Special Report By Martin Popoff

Hard rock icons ALCATRAZZ are preparing tracks for a fourth album. Known for their three studio albums and one live album back in the early ‘80s, featuring three big name guitarists – YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, STEVE VAI and DANNY JOHNSON - the band broke up after 1986’s Dangerous Games, leaving as a legacy, most pertinently, their No Parole For Rock ‘n’ Roll debut from 1983.

Now they are back, even if vocalist GRAHAM BONNET is not on board, and a new guitarist, Stig Mathisen, is in the lineup filling some big boots. The rest of the band is original, consisting of Jimmy Waldo on keyboards and vocals, Jan Uvena on drums and vocals and Gary Shea on bass - a new vocalist will be announced shortly. (The band’s myspace page is www.myspace.com/therealalcatrazz).

“Gary and I and Jan, the drummer, have wanted to do something for a few years,” explains Jimmy. “And we tried to put it together in 2001. We tried to put it together with Yngwie, just basically a one-off, do a record, with Yngwie and Graham. And Yngwie was really cool. But he was just in a position where he felt he would need a lot of the money. And it just wasn’t realistic. And I understand his point - he’s a draw. And I said, well, let’s think about that. But in the meantime, let’s get moving on the music and on playing, and then we’ll work out the details before we turn on anything.”
“And then I called Graham, and we just couldn’t match our schedules. So there wasn’t any bad vibes. And I just said well, we can do this and we can all make some money and it will be fun, and we’ll make a great record. I told Yngwie I’ll fly to Florida, we’ll work in his studio and we’ll do it his way; I don’t have any problem working down there. I can stay in Miami for a month or whatever, I don’t care. And he and I must’ve talked ten times. We get along really good. There are no bad vibes at all. He was really honest with me, but it never worked out.”
“So Gary and I stayed in touch about it, kept talking about it, and I’ve been working with a guitar player out here from Norway, Stig Mathisen, an amazing guitar player, an amazing guy. More than a guitar player is his personality. He was a university teacher in Norway – classical guitar teacher, rock guitar, ProTools. He taught for ten years over there. He came over and is teaching at USC a couple days a week, and he’s taking classes there, going to get his masters. So we got together for a lot of different things over the years; but he was a perfect candidate for this. So I ran it past the guys and they thought it was a great idea. We wrote some songs, and Jan and Gary flew out here and cut some drum tracks.”
“Jan lives in New Hampshire and Gary lives in Detroit,” says Jimmy. “And I’m in Los Angeles. And Stig is in Los Angeles, the guitar player. So it’s really he and I who put the stuff together. We started working on it several months ago, where we were putting the songs together, and we had a lot of material, and are looking for a singer right now. And we don’t really want a Graham replacement. Maybe an unknown guy, really, someone that it isn’t pigeonholed where they think ‘Oh, why did they get a guy like this?’”

And for the record, why no Graham?

“Graham was playing with some guys and had a tribute band, doing ‘80s tribute stuff. And he started singing with them, and after he did that, they started calling that Alcatrazz, and they went to Japan and played a couple of clubs under the name of Alcatrazz. So Gary called Graham and asked him, ‘Why would you do this without asking us?’ And Graham had no answer, really. And they just do cover songs. They do some Alcatrazz stuff, Michael Schenker, Rainbow, stuff like that. And the truth is, I wouldn’t shut the door on Graham, but he wouldn’t be my first choice. I don’t hate the guy or anything, but I worked with Graham in a band after Alcatrazz. I had this band called Blackthorne, did tours and stuff, but that didn’t work out. I got Graham, I thought it was going to be really happening, but it sort of didn’t work out. I don’t blame it all on Graham. But I just thought, well, do I really want to go through that again?”

Referring to Alcatrazz and the demise of the original band in the mid-’80s, Jimmy chuckles that, “I go down with the ship. I keep going down with the ship, and there I was again, and that was it for me. After Alcatrazz I said, OK, no more ships with holes in them for me. So I changed my whole attitude, and that’s why this time, with the current lineup of Alcatrazz, we put this thing together, and it’s nothing against Graham personally. I don’t blame everything on Graham. But I know now, we all need to be on the same page, and have the same thing in mind. And for me, the Alcatrazz thing, honestly, we’re just going to do what’s good musically, we’re not trying to rehash the past – we just do what we do.”

“You know, all the Alcatrazz stuff is up on iTunes,” adds Waldo, in closing. “I have a label with my partner, called Stoneworks, so we put the stuff out, all the live stuff and studio stuff - it’s all up there. And New England is as well. The New England stuff, ironically, doesn’t do as well as the Alcatrazz stuff. For whatever reason, it’s not doing that well.”

So do you get a nice cut from these things when people do the download?

“It’s okay. A download is about 99 cents, and the band, our little organization, ends up with about 60 cents. It’s way better than a record deal, put it that way. Because the truth is, with a record contract, you’re getting 10%. But yeah, if you just go to iTunes, and just type in Alcatrazz, the name of the band, two z’s. There is another Alcatraz, but it’s not a rock band; it’s a dance label from Washington, and they had that name, and they were using it for a while with dance remixes, but it’s one z. But yeah, go there and it will take you there, and it’s cool. More than the money, it keeps people aware of the name and stuff, which helps when we get the record out.”

Again, the web presence for the band is www.myspace.com/therealalcatrazz.