Quiet Riot Guitarist Alex Grossi Discusses New Album from Side Project Hookers & Blow
Grossi and Guns N' Roses keyboardist Dizzy Reed have put together a fun album of great cover songs.
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This week, I got the opportunity to speak to Quiet Riot guitarist Alex Grossi. When Alex has free time from his primary band, he spends time with Guns N’ Roses keyboard player Dizzy Reed in a band called Hookers & Blow, performing covers of classic rock songs. The band is set to release its self-titled debut album this Friday digitally and on physical media (CD and vinyl) on Aug. 13. Alex was kind enough to spend some time this week telling me about the history and origins of his side band, the songs on the album (and some not on the album), and a little about his background. I enjoyed my conversation with Alex (embedded in full below) and I hope you get as much enjoyment out of this as I did.
Perhaps no place in North America has been as vital to the hard rock and heavy metal world as the famous Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California. The 1.5-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard has been a Mecca for live music over the years with its world-famous rock clubs, presided over by billboards — all drenched in the California sun by day and transformed into a darker, edgier world at night.
It’s an area that has long been a hub of activity, with a hint of danger and darkness, from the casinos of the 1920s, with alcohol served on the sly during prohibition, to the playground it became for notorious gangsters, writers, and film industry folks. Musicians flocked there in the 1960s — when its 1966 curfew riots inspired the Buffalo Springfield classic “For What It’s Worth” — and the 1970s. The kinds of music played there evolved from the Byrds and the Doors into disco and punk.
But, in the 1980s, the glam metal scene exploded from the Sunset Strip’s bars, nightclubs, and rock clubs. Bands like Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, Ratt, L.A. Guns, W.A.S.P., Poison, and Guns N’ Roses were just the brightest stars to shoot out of the Hollywood night, but a whole galaxy of them existed in that time and place.
So, it’s only natural that the Sunset Strip is where Quiet Riot guitarist Alex Grossi — who didn’t join that band until its 2004 reformation — met Dizzy Reed, a keyboard player who joined Guns N’ Roses in 1990. Despite not being part of those iconic 1980s metal bands until after that decade had ended, the two musicians seemed likely to one day cross paths and eventually play in a band together.
“I met Dizzy at a place called the Cat Club, which is no longer there. It used to be next door to the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip,” Grossi said. “I was obviously a big GnR fan. I approached him. I said, ‘Hey, we should do some shows together.’ We hit it off musically, and if for nothing else we can come down here and drink for free a couple more nights a week.”
The new project began in 2003 as a covers band. The idea was not to have to write anything, and Reed asked Grossi if the band could be called Hookers & Blow, which is perhaps a moniker that hasn’t aged well for today’s social climate.
“There’s been a few times where I’ve gotten phone calls from the promoters saying, ‘Listen, our corporate sponsors are about to pull off the show because they will not put the Coors Light logo next to the Hookers & Blow logo,” Grossi said. “So, I’m like, ‘All right, take our logo off, but we have a 45-foot tour bus that says Hookers & Blow on it and that’s going to be parked in front of the Coors Light sign.’ Part of rock and roll to me has always been about being a little dangerous and pushing the envelope a bit.
“And even though it’s a cover band, it’s fun to have that sort of reckless abandon, zero fucks given about things, because with Quiet Riot it’s all business. With Guns N’ Roses it’s all business. Hookers & Blow is sort of like our little camping trip to get away from it and just have fun.”
The band has gone through various incarnations, with bass players and drummers drifting in and out a bit, but the Hookers & Blow lineup has stabilized of late with Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative) on drums, Mike Duda (W.A.S.P.) on bass, and Reed’s wife Nadja lending some lead and backing vocals. Previous members include the likes of Chip Z’Nuff (Enuff Z’Nuff) and Scott Griffin (L.A. Guns).
The band quickly gained a reputation for being a top party band with its fun cover songs and has been an ongoing concern for approaching 20 years. Hookers & Blow did a pair of consecutive residencies at the Whisky A Go Go in 2013 and embarked on an extensive touring schedule in 2018. Finally, in 2019, the band headed into the studio to begin work on its first album. The self-titled album took a while to complete, partially due to the pandemic, but it is set to come out digitally on Golden Robot Records this Friday and on CD and vinyl on Aug. 13.
The album consists of a dozen cover songs, which primarily fall into the 1970s classic rock space, between 1972 and 1977, with two songs each from the Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones catalogs. The band also dips into Elton John, Blue Oyster Cult, Tom Petty, and David Bowie from that era.
One of the Stones tracks, “Under My Thumb/Let’s Spend the Night Together,” and “Time of the Season” by the Zombies go as far back as the 1960s, while the 1980s are represented by Eddie Money’s “Shakin’” (1982) and the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right (to Party)” (1986). Hookers & Blow also covers Body Count’s 1992 song “The Winner Loses,” a ballad about a crack cocaine user.
While the cover songs are as instantly recognizable as the originals, they’re not strictly copies. Hookers & Blow puts its own stamp on the songs, so they’re neither note-for-note replicas, nor complete re-imaginings of the songs people already know and love.
“If you try to do it too much like the band, then you’re just doing a sound-alike,” Grossi said. “If you’re trying to make it so abstract — sometimes that works, but it’s just…there’s a fine line. It also depends on what you can deliver musically and what the song was to begin with.”
What stands apart immediately on the track list is “The Winner Loses,” by Body Count, the metal-rap band formed by Ice-T.
“The Body Count cover’s definitely a little different than the original,” Grossi said. “The Body Count song we’ve never played live. We learned that in the studio. It’s an amazing song and it’s just so out of left field. I mean, it’s a ballad about smoking crack.”
The other track that stands apart from the rock classics is “Fight for Your Right (to Party),” the mid-1980s rap/metal classic by the Beastie Boys.
“The Beastie Boys song we used to play live. You really can’t recreate what the male voices did in that song properly,” said Grossi. “It was such a moment in time. But then Nadja went in and took a stab at it and it’s got a thing now with her voice on top of it.”
Both of the Led Zeppelin covers feature drumming not by current Hookers & Blow drummer Kelly, but rather by the late Frankie Banali from Quiet Riot, who passed away at age 68 from pancreatic cancer in August of 2020. Banali’s work delivers two of the highlight songs on the album in “Trampled Under Foot” and “No Quarter.”
“The thing about those two tracks is that (Banali) recorded those songs way deep into his chemo treatments,” Grossi said of his Quiet Riot bandmate. “He was probably about 130 pounds, a liquid diet, tube sticking out of him, and he went in and knocked ‘em out in one take like a 25-year-old kid.”
Ironically, Grossi wasn’t around when Banali was recording, as he was out playing with Quiet Riot with a fill-in drummer at the time. Grossi said that Banali was active deep into his illness and has left behind about two albums’ worth of drum tracks that could end up on future Quiet Riot releases.
Banali’s work on the two Led Zeppelin tracks helps them stand out among a strong group of songs.
“He really nailed it. You listen to ‘No Quarter’ and it gives me chills,” Grossi said.
“No Quarter,” which has only Grossi, Reed, and Banali on it, pays homage to the original while managing to sound different. Banali’s drumming is (ironically) heavier than John Bonham’s on the track. Reed plays the John Paul Jones bass parts on keyboards. The other Zeppelin cover, “Trampled Under Foot,” is another of the album’s high points, sounding like the band is having the most fun of any of the tracks.
There were a couple of lyrical variations of sorts on the album. In the Eddie Money classic “Shakin’” Grossi was originally supposed to take a turn singing during the bridge, but things changed. Rather than follow word for word with the lyrics, the song became a brief little courtroom drama with Grossi serving as both the judge and the defendant.
“I didn't realize how a how bad of a singer I really am in the studio, and how hard Eddie Money is to emulate,” Grossi said with a laugh. “So, I was like, ‘Look, we could do like a little scenario where I’m going to court for getting busted with a hooker.’ And I did all the voices…and it kind of worked.”
Grossi said that Money himself was aware the song was being recorded but never heard the final version, as he died in September of 2019 from complications related to esophageal cancer.
The other lyrical variation was in “Fight for Your Right (to Party),” with the band changing the line, “Your mom busted in and said, what's that noise? Aw, mom you're just jealous it's the Beastie Boys,” to “Your mom busted in and said your friends have gotta go. Aw mom, don’t be jealous it’s just Hookers & Blow.”
“Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult is a fun cover, with help from the Okai sisters, Mayuko and Tsuzumi. The song opens with a bit of a unique spin on the intro.
“Dizzy did his keyboard loop thing,” Grossi said. “There’s these Japanese sisters out in L.A., the Okai sisters. One of them (Tsuzumi) is a bass player for Limp Bizkit. They’re phenomenal players and they came in and did the guitar and bass on it. I did the rhythm tracks, but they did the solos and everything. If you listen to the breakdown with these kids screaming in Japanese, with the sirens, that’s one of the girls yelling into the microphone. That’s probably my favorite track on the record and I barely played on it.”
Hookers & Blow is a great collection of tracks. For me, the highlights are the Stones covers (“Rocks Off” and “Under My Thumb/Let’s Spend the Night Together”), the two Zeppelin songs (“Trampled Under Foot” and “No Quarter”), and “Godzilla,” but there aren’t any tracks that force me to use the skip button.
The covers are done with proper respect for the source material, while bringing something new and fresh to the table. They’re a lot of fun, particularly “Trampled Under Foot.”
For music fans looking for a fun album that explores some old favorites in a slightly new way, Hookers & Blow is an album worth having and a band worth seeing live.
To hear the full interview with Grossi, watch the video below. He talked a bit about what’s next for Quiet Riot as well as his musical background and there’s more insight into the songs on Hookers & Blow than I had room for above.
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