As the main axe man behind Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n Roll,” Ricky Byrd was not only part of Jett’s band the Blackhearts during their peak; he’s also lent his blistering electric guitar work to Ian Hunter and Roger Daltrey. As a musician, you could call the man a Lifer, which happens to be the name of his first ever solo release.
Vintage Rock had a chance to chat with Byrd about the new album, his views about where he came from…and where’s he’s going.
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I really like Lifer. I think it’s a great straight ahead rock and roll album with great playing-which I expected-but some truly spectacular songwriting as well.
My focus here was to write a really good song. There are a million and one guys who play guitar and I am known for that I know, but I wanted my strength to lie here in the songwriting, that’s something I’ll be learning forever.
You run through a wide range of lyric here, some certainly directly influenced by your life, others just riffing on a great idea, though the opening track ‘Rock And Roll Boys’ seems to be all you.
Most of the stuff is fictional, though “Rock and Roll Boys” yes, is autobiographical. Actually that was the last tune written for the album. Lifer was done and mixed, but I got a gift for Christmas of Mott the Hoople’s reunion on DVD and watched that, and I had played with Ian, and it all came back, that fun groove, so I just began scribbling away. I remembered being in Max’s Kansas City, one night when I was 17, standing in the back room right behind Mott the Hoople who had come in after playing the Uris Theatre, their first gig in NYC, so the song just came from that memory and the overall feeling those guys game me about a good groove.
There seems to be a lot of that kind feel to the CD. You are paying homage, if you will, to all that great music.
I wanted this to be a love letter to the music I grew up on. The whole scene was great, “Spiders From Mars,” Mott, we Americans had never seen anything like that! How those bands took our blues and turned it into what they gave back to us. The stuff clicked with us, the outfits, the shows, the drunken behavior even, it all guided me to listen and learn from those guys then to also check out what they were influenced by. Chuck Berry, Otis Redding, Al Green.
Given the current climate of the record business, how do approach putting Lifer through its distribution process.
Well, I didn’t consider a record deal here. I figured why put myself through that semi-audition bullshit in my stage of my career. These days you can do it yourself, maybe not sell as many records but certainly keep more of the money so it evens out down the line. So I’m selling signed CDs off of my website, I’ve got the CD in iTunes, online stores, Amazon Digital as well as physical stores.
Are you touring this record?
I’m slowly putting together a band, yes but in the mean time I’m considering putting these songs together on acoustic, maybe playing some book stores, take it on the road in home concerts…That’s the beauty here I can keep my overhead low, I mean it’s all coming out of my wallet. I don’t overprint, print up another batch 20,000, then when we sell out of those, I’ll print more.
Do you keep in touch with Joan Jett?
We’ve spoken once in the last 10 years. There’s no bad blood, but she’s touring, has her own life as I do mine. It’s like when you get divorced, sometimes you remain friends, some times you just drift apart. Playing with her was a really good time, but it was a little piece of my life. I got to be the guy I wanted to be at 13, in some ways I handled well, sometimes not, though I have now been 26 years sober. I traveled the world, got to be a rock star, got to play with lots of my heroes. It was great.
What do you want people to take away from Lifer, from what you are doing now?
A lot of people know me, I’ve educated them on what I do, what I’ve done for a while now. I guess all I’m asking is that if you grew up with me check out my job now in 2013.
Rick Byrd, Bruce Springsteen & Steven Van Zandt
