Former Holy Grail guitarist James J. LaRue is one of the most talented, unsung guitar heroes out there. From his early work as a member of the first White Wizzard line up to shredding his way into our hearts on Holy Grail’s Crisis in Utopia, LaRue has done more in a short period of time than most could even imagine. Not only is he an amazingly, talented performer, guitarist, and composer but he’s also a great friend.
I figured that more than enough time had passed and that it was finally time to ask James J. to do an interview for the Brainfart. He gladly accepted my invitation and what followed was a great phone conversation which covered so much ground. We talked about his departure from Holy Grail, his disheartening experience with the music business, and how being a member of Vindicator rekindled the fire for him showing him that he could still do music and love it. We also talked about his current project with Shred Sean called Shred Starz and all else in between. Sit back and get to know the man, the myth, the beauty that is James J. LaRue.
James J, thanks so much for doing this interview.
Thank you. I’m looking forward to these questions being asked.
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You parted ways with Holy Grail in 2010.
Being in Holy Grail was like being on duty at a firehouse. At any moment you had to be ready to respond to something and do something. I just wasn’t happy in that situation at all. It was like a lobster in the pot with the heat being turned up slowly. I wasn’t happy with the direction of the band or the way business was going. I just wasn’t happy with where it was all going. I’m the kind of person that will get involved with things, lose interest in them for whatever reason, and because I was raised that if you made a promise, you needed to follow through with it I just keep going. I kind of almost quit but it was before we recorded the Crisis in Utopia so I just decided to keep going. In retrospect I should have just left it at that and said, “You know, this isn’t for me.”
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What was the proverbial nail in the coffin so to speak that made you leave the band?
It actually was a series of events that happened. We played the Wacken Festival and I didn’t like it. It was a glimpse into a world that I didn’t want to be involved in. After our set at Wacken, they played us the live recording of our set and wanted us to sign off on it to be released as part of a live compilation. Speaking for myself, I was so displeased with our performance that I didn’t want that recording released. When we returned home someone had asked me on Facebook on my personal page how it went. I was feeling shitty about the whole thing and I had just gotten back into the states and I said, “It didn’t go well. Let me tell you why” and I went into everything from how bad the sound was, and having no rehearsal to the fact that this huge festival was way over capacity and they made all this money and we got paid like 200 euros or something. The next day we played this small mom & pop festival in Austria and we got like 2000 euros.
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That’s a big difference in pay right there.
Yeah, but it wasn’t so much about me making money. I just looked at the Wacken Festival and knew that someone was getting rich off of that festival and it wasn’t us. Anyways, so I said all this on my Facebook page and the assistant to the management team saw it and got all pissed. The owner of Prosthetic Records sent me an email and was all mad at me saying, “You just ruined your career” so I said back to him, “How I about I just quit. How’s that for ruining my career.” I just quit right then and there.
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It’s really interesting to hear this side of the story. So often we see the “all for metal, metal for all, pirates of the road” kind of story but at the end of the day, it’s still a business.
Oh absolutely. The thing you see is totally an act. The image of a band that’s portrayed in interviews and in the media is also fabricated. I’m actually ok with that. That’s show business. Holy Grail is much more of a fabricated thing and that’s cool. The thing that I didn’t like was that it wasn’t the band doing the fabricating and creating a persona. It was all the label and management saying what could and couldn’t be said or could and couldn’t be done. There was no humor or light heartedness allowed in any of it which is hard for me because all I do is make jokes about poop and I couldn’t even do that.
Yeah. See, Iron Maiden is brilliant at that. You never hear much about their inside business. They’re just good at that. Holy Grail was like Maiden in that they were so much better at doing that than White Wizzard was. Every time someone quits White Wizzard or if the whole band quits or there’s a new line up there’s a press release about it: “NEW LINE UP! BEST ONE EVER!” In Holy Grail, there were all kinds of lineup changes. Different bass players, different guitar players yet you never hear about it.
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So was it hard for you to leave behind a band that you were such a big part of and vice versa?
It wasn’t hard at all to leave to be honest. I tolerate things for just too long until I can’t take it anymore and them I’m just like, “Ok, I’m out of here.” I was over it by the time I quit Holy Grail. Adjusting to not living like that was hard. I had put all my eggs into that basket at that point in my life. My living situation and my whole life was structured around rehearsing four times a week, getting the songs down, hell, my whole wardrobe was stage clothes and clothes for sleeping in the van. Even my toiletries were all travel size. It was a life that I had lived fully and all I did was that. After I quit the band, I still did one more tour because they didn’t have a replacement for me yet. After the last day of the tour, I got dropped off along with Jessie Sanchez at his house and that was the last time I saw most of those guys. The quitting part was great and I loved doing it. Nothing against the band personally but after getting that scathing email from the president of Prosthetic Records I was like you know what? Fuck you man. After that, Clay, who’s my favorite guy at Prosthetic, knew Sean Sean Maier (Shred Sean) to fill in for me but he couldn’t do it. That’s how I first got to meet Sean but Sean introduced them to Ian Scott which is how they got hooked up with him.
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So after leaving Holy Grail and taking some time off, you teamed up with Ohio thrashers Vindicator. How did that come about and what was that experience like?
After the Holy Grail thing was over with, I ended up sitting in as the guitarist on a tour with a band called Aggressor. I started playing with them in Chicago and on the bill that night was Vindicator. At that time they were just a trio and it had a really tight sound. Vic and Jessie are brothers who grew up playing together so their timing is locked in together. I thought they sounded so much better than their recording. The singer had left and the guitarist had left but they sounded so good and I really liked it so much more. I thought they really needed to be captured and recorded that way. That tour was the most fun tour I ever did and everyone one of us just loved it. Everyone was nice to each other and it wasn’t an industry tour at all. It was totally DIY. Sarah, Vic’s wife, was pretty much the mastermind behind all of it as she always is with the booking the dates and whatnot. It was a totally different experience and it took the bitter taste out of my mouth. When I got back home, in my post tour depression, I contacted them and asked them if they were interested in a lead guitar player. I also told them that I wanted to get into producing and recording and get into that. We exchanged riffs online for a while but it became clear to me that it wasn’t going to really cut it. Eventually, I just told them that I’d move out there so that we could get things done. That’s how I ended up out there involved with Vindicator.
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When going into the Vindicator thing did you know that your involvement with them would have an expiration date so to speak? If so, was there every any pressure from them for you to try to stay or did they understand as well?
Well, it wasn’t really pressure to stay because I had told them that I would do a record or be out there for a year, whichever came first. I was thinking that it wouldn’t be a whole year to make a record even and even if I did spend a whole year out there the album would be done in that time. Things ended up getting delayed, there were some health things going on, not on my part, but things would just come up. Priorities got shifted a lot about the recording as to whether we’d do an album or an EP or what. It just went back and forth and I had to say, “Look, in two months it’ll be a year that I’ve been here.” My agreement was for a year and then all of the sudden everyone was like, “Oh crap.” When that happened, in the period of like six weeks it just all came together. It was super stressful but that’s how it always is. When I got back to California, I still worked with them and still do. As far as I know, I’m doing some guitar solos and mixing the next album for 2015.
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So it sounds like everyone was really understanding and that all is good between you guys.
Very much so. That is a band right there that I am friends with. Every one of them, all their families, and their cats. Actually, my beloved cat Moseby is one of the Vindicator family barn cats.
That’s exactly it. You have hit it exactly on the head. Kids now, they learn how to shred but they don’t have the style. To me, it’s not just like shred is just about the playing. It’s this whole aesthetic of yellow and pink guitars, a certain kind of attitude and look. There are all these young kids who play really well and all those bands like Scale the Summit and Animals as Leaders are talented players but it’s just not shredding to me. To me it’s just chops. They don’t have that feel of shredding. There’s not that Malmsteen feel or like a Ritchie Kotzen feel. It doesn’t have that mojo that the old Shrapnel players had. What Shred Starz is becoming is almost like a Shrapnel Records/Mike Varney thing where it’s not going to be about just Sean and myself. We’re going to open it up to other players and find the best ones filming himself in his basement with a webcam. We’ll get him out here to California and put him in front of a good camera. Putting a visual to it is exactly what we want to do. Like the Cacophony “Go Off” album cover. I want to make videos that look like that.
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That’s funny because that’s exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that Shred Starz looks like what Blues Saraceno would’ve done if he had YouTube back in the day.
Exactly. Like the Paul Gilbert instructional tape when he used a green screen. We just want to make it visually fun. All the guitar players that I’m a fan of, all the great guitar players that are out there on YouTube like Guthrie Govan and all these other young players, they’re crazy talented but in all cases they’re just sitting in a chair playing these solos. Whether it’s in a nice studio or in their bedroom they’re just sitting down and playing. We don’t want to do that. Everything is going to be an ultra fun video.
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So the first Shred Starz video was for Midnight Ladies Sonata which was epic. What’s next for you guys?
The next project is going to be like a retro style video game for iOS and Android and that’s going to take things to another level. Next we’ll probably do one more video of a tune that we’ve done. After that, I’m probably going to exit that as a player.
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So how do you see your role with Shred Stars?
I see myself being more like Arlen Roth who was famous for putting out those Hot Licks instructional tapes. He did some himself but then later got more into producing the tapes. I see my role in Shred Starz being more in the video graphics and production. This kind of playing is really not a style I’m fond of. It’s a style that I cut my teeth on but it’s really not how I play anymore. There’s all kinds of crazy kids out there with passion that are playing really fast and they’re far better suited for it but they just don’t know how to do all the after effects stuff and what not.
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James, let’s get to know more about you. At what point did you know that you wanted to be a musician?
When I was a kid, I was always using a tape recorder. I loved recording things. I was always going around recording everything. I had a guitar, it was my mom’s old guitar, and it was missing strings. I was like 3 or 4 and I didn’t even know how to play it and it wasn’t even in tune. I took that guitar, I went out and sat on the sandbox in the backyard. My whole family, my parents and grandparents were all sitting around just having an afternoon summer time outside. I would just make up songs and strum and they would all clap at the end. One time I played a song and at the end they didn’t clap. I asked why they weren’t clapping. So really, I just wanted to be clapped for and I wanted to record things [laughs]. Then in the 80’s I was really into rap music so I would make up and record rap songs. When I was 12, I saw Metallica’s video for “One” on TV. I saw them playing and that thrashy palm muted part, for the record was James Hetfield, it was never Kirk Hammett. Anyways, he’s wearing a wife beater and playing a point looking guitar which was an Explorer and he looks all tough and it sounds all aggressive. I just remember saying to myself, “That’s what I want to do. I want to do that.” I just decided it at that moment and then I got my guitar that following birthday.
Alex Hutchings. Easy answer. I asked him if he does Skype lessons and he doesn’t [laughs].
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If you could have dinner with any person alive or dead who would it be?
That would be Bill Murray. We would have Chipotle.
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If you could play guitar for any band of any era who would it be?
Judas Priest.
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What era?
Oh man. I’d like to play on the 1986 tour. That Priest Live era. It’s tricky because I want to be in that band with Glen Tipton but I don’t really want to play KK Downing’s stuff [laughs]. I don’t want to replace Glen because I want him to be in the band with man.
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What guitar solo do you say, “I wish I wrote that” every time you hear it?
“Tornado of Souls” by Megadeth. I think that is maybe my favorite. Not that Marty Friedman is my all-time favorite guitar player. There’s actually a Vindicator track, I forget which one it is, where I listened to it and said, “That is the biggest rip off of that song.” It doesn’t sound like it exactly but it’s me thinking of it. That solo is just awesome.
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Looking back, is there anything you wish you would’ve done differently?
Yeah. There’s very little I would have done differently because if I hadn’t done it I would be doing it now because I wouldn’t have learned from it. I don’t say that because it sounds like the right thing to say but it’s the truth. There’s plenty of stuff I’ll never do again. If I had a time machine and knowing everything I know, maybe there are things I would go back and handle differently but I would have had to have gone through them to know that.
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If Hollywood made a movie about your life who would play you?
Well, I would assume they’d make it in the future when I’ve done more interesting things. By then, the actors will all be virtual and it’ll just be my face mapped to a computer model so I guess a computer would play me.
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Finish this sentence: If I wasn’t a musician I would be__________________.
I would be… oh man, that’s a great one. I would probably be a graphic artist or designer. Something like that. If I was ambitious I would be a very eccentric architect but I don’t think I have that much academic interest.
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Is there anything else you’d like to let the folks know that are out there reading this?
Yeah. I’m available as a session player or guitar solo guy. I play in cover bands and if like Katy Perry or someone needs a touring guitar player I’m available. I’m not trying to do start up bands. You can see more about me and my past projects and what I’m doing now at www.jamesjlarue.com
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James, you made through this interview brother. It’s the end of the road!
Cool. This was fun man. Anytime I can talk about myself I just love it [laughs].
