(QUI IN ITALIANO) He played with Bad Moon Rising, Whitesnake and Dio. Also with Glenn Hughes and Revolution Saints. He plays the guitar with energy and style, with those golden hands (Corabi said this!), and it seems he found his dream bands when he joined The Dead Daisies about ten years ago. With the Daisies in tour with a gig in town, I couldn’t miss the show, and I couldn’t resist in catching up with Mr Dough Aldrich and asking him few questions!
MH: Hello Dough! Let’s start this: how is this little tour going?
DA: It’s really good. It’s really… the band is really firing on all the cylinders. We are happy be in Italy at the moment. Just two shows this time… but… we are very happy about that.
MH: Summer festivals apart, are you planning other tours during 2025?
DA: Sure, in June we have few festivals and then some around shows as well…
MH: Italy again?
DA: I don’t think so… yet… pity!
MH: Something about your involvement in this super group with important names: how did David manage to have you in and keep you for about ten years now?
DA: They are all friends, you know, once I got in the band I really felt like being in family; we do everything together, we write together, we practice obviously together, but especially writing and recording, doing it together is really like… amazing! You know, of course, you can write a record emailing back and forth… you can record your parts, I can record my parts, and stuff get sent, and we do all separately… but it’s not much fun; with this band we can fortunately do all that stuff together, which is really keen. It sounds better when you record together too.
MH: This band has a line up that drives me crazy: people going, people coming, It’s a mess!
I was thinking Castronovo was back… but he is not. Instead Tommy Clufetos which is back again. And John Corabi is back too!
DA: It’s really interesting. Because, it’s really John’s band. He is really the guy. Even the stuff we were doing with Glenn (Hughes, editor’s note)… the way John is on front is amazing. This is really good. There have always been some changes, but now we are pretty steady, I think it is the second year with Tommy, so we have the same line up, just got Tommy back… and Tommy is a powerhouse, he is so good, we are grateful to have him… but also to have had guys like Deen Castronovo.
MH: I think the line up thing is also your fault… or they happens thanks to you. Because it seems that most of the band members are coming from your career. Like Marco Mendoza who was with you in Whitesnake, and also you had something to do with Glenn, it seems like you are calling your friend on this band!
DA: Actually, I mean, there’s been a lot of members of Whitesnake… so yeah… but I think it’s all about friends. Actually I and Richard Fortus were friends before I came, and Richard happened to pick me and Marco was already in the band, so here’s the guys from Whitesnake… and the you know, Brian (Tichy, in Whitesnake from 2010 to 2013, editor’s note) was in the band as well, and there’s another guy from Whitesnake; in different time we stayed in the Whitesnake when those guys came in, but eventually… we needed a new bass player an Michael Devin was free, and he is playing within the Guess Who… is from Whitesnake too, but he is playing in the Guess Who, and that’s where we got him from.
MH: Right now it’s you and David the longest steady members. You have been here for ten years, he is the founder of the band… so who’s the boss right now? You are the oldest member with David right now, who decide when you must do an album, a tour or whatever else?
DA: We have a great team bind, you know. We have David head work, we have David’s hire… a whole crew of people at work. So they present ideas to David… it’s down to him, he is the ultimate pass, but he likes to work with the team, you know they like to meet together and they make decisions together, and then they talk to us about what they want to do. Me personally am all in this. I want not to be doing to many things at once, so in 2019 I basically stopped everything… Revolution Saints, Burning Rain… I just wanted to focus on this. It makes it better for everybody. But on the delicate questions it’s all about David ultimate pass.
MH: The new album out in May is called “Lookin’ For Trouble”… What a title!
DA: I think Michael Devin came up with that title. We were in Alabama, writing songs for “Light ‘Em Up”, we decided, you know… we were in this amazing blues studio, so much history with blues artists and lot of rock, southern rock… and we decided; we were sitting down all long the day, they were recording other songs, so we just started to jam some stuff in flavour of that blues thing… and we were doing it in our own way, you know, and we realized that was awesome, that was it… so we went to the computer and recorded some of this… and it turned out to be an album! We started with a couple of songs, and then we decided to keep doing it…
MH: How did you choose the songs? Because the list is quite good!
DA: Yeah! It’s really good! Everyone picked the kindest, threw some songs out there, and we tried, we wanted to make sure that everything came out fine…
MH: From what I’ve heard so far, they’re definitely blues songs… but you electrified them a lot, they turned out pretty heavy!
DA: Yeah! Heavy, but not like our usual stuff, because we were using smaller amps, and different guitars. I used all the 50s (Gibson, editor’s note) Les Pauls that I have, we also use smaller heads to try to get some different tones; that heavy comes from the rhythmic session, the guitars there are super heavy.
MH: Corabi is probably the perfect singer for these songs, the right voice to do it…
DA: that’s right!
MH: Will you play any of these songs live tonight?
DA: Yeah. We play them on this tour now, but we will feature more as the year goes on, but right now we are doing a couple of them.
MH: I got a question I asked to Castronovo (here) when I interviewed him for this band few years ago. The band involves fives guys, all of them are famous and with a strong ego. How do you get along together without killing each other?
DA: (laughs, editor’s note)… it’s pretty easy as we are friends, we try to leave any personal baggage… we leave that stuff at home, you know, so when we go on through we try to support each other, if you want to be successful you need to support each other, and that’s what the Dead Daisies does. It’s that kind of situation that we may disagree on something, but we just work it out!
MH: We should text Deen telling him you gave almost the same answer he gave me!
MH: I’ve already seen you live a few times: you’ve got the energy of band made up for five BOYS, but none of you (none of us!) is a boy anymore. Where do you find this driving force we could find behind an emerging band back in the 80s?
DA: We just feel great, we feel a blast from the music, and we love it, we believe in it, so that’s the kind of music we like, that we play and it’s fun playing it, and I mean when you get to play rock’n’roll, with beautiful guitar, great people, friends… you feel young you know.
MH: A personal question for you. How do you feel when you’re playing those six strings? What’s that inner force and essence that transform Doug the man in the guitar player we see on stage? What’s the difference between you sitting here now and you out there?
DA: When I got out there I feel the energy of a rock’n’roll show, and I am like, let’s do this, let’s play, I really always want to play the perfect show, perform perfectly, and maybe I didn’t get there but I played that part perfectly, and it’s all about getting better and better!
MH: To close, please a message to fans, to the fans of the band and to the readers of METALHEAD.IT
DA: First to the fans: we wanna say we are grateful, thanks, so much support over the years. It’s greater to make music and have you guys enjoying It. To METALHEAD.IT, I just wanna say thank you for your support and keep our music alive, not just ours, but all the music with your support. It means a lot to people to get to read about a band they like and also about other bands around. So thank you guys. It means a lot. GRAZIE MILLE!
(Luca Zakk)
Foto: Monica Furiani Photography
