Joe Lynn Turner continues Sunstorm album series with ‘Emotio

[tater1977]

Joe Lynn Turner continues Sunstorm album series with ‘Emotional Fire'

Alison Richter

Music Industry Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/article/joe-lyn ... ional-fire

With over 60 albums to his credit and notoriety as the frontman for legendary groups like Rainbow, Deep Purple and Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force, Joe Lynn Turner is an iconic singer/songwriter whose voice is part of the fabric of classic rock. Turner has also recorded eleven solo albums and lent his talents to a number of musical projects over the past two decades. In 2006, he undertook a series of albums known as the Sunstorm project. In February 2012, Emotional Fire, the third disc in this ongoing series, was released.

The Sunstorm projects are only part of Turner’s musical endeavors. He stays very busy in the studio and on tour, creating new music and exploring different avenues for his many talents.

Despite your ongoing body of work and the fact that you continue writing and recording, many interviews dwell on your past. Is that frustrating at times?

It can be. I’ll tell you a story that says it all. One journalist, I think he was interviewing Eric Clapton, asked him, “Can you please answer this differently?” He said, “How can I answer it differently when I’m telling the truth every time I answer the same question?” That can be frustrating too. There’s no “different answer” if you’re telling the truth. Occasionally you get people who don’t care what your favorite color is, and you actually get some in-depth questions, which are pretty good.

Is that why you continue doing interviews? For the occasional in-depth questions?

If you don’t do press, I think the career starts to fizzle, because you’re only as good as your last record and last interview. It’s good to do press to get your name out there. The journalist and the artist work together, so as frustrating as it is sometimes, I think any kind of interviews, as long as they spell your name correctly, as the saying goes, are good. So I don’t worry about the frustration as much. I’d rather you ask the same questions other people have asked, because you haven’t asked them of me before.

As a real singer who came up in the days when records were tracked on tape, what’s your take on reality-show record deals and the ease of pitch correction in the studio?

Oh my god, good question! Really, because I’m never asked that so succinctly! I think it sucks, if I can say it like that, because this is so phony. If you’ve got to alter your voice in the studio, what are you going to do onstage? There are a lot of track people out there; they come to the venue and they sing and it’s all tracks. It hurts on a couple of points. One, it hurts the culture of music because you’re not going forward in any way. You’re selling schlock, not artistry, and that lowers the bar for all of us. Art is supposed to inspire you and take you higher, but when you fix it like this, you’ve lowered the bar completely because no one has any aspirations to be better. As far as the situation with the television shows, first of all, it’s become absolutely ridiculous the amount of shows with singing, with fashion, with stupid reality shows — it’s embarrassing to the American public. My wife is Belarusian and she comes here and shakes her head and says, “What are you people looking at?” “Lowering the bar” is not even correct. It is just so in the dirt. There’s no bar left. It’s terrible. On the positive side, maybe there’s an opportunity for people that my generation never had. We never had computers to record on and we never had the ability to put our ideas down like that. What kids have today that we didn’t have we couldn’t even imagine. However, you’ve still got these shows.

On that note, what is the studio experience like for you now? Do you track with the musicians, use files, what is the process like for the Sunstorm albums?

We still record with real musicians and sometimes 2-inch tape because digital cannot give you the warmth that analog has. From the technical angle you can use both, or use outboard equipment that produces the analog sound to combine the old with the new. I would never do it any other way. Yes, there are loops you can create. It all depends on the project. Everything old is new, and it’s a shame that we had to get this way, but people don’t hear that warmth today and that sizzle. It sounds wrong to them. We’ve changed the culture drastically and I’m not sure it’s for the better. People don’t buy CDs anymore. First of all, they have to hear a song, and where can they hear a song? Radio is computerized. Once in a while you get somebody who’s real, but other than that, it’s a playlist not chosen by the individual. We used to love DJs because they had personalities and talked a certain way about certain things. Not anymore. Very rarely. I grew up with a transistor radio under my pillow, listening to WABC and all those guys late at night, and there’s no more of that. When people finally hear a song today, they have the ability to download that one song and they listen to it on an iPhone.

Dennis Ward, your bass player, is also your producer. What was the genesis of that working relationship? How has it grown?

We’ve done three Sunstorm projects now, and believe it or not, I have never met him. It’s a cyber relationship. He’s an Atlanta boy who moved to Germany and he has musicians there. He’s had a project called Pink Cream 69, an avant-garde band, and he’s a great producer. We did these last three projects together and we Skype and e-mail files. He uses German musicians and they’re fabulous players, so it’s all real music recorded and played by real people. I track my vocals here in New Jersey with an engineer and send the files to him. So that is a plus in technology, absolutely.

Sixty albums — “ya done good” for a kid from Jersey. Can you really grasp the scope of what an incredible career you’ve had — and continue to have?

I’m pretty happy with it. You look at it sometimes when you want to puff up a little bit, but not really. I never looked at it that way. It’s just one day at a time, and there are more creative times than others. I’m amazed when I do look at it, because I can’t believe it’s me, but when you live your life, you stand aside from yourself and think, Did I do that? Yes I did. But I don’t think about it.

Why does so-called classic rock continue to thrive and survive? Young fans are discovering it and they love it. They’re buying the concert tickets, the merch, buying — or maybe stealing — the albums.

Today’s music is not “time capsule” stuff. First of all, it’s like fast food. It’s bad for your health and it doesn’t nourish your body. It’s here and gone and doesn’t do you that much good. Most of it. I’m not saying there aren’t artists doing great stuff now, but they’ve been conditioned to accept that this is the way it is. There are a lot of youngsters who are into classic rock. That might bring on the change, because everything is cyclical, and hopefully great music will come back in the sense of artistry and one person singing with an acoustic guitar and pouring his heart out. A lot of people I find now still love classic rock. A lot of young people are out there and it’s turning their heads around. It’s taking off again for the younger kids. There’s a vacuum, they’re not getting the substance that they need. You can only take so much b.s. for so long and you feel when your soul is empty.

Your voice and your range are spot-on. What do you know that many singers don’t?

First of all, I learned how to sing and that’s important, because you can have a gift and not know what to do with it. My father said, “If you’re going to build a house, you’ve got to have a hammer,” so I went to about six teachers before I found the right one who taught me the correct way to sing, from the diaphragm, and the push/pull and all that stuff. That really saved me. Marty Lawrence was my teacher, God rest his soul. All he taught was technique. He once told me, “I can’t teach you to sing. I can’t give you soul. All I can give you is the technique to better express your soul. It’s up to you to have the courage to be vulnerable to people, because that’s all this is.” When you sing, you’re laying it all on the line. That’s the thing. You learn how to sing and you can keep your voice in good shape. And I’m a good boy now. I don’t do all the ’80s things we used to do. I still see people dropping, we still lose people and I think, Don’t you learn? I remember partying with these guys, but I stopped. Wake-up call! You stop the recreational drugs and womanizing and all that. At some point you’ve got to grow up. You’ve got to grow up! Growing up really helped me to preserve my voice, and again, with my wife, Maya, at my side, she is my greatest asset in life. She’s my angel. I do everything right now and that’s important. I didn’t get that before. I was miserable, I wasn’t doing things right, nobody around me was doing things right, and I was drowning in this pool of sludge. She saved me and I’m so grateful, but not everyone gets an angel like I did.

Read more of Joe Lynn Turner’s interview here: http://www.guitarworld.com/interview-le ... ional-fire

[yulog]

Weak cd the first one was much better.

[SunshineTwilight]

I LOVE this release! The first one is great as well.... Classic JLT!!