Soul SirkUs was born out of the ashes of PlanetUS. If you remember, PlanetUS
was the announced supergroup comprised of Neal Schon & Deen Castronovo
of Journey, Sammy Hagar & Michael Anthony of Van Halen, and guitar virtuoso
Joe Satriani. The 2004 Van Halen reunion brought the group to a halt. Exit
Hagar, Anthony, and Satriani (January - exit Castronovo); enter Marco Mendoza
and Jeff Scott Soto (January – enter Virgil Donati).
The buzz grew
quickly throughout the melodic rock community. The group wasted no time
in releasing their debut album World Play (read
CD review) through their
official
website in the fall of 2004. Response was so great that the band is on
the verge of a major U.S. and European release for World Play as well as
a World
Tour. That’s not all for vocalist Jeff Scott Soto, 2004 also saw the
release of his third solo studio album Lost in the Translation (read
CD review).
So who is Jeff Scott Soto? The world got their first taste of Jeff as the
lead vocalist of Yngwie Malmsteen’s Force in 1984, and to tell you
where is career went from there, I’d be filling up this page and then
some. Jeff has lent his powerful voice to numerous bands and studio sessions
over the years. I recommend checking out his official website if you want
the real lowdown, but for now here’s what Jeff Scott Soto is up to
today…
RIL: I apologize if my questions are all over the place, but you’ve
had a big career.
JSS: Don’t sweat it, in a sense I’m used to it, especially in
the last couple of years. It’s been so long since I’ve done interviews,
so now we have to catch up in eight to ten years of what I’ve been
doing. So I’m like, okay here we go.
RIL: I noticed that you don’t do too many interviews. I was looking
all over the place for information and there weren’t too many interviews
to choose from.
JSS: I’ve done a lot overseas where a lot of my career is primarily
structured or based out of. It’s due to my involvement with other European
musicians. It just seems to be out there until recently in the Untied States.
RIL: Originally Soul SirkUs was comprised of Neal, Deen, Sammy Hagar,
and Michael Anthony, but things didn’t work out there due to the
Van Halen reunion. You were brought in shortly after, how did your involvement
come
about?
JSS: Neil contacted me when it was confirmed that Sammy
and Mike were going back to Van Halen. Neal wanted to continue the idea of
this band just to
get some other creative juices going out of the whole Journey thing. He was
looking around and asking about other singers, but nobody really floated
his boat so to speak. Everyone he spoke to kept dropping my name. Neil had
no idea who I was; he had no real background on my career. I know a lot of
my peers and I’ve been around the block with a lot of people within
the business; anywhere from the lower local levels to royalty such as Queen
for instance. I thought it was odd that Neal hadn’t heard of some of
the things I had done. He did remember reading my name on a website called
www.melodicrock.com because they did a lot of personal coverage for Journey.
They did a lot of stuff with Melodic Rock. Every once in a while Neal would
visit the site and see my name quite a bit, doing this or doing that.
RIL: That makes sense because that’s where I heard about you
too.
JSS: That was really where he got most of his education
of who I was. It wasn’t until he was watching the movie Rock Star that he actually
heard my voice, again not even realizing it was me. He just heard the voice
and said that’s the voice he wants to check out. When the credits
rolled at the end of the movie, he said that when he wanted to check me
out. It was actually through Melodic Rock.com that he was able to contact
me. He asked the webmaster if he had any contact information for me, and
of course he did. Neal called and we spent a good hour on the phone.
This
took place three days before the NAMM Convention that they have every
year here in California. He suggested that we meet up there. It went from
let’s
meet up to maybe we should do a jam at the Gibson booth, to let’s
put a whole thing together. It went from a basic idea to a full blown out
involvement. It was that initial meeting and jam session that sparked interest
in doing all of this. It was literally three days after meeting him that
we thought this is going to work. From there we started collaborating on
the songs, and we knocked them out. It was ridiculous how we were knocking
out tune after tune.
RIL: Were their any songs already laid out from the PlanetUS writing sessions?
JSS: The only one on the album that was really the only
one structured as a song was “Peephole”. They only wrote two songs as PlanetUS.
I don’t really know how long they were working together and why after
all the time they were working together, why only two songs were developed.
Out of the two we chose to stick with one of them. It just happened to
have the drive and the energy we were looking for. I really like the song.
Neal presented the song and said we should use it, and I of course could
put my own touch to it. I could change the lyrics or re-write the melodies.
The more I kept listening to it and the more I kept trying to put my own
thing into it, the more I kept going back to Sammy’s style. I told
Neil that I’d rather do Sammy’s version if he didn’t
mind.
RIL: When I listened to it, I thought it sounded a lot like Sammy
Hagar’s
style.
JSS: Learning his version and knowing his version so well, it was the only
version that stuck in my head. It was hard for me to out my own touch to
it. I just sang it the way I heard it. I guess those Sammy-isms came out
naturally.
RIL: What songs on the album stand out to you?
JSS: I probably have a different perspective of what
I like than the majority of the people. “Soul Goes On” is a very cool song because I
really love the melody, the mood, and the vibe of it. Lyrically to me,
it’s a deep song. It’s something I feel personally about what
is going on in society today; where the World is heading as a society.
So when I sing and hear that song, it really hits me. It’s not like
I’m just going through the motions and singing like some of the other
tunes I’ve done in my life. That one just really gets to me emotionally
when I do it.
RIL: Any others?
JSS: “Coming Home” is another one. Even though I’m mentioning
two ballad type songs, that one is also something that’s dear to me
as well. It shows my Steve Perry, Journey influence on there. It’s
kind of funny because it’s one of the ones we co-wrote together. Neal
gave me music for it, and one of the initial conversations in going into
this band was he wanted to do something completely different from Journey.
He didn’t want this to have any faces or any distinguishing feels of
sounds to it because obviously people are going to compare it to that. He
said why do something like Journey, when he already has Journey.
When I was
working on the tune, those melodies were what immediately came into my
head. I thought, oh my God, how am I going to get out of this? I was trying
to
write something completely different than what actually came out of there.
I couldn’t think of anything else, so I just decided to go for it.
I figured the worst thing Neal would say was that it was too Journey, we
can’t do this. I sent him an Mp3 rough copy of it. I told him that
I was apologizing in advance, and he’ll know why as soon as he finishes
listening to it. He called me right afterwards and said that it was killer.
Another thing he said was when Perry hears it, he’s gonna shit.
RIL: Have you anything from Steve Perry about it?
JSS: No, Steve Perry doesn’t really pop his head
out to say much of anything these days.
RIL: That’s true. Soul SirkUs initial released the World
Play album over the internet, were you surprised at how well it was received?
JSS: Not necessarily. The initial reason why we
did it was because, when we were getting everything set up for the album’s release, we realized
that in most cases and instances in the business you have to have a good
marketing and promotion set-up time. When anyone releases an album, they
want a good three to four months of to promote it and start setting up the
marketing of it before it’s released. Because of Journey’s schedule
and because of even mine and Marco’s schedule, we knew that we wouldn’t
have that good three to four months of promotional time to commit to.
We
decided that instead of waiting for that time period to actually come to
play, and then getting the album out, it’s already going to be so
old. We wanted to get the album out immediately since the buzz was out
there.
The fans were taking about it, and the whole thing was generating steam
without us even doing one thing. We decided to get it out there through
mail-order
only just to appease the initial people that were clamoring for it. Form
there we were able to back it up. Unfortunately, with the turn of events
that happened in January; losing Deen forced us to re-work the whole plan
of attack.
RIL: Speaking of that, Deen left the group due to personal reasons
in earlier this year, but he was replaced with Virgil Donati on drums.
Is it true that
you’re having the drum track re-done on the CD?
JSS: Yes we have. We’re actually remixing it as we speak. The engineer
that mixed it the first time around, he’s got the tracks out in Boston.
Actually, Neal and I are flying up to Boston next week to help him round
it off and finish it up. We’re just so busy with so many other things.
Now we’re doing the whole promotional circuit and getting things going.
While were doing that we have the initial stages of the album set up, so
when we get there we can knock it all out.
RIL: So the album is going to be re-released?
JSS: It’s going to be re-released, but I don’t think it’s
going to be through Warner. I can’t speak now of whom it is going to
be released by, but we’re working on solidifying a deal. The same company
that releases my solo albums Europe (Frontiers) are going to be doing a licensing
deal for us for a European and Asian release, and then were going with another
major label here in the U.S. The deal with Frontiers was a group effort which
involved a Soul SirkUs and Journey package deal so to speak. They’re
campaigned to do probably more than any major label would be able to do for
us right now, it’s pretty exciting. It’s difficult now as it
is if you’re a new band coming up, but it goes the same way with the
older bands too. There’s not really a lot of room for the majors to
put a lot of attention on us like they used to.
RIL: Frontiers seems to do a good job of that.
JSS: They know how to saturate the market, they know
how to saturate their market, and that’s the important thing. If we can take it to the
next level, and we can actually hit radio and video, then that’s
all bonuses and pluses. For the most part we need to make sure that the
album is available, and that’s the important thing.
RIL: Why do you think that European audiences are more receptive to this
melodic style of rock and the more established musicians than the U.S. is?
JSS: I think that the U.S. is a big marketing promo
machine that caters to the ‘here today, gone today’ mentality. The whole MTV generation
thing, I used to laugh at it. I used to think it was just older bands and
artists pissed off because they weren’t getting recognized, but this
is obviously the younger mentality. I used to think that when I was in my
early twenties and late teens.Now that I’m an older artist, I realize
that the U.S. media is catered to the youthful market. They want to make
it as big as they can, milk it for all it’s worth, because tomorrow
we’re going to do the same thing with something else and change the
scene completely. It seems like overseas they really grasp on to things.
Once you have loyalty, they remain loyal. It’s something I haven’t
seen anywhere else. It used to be like that in Japan. While everyone else
was dropping interest, they’d hold on to things. It seems like the
European audiences have a certain loyalty that stands on its own.
RIL: Are you going to tour in support of the album?
JSS: We’re starting in the U.S., but we don’t have the dates
confirmed yet. There was a little miscommunication on how and where we wanted
to start. Initially we were going to start on the West Coast and end in the
East, that way we were closer to Europe to fly over. Neal had forgotten to
mention to our booking agency that he still wanted to go on with our plans
to record the show we had scheduled at The Fillmore in San Francisco. Unfortunately,
they put The Fillmore show somewhere around the third date of the entire
tour. When you have close to forty dates booked and you have one that’s
going to be released as your live DVD, that’s not something that sounds
too sensible. We asked them to restructure the tour starting on the East
Coast and coming to the West to make The Fillmore show closer to the end
of it. That way we have a little bit under our belts. That’s what were
waiting on right now.
RIL: Do you have an idea about the set list? Are you going to do some Journey
stuff or some of your solo material?
JSS: I don’t want to give away too much because for the most part,
it wouldn’t make much sense to do a headlining set and only do songs
from the album. Not only would most people be disappointed, but they would
want to know how we’re going to stretch out a two hour show doing an
album that only has fifty minutes of material. Obviously we’re going
to tap into other resources and into other things that are going to fit into
the structure of the show, without making it too obvious. In other words,
if we do any Journey stuff we’re not going to do the obvious hits.
We won’t be doing songs like “Faithfully” or “Don’t
Stop Believing”, we’ll probably do something more obscure that
the die-hard Journey fans will all know. It kind of gives the audience something
they were hoping for anyway. We’ll do stuff from my career as well.
Everyone’s going to get a chance to sing lead too, which is also kind
of fun.
RIL: That’s different.
JSS: Yeah, Marco’s actually a great singer. He has a power trio of
his own. I almost feel like not singer after him. He’s that good. Everyone’s
got their own little thing that we’re going to be building around the
live show.
RIL: Didn’t you get Neal to work on a couple of songs on your
solo album Lost in the Translation?
JSS: Yeah, there was one that he worked on (“Believe in Me”).
RIL: Did you write it and submit it to him? Did you write it together? Was
it a left-over from Soul SirkUs?
JSS: Funny enough, that was initially for PlanetUS,
because Sammy suggested that they needed something a little more poppy. The
other two tunes were
more rock-edge and not too commercial sounding. Sammy asked Neal to come
up with something poppy, but when he submitted that song, Sam said it was
too poppy and not really his speed. So they never really worked on it. Neal
brought it to the table when we were writing for Soul SirkUs. I kind of felt
the same way; it was a little too bubble-gum commercial for what we were
doing. I thought it would be perfect for what people expect from my solo
albums. It was more of that AOR melodic thing, where Soul SirkUs has more
of a contemporary edge to it. I knew Frontiers would be thrilled if I could
get collaboration with Neal. Neal thought it was a good idea too.
Funny enough,
when he presented the song to me and we worked on it at his house, I just
did a basic drum program loop so he could give me the structure of the
song. He laid down one take from top to bottom, and then he doubled up
on the rhythm
guitar tracks and put down a solo. That was basically it. When I took it
home to work on it I put drum tracks over his initial home tracks. I sent
the tracks back to Neal and asked him to put the real guitar track on it.
He said that he didn’t see anything wrong with the ones he put on there.
That’s what you hear on the album, what we did in his living room during
a five minute take. It just goes to show the level, skills, and ability of
that guy.
RIL: You’re a big fan of Queen; you even played with the band
when they were inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Were you asked
to be
the vocalist for their upcoming tour before they settled with Paul Rogers?
JSS: No, because at that point and even up to the point
where they jammed with Paul Rogers, they hadn’t decided they were going to move on and
do the reunion tour. I had spoken to Brian May quite a bit about this and
his main concern was they just weren’t emotionally ready. They knew
it was going to take more than just their desire to play live again. Then
it wasn’t until they jammed with Paul Rogers that a certain fire was
lit under them. They weren’t just doing Queen songs with him; they
were doing Bad Company and Free songs. There was something different with
what they were doing with him that they weren’t getting from other
singers.
I think what was different is that they were doing
something with somebody not replacing Freddy, but doing something where
they make it a collaborative
effort. I think it’s a good move. There’s so many naysayers that
want to see it fail based on the fact that Paul Rogers wouldn’t be
the first obvious choice for singing for Queen. That’s why their billing
it as Queen with Paul Rogers, not Queen with their new singer Paul Rogers.
It makes more sense that way because getting someone like me that’s
virtually unknown in their world, just looks like their replacing Freddy.
That just would fly with the majority of their fans. They don’t want
to replace Freddy either. They just want to go out and play with someone
that can stand on their own merits.
RIL: You’re not just a hard rock and melodic rock singer;
you actually did a disco project. How did you get involved with that?
JSS: I did that for five years, the band was called
the Boogie Knights. They started off as kind of a Halloween prank. They
were a funk rock band kind
of like Extreme or Living Colour were. They mixed a lot of funk and groove
in with their rock songs when they were signed back in the late eighties.
When they got dropped they were playing around Hollywood and the LA area.
They had quite a following. They always did a cover version of “Play
That Funky Music” were they added little disco segments to it. They
made it this big medley. That was the on thing that everyone loved about
their show, the finale. From that, they were doing a Halloween gig where
someone wanted them to do X number of sets. They said that they didn’t
have enough music for that, but as a joke why don’t we do one set as
ourselves, then the other set come out as disco figures in polyester suites,
afros, and such, and we’ll do super-rocked-up versions of some disco
songs.
It went over so well, they were getting booking left
and right. They were getting more bookings they were getting with their
original thing. They
just started working as the Boogie Knights. You could barley get into some
of their shows it was so packed. Every week I used to go see them and hang
out. One night they said to me that because I came out and saw them all
of the time, I should get involved with one of their breakaway bands. They
were
working so much that they had their music friends to do off-shoots of what
they were doing. I said yeah, most of the time I was just sitting around
between tours and albums. I figured if I was going out every week, I might
as well go out and earn some money and have some fun. That lasted for five
years. I ended up making a mint with those guys, but it also took a toll
on me. I would literally have two weeks off a year and I was singing anywhere
from three to four nights a week. It really affected my singing voice and
my social life. I had to step away from it in 2001. If I really wanted
to concentrate on my career, I knew I had to get back into it. Otherwise
I’d
be a washed-up fifty year old disco singer. I didn’t want that.
RIL: Everyone asks you about Yngwie Malmsteen, and they want to
know if he’s really the difficult and problematic person that he has become
known to be. I’m going to ask you something different. My question
is; would you work with him again?
JSS: I wouldn’t say no, only because that’s the only thing I
haven’t experienced; working with him. That’s the key answer
to when people ask me what it was like working with Yngwie. I really don’t
know because I’ve never worked with him. I worked for him. At this
point in my life, like you said earlier, I’m more than a hard rock
singer or a metal singer. I know that we really couldn’t go too much
outside of the league of what he does and how he normally does it. He’s
his own entity, and that’s on the heavy metal side. I’m not really
interested in that heavy metal side anymore. I feel that I’ve grown
as an artist, a writer, and a singer. I have so much more to say than that.
I’ve already said that portion of my life. I’d only be doing
something like that if it were a little different.
RIL: I was reading your biography and discography that’s posted on
your website and it’s clear that you’ve been a part of numerous
bands and have done a lot of different session work over the years. Two of
the projects that you worked on kind of stood out with me and I wanted to
ask you about them. They’re both projects that you appeared to have
wanted to separate yourself from; Skrapp Mettle and Bakteria. What were they
all about?
JSS: (Laughs) Those were excuses to hang out with friends
and record something that was supposed to be completely anonymous. We were
just hanging out in
the studio and having fun. It wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously;
it wasn’t even supposed to be released. It was kind of like drinking
with your buddies, except doing it in the studio. That’s what those
projects were about. I don’t really disassociate myself from them,
but I don’t emphasize them either. They are what they are. They’re
tongue and cheek and they’re not supposed to be taken seriously by
any means.
RIL: The description that I read about the Bakteria project was
something to the effect of socially offensive or something like totally
tasteless.
That’s what sparked my interest.
JSS: (Laughs) The Bakteria thing was the brainstorm,
if you want to call it using your brain, of the brothers Johansen who I worked
with in Yngwie’s
band. Those guys are just in another stratosphere all together. Their humor
and their whole way of thinking is so different then most people. When we’re
together, it can get quite repulsive. Like I said, it’s all tongue
and cheek and sense of humor stuff. It’s funny to us, but not to others.
It might be offensive to others, but to them offensive stuff is funny.
RIL: I guess it can be. There’s one thing that I wanted you to clear
up with your work on the movie Rock Star. I read that you did the vocals,
but I also read that Mike Matijevic of Steelheart did the vocals too. So
what’s the story?
JSS: Mike did the vocals for Mark Wahlberg’s voice;
I did the vocals for the guy that was the initial singer of Steel Dragon.
The one where Mark
Wahlberg was in the audience with his buddies at the concert, the guy that
was on the stage was me. I also did the first song in the movie while they
were riding in the pick-up truck and the song that played during the credits.
Two of the song I sang ended up in the movie, and three of the songs I sang
ended up on the soundtrack.
RIL: I read that you and Zakk Wylde (who was also involved in the movie)
did some demo songs together.
JSS: No, there was just one demo. It was one of the songs that was proposed
for the Rock Star movie. It’s funny how everything gets blown out of
proportion. He wrote one of the tunes that he was campaigning to get in the
movie, so I demoed it up in the studio. They said that they didn’t
think it was a song contender, but let’s put your voice on it anyway.
That was one that didn’t make the cut, but then all of a sudden people
are saying that [Zakk & I] were doing this side thing and we were demoing
stuff. I guess it’s floating around the internet on file sharing programs,
and it has both of us on it.
RIL: Another rumor I wanted you to touch upon if you could is; Soul
SirkUs was supposed to open for Van Halen for a few shows out in California
during
their reunion tour last year. For some reason it didn’t work out, what
was the reason it didn’t work out?
JSS: I can give you the sugar coated version.
RIL: You can give me the un-sugar coated version, I don’t
mind.
JSS: I really don’t want to dig up an old can of worms. It’s
best to just leave it the way it is.
RIL: That’s fine.
JSS: Well, basically it was just two shows out in the
Northern California. We were asking to be put on with them because of Neal
relationship with
Sam, and they were playing in Neal’s backyard so to speak. It would
have made sense for the debut to happen up there. We share the same management
as Van Halen, as does Journey. We’re all in the same camp. We just
thought it was an obvious choice. We weren’t asking for the whole
tour or any money from it. We just wanted to do a couple of shows if it
was possible. Initially we were told that they were working on it, for
the most part everyone’s into it, but there’s only one aspect
that’s giving them any trouble. They said not to worry, they’ll
get through it.
We did initially get the okay that the shows were
going to happen, but they were still working on this particular individual.
They told us we can start getting ready rehearsing for the two shows. We
did
the rehearsals and literally on my way back home to L.A. after we finished,
we got the letter that this particular individual freaked out and said
absolutely no way, over my dead body these guys are opening up. We didn’t
understand why. I guess when you read about the mental state and condition
of what Eddie was going through on this last tour, it doesn’t take
much to realize that he’s not really all there, in the sense of
making proper decisions and why we didn’t get to do the two shows.
They were only two shows for Pete’s sake. Everybody made it a bigger
deal than it should have been. It’s his tour, it’s his decision,
I respect it, and we all move on from it. That’s how I left it.
JEFF
SCOTT SOTO
