By Martin Popoff
So came the dictum from chief dick of Spitfire Records, president and chief headbanger Paul Bibeau delivering the order down the line to a shocked and pleasantly surprised Tracii Guns, legendary rock ratpacker for the equally legendary L.A. Guns. As Tracii could clearly hear in the background, the Spitfire head had his usual assortment of bimbos cavorting in the executive office jacuzzi, champagne corks popping left and right, Keith Moon naked on the windowsill, Led Zep roadies on motorcycles whizzing up and down the hall just outside Bibeau's custom-carved gold and platinum office door.
Well, at least the phone call part kinda went down like that. "I've always been trying to put heavy stuff into L.A. Guns," offered Tracii Guns, as we lounged on the tour bus watching video of the band's set (hands-down best of the night, over four other bands: Warrant, Firehouse, Ratt and Dokken) recently over not half an hour earlier.
"That's basically why I left Guns N' Roses, because I basically didn't want to do Aerosmith rock. They're one of my favourite bands, and I love Zeppelin, so when we try to make rock records, I always lean more towards Zeppelin for that kind of influence. But my real heart has always been with Randy Rhoads, early Maiden, Van Halen, stuff like that, Priest, Sabbath. And so Paul Bibeau, the president of our label called me and I thought he was going to say, 'Hey, you've got to make some great radio songs; you've got to come up with the hits.' And I was getting ready for that phone call. And he called up and said 'Dude, I want you to make a f**king great heavy metal record.' And I was like, 'What!? You're kidding me, right?' And he goes no, I'm serious. So immediately after he called, like ten minutes later, I had my recording shit out in the house and I just started coming up with all these riffs and it basically allowed me to do exactly what I wanted to do, given that he requested for it to be like that. Which is the easiest thing in the world for me to do. With that in mind, and given that Andy Johns was mixing our live DVD, and he was there to record it and stuff, it all worked perfectly."
L.A. GUNS - "I Want A Metal Record!" Page 2