Jimi Bell – An Xperience Interview

Jimi Bell – An Xperience Interview – by Dick Beach.

Jimi Bell is a left-handed shredder. A Very Tasty shredder. He’s a member of Beyond Purple coming to the Cohoes Music Hall on October 26, 2024. Autograph, Beyond Purple, and House of Lords. We talk influence, picking, shredding, and Close Encounters of the Ozzy kind.

RRX:  So, we’re taking some time with Jimi Bell. I know we’re really excited to have you coming up at the Cohoes during October. And thank you very much for talking with RadioRadioX.

JB: It’s my pleasure. I can’t thank you enough for having me. It means a lot.

RRX:  As a kid, in my household, it was a lot of classical. It was a lot of big bands. So, what stuff did you listen to as a kid? What did your parents have on and what about that kind of got you interested in music?

JB: Well, my parents brought me up on big band music and I love big band music. I was very much into Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, all those orchestras. But I used to listen to Benny Goodman more so because I was very much into drums and they had Gene Krupa.

One of my greatest treasures that I have still is I got to meet Gene Krupa before he passed away. He was playing at a Holiday Inn of all places. He came with a Dixieland jazz band and was playing in the lounge. I was sitting right next to him, and I have a photo of me and Gene together, and it’s just classic.

RRX:  There were an awful lot of folks who looked to Clapton on the blues side of things or Jimmy Page or the like. While some people were gravitating to more Jimi Hendrix, there was a big chunk of the world that was still gravitating toward that blues sound as opposed to what now is known as shredding.

JB: My influences back in the day were, first, Johnny Winter. Then I discovered Ritchie Blackmore, which really took over my life. Then, the one that really sealed the deal for me was Al Di Meola. There was something about Al Di Meola that I gravitated towards more because he was extremely precise with his picking hand, very clean. I wanted to be that, but I didn’t want to play that style music.

RRX: The other day on Facebook, you put something out. And of course, the comment I made to it was, “You is a’pickin’ and I is a’grinnin’. There was a whole lot of Roy Clark in that.

JB: Yeah. I’m a huge country fan. I love Roy Clark so much. My style has changed throughout. Okay, so I had my foundation with Johnny, Ritchie and Al. Then I discovered Eddie, and then Michael Schenker, and some of these other incredible guitar players. But then I found Albert Lee.

RRX:  I find that with so many of the younger musicians, they have completely forgotten guys like Chet Atkins. How do you forget Chet Atkins?

JB: I know! You know, Chet was one of the first guys doing all this fingerstyle and all this other stuff. Then, some people don’t even know that Jerry Reed was one of the most amazing guitar players. He had this double-stop stuff that he was doing on guitar. People just think he’s an actor from Smokey and the Bandit. I’m going like, no, this guy’s an amazing guitarist.

RRX:  I saw that at one point, you had spoken about one of those missed-it-by-that-much moments with Ozzy.

JB: Yes. Yeah, that was a big one for me, you know? The Joan Jett thing, that was a whole, you know, being in that movie and everything with her was a great, great experience and that was a very cool thing. Let me just give you an example on that. I’ll just show you.

RRX: Sure.

JB: Okay. So, I’m in the band Joined Forces and we get hooked up – we’re an all-original music band, okay? We just do all original. We get hooked up with somebody in Joan Jett’s camp. He’s starting his own management company and he has a partner that owns a tour bus company. That was his partner.

So, Joan Jett’s doing a tour of the East Coast. We have a three-song set is all we had. They put us out on tour with Joan Jett. We have our own tour bus and everything else. We’re out on the road with Joan Jett in our early 20s and we’re going, what the heck is going on with this? This is great!

One day, I’m at home and the phone rings about 10:00 in the morning. He (Floyd Rose – developed the tremolo) says, “Jimi, Jake E. Lee is out of Ozzy. We sent your tape to Sharon and she really wants you to come to California. So, we’re arranging that.” I said, oh my god! He said, “They already have one guy that they picked already,” which was Zakk. “They already have this one guy, but she saw your tape and wants you to come out.”

Okay. So, there was one other guy that got to audition before me from Sweden. So, he went up on the stage. And they’re doing “Flying High Again.” It comes to the solo section that Randy Rhoads had done. This guy was from Sweden. This guy decided to change the iconic tapping section that Randy Rhoads did, he changed it into sweeping. He was trying to get creative with it.

Well, Ozzy’s standing behind him, making like he’s strangling him to death. So, keep it in mind that I have to go up and play next.

They sat down with me afterward and they said, “Well, it’s between you and Zakk.” That was what it was. They took me out to dinner afterward, this real expensive restaurant in downtown LA.

RRX:  Is there any such thing as a cheap restaurant in LA?

JB: No. But you got to understand, this is a restaurant that had probably like all doctors and lawyers. I mean, this was a place that – of course, Ozzy could go anywhere because he has more money than all those people, you know?

RRX: No joke.

JB: We go in there. This was when Ozzy was still a little messed up. I’ll never forget, I’m eating. We had our salads. At the time, I didn’t eat cherry tomatoes. I said, “Ozzy, you want my tomatoes?” because I’m sitting right next to him. He said, “No, no, no.” So, I turned my head and start talking to Randy and the drummer. I see out of the corner of my eye that Ozzy puts his hands in my food and starts eating the cherry tomatoes out of my dish. I’m not making this up. This is real stuff that’s going on here.

RRX: This is great!

JB: So, they get him back, Sharon pulls him out of there. They go back to their chalet or bungalow, whatever you want to call it, right on Sunset Strip. I go over there. We’re sitting in the living room. I mean, this is pretty wild because I’m actually sitting in Ozzy’s living room with Sharon and with Aimee, the daughter that wasn’t in the Ozzy show. She was just a baby.

I’m sitting there and he’s got Aimee on his lap, and he’s bouncing her and the TV’s playing. All of a sudden, Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” comes on the TV. Ozzy’s going, “Look, Aimee! There’s Daddy! There’s Daddy!” You know, going nuts because, you know, he’s showing his little girl that her father’s on TV. It was just a great moment.

RRX: No one thinks of Ozzy as a doting parent.

JB: No! I mean, you see how he treats his kids on – of course, that’s all part of the show. But Aimee’s the one that did not want to be in the show, so that’s why that whole thing, that never happened. She stayed clear of it. That was a great situation.

So, I go home. Then, all of a sudden, I heard that they had decided to stay with Zakk.

Somebody had said something as farfetched as, “You know, Jimi, you might not have gotten it because you’re left-handed, like Tony Iommi.” I go, “Well, I never thought of that, but weirder things have happened.” I said, “I don’t really think that that was it.”

RRX:  You’re still out there. You’re still producing. You’re still having what I have to gather is a reasonably good time doing what you’re doing.

JB: Yes!

RRX: The one thing you never know is, if this had happened, would I be the same guy I am today?

JB: Well, here’s the other problem. Back in the ‘80s, I was not the most well-behaved person. I was always very polite. I was always this person that you’re talking to like this, but I had some – I had a few bad habits that I was doing.

RRX: Yeah, there was a time for that.

JB: I got an opportunity to go out on tour with a heavy metal band out of Germany in 1999. I had let my hair go all grey already. So, I had to die my hair jet black again and I head over to Germany. I went on a tour with this band, Thunderhead, that was kind of big in Germany.

We were opening up for Metal Church. From there, I met the original singer, David Wayne. He brings me aside and says, “Listen, this is the only tour I’m doing. I was only doing this one record.” He says, “I’m doing a solo record. Do you want to be my guitar player?” I said, “Absolutely.” So, when that tour ended, I got together with my buddy B.J., who plays drums. You know; you met him. He was there.

RRX:  I met him. And he’s next on my hit parade.

JB: Yeah, yeah. And so, him and I got together and started doing all these tracks for David Wayne, and we wrote the whole record. And then, that’s kind of like how our working relationship started. It started with Thunderhead because we wrote songs for that. And then finally, then David Wayne’s Metal Church was the whole record.

Then, we worked with this singer, Mike Vescera. Mike was a Connecticut person as well locally for a while. At that point, that’s when I ended up getting in House of Lords. I got a call from James Christian in about 2005.

RRX: Yeah – when I mentioned the name to a couple of the guys at the magazine, they were like, “Wait a minute. I know that name.” They go, “Oh god, yeah! I know them.” You guys just released a new single.

JB: Right, and it’s our tenth record since I joined the band. This album coming out in about a month and a half will be my tenth album with House of Lords.

RRX: When is that gonna hit?

JB: I believe the very beginning of October, actually.

This record, it just worked out so well. For some reason, I mean, I think it’s a great record. Frontiers, our label, is saying it’s the best record that we’ve ever done.

RRX: “Crowded Room” (the first single) has got some serious freaking legs on it.

JB: Yeah, thank you. I had a good time doing that. I wanted to make some of the solos more interesting. So, I actually wrote quirks in. Because I usually just solo over whatever, maybe a verse section, and just call it a day with that.

I’m all about the singing. Guitar playing to me is not gonna sell the song. The song is all about the chorus, the hook, everything else. All these unbelievable guitar players that put out these instrumental albums, I’ll listen to them for about two seconds and I go, I want to hear AC/DC. I want to hear the vocals. I want to hear the 2/4 beat. That’s what I want to hear.

RRX:  So, we’ve also got Beyond Purple coming up (October 26 at the Cohoes Music Hall). You’re gonna be here for that. Is there a plan for a House of Lords tour coming up in the future or –

JB: Yeah. Well, I was actually talking to James about that today. We usually go to Europe, but he wants to go out this time. We were talking about it because he said the response on the record, we’re getting so much good stuff, I really want to go out this time. So, we’re gonna work on that. I’m still doing my stuff with Autograph.

RRX: Right. Yeah, I was gonna say, you’ve got a lot going on.

JB: Yeah, I joined them in 2019, when the guitar player had quit the band. And I had a great run with them for three years, almost three. And then unfortunately, the bass player, who was the last member, original member of the band, passed away – Randy. So, we continued on with another bass player. But then Steve, the guitar player that I took his place, decided that he wanted ownership of the name. So, there was all this big battle with everything.

Basically, what we decided is – we had come out with an album on Frontiers called “Beyond.” Randy played on that, and he loved all the songs on it. As a matter of fact, he turned in all the masters to the record company one week before he died, which was really crazy.

So, we got the record out and we figured after this stuff, why don’t we just call the new band Autograph Beyond? And everybody agreed that we could do it.

RRX:  So, I’m gonna do what I traditionally do as I end an interview. I always ask the folks I’m speaking with, if there’s one thing that you could say, I don’t know, to your neighbor or the world at large, what’s the one thing that you would like people to take away and what’s the one thing that you would like people to hear from you that you think’s really important?

JB: Oh man. Well, to me, that means just be good to each other. Treat someone the way you want to be treated. I’ve learned that kindness goes an extremely long way as opposed to, like we were talking about earlier, all the fighting you see back and forth. People losing friendships and everything on social media and stuff. Basically, that’s my thing.

I practice that every day, just being extra kind. Going the extra distance to everybody. And I do that with all my fans. I will always shake somebody’s hand. I will come out and say hi to somebody, if they want. I’ll always take pictures. I’ll always do this. And I have no problem doing it at all. I’m always right there to show an act of kindness.

RRX: Thus endeth the official interview. Thank you so very much.

JB: Oh, you’re very welcome. As a matter of fact, my wife was just calling me again.

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