Night Ranger Guitarist Brad Gillis Talks New Album 'ATBPO'
The pandemic forced Night Ranger off the road and into their home studios, where the band created a great new album.
Thanks for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. Today I’m pleased to be able to discuss a new album from one of my favorite classic MTV-era bands — Night Ranger. The band has just released its 13th studio album, ATBPO. Guitarist Brad Gillis was kind enough to carve out some time from his busy schedule to talk to me about it and we covered a few other topics as well (see the video at the bottom of this issue). I would ideally have loved to get Brad to weigh in on every track but, alas, our time was limited.
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Now let’s talk Night Ranger:
Legendary rock band Night Ranger was on tour when the COVID-19 pandemic pulled the plug on live performances around the world in 2020. It was a bewildering time for everyone, but especially for those who make a living by performing in front of large crowds of people.
The five musicians — core originals Brad Gillis (guitars), Kelly Keagy (drums and lead vocals), and Jack Blades (bass and lead vocals), along with Keri Kelli (guitars) and Eric Levy (keyboards) — responded to the setback by going back to work. Starting with a few Zoom calls, the band started sharing ideas and putting songs together while working separately in their own home studios. The result of that work is the band’s 13th studio album, ATBPO (which is an acronym for “and the band played on,” which was Night Ranger’s reaction to the pandemic — to just keep playing.
“You know, that's pretty much how that title came about, with everybody down and out, we played on and did a record,” Gillis said from his home via Zoom, sitting in front of some Marshall amps. “Basically we could not get together, and it started, I think, last September-ish.
“We came up with the arrangements and would put down a rough click track of the song and maybe a rough idea of Jack playing acoustic (guitar) and singing, or me playing my riff and Jack doing something over the top, or whatever it might be, to start the process. Then Kelly Keagy, living in the Phoenix, Arizona area, went into a big studio down there and cut the drums — which, I think the drums came out wonderful on this record. The nucleus of any record are the drums. Once you have great drums, I mean, you know that it's a great starting point.”
Once the band had some songs sketched out to work on, they passed a lot of files around to one another and bounced ideas off each other, adding the best of those to the album. Anthony Focx pulled all the pieces together and engineered ATBPO and the band produced it with his assistance, making the entire thing sound as seamless as if all five musicians were together during the recording.
“Anthony's great. He's done so many great records,” Gillis said. “He's in high demand right now but you know he delves into a record with us and he puts 110% into it. But it took a while, and we knew we had the luxury of time, pulling off the best songs.”
Gillis said working in his home studio gave him the opportunity to not feel rushed and make tweaks that he wouldn’t ordinarily get to make if recording the album in the traditional way at a recording studio.
“Back in the day, you go into the studio and for $1,500-$2,000 a day you’re doing a record,” he said. “And you’ve got a half hour to do your solo — you know, come up with it, do it, play it, and think about it, fix it, do it again, or whatever. I could sit at home and know I'm going to be putting a guitar part in this section, and I play something to warm up. You’ve got to come up with ideas and this and that, and then it's kind of throw something down. And then maybe it ends up being kind of late at night and you're done for the day.
“Then you wake up the next morning and you listen to it and you go, ‘that's cool’ or ‘that ain't cool.’ ‘That section is cool, and I can do better here.’ Then you just kind of redo it and come up with the final product.”
Gillis said the band wrote about 16 or 17 songs for ATBPO and then whittled it down to the best 11 for the album, plus a bonus track for the release in Japan.
Night Ranger was a band that was ubiquitous in the 1980s. MTV helped the band (and the inverse is also true) by playing the band’s “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” video in heavy rotation in the early years of the channel’s existence. The band grew into one of the biggest rock acts of the 1980s, selling millions of records, including platinum albums Midnight Madness and 7 Wishes.
The band has plugged away for many years and its popularity has waned a bit over the years in much the same way rock and roll no longer dominates the singles charts. But Night Ranger still has a lot of fans out there and this new release is something longtime fans of the band and new fans alike can enjoy. While some of the tracks stand out immediately — such as first single, “Breakout,” as well as “Bring it All Home to Me” and “Monkey” — many of the album's tracks reveal themselves more fully on repeat listens. And there are more stylistic differences from one song to the next over the course of the record than maybe the band showed back in the 80s. Yet it maintains that classic Night Ranger flavor throughout.
The signature Night Ranger three-part vocal harmonies (Blades, Keagy, and Gillis), guitar harmony lines, and dueling guitar solos are all there in spades on ATBPO. The guitar harmonies by Gillis and Kelli, in particular, make the songs shine.
“We don't use doubling effects and stuff on our guitars,” Gillis said. “There's a lot of harmonies going on. There's a lot of background parts that are just sitting back there, and those are harmonies that are put off in the distance and maybe a little reverbed out, just for color.”
The album kicks off with “Coming for You,” a rocker with a title that could be a promise or a threat from the band. Gillis said the band has gotten good feedback about the song and it could be in consideration as a concert opener. For now, the band has only incorporated “Breakout” as a regular track in the live set, due in large part to a lack of sound check time while doing festivals. Concert audiences for bands that have been around as long as Night Ranger aren’t always patient enough to give new material a chance — how many times have you been at a show next to some doofus who keeps screaming the title of a song all night that will obviously be in the encore? — but there are several songs on ATBPO that would blend well into a setlist with classic favorites from the band’s most popular albums.
One of those songs is “Bring it All Home to Me.” It has perhaps the most sing-a-long-able and memorable chorus on the album and hooks for days, as well as some cool keyboard licks from Levy and the usual excellent guitar heroics.
“Breakout” might be the band’s best rocker since “(You Can Still) Rock in America” became a radio and MTV staple back in 1983. The band appears to be having a ball playing it in the music video. I’ve already added a few songs from this album on my “Post-2000 Songs by Artists You Stopped Listening to in the 80s” Spotify playlist, starting with “Breakout.”
“Hard to Make it Easy” is a bluesy southern-rocker that old-school Night Ranger fans might find a bit surprising but it’s catchy and enjoyable. Night Ranger’s expanded musical palette is a feature, not a bug.
The first ballad on the record kicks in with the fifth track, “Can’t Afford a Hero.” It has a little more twang to it than a typical Night Ranger ballad. The harmonies and acoustic guitar are front and center, but it’s the electric guitar in the background that sets it apart. It’s a song on which Gillis used some vintage equipment to help it along.
“‘Can't Afford a Hero’ is that nice little ballad. I dug deep into my guitar and amp collection and pulled out a ‘57 Strat, going through a black face 1965 deluxe reverb Fender amp, and got that classic tone that so many records were done with throughout the decades,” he said. “Otherwise, I use my main ‘62 red Strat on a bunch of songs.”
Night Ranger kicks the tempo right back up with “Cold as December,” with one of the album’s most infectious guitar riffs. That’s followed by the arena rock opening of “Dance,” complete with its “We Will Rock You” rhythm. That opening is the only resemblance to the Queen song, as it develops into a gorgeous melodic piece with more guitar and vocal harmonies.
The second ballad on the album is next, with “The Hardest Road.” Night Ranger may have gotten pigeonholed a bit in the 80s because the record company pushed the band’s ballads but it was always more than a power ballad group. They’ve always rocked. And yet few bands can put together a quality slow song like Night Ranger. “The Hardest Road” stands up well next to the likes of classic radio staples “Sister Christian,” “Sentimental Street,” and “Goodbye.”
To prove that it’s more than a ballad band, Night Ranger follows “The Hardest Road” with perhaps the album’s hardest rocker, “Monkey.” This is one of the true highlights for me, standing alongside “Breakout” as hard rockers that can stand toe-to-toe with “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.”
“A Lucky Man” is another fun sing-along song with some southern flavor to it. It’s followed by another solid rocker, “Tomorrow,” with a guitar solo that climbs higher and higher as it goes. “Tomorrow” brings a thoroughly enjoyable ride of an album to a satisfying close.
ATBPO has everything Night Ranger fans could want. Even among the band’s vastly underrated later catalog, it stands out. The folks at Frontiers Records must have known they had something special on their hands. In addition to the digital and CD formats, ATBPO is available on vinyl in a variety of colors.
“They release worldwide and we get good numbers. They've been really good to us.” Gillis said of working with Frontiers. “We've been with them quite a few years, quite a few records, and they seem to have a handle on all the 80s bands, and bringing stuff back out and around and so we have no problems with Frontiers. They’re great.”
With ATBPO now out in the world, Gillis’ attention is on the band’s upcoming live shows but he’s also got a third solo album in the works — his first since Alligator in 2000. There’s no anticipated release date just yet on that.
For my entire interview with Gillis, see the video below. Brad spoke a little about how he got into music and his early heroes, what it was like to work on the lesser-known of the 80s famine relief projects, Hear N’ Aid, the making of the “Breakout” video, and more.