Sweden's Metal Shrine recently spoke with legendary guitarist JAKE E. LEE about his new band, RED DRAGON CARTEL. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

Q: Now that the new album is out and people are writing about it and you´re talking to a lot of people, do you kinda regret not doing this sooner?

Jake: "No, no regrets. I was very content with having nothing to do with it for the 15 or 20 years that I didn´t. Now seems right. It seems like if I´m ever gonna do anything it should be now in my twilight years. In the late 90´s early 2000´s, I wasn´t cool. To be Jake E Lee was to be lumped into hair metal or at best blues rock and musically I´d already done those things and I wanted to expand somehow and not be confined to that. The industry was only gonna relegate that to me at that time. Now it´s been so long and I´m such a wild card whether I´m gonna do anything or not and now it feels more freeing as far as I can do whatever I want and not have to conform to somebody´s preconceptions on what it is I should be playing."

Q: Still, there were a lot of musicians that went through times when their name wasn´t as exciting anymore and still they kept playing and doing their thing, but you just kinda left it all?

Jake: "Yeah, yeah, that is an interesting observation that nobody else has made. I think that my motivation for doing this is solely about the music and the music is entirely how it makes me feel. I started playing piano when I was six because I asked my parents to buy me a piano because I felt that I needed to play music. If you believe in that kinda shit, I think that´s why I was put on earth. 'Here you are, you´re gonna make music!' My motivation was never about being popular, it was never about money and it was never about particularly pleasing the masses. It was about music and what it meant to me and just making an artistic expression. A lot of my contemporaries in the 80´s and early 90´s… I can´t speak for them, but I don´t think their motivation was so much making something they felt was an expression of art, so much as remaining contemporary or making money. I´m not bemoaning them as far as being 'Sure, you should be able to make some money and make a living,' but to me that was never what music was about. It was about doing something with integrity and with some meaning to somebody, as opposed to 'Well, I need to pay this month´s rent.' A lot of people kept on going, but by the early to mid 90´s I realized nobody was gonna take me seriously as far as what I had to offer and I felt like I had to offer, but everybody was pigeonholing me as far as that being a hair metal guy or at best a blues rock guy. I didn´t think I was either… I was both of those, but I didn´t think I was only that and since I wasn´t being offered anything that would help me expand musically, I figured I would just bow out."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Red Dragon Cartel's self-titled debut album will be released on January 28th via Frontiers Records.

Tracklisting:

'Deceived'

'Shout It Out'

'Feeder' with Robin Zander

'Fall From The Sky (Seagull)'

'Wasted 'with Paul Di’Anno

'Slave'

'Big Mouth' with Maria Brink

'War Machine'

'Redeem Me' with Sass Jordan

'Exquisite Tenderness'

'Feeder' lyric video: