TONY HARNELL
TNT vocalist
www.tnttheband.com

(Winter 2006) by George Dionne

All the Way to the Sun (read CD review) is the latest album by the Norwegian melodic metal group TNT. If you live in the US, chances are you might have missed them. TNT released their first proper album in 1984. They weren't the type of metal act that was typical at the time. TNT always had that little something extra that the standard run-of-the-mill act didn't; diversity. TNT would go on to release several moderately successful albums throughout the decade of decadence, before label problems and internal struggles sent them overseas. The band eventually broke up, got back together, broke up again...you know the cycle.

In 2004 TNT released My Religion; a pop-metal powerhouse that saw the band return to form and garner rave reviews from fans and critics alike. Not wanting to keep their fans waiting, TNT returned a year later with their latest. Vocalist Tony Harnell has also been keeping himself busy over the past year during his TNT breaks. He has contributed to numerous projects that have been well received.

Rock Is Life would like to thank Eric, David, and Nina for helping out with the questions.

RIL: If I knew absolutely nothing about the band TNT, how would you describe the bands music to me?
TH: That’s a good question, because I meet people all the time that don’t know about TNT. They always ask me that same question. What I usually say is that it’s kind of a combination of seventies and eighties rock that is very melodic. It might remind people a little bit of Queen, The Scorpions, Journey, or bands like that. That way even if there passive melodic rock listeners, they should get somewhat of a picture.

RIL: Your current release All the Way to the Sun is a slight departure from your last release My Religion. Was this a conscious effort to sound different or did it just happen that way when you sat down to write it?
TH: I kind of just happened that way. We didn’t set out to do anything. I don’t know if that good or bad. On My Religion, we had a lot of time to work on it. Getting the band back to make the record was a fairly long process, as we were doing some shows and we had a greatest hits album out that we needed to record a couple of songs for. We had quite a few writing sessions and recording sessions in about a two year period. We had somewhat of a conscious idea that we needed something that we could live with and that was contemporary enough for us to record it. We needed to do something that we could get back under the same skin. I guess it was a little more of a conscious thing with My Religion.

With this one, we went back to what we usually do, which was to wing it and whatever comes comes. I think that if you listen to any two TNT albums back to back, like at the very beginning when I joined the band, there have never been two albums that have been the same in our entire career. It’s nothing new for us to do that. It’s frustrating for people sometimes, and I think in a way that’s what makes us special. We’re willing to take risks. Plus, we don’t sell enough records to have that giant pressure from the record company, so I think we have a little more freedom that way. I think ninety percent of our fans kind of dig that. They don’t know exactly what to expect each time.

RIL: Are you going to tour in support of this album?
TH: We have been, but in Europe mostly. We are going back out in March, and we’ll do Greece at the same time. We’ll be doing some Scandinavian dates too. We’re going to use that area as a launch pad. Whether we’re doing a full tour or heading off somewhere else, we use Norway or Sweden or one of those other countries to warm up. We’ll be touring as much as possible and probably playing a bunch of festivals over the summer. We are really working hard getting to the US. We have been talking to promoters about it. I can’t give you a straight answer on that right now. Nobody wants to do it more than I do.

RIL: Why do you think bands in your situation find it hard to get a tour in the US?
TH: Mostly because were a European band. If we were based in the states, then we would have been touring there a long time ago. Even as a comeback thing you know. We would have probably jumped on one of those eighties tours or something. I think that we have an advantage that some of those other bands don’t have. There are a lot of bands that are doing mid-level touring in the US that could never tour Europe. We still have a few countries over there. Norway is a very small country, but we we’re a major act there. When our albums come out, they go to the major pop charts. We had a gold album a couple of years ago when we came back. It’s really good to have that; it gives us a home base and gives us a place where we know we can have an economic base. That’s where we are lucky. It’s just logistically difficult to get four guys from Norway and a crew over to the US. To be really honest, when guys get a certain age, there not willing to go grind it out and come home at the end. It’s not that we’re trying to actually make any money touring America, but we really can’t go home in the red.

RIL: TNT recently performed “What a Wonderful World” with the Oslo Symphony and Gospel Choir…
TH: Well, it actually ended up being just the gospel choir. It was a real disappointment to me. The symphony was already booked due to the holidays. They do there most work around that time, so there was a scheduling conflict. I have heard they were disappointed also. We did do it, but just with the Gospel Choir.

RIL: Are you going to reschedule something with them?
TH: I would love to. I would love to do a full on concert with them, or possibly write something with Ronni outside of TNT for something like. I am very interested in doing something classical at some point. Not all the time, but as a one off thing.

RIL: Would you make the audio of the concert with the Gospel Choir available to your fans?
TH: I wouldn’t mind doing that, however I don’t have it. I have never heard it. It’s on the internet to watch, but for some reason it’s in some format that I can’t get to watch on my computer.

RIL: Did you consider any other covers on the new album besides “What a Wonderful World?”
TH: You know we did, but as usual in TNT fashion, we got down to the wire and the only thing that was decided was that we would do our first cover song on this album. When it came down to it there wasn’t any time left, and Ronni was actually the one that choose the song. I said to him to go record it. We usually record together, but this time he would record it, then I would come back to the states and record separately. That’s the approach we took, and I think it’s really cool. What I didn’t realize is that some people say it’s been covered to death. The only covers I have ever heard were Joey Ramone’s and recently Rod Stewart’s. I didn’t even know about those two at the time that we decided to do it. I’m kind of glad we did it because it’s very controversial apparently. I have been reading reviews and some are hilarious. One said that they have never hated a song so much on an album that they love so much.

RIL: Well, you kind of took a song that isn’t happy and upbeat and brightened it up. I think that’s what that particular reviewer was thinking there.
TH: I know, but the lyrics are what they are. I think it’s really cool and I’m glad we did it, even when I see reviews that say it’s the worse cover they have ever heard. It’s not that I’m trying to piss people off, it’s nothing like that. I think one of the things that we have been proud of as a band is, we’ll try anything. We will take risks. We are not a safe band at all, and to be honest, I think that’s why we haven’t been more successful in the eighties. I mean, we had great songs, and there’s no doubt in my mind that had the record company done there job at that time, we would have sold alot more records. I think we always had a quirkiness about us. We weren’t quite as cleanly commercial as the bands we were competing with. We didn’t have the big name producers working with us. We could have done that, but we just chose not to. People were trying to make us accept songs from all the big songwriters and we didn’t want to.

RIL: In addition to TNT you have been a part of numerous side projects; Brazen Abbot, Starbreaker, and Westworld, just to name a few. Do you even know which band you’re cutting vocals for when you hit the studio?
TH: You know it’s interesting, if you look at the last eight years or so, I’ve been pretty loyal to each project that I have done. I haven’t been a whore, you know. A lot of my contemporaries have been doing it for years, and I just always shied away from it. This past year I took on a couple of extra things that I thought were worth while. There was only one that I really…I don’t like to use the word regret, but there was one project I could have done without. I learned a really good lesson from it though.

RIL: What project was that?
TH: Brazen Abbot. It was not a fun project. I don’t want to knock [Nikolo Kotzev] down; he’s a very talented guy, just not the easiest to work with. We didn’t click, let’s put it that way.

RIL: Really? My Resurrection (read CD review) came out great.
TH: Thanks. I don’t think my style fits that music exactly, but that’s fine. I respect Joe Lynn Turner a lot, and he’s a good friend of mine. That’s why I did it to begin with. If you think about it, I was just doing Westworld for four or five years. Then I came back and I just did TNT. Then Starbreaker came along when I had a break…I really thought it was a worth while project. I’m very proud of that CD.

RIL: That’s another one that came out great.
TH: I think that perhaps the way [Starbreaker] was done, which is not the way I usually do things…it was the long distance internet way. Bands these days that are working on a very small budget do that. I think it came out phenomenally; better than most of the CDs that are done that way. We took a lot of care in the writing. I threw Brazen Abbot on top of it, and I had a couple of one-off songs here and there. There was a song on the Liberty and Justice CD, and one song with Ronni on a Kiss tribute album. We did “Detroit Rock City” with a well known regional band. I guess it was a Kiss Army thing that was sanctioned by Kiss or something. Anyway, it was an especially busy year. I don’t normally do that, but some things just came along that were interesting, and I was on a roll. But YES, I can tell the difference, and I defiantly know when I’m in the studio what project I’m doing.

RIL: What’s the current status of Westworld?
TH: Westworld is sort of on an indefinite hiatus. Mark is really getting busy with Riot again. I think there going to be working a lot this year. It’s a great project; I love the [Westworld] albums. I think those albums were really good for me as a writer and singer. I think they brought a lot back to TNT when I came back to TNT. I would love to do another one, but there are some logistical things. We’re all really good friends, so there is nothing there, but just so many logistical things and time issues. Some people take a really long time in Westworld to get things done. I’m not one of those people. I like to get in and get it done, you know.

RIL: Will there be another Starbreaker album or maybe a tour to promote the current album?
TH: I really thought there was going to be another Starbreaker album. I was really hoping there was going to be another Starbreaker album. Magnus and I need to do some work together, but I’m not sure it’s in the cards for another Starbreaker album. Part of that reason is the way that the band was put together, and how it was structured by the record company in Italy. [Frontiers] does not give us a lot of freedom to go forward using the name, so I’m not sure that’s going to happen. We’re all good friends as well. It’s just a business thing. We were all very gung-ho about it, and we tried to put a tour together, but things came up that none of us felt we wanted to deal with on a business basis.

RIL: Frontiers Records seems to throw artists together on a project to put out an album, and it just seems to not go anywhere after that one album.
TH: It’s unfortunate. For a situation like this, the way that is it done is; they will offer everyone in the band a fee. Starbreaker was originally something that Frontiers was putting together around me, and we went back and forth for about a year with what kind of material it would be. It almost didn’t happen because they kept sending me these songs that I would not do. Finally we agreed I would write the songs with somebody. He wanted me to do really lightweight, AOR sort-of thing, which I had zero interest. Seriously, AOR doesn’t really sell, unless it’s Toto or Journey, or one of the established bands. Metal is a much bigger market. Metal is such a wide genre, it goes from one extreme to another. AOR doesn’t really have the following you think it would have. Personally, even if I loved it, I wouldn’t care. I have no interest in doing it.

I love those bands; Journey, Foreigner, and Boston. Those bands are phenomenal, but they did it already and there the best at it. Why would you try and copy it? That’s what I don’t understand about some of these releases. They sound like B or C level Journey type bands. I just don’t understand what the point is. So anyway, we finally came to agreement and in the Starbreaker project, Frontiers owned everything. That’s kind of their plan. They owned the whole thing. That’s fine if it goes well, like it occasionally does. I would say that maybe one out of twenty of these things turn out like Starbreaker. Starbreaker was a situation that we all really wanted to go forward with together. Because of that situation that, [Frontiers] would not bend on that. We came to a decision to not to go forward at this point. In the future you never know.

RIL: You contributed vocals to the Christian rock band Liberty and Justice’s upcoming CD as you said earlier, how did that come about?
TH: You know I got an email from Justin and he actually sent me a song. I said, ‘man this is really a cool song,’ you know. It’s more contemporary than I was expecting. We chatted on the phone and we got along really well. They took really good care of me. They flew me out, and it was a great experience. It was a lot of fun, and I like doing things like that. The song was really the thing that got me though. At the end of the day, that’s why I did it. I also like the fact that I’m very much about religious freedom. I’m not a Christian, but I think that it’s cool for people from different faiths to contribute to something that’s based in a particular faith. I’m all about human rights, religious freedom, and people being able to have that, so I was really behind that project.

RIL: Do you think that some of your own spirituality comes out in your songwriting?
TH: Oh yeah. Oh my God, just look at my lyrics for the last twenty years. If you have the time, you can look at my lyrics and tell what’s been happening in my life and where I was. I think as time has gone on, I’ve gotten more and more honest. I’m not out there being completely autobiographical, at times it can go pretty far. I think that’s the only way I can write anymore. I feel that if I don’t talk about things that I’m passionate about, it’s not always about me, but I have to have some personal relationship with what I’m writing, or to me, I can’t sing about it and have any sort of emotion attached to it. All my albums have a lot of spirituality going on, but Starbreaker was particularly pointed in a very sort-of focused spiritual direction. I haven’t really talked about the album for a while, so I can’t actually remember where I was going with it, but I do feel very strongly that there was some kind of abstract concept. That makes a lot of sense to me, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me when they listen to that album that they sort of find themselves.

RIL: There were a lot of vocalist for the Liberty & Justice project; did you get to mingle with any of them?
TH: When I went out it was kind of cool, because Steven Pearcy happened to be there. He and I had a brief encounter as I was there sitting in when he was doing his vocal track. I had stayed for a couple of hours and went back to the hotel and chilled out. I know a lot of the guys who sang on it, but we weren’t hanging out together.

RIL: Since you mentioned Steven Pearcy, and I’m a fan of Ratt, what do you think of his vocals today?
TH: I don’t think his vocals today are much different than his vocals twenty years ago. I think if you would have asked me that question in the eighties, I would have said something very arrogant and idiotic and inappropriate. I think today I can look at it and say he’s a cool stylist. I think that he has his own vibe, and I think that you always know that it’s him. I can look at him now and really appreciate what he does. He just has a nasty attitude filled style, and I think it’s kind of cool. I was always a Warren DeMartini fan. I think that back in the eighties, where my head was at, I really didn’t appreciate his vocal style at all. Now I think when I hear their older songs, it sounds cool to me. It sounds great, like David lee Roth with Van Halen.

RIL Yeah, but if you hear David Lee Roth today…
TH: That’s a different story! He was a good singer on their albums. He didn’t have a huge range or anything, but he was actually a much better singer than I remember giving him credit for. I love him on the first album. He had a lot going for him. Those guys were totally great, but they were just doing things different from what I did.

RIL: You have a solo album in the works, how’s that coming along?
TH: Slowly. I just get so busy with TNT and with other things that I’m doing. I’m just getting a couple of huge things off my plate right now. I hope to get started in February, at least really digging into the writing process. I’ve got tons of lyrics and recordings that I have done on my own hanging around, so I‘m probably going to start going through them and start from scratch with a couple different writers that I’ve wanted to work with.

RIL: You wanted to be a pro skateboarder when you were growing up?
TH: I was a pro skater.

RIL: That must have been before the big publicity boom for skateboarding.
TH: You had a few different periods. I was actually part of the first big explosion of pro skateboarding which took place around 1977-78. I was part of the whole thing. I knew all the guys, and my dad was actually a sports photographer. I pulled him into skateboarding and he became one of the top guys at the time, working with all the famous boarders like Tony Alva and Tom Simms. We were having a great time, and I was competing a little. I entered the first pool competition…the first pool competition ever! It was at Spring Valley Skateboard Park and I believe it was 1978. That was a big part of my life, that and surfing.

RIL: Do you keep up with both?
TH: I wish, but I moved to New York when I was seventeen. I kept up with it as long as I could, but slowly but surely when you live in the city, it’s not that easy to just pop out to the beach and do it. I sort of just lost interest. I wouldn’t mind skateboarding and having a little fun again.

RIL: Is it true that you’re mother is an opera singer and did your wife sing on the new album?
TH: Yes she was, and yes my wife sang and played recorder on “Song 4 Dianne.”

RIL: Have you thought about doing a full recording with either of them?
TH: Well my mom really doesn’t sing that much anymore, she retired about twenty years ago. She was touring all the time, working at it pretty hard. She just had enough I guess. So my wife yes, mom probably not, but definitely my wife. We want to defiantly do something. I’m probably going to have her singing on a few things that I’m have coming up. I had an album called “Morning Wood” in the nineties that was all acoustic with kind-of an all star band. I’m going to do another one of those probably in the next couple of months. That’s going to be sort-of a bridge to the solo album. There will be some original songs on there that will be played in a slightly different way than people are used to, and I’ll have her sing a lot on that one. She will probably sing a lot on my solo album as well. She’ll sing back round or maybe a little duet part.

RIL: That sound good. I appreciate you taking the time for us.
TH: Thanks.

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