While so many of the bands that emerged from the 1980s hard rock and metal scene have faded into obscurity or now earn their livings purely as nostalgia acts, L.A. Guns has been thriving on creativity and production since the core duo of guitarist Tracii Guns and singer Phil Lewis got back together in 2017. Due April 4, 2025, via Cleopatra Records, “Leopard Skin” is the band’s fifth studio album since that crucial reunion—two live albums also have been issued in that time—and it features a bluesy, classic rock ‘n’ roll vibe as opposed to the more metallic edge L.A. Guns had been pursuing of late. As evidenced further by his many collaborations outside of L.A. Guns, Tracii Guns is a lover of guitar playing and rock music in all shapes and sizes, and his need to create is largely responsible for one of the more unexpected hard rock/metal comeback stories of recent years. Tracii recently connected with Live Metal’s Greg Maki to discuss “Leopard Skin,” the happy family vibe enhancing the band’s productivity, why guitar solos are scary and more.
LIVE METAL: I’m sure it’s an exciting time. The new L.A. Guns album, “Leopard Skin,” comes out Friday, April 4, on Cleopatra Records. You’ve been doing this for a long time. Do you still get that excitement leading up to the release of a new album?
TRACII GUNS: Yeah. You spend quite a bit of time putting the music together and getting all the gears working and doing quality control and stuff like that to the point where you make something you’re proud of, and the one thing any creative person wants to do is show what they’ve made to somebody. So with an album coming out in a week, yeah, I’m really excited. Music is my profession, but it’s also my hobby. So it’s something that I do all the time. I love it.
This is the fifth album from L.A. Guns since you got back together in 2017. A lot of the bands that emerged when you did, if they are still together, are nostalgia acts. They’re playing those same songs from 30, 40 years ago. What is it that’s driven you to keep creating new music and be so productive?
It’s the ability to do it, to have a reason to not only do it for ourselves, but we have a fan base that is receptive to our new music every 18 months or whatever it is. It keeps the kind of youthful attitude about being in a band—it keeps it alive and well. A lot of bands go and do the weekend thing, or they’ll do a nice little tour for nostalgia reasons, and they love to play the songs and the audience loves them. But we live in a complete fantasy world, where it’s 1976 and we’re getting on the bus and we’ve got our new record out and it’s called “Leopard Skin” and we’re gonna slam. (laughs) That’s our attitude.
Do you go into each new album, when you’re starting to work on it, with a plan, a specific one for that album—goals, things you want to accomplish that are different from before?
Yeah, sure. There’s probably a small list every time—what I think it should sound like, what not to do that we’ve recently done. I really try to catch myself while I’m writing repeating something I’ve done recently. So there’s that little bit of a mental checklist—“Oh, just did that, so scrap that for later. It’ll come out six years from now.” (laughs) That kind of mentality.
Adam Hamilton, the drummer that plays on the albums—he and I construct all the music together, and there’s a lot of conversation while we’re doing it in the beginning of, like, what influences are we looking for on this album? Where do we draw from, and also, within these type of influences, what is that recording process gonna be, and what’s the album gonna sound like? Because when you make a metal record, you do it one way. When you make a rock ‘n’ roll record, you do it another way. So saying that, let’s say we have a ballad on a metal record, tonally it’s still a metal ballad. But if we’re doing a ballad like on this album, “The Masquerade,” it has more the sound quality of something from the early ‘70s. And that’s very intentional, and a lot of fun to create or recreate—however you want to look at what we’re doing at the moment.
But it always starts with a deadline from a label and the initial panic and then the first day of sitting down with a guitar and absolutely freaking out, terrified, because it’s like starting a giant novel. It’s like, “I haven’t even gotten through the preface yet!” (laughs) But once we get going, it’s absolutely like putting together a giant Lego castle, and it’s so fun.
I saw L.A. Guns live about a year ago for the first time in quite a while. It was on the KK’s Priest tour.
Oh, wow, what a cool tour.
Yeah, and I remember as I was watching you, I was thinking, “Wow, they’re a lot heavier than I was expecting.” And then, listening to this new album, I was like, “Wow, this is a lot looser and bluesier than I was expecting.”
(laughs) Right!
Was that the plan going into it?
That’s what’s great about L.A. Guns to me. We can go on tour with Priest and be fuckin’ heavy as fuck, but then we could easily tour with the Stones and pull out those songs. We’re a full range rock band—everything from “they stole your heart because they were sensitive guys in tight pants” to extreme thrash. We do it all, and it’s because I’m a guitar player. I’m an interested guitar player. I’m interested in all of the things that happened before I put out my first record. It’s like, “I love all of this!” So I incorporate that, but I try not to overlap on one album, like an extremely heavy two songs out of nowhere and the rest is just good old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. I try to at least focus the albums within the albums.
The band has had a pretty stable lineup for several years now. What effect has that had on the albums and songwriting and everything?
Well, it’s the happiness factor. When everybody’s kind of a cheerleader for their own band and proud of their band, especially in the writing process—we have two drummers, a live drummer and a studio drummer, and that could be very sticky. There could be some strange kind of resentment there, which would be warranted. It’s like, “Hey, I’m the drummer in the band. How come that guy plays on the albums?” Well, it’s just the way we do it, and there’s no issues there. But really, it comes down to the happy family vibe that the band has now. Anybody involved with L.A. Guns, it’s all family, and we’re all cheering the whole project on every day. The small successes that we have every day still are exciting.
There were a lot of lineup changes in the past. Do you think those changes held the band back in different ways back then?
Not sure. I want to think on one hand that that was very educational for me personally—like, “Whoa, what’s going on here?” kind of a thing. (laughs) But also, it gives space in between the last time Phil and I were doing L.A. Guns properly to now or seven years ago when we started doing it properly again. It gave people time to appreciate what we do. That’s the hardest part of being in a band: In the beginning, six, seven years in, everybody gets complacent, because it’s like, “We did everything we set out to do. We’ll be fine. We don’t need to rehearse.” Getting the second chance and having it be successful, now we actually really appreciate it. We don’t take it for granted. Kind of the running joke is there’s been 10 times more members than albums. (laughs) But all those things, they must somehow be connected to what we’re doing now.
Obviously, there was that long period where you weren’t in the band, but now that, as you say, everybody’s happy and a big family, what are the differences in your relationship with Phil now as opposed to the first run of the band?
There’s nobody getting in between us. You’ll find that in any duo, like Phil and I, Keith and Mick. All those duos that front a band, there’s always people taking sides from day one. Whoever they can latch onto, they latch onto, and then they’re toxic. It’s like, “Well, I’m friends with Tracii.” “Well, I’m friends with Philip.” It’s like, “Yeah, great. Why can’t we all be friends?” “Well, he likes that kind of wine, and you like that kind of whiskey.” It’s that petty. It’s that stupid. And then, when there’s issues in the band, like direction issues or something, then everybody else has an opinion that’s more important than the two people that are creating everything. And it makes a very toxic environment.
So the one thing that Phil and I have going for us is that we have eliminated anybody that gets in between us. It was still going on when we started. There was still a couple fuckin’ hangers-on, leeches with their hands in our pockets, and we got out the big scissors and chopped. It’s a hard thing to do, man, but it has to be done. So now we are where we are now.
The new album, as we said, is called “Leopard Skin.” What is the title referencing?
“Leopard Skin” is rock ‘n’ roll the way that we look at it. That’s the aesthetic—leather jacket and leopard skin pants, or a leopard jacket and leather pants. It really lets you know that somebody’s a rock ‘n’ roller. This album is a rock ‘n’ roll album, and we want to celebrate this part of our catalog that way.
I’m sure all these songs are really close to you, but are there any that stand out a little more as being favorites or a little closer to you?
I think the band’s collective favorite is “Hit and Run,” which is a very different sounding rock ‘n’ roll song for us. It definitely has a Lords of the New Church, maybe The Cult a little bit, Chris Isaak’s ‘50s vibe going on in the sound of it. Collectively, the band loves that one. For me, “The Grinder” I would say is the one that really ties up my personality. If I had to write the same song over and over again, it would be “The Grinder.” “Masquerade” is just fucking hands-down the best slow song we’ve ever written. And then “Runaway Train,” it’s such a departure—it’s a train with a departure, get it?! (laughs) It’s so different for us to do it, and nobody really sings Southern, Black blues better than a white British guy, right? (laughs) That’s kind of been proven over and over again. So we nailed that one, too, so that’s really exciting for me.
What is your approach to the guitar solos? Do you plan them out ahead of time, or do you leave room for improvisation?
Oh, no. Guitar solos are scary (laughs) because it’s a song within a song, and sometimes there’s two of them in a song. On a rock ‘n’ roll album, I really stick to the melodic, that sweet tone. I really try to make it say something in a palatable way where you’re singing the song and the next thing you know, you’re singing the guitar solo. That’s really important on an album like this. I wouldn’t want to get out my high gain guitar sound and just start ripping over these really classic, familiar styles of songs. But I can do that on the next record. We can do a high gain album where I’m shredding.
But what I will do, normally, is it takes me a couple hours to do the rhythm tracks and look at the rhythm tracks and start inverting chords and making the guitars play off each other. By that time, I’m like, “OK, I’m gonna do a solo now.” So by that time, I already have the melodic structure in my head of what the chords are doing, and then I’ll start out playing the chords the first few passes—playing the notes through the chords—and start bending a little here and there, and the next thing, I go, “Here I go. Bam!” And then I’ll do four or five takes until I feel ah, that’s it. And then I always attempt to double it just for audio purposes, to make it sound a certain way. That’s really the process. So everything’s improvised at first.
When we do the heavier stuff, it’s a different approach. I look at the chord structure, and then I start looking at different modes of music, like “I want this to sound a little bluesier. I want this to sound a little bit more classical. I want to blend those two things.” So that’s different, and that’s why I keep making records, because the puzzle possibilities are unlimited, right? There’s only 12 tones, but my god, you can just do so many things.
So those are the two processes. Rock ‘n’ roll songs get melodic solos or whatever is appropriate for the song, and the heavy stuff gets either really mellow solos—because a lot of times I’ll play something really mellow in a heavy song to kind of balance the dynamics, but most of the time it’s (makes shredding guitar noises).
You’ve got a tour coming up, starting next month. As you’ve been saying, you guys have been playing a lot of shows since you’ve been back together. Do you still get excited, maybe get some butterflies when it’s time to get up there and play?
Oh, yeah, yeah. I get nervous every night. Phil really gets nervous, which makes me less nervous. (laughs). Yeah, it’s always this excitement, hoping that you connect with the crowd right away to get that energy. And then, for me, it’s an hour and a half of improvising over these songs. So it doesn’t get old.
You talked about being influenced by and loving so much of the music that came before you. Are there any newer bands that you’ve been into, not necessarily influenced by but that you’ve been into and enjoying?
Yeah, Pantera, man. I fuckin’ love Pantera. I love those guys in that band. I miss the two guys that aren’t with us anymore. But to me, they’re the last classic band. They have the Van Halen formula but a heavier, more aggressive sound. The songs are songs. They’re not these opuses that a lot of metal bands do. It’s very palatable. That’s why they’re so big, is the songs, and ultimately, songs get you to the bank. They still have a huge impact on me.
But music’s weird. It’s been weird for a long time. It’s been very specific as to where the stuff that I grew up on wasn’t specific. Sabbath was specific, I guess, but they had a lot of mellow stuff, too. But Zeppelin and The Beatles and the Stones, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Who—they all were doing their own brand or flavor, and I love all of that. So L.A. Guns is never gonna be this one-dimensional band. But we are a hair band! Let me make that clear. (laughter) We are definitely a hair band! (laughter)
We’ve been talking about everything L.A. Guns has been doing, but you’ve been doing even more aside from that with Sunbomb, Blackbird Angels, the Russell/Guns album. Is there anything else you want to plug or talk about before we go? We’ve got the vinyl of Russell/Guns coming out soon.
Yeah, that’s coming out, too. All those things were so good. I’ve always done these kind of—they’re not really side projects. They’re legit collaborations with the people I respect and admire, and we pushed those to the max. With Todd Kerns, I know what he’s all about and I know what I’m all about. Together, we did that (Blackbird Angels). It’s very similar to L.A. Guns. And then with Michael Sweet, I just went as heavy as I could (Sunbomb). That’s kind of the God versus Satan band, and it works great. There needs to be a purpose for doing the things. The Devil City Angels thing I did with Rikki (Rocket) and Eric Brittingham, that was very similar to this. This is heavier than that, but that was a really good rock ‘n’ roll album. And then all the way back to Contraband with (Michael) Schenker. That was a very good record. People like it more now than they did then. It comes up in a lot of interviews, and a lot of shows, people have the CD or the album.
I love collaborating, but right now it’s all about L.A. Guns. One of my dreams I always want to do is I want to have a garage band where it’s just me and a bass player and a drummer and a singer, and I don’t have a big, massive guitar sound. I just want a fuzzy sound, kind of that mid-’60s thing. That’s always been a fantasy of mine. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it, but I would really like to.
Is there anything else you’d like to say before we go?
Rock ‘n’ roll!
LINKS:
Pre-order/save “Leopard Skin” digitally or on CD/vinyl.
www.lagunsmusic.com
www.facebook.com/lagunsofficial
www.twitter.com/laguns
www.instagram.com/laguns
YouTube channel
www.instagram.com/traciiguns
www.facebook.com/traciiguns
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