The Dead Daisies are back in the studio working on album number 7 and the first with John Corabi since "Burn it Down" in 2018 following on from the 2 successful albums recorded with Glenn Hughes, the band has also returned to Nashville and are again collaborating with Marti Frederiksen who has down the years worked with an "A" list of rock cognoscenti including Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Foreigner all of whom he has both written for and produced and also returning to the fold Tommy Clufetos this was literally announced as we were posting this there will also be a selection of live dates in the US beginning in New York June 6.
John Corabi: “We’re very excited about a TON of things happening as of late. We’ve been working really hard on new material with our “good pal” Marti Frederiksen down at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, and at Sienna studios in Nashville. We can’t wait for you all to hear what we’re doing and have done!!! We’ve also brought back our long-time buddy, (and Daisies alumni), Tommy Clufetos to kick this new music in the teeth. We’re looking FORWARD to seeing all of our incredibly supportive friends, fans, and family out on the road, right here in the “Good Old U.S. of A” kicking off June 6th… Thank you, we love you!!!”
So what can we expect "Look out for a big-sounding album filled with awesome guitar riffs, big hooks and thunderous drums coming your way later in 2024".
Now over the course of the last few years, we have featured many interviews with the band and you can still watch and listen to the features we recorded with Doug Aldrich, Glenn Hughes and David Lowy either on the website here or on You-Tube as well, and it's the interview with David Lowy that we feature here as we look at the backstory of how "The Dead Daisies" came into being.
"All Our Dreams Can Come True If We Have The Courage To Pursue Them" Walt Disney.
So I want to start by just saying you must be immensely proud of what you've achieved with this band over the last 10 years, having taken this seed of an idea with a huge chance of failure and turned it into a big success.
david lowy (00:31.746)
Well, I am very proud of it. You know, it's a journey, it's a long journey. Sometimes it doesn't feel like you're making a lot of headway. It's a very difficult and complex field, the music field. And, you know, I basically started it much later in life than most people, which gives you...
advantages and disadvantages. But it's been a very interesting journey with lots of highs and lots of lows, as one would expect. I think we've had moderate success. And in the circumstances of how the industry works and the ups and downs of the
macro environment that's going on all around us. Yeah, I feel good about it. I feel good about it and I think we've achieved a lot. We could achieve a lot more as well.
tim caple (01:45.019)
That dream of a successful band, you know, those seeds that were planted in your head when you heard the Kinks, you really got me. And you bought that first song, wasn't it The Easy Beats,
david lowy (01:49.313)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy beats, easy beats. She's so fine, she's so fine. I spent my bus money and I walked home, I had three or four miles, because I didn't have enough money to get the bus and buy the record, but I bought the record. I was 10.
tim caple (02:14.563)
I was going to say that rock star dream as well had significant competition, didn't it, with being a fighter pilot after you launched that glider off the hilltop and watched it fly down and building a business because you spent most of your early years, didn't you, when you were a kid at the weekends, tramping around building sites.
david lowy (02:35.678)
Yeah, I went with my dad since I was five years old to building sites. He worked seven days. So I worked with him on the weekends since I was five years old. And then I started once we built some early shopping malls in the mid-60s. I was in high school and all my summer jobs, I worked in the parcel pickups.
cleaned the public toilets in one of the malls as one of my first jobs. So I've done it from, I've done everything, done it from the bottom up, yeah. But I loved it.
tim caple (03:12.871)
You clearly had that sense of value instilled in you from a very early age which has provided this solid foundation. You were never given anything for nothing. I love the story about you walking past the guitar shop and seeing the guitar and thinking, well, if only I had the money to buy it.
david lowy (03:22.29)
Yeah, it's for sure.
Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's how it goes. So I mean, look, you know, my father, my parents taught me well, I guess. My father's a Holocaust survivor. So, you know, instilled a certain work ethic and survival ethic in you. And he did say to me, I remember, I can't remember, what age I was, but he did tell me that
you know during the terrible war years and the Nazi occupation of Europe which he had to endure, he did say that the rich kids died first and you know you needed to have a certain amount of self sufficiency and resilience and I guess he brought my brothers and myself up with that.
tim caple (04:25.673)
Yeah, you do have European roots he was born in the old Czechoslovakia, wasn't he?
david lowy (04:29.29)
Yes, yes, he was born in what is now Slovakia. Yep, and survived the war years in Hungary, in Budapest.
tim caple (04:37.531)
You've clearly inherited the success gene as well you've looked and watched what your father and his friend John Saunders achieved with that first deli in 1955 and the retail empire that followed has this been an inspiration for you to follow the way that he did things?
david lowy (04:48.298)
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
david lowy (04:58.806)
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I also inherited the luck gene because there's no such thing as a success gene without a luck gene. So, yeah, there's a lot of hard work. There's a lot of, it takes a lot of many different things and qualities to be successful. And believe me, luck plays a huge, huge role.
tim caple (05:04.839)
haha
david lowy (05:28.69)
and anybody who doesn't realise that is fooling themselves. So I got the hard work gene, the diligent gene, and the survival gene, and the luck gene. Let's put it that way.
tim caple (05:44.504)
I saw an interview with him talking, this is your father, talking about the character traits of successful people and you look at it and you just think, yeah, well, it's spot on. Trust your instincts always look after the dark side and keep on moving. I mean, it's a fairly simple template.
david lowy (06:02.442)
Yeah, yeah, it is, it is, it is. Unfortunately it comes with a large dose of paranoia, which can get you down sometimes. But anyway, look, as I said, my dad always said success is a journey, it's not a destination. And you never really get there. There's always somebody bigger, better, brighter, faster.
you know more successful the thing is not to compare just follow your own path and do your best and uh you know you will screw up you do screw up got to go to get up from it that's all
tim caple (06:52.303)
What was the moment for you then when you thought, right, I'm going for this, I'm going for the band thing was it literally the meeting with John Stevens?
david lowy (06:58.526)
Yeah, yeah. I can tell you what happened was, it goes back to the story of wanting to buy a guitar when I was a kid because where I used to get the bus at school as an early teenager, there was a music shop outside where the bus stop was and they had guitars and
They actually put them outside on stands and I wanted one so badly that I hatched this grand plan to steal one of those guitars and I never had the nerve to do it. I don't know whether it was a nerve or realising I shouldn't do it but anyway I didn't do it. And then, I don't know, 20, 30 years later I'm walking past a shop in the city of Sydney and past a, not that music shop because it closed long ago, but another one and this guitar just caught my eye.
I walked in the shop, this was in November 1999, and I thought, well, I don't have to steal a guitar, I've got enough money to buy one now, so I went in and I bought the guitar. I took it home. I mean, I played bass guitar as a kid and I learned piano, so I had some remnants of some music training. And I took the guitar home, started to learn to play it. And it was just before the millennium.
from 1999 to 2000 and I had a New Year's Eve party. New Year's Eve happens to be my birthday as well. So I had a big party and I hired a cover band to play at the party and I asked them, listen, you know, I have played some guitar as a kid and I've just bought this new guitar, can I play a couple of songs with you? And they said, can you play? I said, well, not really, but I'm a quick learner, but let me do a rehearsal with you.
Give me your song list, let me do a rehearsal. And if I can get by without embarrassing myself and you guys, let me play a few songs. So that's exactly what happened. They gave me their list. I learned six songs, very simple songs. At that time I could only do downstrokes on the guitar. I couldn't do upstrokes, but I did it. And somehow I got away with it. And I said, this is really good. I'm gonna do this. This is really, really good. I'm gonna do it.
I wanted to always do it as a child, as a kid, listening to the radio. And as I said, I did have a bass guitar. We had a garage band, played three gigs when I was about 14. We weren't very good, nobody asked us back. And then I had to study anyway. I was sort of pointed in a completely different direction. And then I bought this guitar, I was much older by then and did a cover gig and I said, I'm gonna do this, this is really good.
And that was the germ of it. And that was New Year's Eve, 99 to 2000. So it's 23 years ago, 23 and a half years ago. Yeah.
tim caple (10:02.607)
Being successful in a business and a creative environment, not an easy thing to blend, is it? Finding the balance. But has bringing that business and corporate mindset where you're used to structure, has that helped avoid the pitfalls that many fall into when they think, right, I've got a dream, I want to be a rock star?
david lowy (10:29.974)
Yeah, well look, it's helped it and it's hindered it, for sure. The helping part of it is that, you know, I'm very fortunate in that I've got organisational ability, which I've learnt through my business. I know how to work very hard towards a goal. I know how to structure things in such a way as to meet milestones and get past those milestones.
build on building blocks in order to create something at the end. Having said that, that is the antithesis of creativity. So I'm burdened by that side of it in terms of, you know, to give you an example, when we recorded the Mink album, we got into the studio and the first thing I did was got to put a whiteboard into the studio. We had limited time and I
put all the tracks up that we wanted to do and how much time we had and I allocated time to each individual component of completing the songwriting, getting down the bass, the rhythm and everything. And they just, the guys just laughed at me and said, you don't do it this way. I said, well, I do it this way. And they were right and I was wrong because some songs took days and days and others took
literally minutes. So, you know, I was burdened by the structure, but the structure is what made it all possible and happen. You know, without having the success, the business success that came from having that type of structure, I wouldn't have had the capacity to do it because, you know, no, no label is going to hire an unknown band and give them an advance to make a record.
Fortunately, I was able to be the record label and provide the advance. All a record label really does is two things. It lends the band the money to make the record and then markets the record for the band. That's what they do. They're a money lender and a marketing organisation. I said, well, I know how to do both of those. And so I didn't need a label. But really it's...
quite difficult when you come from a mindset of a highly structured mindset in order to achieve an outcome. I know it's the antithesis of the creative process and I've often had disagreements with the creators, the people I create with, even using my own type of creativity because I try and impose the structure on it.
But every time I do that, it's not the right way to do it. So, and the last disagreement I had with a very, very creative person who I had some difficulties with, and we were having a, I wouldn't call it an argument, but quite a heated discussion. And in the end he said, well, what do you want? I'm an artist. I said, well, what do you want? I'm a pragmatist.
I said, maybe those two things don't mix that well together. But the fact is that they do. Because a good manager or a good label, they're very pragmatic. They're just able to couch it in a way that a creative person understands. So I guess two things here. I've really learned a lot from the people who I've worked with, the musicians I've worked with and the people in the industry I've worked with. But one thing I always do,
I want to stand on the shoulders of giants. So I've always got people around me who are much better at it than myself. And that way I learn from them. And literally I stand on their shoulders. And that comes back to almost like a business way of doing things where you get the best people around you. And you...
You're the dumbest guy in the room, you want the smartest guys in the room with you. You know? So, I think it's a blend of both of those things, but when I really think about it, I think the truly creative artists, they do it their way. And they have to do it their way, and I really respect it as much as it frustrates me.
because their outcome of doing it the creative way is the way to do it. And I know both, I know some very, very successful ones and I know some very unsuccessful ones. And the unsuccessful ones aren't unsuccessful because their work is not as good or their creation is not as good. I think they just, you know, the...
The serendipity hasn't worked for them. As I said before, you've gotta be very smart and you've also gotta be very lucky, really. Very lucky and the real artists that you meet, that I've met, that I've got the most respect for, the ones that haven't made it, but have stuck to their guns. But they still haven't made it, you know, okay.
But they are artists, they're true artists.
tim caple (16:21.175)
You've managed to do it all as well by gathering together an A-list cast. Now this again can't have been easy with you getting on the phone and saying, yeah, I've always wanted to work with Doug Aldrich, I'll give him a ring. And you've got this guy on the end of the phone who's worked with everybody and is saying, well, look, I want you to come and join my band and here's my idea. How have you managed to convince these people in the early days?
david lowy (16:53.59)
Yeah.
david lowy (17:00.918)
Well, look, I played them some of the music. I play them my ideas. I have a number of the songs that were recorded through the ages are my songs, I've written songs. And I've got a lot of ideas for songs as well. I like to collaborate in anything I do. And I think that for me, the outcome's better collaborating. And I like to get a...
a group of guys around and play them my ideas and say what do you think about this, what do you think about that. So you know I can have a discussion with the guys and like with Doug you know we met and fortunately he also you know came with recommendation from Richard Fortas so that added a lot but to get Richard in the band it wasn't that initially it wasn't that easy and I knew he wasn't going to stay because ultimately he would go back.
Guns N' Roses. But with Richard, we sent him the material and he loved it. He said, OK, I'll give it a go. So I think it comes down to the material and the other people that are in the band, if they have confidence in them that it's going to work for them. So, so, yeah, it's never easy.
But you know, it's not supposed to be easy. So it's just not.
tim caple (18:30.267)
. Six albums in 10 years, your work rate is prolific. Each one is built on the success of the previous one. But there's no doubt that the last incarnation of the band for Holy Ground and Radiance, the albums made were, quote, a quantum leap forward. What was it like here when Glenn Hughes walked through the door for the first time?
david lowy (18:53.355)
Yeah.
tim caple (19:00.215)
and you look back at what he's produced and then you start to hear him in the studio. He must've given you chills.
david lowy (19:04.714)
Yeah, oh totally. I mean look, it's an absolute privilege to have collaborated, written, played, performed and with Glenn. I mean he's a one of a kind, incredibly talented individual. And yeah, it was a privilege to
to work with him. It was a privilege to have him in the Daisies. And it did build a lot on what we'd done in the past. He had some very firm ideas, which is okay. Very firm ideas. He's a strong character in the room, in the studio. But look, he's got the runs on the board to carry it.
And it was.
It did work out to be a collaborative process. I think it was more collaborative than Glenn would have liked for some of the process he works well alone and it's unusual for him to write how we wrote. But nevertheless, he was flexible enough and board minded enough to, to do it how we wanted to do it.
tim caple (20:35.715)
I was just going to say, I spoke, when I spoke to Doug Aldridge about a year ago, just before they were launching the album, the first one with Glenn, the danger is you get somebody with a character like that who's done what he's done. I said, how did you manage to make it not a Glenn Hughes solo record? Because it didn't, it wasn't a Glenn Hughes solo record. It was a Dead Daisies album.
david lowy (20:43.233)
Yeah.
david lowy (20:54.399)
Yeah.
Yeah. That's right. That's right. It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. Look, we've got, we've also got some very good people around us as well. The manager of The Dead Daisies, he's David Edwards, who, I mean he's a very experienced guy and I very much, and the band very much relies on him. He's a member, he effectively,
and the other member of the band that nobody sees, I rely very much on him because one, I don't want to do the business of the band, and two, you know, often you need an outside person to adjudicate, if you like, somebody's gotta be in charge, and it's not a good idea if it would be me.
simply because I don't know as much about it as everybody else in the room because I've not done it since I'm a teenager. So as I said, you know, to stand on the shoulders of giants. But with Glenn, he did, he came around and we worked together and it and it worked really well and I think he enjoyed it most of the time. But you know, like with this...
As I say often, it would have been very good to have a stable members in the band from day one. But it's just, we're not 20 years old, we're not a bunch of guys that put two grand together, bought a combi. And yeah, everybody's already got their careers. The secret to their careers is they need to do different things at different points in time. And that's what's kept them fresh and great in the business.
also my time is restricted as well. So in order to fit the music in, I need to, you know, I've got a timetable, these guys have got timetables, they wanna do their own things as well. And my arrangements with them has always been, you're not exclusive to me, okay?
I don't want to hold anybody back from doing anything they don't want to do. And I understand people have got different things to do. So that has meant that there's been a bit of a, there's been a lot of, it's not a revolving door, but we've played with people and they've played with us again and they've played, and I hope to play with them again. And in a way, it's a bit of an alumni.
And, but I treat each one's a learning experience. And I think the band's grown each time we've had to make a change. And Glenn now wanted to go back and do his Deep Purple solo thing. You know, the burn thing, 50 year anniversary of burn. And of course I respect that. And so, you know, we're going to, we're going to do something with John again. Which I'm looking forward to Yeah.
tim caple (24:17.383)
So you've got the best of scheduled for release. So was this a collaborative thing? So you all get together and you say, right, now what I want you to do is put down your favorite three tracks in order and then we'll come up with an order. Because it's never an easy task, this, because regardless of what you put out, someone will say, well, where's so and so? Why isn't that in there? So how did that come about how did you pull it all together?
david lowy (24:44.842)
Okay, well, everybody, we all had some input into it and then we let management choose. Because, as I said before, there needs to be an arbiter. And I don't want to impose my will. The track listing is not mine, I can tell you that. It's not mine. And it's the same when we do an album, we always record more songs than we need. And I'm not the one that makes the choices.
david lowy (25:13.562)
And there is some, I mean this is a creative thing, but it's also a commercial thing. And you need to generate income for everybody to get paid. And ultimately there's some commerciality that comes into it and the management says, look, I think you put these ones on, it's the best chance of a commercial success. And then you blend it with what you think's gonna be commercial and then what you want is.
as a creation and then the commercial people win out.
tim caple (25:47.575)
So just a couple more things before I finish . What then has given you the greatest satisfaction in your life when you look at everything that you've achieved either in business,
in aviation where you had a significant set of achievements, and in music, what's given you the greatest pleasure?
david lowy (26:24.722)
Well, it's different things at different time all of them have got their very dark times and times where you're very elated. You know, if I take the business side of it, you know, you do some transactions and you have a great success at it and then suddenly something doesn't go as planned, doesn't go your way.
and it's not successful, it's a failure but it's in the long run, what counts, where you are in the long run. It's hard to see the long run at a particular point in time. And we have had, we've had a lot of success for sure, but we've also had our share of failure. And that's, so you've got the ups and downs of it that's in business, in aviation, the...
the type of flying I did with the air show and aerobatics. The negative of that is there were some incredibly difficult times. I've had 21 friends killed flying and I've been to plenty of funerals and that is a very, very hard thing to cope with. But then there's something so special about being able to roll an aeroplane around the sky in three dimensions and then actually do it competitively.
and win competitions at it, it's an unbelievable sense of achievement. So you get the highs. Again, I entered many competitions and often, and I didn't score well, and some of them I came last. Fortunately, in the end, I won the Australian Aerobatic Championship, but it took me nine years of a highly competitive sport. And a lot of...
a lot of frustrations of course. The tip of the spear is a great thing but there's a whole spear behind it. So it's the ups and downs and with music, plenty of ups and downs in the music. But if it's not for the ups and downs, it can't all be just one way. Even for the most successful famous guys. They have a tough life, any of them.
Of all the things I've done, music is the hardest. It's the hardest in a business sense. From a business point of view, it's the, it's got the two very bad elements of a business. It's low margin, which is terrible, and high risk, and high risk, low margin and high risk. You know, it's not a good starting point from a business perspective, but it's not about business. It's about.)
love of music and everybody in it is passionate about it and that's the thing. But in whatever field of endeavour you get to meet wonderful people along the way and the key to it for me is really trying to learn as much as I can from the people that I'm working with or doing things with and then just doing the best you can and living with the ups and downs of it.
tim caple (29:47.247)
Lastly, I know you've always or you used to have a big Friday night family thing going on down the years. Have you ever watched the TV program? I'm sure it's Crossed Continent's Friday Night Dinner.
david lowy (30:00.643)
No, I haven't. I've got to watch it. I can imagine that. Yeah, Friday night dinner? Yeah, where's it on?
tim caple (30:05.011)
So it was on channel four in the UK you can get it on demand. It is very, very funny. And if you watch it, you will understand the humuuor. You will definitely understand the humor. so go and watch it.
david lowy (30:16.194)
Alright, Friday night dinner.
david lowy (30:27.914)
Yeah, yeah, I look forward to it. I will.
tim caple (30:31.811)
And have you still got back in black as your telephone answering service
david lowy (30:35.314)
Actually, you know what? Yeah, I've just took it off recently and I've got Hypnotize Yourself because I, that's my opening, I play the opening riff and I thought, geez, I'm going to have my own song on it. So I've got Hypnotize Yourself, one of the songs we did with Glenn.
tim caple (30:41.516)
hahahaha
tim caple (30:51.043)
Well, I've got to say the best track on that album "Born to fly."
david lowy (30:58.142)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well that's my song, I wrote that song. Yeah, yeah and look, the one thing I didn't mention is I couldn't do any of this without the full support of my family. And I'm very, very grateful for that because it's, you know, for my wife, it's not an easy thing for your husband to go out on the road and.
and then do all the other things. And then the flying, of course, it hard its, as I said, I had 21 friends killed. There's a lot of danger. I'm so glad that my kids don't do it and put me through what I put my parents through and what I'm sure I put them through. So, you know, I've really been lucky to have incredible parents and brothers as well.
That was David Lowy talking last summer ahead of the "Best Of" release and so we move on John Corabi is back the direction will change but the one constant will remain
tim caple (31:03.943)
Well you've said. It all starts with the riff. and this a a great riff..........
Thanks to David Lowy for spending the time talking to us and we can't wait to hear to the new album toward the end of the year.
Don't forget you can listen to this interview on the podcast and there are two further Daisies related shows with Doug Aldrich, Glen Hughes and John Corabi also available you can find them here on teh website just go to the podcast home page there are also shorter cut down versions available as well.