September 25, 1998, Bigsound 100.5 Rob Rock Interview
by Goodfriend Godffrey and Big Rey

*ROB ROCK's historic, first and exclusive interview in the Republic of the Philippines. Recorded on September 25, 1998 at 10:00 PM (Philippine day/time) for the 3-hour DWXY-FM Bigsound 100.5 ‘s FREE YOUR MIND radio show featuring Impellitteri ‘s music and Rob Rock interview aired on September 27,1998 at 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM. 

DWXY-FM (Bigsound 100.5): Welcome to "free your mind" program happening only in the no.1 Pop music station in Tuguegarao, Cagayan, Philippines and that’s why I said "Philippines" because we’re having a recorded live interview with one of the greatest rock artist we’ve known Mr. Rob Rock, former vocalist of the supergroup M.A.R.S, Driver, Joshua, Angelica, Axel Rudi Pell and the current vocalist of one of the great bands today "Impellitteri". He is  on the phone right now and we are talking to him live all the way from the United States of America, we’ll be asking him where specifically right now, so hello to you Rob! 

ROB ROCK: Hello Philippines! 

DF: Where are you calling from? 

RR: Orlando, Florida. 45 minutes from Disney Land. 

DF: We’re live on the internet.

RR: Great! 

DF: Let’s start by allowing you to introduce the other member of the band. 

RR: You know who I am, I am Rob Rock, the vocalist and the rest of the band is actually living in LA. It’s Chris impellitteri on Guitars, James Amelio Pullli on bass guitar, Edward Roth on keyboards and on drums, Ken Mary. 

DF: Who does the songwriting? 

RR: Chris would come out with a riff and he would send me tapes then when I get the tapes,  I come up with all the lyrics and melodies that go over the music and because we worked together for so long and we have a very good chemistry…we were able to work in this way. 
Basically Chris and I write the songs. 

DF: What direction do you see yourself moving in musically?

RR: We feel that we make a very strong statement in "Screaming Symphony" album then we just came out with our new album "Eye of the Hurricane" which is more versatile, it has ballads, instrumentals as well as great rock songs down there and now we’re starting to write for a new album and the new direction is going to a little more progressive,  a little more musically diverse, I think we’ll gonna bring in more keyboards, more dual guitars solos and add different sections of music that kind a go off in a different directions in a progresssive vein. Just so we can spread our wings out. 

DF: What are your goals as a performer over the next few years? 

RR: as a performer and as a band, our goal is to do a european tour next.   "Eye of the Hurricane" is just  being released now in Europe.  That I  think is going to be September 30.   It’s finally coming out in Europe. 
We finally found a company we think will do well with us and we’re looking forward to  that meanwhile though we’re not just waiting on that, we’re actually writing songs for the new album. 

DF: Why is your CD called "Eye of the Hurricane"? 

RR: I lived in Florida, I see a lot of Hurricane. In fact there is one going on today "Hurricane Georg". "Eye of the Hurrricane" was written at a time when  the sky were turning black and I was thinking how awesome it is. How awesome God is. How awesome nature is. How we are so small we have no control over this and how powerful the hurricane is and in the eye of the hurrricane, like the   center of the hurricane, all around the eye, the winds, the storms are spinning. Relating that to life, if you have peace with God, you have that serenity in your life even though the world around you is crazy and a lot of things go on. If you have peace in your life everything is okey, that’s what eye of the hurricane is about. 

DF: What’s the theme of the songs "Fuel for the fire" and "Rat Race"? 

RR: " Fuel for the fire" is apretty hard rocking song, that song is about ambition,  how people are so busy today chasing money, I think more than anything. At least in America, everything is to have more stuff you know, to be king of the hell or something like that. It’s about wasting your life trying to be, trying to go for that stuff instead of a relationship which is more important in life. 

"Rat Race " is kind a similar actually because Rat race is direct towards just being so involved and caught up in the world where people just  go to work 9 to 5 and come home and sat down on TV that all their lives 
is consists of this work or entertainment. Parents never talk to their  children and children go up and they just get this trouble because there is no relationship there. The media, the television,radio and everything you see, ads, everything tells you, "you need more", "you deserve this…that"…it’s more on getting and gathering things, when actually "you can’t take it with you when you go". So, the most important thing to what you do now is your relationship you have with diffferent people, relationship with God actually, on how you actually see yourselves on day to day basis, as oppose all this chasing the dreams or chasing money. 

DF: The market are into alternative music nowadays, is there a posssibilitythat Impellitteri will follow suit? 

RR: I have to say "No". there is no possiblity. Basically we write songs around the guitar and vocals. Chris is known in Japan as the "great guitar hero". I don’t see Chris or myself going down the road to write songs with only simple chords and no guitar solo and vocal harmony. Right now, all the alternative is very dark. Sometimes I think the lyrics are very depressing And I like to write lyrics that are bold and strong and uplifting too. 

DF: What basically is your repertoire about rock music that you’re in? 

RR: Any kind of music is a gift from God. I don’t think music is the thing that should be dismiss and not say that you can’t enjoy it. No matter what you believe in, I think music is like an international language that touches everyone and because personally I love rock music, I love the energy, I love the power of it. I use this tool that God has given me to write songs that are relatable to His word, and also to everyday people. In my style of writing, I know a lot of things, I was brought up in a Christian home and I read the Bible, I pray everyday and I am in touch with God in this way and I want to share that to the listeners. I don’t want to share it in a way that is preachy because to me it’s very personal. If I can get them to see a glimpse of the goodness in it so maybe they would be interested as well, because it is a great thing something I would like to share with my friends. This inspires me you know to write songs that aren’t about sex, drugs, drinking and partying but they are out there about life, positive things that are great. 

DF: How would you describe the other guys in the band musically? 

RR: Chris is very awesome guitar player. He is very focus on his guitar technique and he spend a lot of time practicing and practicing, playing and playing and that is the main focus of the band. The other members of  the band are also professional players. Ed Roth on keyboard played a lot of session, he does a lot of work in LA and so does Ken Mary and James Pulli. Everyone in the band do not work down at the grocery stores and play guitar  at night but we play our instruments and sing all day and we do this for a living. It’s more of e evryday process so when we are together it’s very natural thing to have this harmony between us. 

DF: What point in your life did you know you would definitely pursue a 
career in music? 

RR: I was in high school and I was playing drums in my brother’s band.   I basically play drums and I sing . For me to get into my first band, I had to sing harmonies because there are a lot of harmonies in the band. I was playing in a lot of bands being both the drummer and the singer. That was when I knew I wanted to do music. 

DF: So, you belive in destiny made God? 

RR: Yeah, yes!. I think He has given me a talent. He has given me something that comes natural and for a long time in the beginning of my career. I used this talent to try to make it big in rock and roll and I didn’t think much about God and at the point when I made the M.A.R.S Project Driver in 1986, I thought that would be a great huge success with Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge from Whitesnake, I mean they were not Whitesnake at that time. I though by playing with this guys and Tony McAlpine on guitar, that would be a great success but at that point we just finished recording the album and David Coverdale from Whitesnake offered Rudy sarzo and Tommy Aldridge a very big amount of money to come to play and do the next Whitesnake album. They left to do that. That’s how M.A.R.S. project driver broke-up. At that point I decided that God gave me this talent and I would use it for His glory and at that point I was like out of a band and I was in LA and that’s where I hooked up with Joshua band. 

DF: Where do you get your inspiration in writing exciting, good and 
quality lyrics? 

RR: I get a lot of the content that I relate to in the songs from everyday life and from television and stuff like that, what’s going on in the world. 

DF: Are you married? 

RR: Yes, I am married and I have a beautiful wife and she is very supportive in what I do and she is definitely a gift from God. 

DF: Who is the better guitar player, Chris or Yngwie? 

RR: Well, I only knew Chris so I have to take Chris. I don’t know Yngwie personally. 

DF: Do you find putting good lyrics in a song important? 

RR: I find that very very important. When I write songs, I like to obviously  write the words with a meaning but also there is another aspect when you are writing lyrics. Lyrics need to sound good on tape sonicly. Some words do not sound good when you sing them or put them on tape and they stick out on music and it could sound funny. A lot of times you end up changing words that’s sound good on tape but it’s very difficult to get the right meaning with the right sound is where I concentrate very much plus also with my melodies I like the words to fit in the melodies so that easy to remember and easy to sing, so that it will stick in people’s mind and I test my lyrics that if I can sing the song away from the music, if I am somewhere out driving or in the shower or something that I think of the song that I could sing the melody and the lyrics, you know, you remember it. That’s how I test myself as far as whether I think it’s ready to record. 

DF: If you had to make a 1-5 list of people you look up, respect musically, who would that be? 

RR: As a singer, I have to say Lou Gramm of Foreigner. I look up to Lou Gramm because I love his range and melody. I like Ronnie James Dio from Dio because I like the power of his singing. I like the band Styx very much, I really love the harmonies and also chords changes are very nice and also Steve Perry of Journey, very melodic, very nice and I really like all Deep Purple stuff too. 

DF: In what way would you desire people or the media to describe the band? 

RR: Our purpose is that we are a rock band and we write rock and roll songs and we’re rock and roll musicians like I told Big Rey, we all do this as a living. So we made the living playing music and when we’re together as a band because I write the lyrics and because of my personal relationship with JESUS CHRIST, I feel the need to write from my heart and what’s in my heart is my relationship to Christ and my relationship to other people, that’s what I write about. … LYRICALLY, IT IS A CHRISTIAN BAND; PROFESSIONALLY, IT IS A ROCK AND ROLL BAND, …we are interested in reaching the people that don’t go to church and in letting our songs be heard by people on the street, people that are normal everyday people. Those are the people we want to reach and people we want to talk to and people we want our music to touch….Service being true to ourselves reaching people that are lost. People that have no idea who Jesus is. Maybe they could see in our lives and in our music His light can be attracted to it. 

DF: What can you say when people describe rock music as a bad influence for the youth? 

RR: In any profession, there is bad and good people. I think in my world, the rock world there is a lot of professional musicians, the professional musicians are very serious about their music, their craft, their art. Most of them do not let drugs interfere but when you have young people, young kids Aren’t sure how to handle themselves in anyway and then you put in a position with a rock band and they have great success that the money, the sales, the pressure to always do better leads them into drugs because they don’t know how to handle themselves on their own. They live out in the world on their own so they go to drugs because they are on the road and they are being promoted all the time and they find sanctuary in doing drugs and that road of course is getting darker and darker before you know they’ll have drug pronlems. That’s what you hear about. You hear the successful artist that cannot handle it on emotional level that lean on drugs to carry them through and then they get in trouble and then   everyone hears about that and that’s how the misconception is being said. It’s a personal matter, it’s just that you take the very young stars that record company is pushing, put them on the 
spotlight and under the pressure they go to drugs maybe they are not mature enough to handle it. 

DF: Tell us about your most memorable experience in the studio 

RR: When I was recording with Axel Rudi Pell in Germany. That album flew over there as a studio musician to sing for Axel, he said "go for it man, do what you want to do, we don’t care what you do, just  do what you want to do" so I would come in everyday I was there for like 10 days, and I would listen to the tracks they recorded and then I would go out to the kitchen of the studio. I would write lyrics like 4 to 5 hours then we would go out to dinner and after dinner I come back and I would sing the song like 10-o’clock at night and I would sing the song only 3 to 4 hours, that I would give it everything I have and do it in my own way and those guys when I look to the glass and see them at the board they were yelling and screaming, they are so happy. To me is a great memory in my mind, they are so excited about the performance. 

DF: What about your worst experience in the studio? 

RR: The first album that I recorded M.A.R.S Project Driver. When I went into that recording session, the producer does not have very good people skill. I would say and for him to get me to sing very hard and very heavy and he put in his mind that he would have to make me very angry so he was doing everything he could to get me very angry, the words he was saying and he would abuse me verbally to get me angry so I would sing and scream very hard on the record and that emotionally, I didn’t like that but the end result it taught me how to sing with a lot more power and strength than I ever did before that recording session and to this day I still use to deliver power in my vocal style so I am thankful for that but the way I have learn it I didn’t like. 

DF: Where can the fans expect to see you in the future? 

RR: As far as playing live the next time will probably be Japan. Japan is very goog country for us and we have a new release for  Europe now. "Eye of the hurricane" is coming out in Europe at the end of the month. We hope to play some festivals there. As far as Philippines is concern we hope we can create a big enough fan base there so we can come there and play. JVC-Victor which is the same record company in Japan owns the territories for release in Philippines. I hope the records are out there and in the future we can somehow get there. I love to perform there. 

DF: What is the status of metal music today? 

RR: As far as America is concern. I think metal music is kind of back to being more underground. Right now those radio stations here that are not playing pop are playing alternative music and sometimes they play some good hard rock but not very often and most of it I would say underground. I think in the future that it would be coming back around and we come out and be popular again so I don’t know, it’s very hard to judge. All I know is that I’ve been able, God has blessed me to be able to put up like 12 albums in 12 years and I plan on continuing to write and record song and I hope that someday the recording and radio industry will catch up to me. 

DF: Where can they reach you? 

RR: They can reach me at P.O. Box 720425, Orlando, Florida 32872-0425 USA. Or e-mail at: rob@robrock.com also check the website www.robrock.com and on that site you can get to the list all the albums I’ve done and all the history and also it has link to Impellitteri webpage which also has all the Impellitteri history and it has the CD ordering section which links to Sonic Revelation which is a mail-order company that carries all of the Impellitteri and Rob Rock CD. So the easiest way is www.robrock.com

DF: When will the band back into the studio for the next album? 

RR: Come January-February we will be going to start recording the new album and right now we’re getting together guitar riffs and vocal melody ideas and song title together now so we can take and choose for the new album.

DF: To all our listeners, what would you say as your concluding statement? 

RR: I would say to all the listeners out there I thank you very much for your support throughout the year and I thank you for staying in touch with Rob   Rock and Impellitteri and I ask you to keep listening to our music and to share it with your friends and we just thank you for sticking by.

DF: We would like to know your favorite song.. 

RR: On the new album, I would say "Paradise".

DF: Can you sing a part of your favorite song? I hope it’s OK with you and this is our request. 

RR: (laughing..)

DF: Please C’mon! Okey they are clapping right now, so we’re waiting (…laughing and clapping..) 

RR: Oh! This is embarassing. This early in the morning?

DF: (laughing) Please! 

RR: Oh man!

DF: (laughing) C’mon! 

RR: Alright, you’re ready?

DF: Yeah! 

RR: (…Rob is singing the first paragraph portion of the song "Paradise" and everbody inside the station was very silent and excited…very very happy and they started shouting and clapping after Rob finished singing…)

DF: That was really good! In Behalf of the staff of DWXY FM and of course Charlie, we would like to thank you for taking time with us and we would like you to know that YOU GOT A FAMILY HERE IN THE PHILIPPINES. Thanks and God Bless. 

RR: Thank you.