Featuring ex-Deep Purple bassist/co-vocalist Glenn Hughes, blues guitar star Joe Bonamassa, keyboard king Derek Sherinian and drummer Jason Bonham, Black Country Communion have established themselves as one of the greatest supergroups of the last two decades. In 2011, as they geared up to release their second album, the four members sat down with Classic Rock to talk about how it was on the way to becoming bigger than any of them could have imagined.
What began as a brief side-project for Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian has grown into something closely resembling the real deal: a contemporary classic rock group comprised of four musical over-achievers with their collective artistic compass pointing to some time in the early 1970s.
There is also another component to the group: the man whose vision it was the persuaded them to work together, producer (“don’t call me ‘svengali”) and co-songwriter Kevin Shirley. Like the band, whose combined CV includes time with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Dream Theater, Shirley’s resumé also includes some of the biggest names in rock: Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, the Black Crowes, Journey… The full list is huge and impressive.
According to Shirley, “The master plan was begun before we even started. To the point where we scripted the ‘no touring until we had enough for a two-album set’. We had a little hiccup at the beginning of the second record, which was the result of many managers in the room, but other than that it’s been pretty much like clockwork.” Well, almost. With so many super-egos involved, ‘clockwork’ was never going to be an accurate description of how things work in Black Country Communion. But, as we learn, it’s been amazingly close – so far, anyway.
How did this whole journey begin for you?
Glenn Hughes: John Bonham was my good friend, and I had Jason on my knee when he was a kid, though he doesn’t remember that. I met Joe at a NAMM show five years ago. Joe and I started to hang out and write a couple of vignettes, nothing heavy, just kind of bluesy Americana. Then he invited me to sing a couple of songs with him at the House Of Blues. He loved Medusa from Trapeze, and he liked Mistreated from Purple. And Joe’s audience, you know, they’re a blues audience. But when I went on there and did my shtick they went fucking mad! Kevin Shirley ran backstage, sweating going: “I can see it! I can fucking see it now! We’ve gotta get Jason and Derek…” Me and Joe went, okay. Then the next day, a conference call and the band is born.
Derek Sherinian: Any time Kevin gives me a call I always make myself available. I’ve known Glenn for a long time, and of course I knew who Jason was. I’d never heard of Joe before. I think I’d heard his name, but I didn’t know anything about him. So I just went down there blindly to see if there was some kind of vibe, and we ended up doing a whole album.
Jason Bonham: I was doing the weekly grocery shop in Florida, where I live, and Kevin called me. I knew Glenn, I know Joe, I didn’t really know who Derek was. I didn’t do any homework, I didn’t listen to any of the songs, and kind of just went in there with that: “Okay, we’ll see what happens.” I think I was six hours late the first day. And then they had bets the second day what time I’d get there. I didn’t take it very seriously at all. I kind of had a bee in my bonnet about how it was being put together. I was still kind of upset that my dream hadn’t come true.
With Led Zeppelin, you mean?
Bonham: Yeah. And I was still kind of in a bitter place. So I was a little bit off. Not so much with everybody – Kevin. I didn’t kind of get the deal. And I made quite a bit of a problem. I’ve since very much apologised to the guys. You know, the old, ‘You’re exploiting the talents of Led Zeppelin. How much kick-back you getting?’ kind of vibe. And then when I heard the album I was like, hey, well, this is pretty good. I’m so pleased with my drumming on it. But I couldn’t really imagine it being a success, I don’t know why. I just didn’t really get it, until people started to go: “Oh my god. This album’s fantastic!” And it just grew on me. You know, on the new album the song Cold is one of my… I’m getting goose bumps talking about it. That is to me just beautiful, beautiful writing.
Joe, you and Kevin had a longstanding relationship before BCC. How does it work and why?
Bonamassa: First of all, we wouldn’t be having this conversation without Kevin. He really is the fifth member. He basically took those ramshackle tracks [on the first album] and made something out of it. I mean, you should have seen the look on my face when I heard the first record! I didn’t even remember doing it, we’d just cut it so quickly. He was the guy who kind of gave the mandate at the very beginning. Like, “Let’s get in our time machine, go back to 1970-71 but make it new and make it original and make it in 2010. Because I think there is a gap where bands are not doing that anymore.” You can’t buy any new music that sounds like the old school. There’s old school bands doing new music but there’s not like a brand new band. So I thought it was really clever of him to come up with that, and I was like, “Yeah, that should be fun”. And it’s been a blast.
With this second album, the band have suddenly got something to live up to. Did that make it more difficult for you?
Hughes: Kevin said to us: “I want you all to go write music for the next album.” I don’t write for a project, I just write every day because I like to write. It makes me feel good. So I wrote a lot of songs. But Joe doesn’t write on the road, so I said: “I need you for two weeks,” right after the two live shows. But he went up to Hogmanay with his girlfriend and I had him for three days. We went in with no pre-production, we went in cold again. And Jason and Derek hadn’t really heard what I’d been writing. They’d heard little bits and pieces. We just huddled together and I shared my music with the guys, and built the songs from there.
Bonamassa: We’d done Black Country, the first one, then four months later I’m in the studio again doing what would become [this year’s solo album] Dust Bowl. Then as soon as I get off the road after nine months of hard touring, Glenn’s ringing like: ‘So, Joseph, on Monday you’re going to come to my house and we’re going to start writing…’ I’m like, whoa! Fellas! Man, I’m not a machine! Give me a second to get my head-space! [laughs] But it did work out well. I warned Glenn: “I won’t be able to bring in half the record this time, but I will be able to commit to like doing two [new songs],” which took a little bit of the pressure, and he and I collaborated on some other songs. But it was basically ideas that he had gestated.
Bonham: It was a much better experience. Like we were a big fucking family, honestly. I felt in a completely different place. I didn’t want to say to Kevin: “You were right and I was wrong,” but I did. Me and Kevin had a really good chat and we both left hugging, and since then we’re getting on in leaps and bounds and speak to each other quite often. The strangest thing, I haven’t stopped listening to it since we finished it. I listen to it on a daily basis. Which is really bizarre for me.
Let’s talk about some of the songs on the new album, starting with the opener, The Outsider.
Hughes: I wrote that riff at the start of the song. Joe freaked when he heard that. But it’s so simple – it’s five notes, it’s a scale, you know? I wrote a song called Good Man. It broke down into a half-time on the chorus, with a really acoustic, almost Crosby, Stills & Nash vibe. And it sounded fantastic. But when we got into the chorus after playing that intense lick, it just went somewhere else.
The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall is something of an epic.
Bonamassa: I brought in Ordinary Son and I wrote The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall. Live, I may have to lower the key just slightly on …Hadrian’s Wall. I kind of sang myself into a corner on that one.
Bonham: In my head I was still thinking of a Zeppelin song at the end when the drums come back in. I kept thinking: “What would dad do in an environment like this?” I remember Kevin saying something like: “Don’t worry what your dad would do, just do what Jason would do.” And I was like: “Well, yeah, you’re right.” But in my head I use him as a building block.
How about Save Me?
Bonham: That actually started back with me, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, one of the days we were working in 2008, when we got together just as a three-piece to see what we could come up with. I remember one day, the greatest day of anyone’s kind of life, Jimmy Page turns to you and says: “Hey, you got any ideas?” Like, what? “Er, yeah. Hold on a minute…” Rush to the computer and suddenly go through all of my favourite Zeppy kind of riffs that I had flying around my head. And that was it. I had the basis of the song, of the main riff, but I never got to finish it. Glenn took my idea and finished it. I was so stoked when I first heard it. And Derek came up with the chorus chords, and Joe with the bridge.
The tag, like the Indian part, was through a friend called Chris Blackwell who played with Robert [drumming in Plant’s 90s backing band]. I contacted him a long, long time ago: “You haven’t got any more ideas like Calling To You [from Plant’s Fate Of Nations], have you?” And he sent me an idea of a song. And that was just the one part of the song I really liked. So I said, you know what, we need that kind of part there. So I had to give him a writing credit on it. It’s like a collection of bits and piece that kind of all stem back to the boys [Zeppelin], I suppose.
Hughes: I said to Jason when he played it to me: “Can I have that?” And he said: “Yeah. Write something that’s gonna make me cry.” He’s really emotional, that boy. So I wrote something… But these songs sort of wrote themselves. Kevin is in the studio, directing, conducting us with the headphones on. We know what key we’re in and we’ve run through it once in the control room with acoustic guitars. Then we go out there and the tape is rolling, and the magic, I swear, just happens.
What can we expect from the shows this summer?
Hughes: This is my first band since Purple. It’s been fucking 34 years, for Christ’s sake! Come on! It’s out of this world. I’m back in a rock band again. And I’m in it for the right reasons now; I’m not in it for the drugs and the booze and the blow and the birds. I’m really enjoying being in a rock band, a real rock band, a great band. I said to Joe early last year: “We have got to do shows before the end of this year, and we’ve got to do it in England.” It wasn’t hard to convince him.
Bonamassa: Well we certainly had that not-knowing-what’s-going-to-happen-next thing at those gigs in Wolverhampton and London [laughs]. I felt we didn’t have enough material. There’s no reason for me in Black Country Communion to be singing [solo song] …John Henry, you know? Now that we have a second record we’ll have a really comfortable hour-and-a-half of all of the band stuff, and we can still throw in a [Led Zep’s] No Quarter cos that was one of my favourite songs to play. Then you have a real show, and it won’t be like a 20-minute guitar solo.
Glenn, Joe told us he was taken aback at the start of the first show in Wolverhampton when you just ran on from the wings all guns blazing. That he felt he had to try and keep up.
Hughes: [Smiles] That’s a work in progress. Jason won’t look at you onstage. And I like to engage everybody but Joe won’t look at me either. He’s never had anybody engage him [onstage]. His manager’s going, ‘Push him! Push him!’ Kevin’s going, ‘Give him a fucking…’ you know? But we’re a work in progress, we’re like two gigs! So God knows what happens after three months. I see us being another Purple, Zeppelin, where live the songs will morph into longer things, because we have the musicianship in the band. Jason Bonham, pound for pound, right now has gotta be the best musical rock drummer we have – period. He is fucking insane!
How do you see BCC proceeding from here?
Bonamassa: Our next real challenge is to go out there and make a real live show out of it. Everybody was kind of running on adrenalin those first two gigs, but now let’s make sure we can keep that spirit three or four weeks into the tour when the novelty of it wears off and we’re grinding it out on the road.
Bonham: I’d love to give it the proper attention that it needs. To make sure the albums get toured and the band gets seen all over the world. I just hope the band gets a chance to progress and be what it could be. At the same time, you can’t really ask Joe to give up such a successful solo career. Glenn is a hundred per cent into it. I’m a hundred percent into it. Obviously we’d all like to do more, but I’m totally behind whatever the decision is of the band. We will play to our best ability at every show we play.
Hughes: I said to Joe at dinner last week: “Joe, I need you to invest your time into this band as well as your solo career.” And he told me very frankly: “I absolutely love this band. I love being the guitar player. I don’t have to be the leader, and I love being your partner.” My dream is to establish ourselves even more so next year. I shouldn’t really talk about next year, cos I’m in the program and we’re supposed to deal with today and stuff. But I know that I’ve got tour dates coming up with BCC. I’ve got my own full European tour in the fall. But Black Country to me, truly, is my first love. When people think of Glenn Hughes I want them to think of Black Country Communion. Glenn has actually found a band again and he’s not fucked up and he’s focused and he’s hungry to be part of it.
Now is our time. What the beautiful thing about those two shows and the second one you saw was – if we were that good on those first two shows, my fucking word, how is it gonna go after like three weeks?
Originally published in Classic Rock issue 160, June 2011
