By Martin Popoff
You guys and Poison on the last tour. Why was the communication perhaps not so good? "Oh, the communication was great (laughs). You know, we knew where we stood and we followed the rules and there you go, and get the f**k out (laughs). There was no lack of communication. We knew before we got the tour what the rules were and we were very professional about it and didn't ask why or what happened ten years ago. We were like, all right, that's cool."
Do you know why?
"I do, yeah. But I don't really want to talk about it. It's not a big deal, just something that got blown out of proportion ten years ago that kind of got carried over. It's ridiculous to me. But every band has got their own thing, especially when you headline, and you've got to respect that. It's not a game anymore with egos and stuff to us. It's like hey man, if you want to go work and be professional, you know... we're there to do the show anyway, not to hang out. So we knew going in, upfront, what was supposed to happen and we were cool with it, and we accepted it like big boys and did our show."
"I think it's right now. I think we're at a point now where we are driving the car once again," answer Dixon when asked what the point was when they looked around and realized they had made it. "There's no label involved; there's really nobody in our way. We know what we are, we know where we stand, we know what we are worth and it's pretty much up to us at this point, how much we want to work or not work. And that's just a great feeling. And especially since the '80s has kind of resurged in the last year or two, so that's helping us. So things are really kind of good right now. I think we've been around long enough, and the '80s have been around where they kind of weren't cool, but now enough time has gone by where it's OK to like it again. It's all right to come out of the closet. So things are just pretty much... you know, in this business, control is a lot. It means a lot to a band, and we're kind of in control again. We're pulling our own strings; it's up to us if we want to do 150 shows or 30 shows, or a record or no record. Things are really kind of smooth right now, which is nice."