Gary James' Interview With Steve Blaze Of
Lillian Axe



They've been rockiin' out since the early 1980s. They've opened and toured with bands like Ratt, Poison and Queensryche. They were the first Hard Rock band to be inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame. On August 19^th, 2022 their new album, "From Womb To Tomb" was released worldwide on Global Rock Records. Lillian Axe is the band we are speaking about, and lead guitarist and songwriter Steve Blaze talked with us about his group.

Q - I guess if you were going to be the lead guitarist in a Hard Rock group, you couldn't have a better name than Steve Blaze. It's such a perfect fit!

A - (laughs) Well, I didn't come up with that to be honest with you. My real last name, and you'll say no wonder you changed it, is German. Nunenmachar. Jim Dandy named me Steve 'The Axe' Nunenmacher. Nowadays I probably wouldn't have thought to change it, but back then everybody had a cool name. Our singer at the time when I first formed Lillian Axe, Johnny Vines, used to always call me that, "Blaze." "Hey Blaze," and it kind of stuck. That's what they called me. He's the one that came up with it. It was because of my lack of lethargy. My lack of being calm and productive. I'm always on the move. I'm always moving quickly. I'm always thinking. I'm sure he meant it more about my guitar playing, but I looked at it more as a statement on my personality as well. It kind of stuck with me, and here we are.

Q - Did you change your name legally?

A - No, not at all. I'm proud of my family and my family name. I never wanted to do anything like that.

Q - This new album is Lillian Axe's first release in ten years. Were you able to tour without having a new product for your fan base to buy?

A - We have always stayed busy. One of the things we like to do, at lease if we weren't in the process of putting a new studio record out, is putting something out there. About six years ago (2016), I'm not sure about the exact date, we had an idea to do something very simplistic. Two guitars, our singer, sitting at a campfire. A real intimate acoustic thing, which evolved into a full acoustic, private show for about a hundred people, recorded and a DVD made of the the entire show. And we released "One Night In A Temple". This thing took six months to do, create, mix, and master and get out. So we all kept moving stuff out, trying to find the right situation business wise for us, label wise, and try to get through the hurdles of the music industry being in the rut that it seems to have been in for awhile. So, we were always putting something out. We just kept busy. I kept working on writing for this record right now. Most of the songs are fairly new, but there were a few that were in my catalog, things that the timing wasn't right for me to release them yet. But, I always had the concept in my head for many, many years. Just the right pieces fell into play. Just the right people came into my life, the right changes were made, and the right label came to the table. But we've never slowed down or not played because of that, especially because this is our tenth studio record and our fifteenth release. We have lots of material to back up and to tour and play on. That's what we did, but now with a new album, a new record company, and a new reissue of all of our albums, we've kind of gotten a big resurgence behind us. Not only with the machine and the mechanics of the business, but just with the entire attitude and the individuals in the band, a spiritual resurgence of our attitudes, of our emphasis, of our power and passion. It's all been really a nice big kick start. I feel better right now than I have in many, many years in all aspects of what we're doing.

Q - You wrote all the songs for this new album. Were the other guys unable to come up with any ideas? And down the road, could that create friction when the royalty checks start coming in and they're for Steve?

A - Well, on the aspect of royalties, everything in the band is split evenly, even though I formed the band. The only thing that is the differential is for writers writing the songs. That's basically the way it's always been and the way it is with 98% of the bands. Whoever writes the song gets that aspect of it. But everything else, live shows, merchandise, album royalties, everything has always been split evenly. We have a new player that's been in the band one or two years. He gets the same thing as everybody else. It's always been like that. As far as why have I been the only writer? Well, when I formed the band back in '83, I was the one writing material. It wasn't so much that nobody else could. It was that nobody else did. I could never tell you if any of the guys at the time had the talent to write good songs 'cause they didn't. I guess it was the fact that I did it. I worked really hard at it to not only become better, but I spent a long time as much as working on my guitar playing craft. I spent that time on writing and listening and learning and trying to be a better songwriter, which is really not a mechanical thing. Being a songwriter is more of a, I guess, a gift. You can't practice it, like I'm going to put in four hours a day into songwriting. It's something where I can song write without having a guitar in my hand. I can walk up and down the street and write songs. It's an internal thing. Nobody ever seemed to do that. So, when we got our first record deal, MCA signed me. I'd written all the songs. That being said, that was the reason they liked the band so much. They liked the material. They liked the band of course. It's always down to the songs, no mater what anybody will tell you. The most endearing and long lived things about any musical group is the song. Why do you think anybody cares whether anybody in The Beatles were proficient at their instruments? No. They care about the songs that those guys wrote and performed together. That's always been the most important thing to me, is the material, the songs. Are they endearing? Will live forever? Those are the important things. So, as we kept going I was always writing. I have catalogs of stuff that's never even seen the light of day that I did back then. Other people were always encouraged to give me ideas and let me work with them. Many times I did give, in the past, people credit for writing things I didn't need, like lyrical things, but I wanted to make them feel part of the band, so I would take a few of their lines and find a place to put 'em in the songs. My philosophy on that is, the way that I work, and it may not be that way with everybody 'cause there are some people who will admittedly say, "I'm not good at writing lyrics, I can come up with melodies and riffs, but I can't write lyrics." For some people it's vice-versa. So, in my case I write like a painter paints or like a writer writes a book. I see everything at the same time. When I'm writing the musical part of a song, I see, hear and feel the lyrics. The music takes me where the song will potentially be discussing or what it's about. I even see words. Certain words will come up and then the whole I idea, it's one thing after another. The arrangements work very fluidly in my mind. Most of the time I don't even have an instrument in front of me. I just have it in my head and I put it on a recorder and hum it, put the idea down, come back to it later. That's been the case with a couple of songs on this record. It's like as if, let's say Whistler's Mother, the painting. Somebody had come in and said, "Hey, I want to change the outfit she's wearing," or "Change the rocking chair. Let's make it a horse." The whole image of the artist from that would have been completely changed. Not saying it would have been better or worse or not, but it wasn't the vision of the artist. Everything works together. It's not like I can write a book and say, "Hey, can you come in and write chapter three? I'll do one through sixteen, but you do three. Just pick up right in there and still have it have the same effect." I've been doing it for many, many years. I spent a lot of time and it's very personal. Everybody is very open, but over the years it's the Lillian Axe sound and style that's been centered around my writing. So now when I demo the songs and get 'em to the band, I always demo them in a very skeletal fashion. I'm doing tons of over dubs. I give 'em the basic ideas. "Hey guys, this is what I'm thinkin' Give me your ideas. What do you think?" And they'll come back, "Why don't we add this?", mainly in the studio when we get together. That's when the ideas come and we hear things up on the speakers. We're playing around with different things to add and subtract and different melodies. Then ideas will come in. But I guess I'm pretty complete as far as I don't bring anything to the band until I feel really good. I've spent a lot of time to feel like this is pretty much the basic arrangement, like here. "Let's get in the studio." And that's how it works out. That's how it always worked.

Q - Since you brought up MCA, how good of a job did they do for Lillian Axe, promotion wise?

A - Honestly? Not very good at all. I'm not the only one who thinks like that. You can run down the list. As a matter of fact, Alice Cooper was on MCA one time and he told me when we toured with him what a bad job they did for him as well. We were signed by Irving Azhoff when he was president of MCS. He left right while we were doing the record. Al Teller I think came in as president. We had to basically crash a party to introduce ourselves to him and tell him who we were. He kind of really didn't seem like he knew. There were a lot of bands that heard a lot of lip service. That was pretty much the end of it. We had poor management at the time. I look at it like this: My spiritual beliefs tell me that God has a plan for everything. Don't understand it. All I can do is the best I can do at that moment and make the best decisions, do the best and try to follow the best path for everyone involved. And that's what we did. If I was still back then and could go back and know what I know now, I'd go, "Maybe we don't do this, this, and this." If I had to go back and know exactly what I knew then, I'd make the same decision because I didn't realize a lot of things. I didn't know we were going to be just another stat to be thrown against the wall and see if it sticks. We got two albums and a lot of people have loved those two albums. I can't say it was unsuccessful. It wasn't the commercial success we were looking for, but we did do two records that lots of people really loved. It kept us going. What can I say? I just gotta look to the future. It was a shame that record companies will do that and treat bands and artists just like a commodity, but in all actuality that's what they are. It's a can of vegetables.

Q - Right. It's a business. There might be more glamour attached to the record business than there is with U.S. Steel or General Motors, but at the end of the day it is a business.

A - Absolutely.

Q - You had at one point Marshall Berle managing Lillian Axe.

A - Yeah.

Q - How much clout did he have in the music business? He was managing Ratt. Wasn't he also the manger of Van Halen at one point?

A - Yeah. I don't know to what extent. Marshall was managing Ratt at the time. We were asked to open up some shows for Ratt because they were on tour. Ratt, Queensryche and Poison. We were an unsigned band, but we were drawing like gangbusters. Wednesday night at a club in Lafayette we'd do five hundred to six hundred people. We were the hot commodity in the area. So, they asked us to do these shows and after the second show I got a call from Marshall Berle. He said, "Hey Steven, Marshall Berle." I knew who he was 'cause he and Don McGhee were managing Ratt and (Motley) Crue at the time. Those were the two hot Rock bands in the business. He said, "Hey Steve, do you want a record deal?" What was I, 21, 22 or something like that? Early twenties. I was like, "Yes sir. Absolutely. I'd love a record deal. It would be great." (laughs) What am I going to say? He said, "Robin Crosby (from Ratt) really likes the band a lot. He wants to produce you guys. I can get you guys a deal," and that's when the talks started. But Marshall was supposed to be managing us, but he didn't do much except act as somewhat of a liaison on getting all the so-called business things with MCA, which were things I wasn't ever really made privy to at the time. We were just a commodity. We were a new car. See how far we can drive it. See how many miles we can get out of it. That's how that happened. After the two records at MCA, we just cut ties, period.

Q - I see you opened shows for Ratt, Poison, Queensryche, Krokus, Stryper and Lita Ford. I don't know if we're talking hockey arenas or clubs, but did that translate to record sales for Lillian Axe?

A - Those bands we played with were way back in the early days. We've played with a million other bands since then. So, a lot of the ones you just mentioned were bands we were playing with before we even got signed. I think the first thing we did was a string of dates with Lita Ford right when the first album came out. One of 'em actually was in a hockey rink and a couple of theatres and a couple of big Rock clubs at the time. So, it was a combination, but as far as being able to take a look and see albums sales in this city since we just played there, you could always kind of gauge that, but our mentality is, even more so now than it was back then because of the internet, the more we played, the more people would share. You just had to reach everybody. We really had the mentality, it sounds cliché, but we had the mentality of we're playing for fifty people, that's fifty people more that know about us that will go out and talk to someone else and add on another two, and you can double and triple that and you continue. Once somebody knows about you, they know about you the rest of their lives. Whether they've heard you one time, thirty years later, "Yeah, I've heard about them." Once you're in somebody's psyche you're always there. So, we always looked at it like that. We're very proud of what we do. We believe in it, so we're going to continue on to whatever we need to do and we love playing. I mean, that's another thing too. So many bands are like, I gotta play? I gotta tour?" We love it. That's why we keep doing records and a lot of our peers don't anymore. I would do a new record every year if it was feasible, but the fact that we waited ten years on this, I'm not happy about that, but I'm happy about that it took this long and we're in the right position and situation for where we are. We've very happy where we are right now.

Q - You released four albums between 2007 and 2012.

A - Yes.

Q - That's really moving. Were these albums promoted? Were they released worldwide?

A - They were in Indie labels. They were released as Imports in most parts of the world. So, they were independent labels and we were trying to use them as stepping stones. Even when an independent label comes to you and wants to work with you, they always tell you they have the game plan that we're going to do this, this, and this. It's going to grow here. Everybody always has a plan and gives you the lip service that is needed to get you where you need to be. And it sounds good. We were on multiple, independent labels, which I don't think any of them even exist anymore. Even the majors we were on don't exist anymore. It's kind of sad. We look at our history and career and we still have the best of us left. We haven't had the full-out, commercial success that I think we deserved, but we have had a lot of success. We have fans all over the world and we're still doing it. I think we're better as a unit and the best on all levels that it ever has been, and we love it. For lack of sounding cliché again, this is the best record and the most complete and quintessential record that we've ever done. For me to say that about it, it means a lot. It's like picking what child do you like better? (laughs) Which one do you prefer? I wrote the songs and I formed the band, so it's very dear to me. So, when I say I really feel like this is our opus, so to speak, I mean it.

Q - Lillian Axe was the first Hard Rock band to be inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame. Typically, what kind of acts are being inducted into that Music Hall Of Fame?

A - Oh, Zydeco, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, James Burton, Bill Conti, Floyd Cramer, Steve Cropper, Jimmy Davis, Frankie Ford, Mickey Gilley. It's a lot of acts that are stylistically different than we are.

Q - You're in great company, Steve!

A - Absolutely.

Q - You've got Lillian Axe's entire catalog being released on all digital formats by Global Rock Records. What does that mean for the band? And what can you tell me about Global Rock Records?

A - This label is a brand new label created by Brian Adams at the Store For Music, which is one of the largest reissue labels in Europe. Their A&R guy, Giles Lavery, contacted me through our drummer. He knew our drummer basically from Facebook. Our drummer, Wayne is in a few Prog Rock acts too. I guess they were friends. Then when Wayne became our drummer a few years ago, he (Giles Lavery) said, "I would love to sign Lillian Axe to the label." Wayne said, "It's Steve's band. Call him." So, he contacted me and we talked for a long time. They came in. They got the rights, which I have the majority of except for the first two albums which are owned by Universal. So, they worked it all out that we could put out an anthology record a few months ago called "Psalms For Eternity", and get the rights to reissue everything. So, everything has been reissued digitally. It's coming out very soon I think on actual, physical CD, as well there's a vinyl deal that's been completed. I guess because there's a huge delay in vinyl production that's kind of moving that towards the end of the year (2022). So, everything out there has been re-released, including a couple of my side-project records too. I'm just really happy. The communication is great. They're out there working it hard. It's out for pre-order right now. A lot of people are hearing about it. We've got a new video coming out and it's almost finished editing for the first track. Everything they said they were going to do, so far they have done. So now, we can kind of just keep pushing and get prepared for the release on August 19th (2022).

Q - Since your first two albums are owned by Universal, were the master tapes destroyed by that big fire?

A - Well, we don't know that. We don't know what happened to the masters. It's really difficult to get straight answers. I got notification from a law firm the other day that after thirty-five years, artists get their masters back. So, we're kind of getting ready to go into the thirty-fifth year. We'll probably look into that. On the anthology record, we use live versions of those songs that we put out for those first two records until we get the full rights for those first two records. So, we found a way around it so we can still get them out to people. And, they're still out there, available through Universal, but everything else we're able to get, which is great.

Q - After a twenty-nine year absence, you're going to tour the U.K. What kind of music is popular over there at the moment? I would imagine Hard Rock or you wouldn't be going there.

A - We went to Europe about ten years ago. We did one festival in the U.K. and that was it. So, we haven't really toured through there in a long time. We've been to Europe, but we haven't centralized in the U.K. for awhile. The last time we went we were in Germany and we co-headlined a festival that all day long was a lot of the A.O.R. (Album Oriented Rock) bands and the Prog Rock bands, and we co-headlined pretty much with a Death Metal band. So, it was like, "How is this gonna work out?" And those people over there will support Poison on one hand and Cradle Of Filth on the same show. It's like they just like music. It seems to be a lot less of that prejudicial mentality like you can only like one kind of thing. It just seems to be more open minded from my view and what other people have told me. Over here (the U.S.) a festival had to be all bands of this genre, period. The fans over there just want to hear the music. They're not worried about the trappings and the wrapping, the color of the paper. They want to get down to the gift. When we go there, probably because it's rare, the fans are just so genuinely excited about seeing us. It was the same way in Japan. You don't want to take those things for granted. It's been a long time. We'll be there right after this album's release, so I'm excited to see how things go.

Official Website: www.LillianAxe.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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