While Faster Pussycat guitarist Brent Muscat says that he wasn’t involved with the band’s latest offering, a remix album vocalist Taime Downe had produced for Cleopatra Records, he says that the album was responsible for sparking interest in a reformation of the band. And since Downe had already done the Newlydeads for quite a while without an major label interest or exposure, he says, the timing seemed right.
“We had friends that were in an agency that were booking bands and they basically came to us and said, ‘Look, a lot of these clubs have people who want to see you guys. There’s still interest in you guys.’,” Muscat explained.
When the initial offer was made for them to regroup and hit the road with LA Guns for a club tour, Muscat says that they wanted to be “comfortable and have a good time.” While he admits that they are not in it to get rich, they needed to make enough money to afford a bus and crew members. He stressed how difficult it is to tour these days and explained that when the band reformed that was one of the reasons the other “originals” didn’t go along for the ride.
“They were not in the right frame of mind,” says Muscat. In fact, “Greg (Steele) wasn’t totally in the right frame of mind to do it last year. He quit half-way through. I think he was out of it for so long. He just didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to tour.”
“It’s hard. It’s really hard to tour. There’s days when I want to quit, but I don’t do it because I know I’ve got four other guys depending on me being there. And it’s a job too. You’ve got to have fun, but at the same time you’ve got a lot of stress involved too, when you’re cramped on a bus for four months.”
With bandmates Eric Stacy, their two former drummers, (and now Greg Steele) missing in action, the other members of the Newlydeads, Danny Nordhal, Xristian Simon, and Chad Stewart were ready for the challenge. And, without a major label and a manager behind them, Muscat says that was great, because they didn’t want to work with anyone that required “babysitting.”
“That was easy, they had already played together and Taimie knew those guys and they were a great rhythm section. So, it made it easy just to go, these guys work. We don’t know where our former drummers are at, and they had a lot of problems. Our first drummer and even our second drummer got involved in drugs and couldn’t handle it. And Eric Stacy’s not in any shape to tour,” he explains, “I like to take it from Phil Lewis, he always says this ‘You’ve got to be a rock-n-roll warrior.’ Like a soldier, you’ve got to be really tough to come out here for four months. And, you can’t have somebody that’s going to have a mental break down or be babied.”
Despite their club tour, the Poison tour this summer is the initial exposure to the new formation of Faster Pussycat for most fans, and along with that exposure has come some momentum and some controversy…
The band’s new stage wardrobe was vocalist Taime Downe’s idea. At first Muscat says he wasn’t so into the idea, but he admits that he likes that they are getting a reaction from it.
“I thought it was a little corny, but I like it because it’s real shocking. It makes people react a little bit. I told Taime from the get-go, I’m not a racist and I’m not going to wear a swastika. But we just want it to look a little like it to be offensive looking, so when people first look at it, they go ‘Oh my God, what are they doing?’
Obviously, there is no reason to take them for Nazi’s, he jokes, “If Hitler was alive – Xristian is wearing a dress, we’re wearing lipstick – Hitler would not be too happy about all that.”
But, seriously, Muscat says, “I wouldn’t wear a swastika on there, because we not prescribe to any hate messages. If you listen to Faster Pussycat, were not into anything about that. If people really know us, they’re going to say ‘They’re doing it for shock value.’ Part of the reason we’re doing it is we come on, we have half the sound when your on the Poison tour, we have no lights. We come on during daylight hours. We have no pyrotechnics. They have all the lights all the pyro, it’s their show, and you’re not aloud to jump off and do this, so all we can do are the clothes on our backs to make people go, ‘Oh my God’.”
Muscat says that with the name of the band back in front of fans, they would also like to build from that momentum. However, without that major label and management pressure, getting motivated and organized “is a little bit more difficult.”
“I’m not going to promise or guarantee it, but I’m hopeful that we’re going to do a new record…We’ve all talked about it and we’re definitely thinking that this Poison tour has brought the profile of the band up in people’s eyes again…I’m not expecting to sell a lot of records, but in case we go out again next year I want to at least have a new record or something.”
In the meantime, fans can definitely expect something new from Muscat personally, “I’m putting out a book in the Winter,” he says enthusiastically.
“It’s going to be a biography about my life. Heavy on the Faster Pussycat story, because that’s obviously a big part of my life. But it’s going to talk a lot about when I was in LA Guns for a while, and about going to Europe with Motley Crue and what it was like growing up around Guns N Roses and being a kid even before I was in Faster Pussycat…”
