Saraya Band interview english Aug 2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

When Saraya’s first album was released in 1989, few could fail to predict a successful future for the band. For women in those days, the male dominated world of hard rock was not easy. Whilst Lita Ford, Femme Fatale, Vixen and Chrissy Steele were defined mainly by their provocative image, female rock singers were few and far between. In 1987 the New Jersey band, then going by the name Alsace Lorranie, gained their recognition through the alluring voice of Sandi Saraya. They began putting together an outstanding debut album that was bewitching from the first note. However, shortly after the release of their second album, Sandi Saraya mysteriously disappeared. Since then nobody heard anything about her. The fact that until now, she has ignored any questions about this disappearance leads us to suspect that she left leave the music industry on a bad note. “I never gave up singing or making music. I’ve always loved music. Today I’m in a new phase of my life. Now I have five children who are no longer quite so dependent upon me. Apart from my 11 year old, they are all more or less independent and can take care of themselves. This gives me the opportunity and the time for my music. At the moment I am working on two projects that will be recorded in a few months and will be released sometime in the coming year. I definitely want to tour again.” As the band gained more and more recognition in the late 80s, it appeared to be a dream come true for the singer. “I had a great band, a great album and our videos were appearing on MTV. My mum always said how proud she was that I had found such indescribable happiness. I was young and ambitious and hat everything that I had ever wished for, but despite all this, I never felt completely fulfilled. Something was missing. When our album “Saraya” was released, I should have been really happy, but in fact I felt the opposite. I would go as far as to say I was truly depressed.” Sandi Saraya and keyboard player Gregg Munier had already played in several bands together. Now it was time to turn her back on her home on the east coast of America and to search for happiness in LA. “I don’t want to go into great detail, but at the time I had a very well-known and influential manager. As things became more and more complicated between us, it couldn’t carry on, but he threatened to ensure that I would never achieve anything on the East Coast with any band in the world. So Gregg and I packed our bags and set off through America to start again from scratch.” Not everybody in the band managed to settle in LA. Joined by Danger Danger guitarist Tony “Bruno” Rey, bassist Gary Taylor and drummer Chick Bonfante, Alsace Lorraine were soon discovered and signed by Polygram Records. But not without certain conditions: “They wanted us to be known as Sandi Saraya, but for me that was out of the question. Under no circumstances did I want to be a solo artist: I wanted to be part of a band. Then they wanted to put a photo of me in a see-through miniskirt on the album cover. They wanted to promote our records by making a sex symbol of me, like Lita Ford or Lorraine Lewis. That might have worked for them but for me it was unthinkable. In the end there was a compromise: I put forward my idea for the album cover, that I hid myself amongst the band members so nobody could tell if I was a woman or a man. I agreed to the name change – as long as they took it down to just Saraya. If you weren’t already a superstar, you had no choice but to do as the record company told you. Polygram wanted me as a female Bon Jovi who they could market through my image. But that wouldn’t have been me.” Their first album sold well: there was only one song that appeared on MTV that was of the party-hardrock genre. Apart from that, Saraya were associated with a serious, rich sound: a mixture between Whitesnake and Heart, with a singer and front-woman whose voice was reminiscent of a combination of Ann Wilson,
Allanah Myles and Pat Banatar. Hard rock classics such as “Gypsy Child” and the comparatively clumsy “One Night Away”, the hits “Love Has Taken its Toll” (position 64 in the charts), and the double bass and organ runs on their cover of Rainbow’s “Running Out of Time” brought the album straight into the top 80. Saraya were produced by Jeff Glixman, who in the 1970s was responsible for acts such as Leftover, and the first solo work of Paul Stanley, and who shortly before he began working with Saraya, was responsible for creating the outstanding sound of Black Sabbath’s “The Eternal Idol”. “I know that many people find our records to be too smooth and overproduced, but they should have heard them before Jeff came to them. The label wanted us to sound sugary sweet but Jeff brought a hard, raw quality back into our music. He was a blessing!” A few years later, the band begin working on their second album “When the Blackbird Sings”, and things began to change, not least for the singer personally. “It sounds pathetic, but it is what it is: I found God. I come from a Catholic family but religion was never really of any consequence to me. I suddenly became aware that some of the songs that I was currently writing had many similarities to certain stories in the bible – even though I have never read it. I’ve never spoken openly about it, but my relationship with God has changed my whole perspective.” Meanwhile, bassist Gary Taylor left the band, making place for Barry Dunaway, who had already played for Lou Gramm and Yngwie Malmsteen. Disappointed about the new addition to the band, Munier also turned his back on Saraya. “The songs on the second album were much harder and more guitar orientated than on the debut. Gregg felt that he no longer had a place in the band. I did everything I could to try and persuade him to stay but nothing worked. I don’t think he’s ever truly got over not being part of Saraya. He was unbelievably important to me, both as a musician and as a friend.” In their concerts, the keyboarder was replaced by a second guitarist. Gregg Murnier died of pneumonia in 2006. The already noticeably harder songs on The Blackbird Sings maintain the exquisite sound that Peter Collins had created for them. Before this, the reputable producer was already responsible for creating the sound of Queensryche’s “Operation: Mindcrime and Empire” and brought a similar tone to Saraya’s second album. In the explosive “Bring Back the Light and “When You See Me Again” the rich sounding phrases are reminiscent of a mixture of Queensryche, Ratt and Heart. In 1991, six months after the release of “When the Blackbird Sings”, the band split up. “I simply lost the will to continue. At the time, we were being managed by a huge company called Q Prime. Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein were wonderful people, but were much too busy with their most important bands – Metallica and Def Leppard – to take care of us. It all fell on me to organise tours and to decide what we should be doing next. I had to make sure that our merchandise was selling and that the others didn’t drink too much. I had to throw the groupies off the bus. In short, I was suddenly playing mum to these guys!” The fact that Sandi Saraya had married Tesla bassist Brian Wheat didn’t help the situation. In fact it was the opposite. “I was with him for a reason, but I wasn’t really in it for the marriage.
Page 1: When the Blackbird Sings At the end

Saraya Band interview english Aug 2017

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?