Interviews
KINGDOM COME Drummer JAMES KOTTAK Talks About Putting the Band Back Together, Hard Partying, and 30th Anniversary Tour
We spoke with Kingdome Come drummer James Kottak about getting the band back together, the olden days of the hard-partying 1980s heavy metal scene, and their thirtieth anniversary tour.
From out of nowhere in 1987, Kingdom Come was formed and quickly signed to Polydor Records. German singer Lenny Wolf, along with drummer James Kottak, lead guitarist Danny Stag, rhythm guitarist Rick Steier, and bassist Johnny B. Frank, delivered the first debut album in U.S. history to ship gold, based primarily on the hype generated by the advance single âGet It On.â
By the time the third single was put to radio and MTV, the album had reached platinum status in the United States, Germany, and Canada. After a 52-city sold-out tour of Europe, the band was chosen to open for the North American Monsters of Rock Tour in 1988 supporting Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken, and Metallica. Further touring included more dates with Scorpions, Black Sabbath, Bon Jovi, Ratt, and Warrant.
In 1989, Kingdom Come went on to release their second album In Your Face using producer Keith Olson (Whitesnake, Foreigner). They released three singles from the recording and toured with Black Sabbath and Warrant. While out on tour supporting In Your Face, the band abruptly broke up due to personal reasons.
Lenny Wolf carried on with the Kingdom Come name for years afterward, but none of the original members were involved. In 2014, there was talk of a full reunion, but James Kottakâs responsibilities with Scorpions threw a wrench into those plans. In 2016, Lenny Wolf, and original members Danny Stag, and Johnny B. Frank performed on the Monsters of Rock Cruise, giving the band a partial reunion. Shortly afterward, Wolf declared the band finished.
2018 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the bandâs classic debut, which is by far their most popular release internationally. James Kottak has revived Kingdom Come along with original members Danny Stag, Rick Steier, and Johnny B. Frank. The members reached out to Lenny Wolf several times to participate in the reunion, but he respectfully declined the offer. He does, however, fully support the members moving forward without him. The current version of Kingdom Come includes singer Keith St. John (Montrose, Lynch Mob) and will tour in 2018 â 2019 performing their debut album in its entirety along with music from their second album In Your Face.
James Kottak took some time out of his rehearsal schedule to talk a bit about the reunion and upcoming tour dates with PureGrainAudio. That interview is presented here along with the unabridged audio via SoundCloud.
You have not booked a date up in Toronto yet, and I hope youâre not gonna forget us here in good Toronto!
James Kottak: We havenât, and thereâs a couple offers, but it just wasnât enough to make the trip. If we do come up, we wanna go Toronto all the way over and hit eight cities. We played Canada with Scorpions so many times, and with Kingdom Come, and itâs such a great place to play, everybody loves rock nâ roll so much. If weâre gonna go in, weâre gonna spend some time and stay there.
Cool. I figured itâd be 2019.
Kottak: Yeah, thereâs a lot being offered so weâre pretty excited.
Do you want to take us back about 30 years? Weâll talk a bit about 1987 and 1988, how Kingdom Come came together originally?
Kottak: Well before, in 1986, I did an album with Ronnie Montrose, the Montrose Mean album. Iâd been trying to get to LA because I knew the scene was exploding, and he invited me to San Francisco to do the album. Once I got to San Francisco, I just went, âOh my God! What am I missing?â I got it together and moved to LA, and believe it or not, I answered an ad in Music Connection magazine, which was pretty big for the time. Itâs everything to do with the music industry, blah blah.
And I went to this audition. There was a lot of drummers, they ended up auditioning something like 60 drummers. I just went myself, and me and Lenny (Wolf) kinda hit it off. And then we got Danny (Stag), and Johnny (Frank) whoâs the guitar and bass player, and then Rick Steier came in. At the time, we were kinda like, âUh, whatâs gonna go on?â but we did our first demo with Bob Rock, who as you know did Mötley CrĂŒe, Metallica, etc.
And the pieces just came together, and we started this, and then somebody leaked a track, and then everyone thought it was Led Zeppelin, and Iâm goinâ, âRight on! Iâll take that!â Then, the album came out, and it was just, wow, it was whirlwind. It was everything I had ever wanted in my entire life. We hit it, and it was so awesome and Iâm so grateful and thankful for that time, âcuz it set a precedent for everything else. Plus, thatâs when I met the Scorpions.
Iâd forgotten that was a Bob Rock record until I was looking up for some information to chat today, and it was like, âOh my God, he produced that thing!â Thatâs awesome!
Kottak: That was one of his first productions. He was always Bruce Fairbairnâs right-hand guy, which producers often share, so it worked out really cool, and Bob Rock, there you go.
Let Kingdom Come show you âWhat Love Can Beâ with the classic live video.
So, how did you go about getting signed? You must have had a number of labels interested in your material, once it went out for tender.
Kottak: Well, Lenny had a manager and the manager was already shopping the tape around, âcuz heâd been in the business for a long time, and there was already interest, but it came down to Polygram. Derek Shulman came down over to our rehearsal, and everything just fell into place. He goes, âLetâs go!â Next thing you know, three months later weâre in the studio in Vancouver with Bob Rock.
I remember buying that album back in the day. Pardon me… the cassette tape. Because thatâs what I was listening to back then, right? It just came out of nowhere. It was one of the first albums where I remember thinking, âThis is a debut album that has so much power and strength behind it. There was not really a lot that I could compare it to. Maybe Van Halenâs first album?â It was pretty wild.
Kottak: Thank you. Well, also at the time, there was so much hair metal and great metal bands… we were not that. We were more like rock-blues. And not in that order but it had hard rock in it. We were hard rock with a blues feel, and it was different from everybody else, and maybe thatâs what helped. A little bit of this and that, and Iâm still super proud of it.
Is there anything you remember that Bob Rock brought to that album, while you were working with him? Something that strikes you as being different or interesting that helped the music along?
Kottak: I donât wanna be clichĂ©, but man, he brought something magical out when we were up there rehearsing. We were in LA rehearsing in this huge warehouse, rockstar type place. We go to Vancouver, we looked at the room, and Iâm not kidding, it was like 14×14, we were in each otherâs face, and every nuance. He just kicked our ass. He took it from, âOh, weâve got some songs,â to, âNow we REALLY got some songs.â His production work on that album was phenomenal. He also knows how to talk to bands; he knew how to talk to Lenny one way, talk to me one way. Thatâs what a producer does, he guides you through making an album, that he puts on the icing on the cake. He killed it.
Were Danny, Rick, and Johnny a part of any Kingdom Come inceptions after you left?
Kottak: Well, we did the second album In Your Face, we were all on that. And we all co-wrote quite a bit on it, but when it imploded, it was kinda like, it all happened, and the writing was on the wall. It was one of those things. When youâre in a band, you know it. You donât want it to end, but there was no alternative. We took some months off, but in the meantime, Iâd already been working on the Wild Horses project with a friend of mine, even though I had Kingdom Come, I was just like, âWell, letâs do an album on the side.â That turned into my main thing, so Wild Horses then got a deal with Atlantic, and I said âHasta la vista,â and we did our album, and it went ten! (laughs) Or nickel.âš
In Your Face was the bandâs sophomore record, released in 1989.
So, how is it stepping back into Kingdom Come territory for you now? Is it kinda surreal for you? Are you embracing this material again whole-heartedly?
Kottak: Well, itâs awesome. Like I said, me and Rick just feel a lot of love from each other. He played all of my Kottak solo albums, Johnny and Danny, we all just fit like a glove. Thereâs a great bond there, weâve never not talked to each other over the years. And they are very sincere. It just works! And we brought in Keith St. John, he sang with Montrose, of course, and Lynch Mob, and gosh, everybody else. He came in and fit right in, he was like one of our brothers immediately. Everything happens for a reason.
This is an anecdote – right now Iâm listening to Nikki Sixxâs Heroin Diaries book in my car on audio, heâs narrating it. And I didnât know about any of the debaucheries that were going on back in the day. I was pretty naĂŻve I guess. Was there anything like that for Kingdom Come? Were you snowballed in with a whole bunch of bands, and exposed to women and drugs and shenanigans?
Kottak: Of course, well it was a different time then. Of course, we all drank, we were drinking like fish, and especially if you were hanging out with Metallica in a hotel, and itâs midnight. Me and James Hetfield runninâ down to buy a couple of cases of beer. And then there goes the hotel room. (laughs) Everything was around, but we were always able to keep it under control and stay on the straight and narrow as much as we could. Plus our manager kicked our ass, which was really a good thing.
So whatâre you thinking now? Itâs not gonna be alcohol and wild parties on this tour, itâs gonna be Voltaren and fruit smoothies, right? Everybodyâs sorta pushinâ fifty now.
Kottak: Well, not to sound like a stick in the mud, but we do have a no alcohol policy backstage. We tell the club in advance, donât be sending up pitchers of beer or shots of vodka or anything, weâre not drinking it. Yâknow, weâre all the better for it. Iâve struggled over the years, Iâve been up and down, Iâve been in and out, but mostly Iâve been IN for the last eight years, and Iâve done really well. But then you struggle, and you fall off, and then new problems come up. Weâre way past that, we enjoy life and rock nâ roll and people and talking and all those types of things.
Tell me about right now, then. Youâve got four of your five original members together, have you done rehearsals? Have you gamed-up on all these songs?
Kottak: Iâm at rehearsal now! Weâve been hitting it man, we started pre-production at Rickâs studio, and then weâre actually moving into my place tonight, I have a studio as well with my partner Bruce, and we were in there quite a bit. Just for reference, Iâve recorded the drums over so the guys can play along with it and practice. It is a labor of love, and practice is never really fun, but we make it fun âcuz weâre all friends. Thatâs something about the Scorpions that a lot of people donât realize, what makes it works is everybodyâs friends. We have our differences, and I got 21 years out of that. That really helped. It was awesome, are you kidding?! I got to roam around the world with some friends of mine.
Ready to âGet It On?â Check out the video for this Kingdom Come classic.
Have you talked at all about what itâs gonna look like, two or three years down the road? Do you think you might go into the studio, are you gonna record some of the stuff for a live album?
Kottak: Yâknow, all that stuff has been brought up, especially during interviews. But for the moment, weâre focusing on getting up and running, getting out there, checking in with fans and friends, what they think and want us to do. You never know how this is gonna go, we could get out there and it could flop. I doubt it, but it could. Weâre just testing the waters, but itâs not a whim, weâre not just gonna go away. Unless weâre playing to the crickets. (laughs)
Well I can tell you in all honesty, that I know about ten people who are pretty stoked about this 30-year announcement, that tour dates are coming and they are talking about traveling. So whatâs close? Do we go to Detroit?
Kottak: Well, I dunno how close Poughkeepsie is, Poughkeepsieâs on the list. But we only get to play 50 minutes, âcuz Zebraâs on the bill, they play second that night for some reason. Even though I like those guys, theyâre very good.
So, do you think that youâve got a book in you? Youâve been immersed in rock nâ roll for over thirty years now. Do you have anything in your lifetime that you think you could put pen to paper and tell a story?
Kottak: Believe it or not, when I was on holiday in Dubai, every day I wrote front and back pages, handwritten. I have about 190 pages of a book. The story stops at around 2017, so thereâs more catching up to do. But you know what? Iâd love to get it out, find the right publisher, the right people who do that. Some of the ghostwriters want a lot of money, and a lot of publishing companies now donât want to pay it anymore.
What are your plans for merchandising on this tour? Are we gonna be seeing some retro designs? I donât even know if the first album is still in print, it certainly isnât available for streaming.
Kottak: No, but it will be. That one and they just put the second one up digitally, Universal did. Iâm sure, depending on the success of this, there will be a re-release Iâm sure, and thatâs good for everybody. Weâll see, itâs yet to be seen right now.
I also noticed youâre offering VIP meet-and-greets on the tour. Are there any details you want to include about how theyâre gonna be different? I noticed the soundcheck…
Kottak: Well, Iâll tell you what, itâs not very expensive. (laughs) I donât know where the soundcheck thing ever came from, I donât think we ever agreed to that, but weâll probably do something where we also let the VIPs come up onstage and feel what itâs like. And, you know, really take the time and spend a good time talking. All the things that you want to do. Iâve done hundreds of them with Scorpions and with a lot of bands like that, where they just get you in, and they get out. You get your photo and your gift bag, and youâre out. But weâll have the time to actually communicate and talk one-on-one.
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