ERIK TURNER: 'In An Ideal World, We All Wish JANI LANE Was Alive And Healthy And Singing In WARRANT'

Mark Dean of Antihero Magazine recently conducted an interview with WARRANT guitarist Erik Turner. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Antihero Magazine: You had massive success as a band in the ’80s. Was that difficult to deal with at the time?

Erik Turner: “It was only difficult when there was drama. Like anything in life when things have gone bad and everybody’s dealing with painful situations in our life our band its very hard and your relationships and your friendships and your family suffer. It’s great to be in any band I imagine when the business is good, but then when somebody causes drama it does something, it upsets other people, then it’s a bummer… the band dynamic is fucked for awhile. But it is what it is, there’s no going back, things happened that happened and there was a lot of good times and there was a lot of bad times in the 80’s/90’s for this band. Time has a way of healing wounds in the short term and especially in the long term. I try and remember all the good times when I think back on the ’80s. We are grateful to still be here and touring and making WARRANT music in 2017 for our fans.”

Antihero Magazine: And then, of course, the band experienced a lot of traumatic periods in the ’90s as well. There was different lineup changes. The “Belly To Belly” album [1996], how would you look at that in hindsight? It was a departure from your original style.

Erik Turner: We were trying to fit in, we were trying to reinvent ourselves. We were influenced by some of the really cool music that was happening at the time. I [and] we all really liked ALICE IN CHAINS and SOUNDGARDEN, so some of that stuff started creeping in our music. There was a real backlash against ’80s bands; it was fashionable to hate ’80s bands and say bad things about bands from the ’80s. But we were fortunate. Jani [Lane, vocals] quit WARRANT around that time and then he came back six months or so later and then Joey [Allen, guitar] quit and then we let Steven [Sweet, drums] go and we got these new guys in the band, and we got a new record deal and we basically just kept on going. That’s all we’ve ever done, just kept on going. Every time somebody quits, like our original drummer and singer quit in ’86 and that’s when we got Jani and Steven. But we just kept on going. And that’s what we’ve done for 35 years — Jerry [Dixon, bass] and I pick up the pieces and we just keep on going. I am happy to say since 2004, we’ve had four out of five original members in the band, and we even had Jani come back for a little while in 2008. At the end of the day, we just feel blessed to keep on making records and keep touring every year.”

Antihero Magazine: It’s what the fans want to see primarily anyway from the band — most of the original, if not all the original lineup back together.

Erik Turner: “Yeah, in an ideal world, we all wish Jani was alive and healthy and singing in WARRANT. I mean, that would be ideal. On so many different levels, he had his demons and I think he couldn’t stop drinking and it finally took his life. It was a horrible, sad thing for his family, his friends and this business as well. It affects everything in a bad way, when somebody has an addiction like that and they can’t stop.”

Read the entire interview at Antihero Magazine.

WARRANT‘s new studio album, “Louder Harder Faster”, was released on May 12 via Frontiers Music Srl. The disc was recorded with producer Jeff Pilson, a veteran bassist who has played with DIO, FOREIGNER, DOKKEN and T&N, among others, and was mixed by Pat Regan except for the song “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here And Drink”, which was mixed by Chris “The Wizard” Collier (FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, PRONG, LAST IN LINE).