from BW&BK
"Isn't Ricky a trip," asks the singer, switching gears. "Once he heard I was doing a solo album, he contacted me, in Florida. He asked what I was doing for a touring band and said, 'I want in. I've learned your album. Come on over to my house, I'll play it for you.' I thought, 'Yeah, right.' A couple of weeks later, I met him for the first time and thought, 'Oh my God, what is this? What do I do with this?' He played and burned it up! I was like, 'Crap! Why does he have to be so good?' It took me about an hour to get over it. To be honest, it crossed my mind, 'What are people going to think of this,' but he's hot, so let him rip!"
Unable to tour his homeland, Rock will throw himself into more recording projects, some in front of the mic, others behind the scenes. "Well, Avantasia part two is coming up. I did a couple of tracks on there and there's going to be a best of Impellitteri, in June, but that's only for Japan. I'm going to produce a record for Rick. We wrote 12 songs; half are instrumental and the rest have vocals. I'm going to wrestle up some guest singers. Even though I wrote the songs, I don't want to sing on it, because people would ask, 'Why don't you just call it Rob Rock then?' It will be in the same neo-classical vein, but first I'm going to do my next solo record, then another Warrior record. I've got a busy year."
What of the follow-up to Rage Of Creation? "I've been going over songs with Roy Z. I've got 20 or 30 idea we've been hacking through, deciding what we should record. I think we'll start in May and have the new album done by the end of June." As yet, the new opus remains untitled. "Got any suggestion?" jokes the affable vocalist. "I'm going to record the drums at Silver Cloud again, as well as mixing it there. There are a couple of songs that I recorded before, but never finished, that I might use. I'll be using Butch Carlson on drums again, and of course, Roy Z, but I'm also going to have Rick on guitar and Stephen Elder on bass, from my touring band. I'll try to talk Jake E. Lee into playing another solo or so. Everybody loves to hear Jake rip."
ROB ROCK - Fighting The World Page 3