STEELHEART
Interview with Frank Di Costanzo
1. Tell me about the whole story with STEELHEART , how did they start and we they are not with us anymore?
Red Alert started back in the early eighties, and was a four piece band at the time. Chris and Jimmy had been jamming since high school with a drummer by the name of Jack Wilkinson, and later Mike joined the band. Red Alert was absolutly the the hottest act in town, and whenever they played, I was there. Chris and I met through our mutual guitar teacher Link Chamberlin, who has been featured in Guitar Player as an unknown great. Later, I started taking lessons from Chris, and enevitably became great friends. John Fowler and I were in a band called Rage of Angels. We used to rehearse nextdoor to Red Alert. When Jack left the band, Red Alert was in desperate need of a drummer. After searching high and low, they hired John, who was in the next room. About a month later they hired me, and the band set out to get out of a bad deal they struck up with a song writer/producer. Soon after we met up with a manager who got us out of that bad deal, and into another………….deal. Three months later, we were in Los Angeles recording our debut album, Steelheart. The rest is history!!
2.What are the other members doing now?
Jimmy is working in my studio on a project with his brother and some friends. The name of the band is Jacko McGuire. They’ve revamped some old Irish folk tunes, and kind of rocked them out. I love it, it’s refreshing to listen to, they’re a blast. John plays drums for three or four different local bands last I heard. I know they range from real heavy, to blues. He’s happy just so long as he’s playing. Chris has been living in Florida since the band broke up. I know he’s got quite a teaching schedule built up. He used to teach here in Connecticut, and always had a waiting list, so I’m sure it’s the same situation down there. Mike lives out in Los Angeles, and last I heard, he had done a sound track for a movie thats due out in May or June called Metal Gods. The band consists of Jason Bonham, Zakk Wild, and Jeff Pilson. I also heard from Jimmy that he was in Germany trying to shop a deal with a techno pop project he had been working on. Mike was recently in Connecticut taking care of family matters, and stopped by my studio to mix a song the may appear on a compilation CD., it was great to see Mike, we caught up on a lot of old times!!
3. What did you do after STEELHEART?
After Steelheart broke up, I went looking for a guy I used to jam with in the mid 80’s. I found him living in Manhattan, and just so happened, he had a band and had just lost his guitar player. After getting together and discussing musical directions and interests, we decided to give it a go. The next day he called me up, and with my answering machine, I recorded him playing an acoustic guitar of some songs he had. He said he had a gig comming up in a couple of days, and didn’t want to cancel it, so I learned the songs real quick, and with a little improvisation, we played our first gig. The Heroes had been born, and we went on to record two CD’s worth of material. The Heroes stayed together for about three or four years. In that time we gigged and rehearsed mostly in Brooklyn and Manhattan, because thats where 2/3rds of the band lived. Once I got my studio built, the guys moved to Norwalk Connecticut, where we set our minds to recording, and creating our sound. This material, and many other projects that have been recorded in my studio, will eventually be available on my soon to be launched website. I’ve played on a couple of cool projects that have come through the studio, Steven Christofor’s being one of them, and another project that I think has a lot of potential, a local artist named Eric Malizia. I was also thinking about reviving my old band Rage of Angels. We had an album that was released in 1989 on a small indie label, and it did quite well. Apparently the album has become a collectors item, and I’ve been receiving emails from fans who would love to hear a second record. There is also alot of music that never got recorded left over from the Heroes days. I would love to get the guys back together and lay that shit down, if I could just find the time!!
4.These days we have reunions from many 80’s Hard Rock bands (POISON ,BRITNY FOX , GREAT WHITE ,….) can we have your comments about that and do we expect the same thing with STEELHEART ?
Some things are better left alone. At least those are my thoughts right now , who knows maybe they’ll change in the future. As far as Steelheart goes, I don’t see anything like that happening in the near future.
5.What are you working on these days?
What am I working on these days you ask. I am a LAN Manager for a very large worldwide company. I also run my studio, Pumpkinhill Recording Studio, with a partner of mine, which is where I keep in touch with music.
6.What is the situation about hard rock in USA these days?
There are still a lot of bands out there that carry the hard rock torch, they just do it in a different way, it’s all good, it’s all rock and roll. Some of my favorites, there are way to many to list, are The Black Crowes, The Foo Fighters, Living Color, and of course all the old ones Jimi Hendrix, The late great Stevie Ray, The Beatles, Led Zepplin, The Who, Jeff Beck, I can go on for hours!!
7.Tell me your best and worst experience from the music industry
My best experiences were that I got to work in some of Hollywood’s top notch studios with really top notch people. I also got to travel around the world, see lots of beautiful places, and meet lots of really cool people. The down side, was that we were all pretty young, and easily taken advantage of. We had poured our heart and souls into the band, signed this deal, sold a shit load of records, but were still all broke. This lead to fighting with managment, the record company, and each other, and eventually the breakup of the band. SAD! Latest breaking news!! Some friends of mine left a mesage on my answering machine. VH1 has a special called “Top 40 Hair Bands of All Time”, that is showing Steelheart, and a little segment about us. Hair Band? I always thought we were a little more than that……..what do I know.
