CRASH KELLY - Hard, Sweet & Sticky Page 2
by Martin Popoff

"You know what? There totally is!," agrees Kelly, in response to my singer-songwriter comment. "And it's funny that you mention that, and I'm sure this is going to doom me with some hard rock people, but I've been getting into early Elvis Costello and early Tom Petty stuff; I've been really moved by that. Yeah, there is a bit of that. I'm a bit of a storyteller. Some of it is personal experience, some of it is observation, and I try to blur the lines a bit and blend it all in."

The brightness of the album, the upbeat, airy quality to the layering, comes down to incidental GN'R member and not so incidental TV star Gilby Clarke, who produced the album. "What Gilby did was, he trimmed the fat essentially. He talked about getting down to the essence of the song. When I produce, I'm a bit of an 'everything but the kitchen sink' guy. I tend to go a little overboard. He really helped us try to cut things down to the most essential parts. And we're going to do even more of that on the next record, make it even more raw. And he also has great guitars, great amps, all the great tools. And a great ear, and a great rock 'n' roll esthetic. He knew about the old Starz records I talked about, and the Lizzy guitar tones, and the Cheap Trick references - he got all that stuff. We didn't use a lot of words. It was more like pointing at a certain piece of gear, you know, 'Hotter Than Hell?' 'Yeah, exactly.' 'Paul Stanley's rhythm guitar?' 'Yeah, left channel?' 'Perfect.' 'Let's grab that one.'"

And a chewy, yummy, punchy hard but poppy piece of ear candy was produced, with a theme to it (although kind of after the fact) revolving around the idea of electric satisfaction, hence the title...

"Basically I kind of took a look at what the lyrics were about. I never do these things as I do each individual piece, but there was something that was streaming through all of them. And 'electric satisfaction' refers to the things we human do to get a rush. You know, how many times people, when they seem to have everything, throw caution to the wind, just to get another rush, right? Whether it be drugs or chasing dreams of vanity like movie stardom or rock stardom, driving too fast, whatever. Sometimes people do things that seem a little bit irrational and are ultimately harmful, just for that rush. So I'm always fascinated with why people do that stuff. There's just something that drives people really, and Electric Satisfaction... a lot of those songs are cautionary tales. Something like Ride The Wire, which is 'Give me drugs/give me action.' A lot of people throw those around, but I'm trying to exploring a little bit about. What happened? What made that guy go down that road?"

CRASH KELLY - Hard, Sweet & Sticky Page 3