GILBY CLARKE - Classic Rock Renaissance Man Page 2
by Martin Popoff

Assembling this compilation was easy enough. Very few bureaucratic ownership issues across labels. Says Gilby, "The thing is, people were telling me - you know, the industry - this was like '94, '95; things were really changing, and the industry is disappearing. What we'd know now then is gone. People were saying, 'You have money; for your next record, own the master. Just pay for the recording. You know how to do everything. You don't have to pay $200,000 to make the record. Your gear in your house is as good as any studio's.' So that's what I did. And I started doing that way back then. So I own the masters, and I license, so what was really cool was, I own the master, and I got to license it to Japan, Europe and South America. So I got more money from my advances of that, than I would make on a major label. I would sell a tenth of the amount of copies, than I would with a label, and I would still make more money. It was unbelievable. Just like any business, if you have enough to do the start up costs, you're in good shape."

Collaboration is the key word for Gilby, when it comes time for the next solo record, the next band project... hell, even work with Sean Kelly and perhaps at the high stakes end of things, Rock Star Supernova. And where this all came from is the extent to which the first Rock Star Supernova was a collaboration, weird as the working units turned out to be.

"I've got to tell you, there have been a lot of new doors open for me from this experience," muses Clarke. "You know, you can live in your own little world, and say this is what I do and I don't do anything else. I mean, four or five years ago I wouldn't have done a television show. This is completely new. You don't have the avenues you used to have, so this experience, just working with Tommy and Jason, and Butch (Walker, producer), I tried some new things I probably never ever would have tried, and I liked it. I really love working with Butch. It was so weird, because the four tunes of mine that are on the Supernova record, those would've been on one of my records, but Butch wrote the lyrics. And Lukas (Rossi, vocals - winner of the competition) did some of them too. And that was really wild, hearing someone else do the lyrics and the melodies to what I do musically. And it really blew my mind, because especially, there is a song called 'Be Yourself' on the record, that was a done song, for me making another record. I had lyrics and melody. And Butch said, 'Let me just try it.' And he took it in a direction that just blew my mind. That's what opened me up to having Dilana collaborate, and everybody, was like well... just be a little bit more open-minded."

GILBY CLARKE - Classic Rock Renaissance Man Page 3