy with all their contributions they're great songwriters they're great people and they also did background vocals to the tracks.  I then sent those demos with their vocals and lyrics and melodies over to James and then he basically copied that."

When asked about his future plans:

"Even though the new record won't be out until November 8 I've already started writing material for a future Quiet Riot record and I've actually laid down a couple of drum tracks. I just sit down and start writing and Neil is instrumental in the writing process and we've got a really great partnership in that regard.  I'm actually going to go check with my medical team for future shows, they've already green lighted me to go back out on the road in 2020. I just have to really schedule you know my treatments so that one does not interfere with the others but it's my intention to go straight back out into the saddle in 2020."