Monsterfest headliners Gun inspired by their past
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It was during the Covid pandemic that Gun’s Dante and Jools Gizzi first got together to write their new album The Calton Songs.
So it’s ironic that as they have just toured Scotland’s HMV music stores on a promotional set of live appearances, frontman Dante has been performing while fighting off the last lingering symptoms of his second bout of Covid.
But having fulfilled that punishing schedule, Dante promises to be fighting fit in time for the Glasgow rockers to headline Monsterfest at Eden Court on Saturday.
Dante laughed: “It is the travelling more than anything that really tires you. Eventually I went to see my doctor. I had just tested negative. But he said ‘You really need to rest up’. And that I needed to give myself the chance to rest and recuperate.
“I had Covid first away back last year and I have had all the vaccines, but the reason why I think it has been worse this time is I have been quite active!”
Anyone who saw the band play Monsterfest in 2019 knows what an energetic full-on rock party Gun put on with some of their biggest hits rolled out early in the set – they have so many to choose from in a career that goes back to the late 80s– and it gave a real adrenalin kick-start to their show.
Talking of the band’s early songs takes Dante back even earlier in the band’s history with the North – and probably their first appearance in the Highlands, at Dingwall venue Jings, as it was known.
Dante laughs: “A lot of the times we went up there and it would be for an album launch or the beginning of a tour and to test the water and the songs. I remember going to Dingwall and Tain, I think.
“I loved those crowds.
“I remember the first time, getting to speak to some fans after the show and I couldn’t stop laughing at one of the guys and what he said. I’d never heard this expression before so I didn’t know if it was good or bad, but this guy said ‘By the way, man, you’ve got 10 colours of sh** coming out of that bass amp!’ and I was asking myself ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’. But they were just lovely people and super-friendly and that’s why I think we always travelled up.”
Gun got together in 1989, initially for 10 years with albums Taking On The World, Gallus, Swagger and 0141 … Swagger going to five in the album chart in 1994.
Four top 40 singles including debut Better Days were topped by their cover of Cameo’s Word Up which went to eight in 1994.
They split in 1998/9 and had a reunion in 2008, still together now with three more albums Break The Silence (2012), Frantic (2015) and Favourite Pleasures in 2017 which went into the top 20 for the first time since 1994.
Their latest album Calton Songs has updated versions of some of their biggest hits, including live favourite Word Up, as well as new song Backstreet Brothers looking back to the Gizzis’ growing up in the East End of Glasgow.
“The idea was to write a new album, but Jools and I just struggled during that whole pandemic, Dante said. “We just never saw an end in sight with how things were going to turn out. For us, it just felt like we couldn’t be that creative.
“And I think that is why we sort of honed in on the older material that’s also on the album. It maintained working on some stuff and obviously we were putting a different stamp on it and a different vibe to these songs, a more sort of chilled edge.
“But Backstreet Brothers was one of the songs we had written during the period. I remember hinting lyrically how I wanted to play it. And I think I was thinking more about the past and where we were, compared with that moment in time when the world stopped!
“That was a bizarre time, unknown to anybody.
“I remember that time when you were only allowed out with family members,” Dante remembered living with his family in Glasgow through those days.
“I used to take the kids and go down into town and it was completely abandoned, just so we could have a wee bit of exercise.
“I feel for the kids more than anything,” he said, remembering how the pandemic kept them at home and away from their friends.
“Maybe that’s why I kind of reminisced about my childhood.
“And I was looking back to when I was 16 and what I got up to with my pals.
“The whole song was about a camping trip with my best buddies and to think of happier times.”
The new album’s title Calton Songs refers to Calton – the area in Glasgow where Dante and his mum, dad, brothers and sister lived when he was growing up.
“I’m actually here at the moment! It’s in the East End of Glasgow and 99.9% of our songs were written here in my family home that belonged to my mum and dad.
“Me and Jools have always had a wee studio set-up here and Jools and I would always be working on songs.
During the pandemic it was one of the places we could actually work together, Jools was one of the people outwith my family that could come to the house.
“I’m actually five minutes walk from the Barrowlands here and about 10 minutes from Celtic Football Stadium. I’m quite settled here, and quite close to the city centre.”
Dante and his older brother, guitarist Jools, come from Italian family heritage on both his mum and dad’s sides.
“They were born here, and Jools and I were born in Duke Street Hospital. We always lived in the East End with both sets of grandparents.
“They came over here, and it was always their intention to go to America but the travelling took it out of them so they ended up staying here.
“They go back to the late 19th century, they used to serve ice cream in the summer and chestnuts in the winter and our family has been around for years.
“I love looking back at the whole story of how my family came over from Italy and played a part in the city – it is really nice.”
Music was always part of their family and important to his mum and dad, Dante revealed.
“We have an uncle as well who is blind – he is 85 now – and he plays the accordion and he lived with us and we would listen to him playing every night, playing Italian folk songs.
“Dad did night shift in the United Biscuit factory and at weekends about two or three in the morning – he never drank, it was cups of tea like tar! – and you would hear him blasting out all these blues records and the radio. He was a big fan of Fats Domino and music like that.
“And my mum was a huge Frank Sinatra fan and on a Saturday morning there was this radio presenter, Frank Skerrett? He used to play old songs on the radio on the Saturday morning, so it was always musical in our house and maybe we did take it from that.”
Both the brothers gravitated towards the guitar as they grew up.
“Jools is quite a few years older than me,” Dante said. “He played from 14 or 15 which is a good thing cos I think he might have been a bit of a bully because I know one of my friends knew Jools’ timetable so he could avoid him in the school corridors!
“But I also remember my friend telling the story that he couldn’t believe Jools had found him one day because he knew his timings so he could avoid him, but Jools went up to him and had said ‘I know you play guitar is there any chance you could come and show me a wee bit?’ and my friend was delighted and said ‘Yes, OK!’.
“I think music calmed him down a bit or gave him another outlet.
“It was nice that he picked up guitar and then I started playing acoustic guitar, never bass guitar and that inspired me to continue.”
Dante became frontman of Gun only in recent years. But after the first incarnation of Gun ended, during the break before the band got back together, Dante got the chance to explore his identity as a frontman with the glam pop persona of El Presidente.
He reveals some of the El Presidente songs had actually been written by him and Jools for Gun quite early on, but never recorded by them.
“These songs were kind of written when Mark [Rankin, original singer] was still in Gun, such as 100 Miles An Hour.
“We loved the song, me and Jools, and we tried to get Mark to sing it but he couldn’t get the angstiness of it.
“So we just thought we would put it aside. There were a few songs that were.”
Gun quickly became a hit when they started playing in 1989, but four albums in, recording album 0141… took the shine off for Dante.
“We did take a break from the whole music scene in 1998 after the 0141… album and Jools and I and my sister and my other brother Mario opened up an Italian French bistro in the East End just off Sauchiehall Street on Cambridge Street.
“That was quite a nice thing to do because at that time we had just had enough of the whole music industry and wanted to take a break from it.
“It was really tough for us.
“The album we had released at that point, the 0141… album was an album Jools and I really struggled with and it felt like everybody was against us in the sense that we didn’t want to release it.
“All the demoes for the songs were really quite rocky and quite in your face and we went to work with a guy called Andrew Farris from INXS and we maybe wanted to have an album that sounded closer to their Listen Like Thieves or their Kick album.
“But it turned out that isn’t what he wanted to do, but we only found that out after five or six songs were recorded.
“In those days you were in a residential studio for a couple of months and it cost a lot of money. So the record company said ‘No you should just go ahead with it!’. And our management agreed, to just go ahead with it. Even Mark [Gun’s former singer] to a certain extent had said ‘Let’s just be on the safe side …’.
“But Jools and I were hating it – and how were we meant to go out and promote it when we just really didn’t like it?
“We knew that was kind of the beginning of the end, with Gun, and we had had enough of the whole politics of the music industry.
“So we got out of it and started running the restaurant and had a bit of a breather, but continued to write songs, albeit songs that were a different vibe.”
But soon the word was out about the songs.
An A & R man who was working for Sony BMG and other people took a big interest in the El Presidente songs
“We got signed, but it was just Jools and I who wrote the songs, so I sort of took over as frontman for it – and that was my first introduction to being a frontman!”
Dante shares the first moment he got up on stage with El Presidente.
“The first show I did was a ‘backing’ show at King Tut’s in Glasgow with 300 people there.
“I never had a band at that time, but I was singing. I just had the songs and wanted people to hear them.
“There was a wee bit of a buzz about the band. We ended up selling the place out. But I didn’t know what to do with myself when it came to the guitar solos.
“I just had to stand onstage and perform – I think some people had come from Aberdeen and expected to see a full band.
“But the truth of the matter was, I didn’t have a full band! I just had the songs – but I was singing them live, at least!
“And when it came to the guitar solos, because I was called El Presidente – it was when you could actually still smoke inside bars – I had this big cigar and smoked that onstage, it was just funny. So that was fantastic.
“It was a brilliant step to go on to do.
"I think doing Gun again in more recent times was I think – especially doing new albums and things, for me and probably for Jools, for that matter, we both didn’t want to leave it with that bitter taste after the 1998 album – we still always felt we had some unfinished business with the band.
“And in 2012 we brought out Break The Silence and that has been another 10 years!”
It will be the second time Gun have headlined Monsterfest when they take the stage at Eden Court on Saturday.
“I’m really looking forward to doing Monsterfest,” Dante said.
“And this will be the first proper show with drummer Nick Georgiou who is standing in for Paul McManus – he has taken some time out. We’ve got Nick back in after he stood in for Paul last year, but then contracted Covid!”
Gun headline at Monsterfest on Saturday night, full details below. For more on Gun: https://www.gunofficial.co.uk/
Monsterfest events:
THURSDAY
OneTouch, Eden Court 7.30pm: Monsterfest fringe with Susanna Wolfe, Lional and Mason Hill.
FRIDAY
Events at the OneTouch, Eden Court
Graeme Thomson – author of various musical books including the official autobiography of Philip Lynott of Thin Lizzy. Graeme went to Crown Primary School in Inverness. From 3pm.
Music:
From 4.10pm, Geai Thompson, young Highland guitar protege will open the music. Wild Fire and Bastette are followed by rising stars from the Highlands, Bad Actress. Grand Slam, Phil Lynott's band after Thin Lizzy, are followed by Marco Mendoza doing a 40th celebration of the Thin Lizzy concert at the Ice Rink in 1981 with guests including members of Gun, Grand Slam, Lional and Bad Actress followed by a set promoting Marco's new album New Horizon.
SATURDAY
OneTouch, Eden Court: Monsterfest describes the full line-up at Eden Court’s OneTouch for Saturday: starting at 2.30pm with local stars, Caithness band Forgetting The Future kicking off before “Biffy Clyro style band” North Atlas, Leeds rockers As Sirens Fall, local legends Iain McLaughlin & The Outsiders, all-girl group The Hot Damn, then, as recently-featured on the ITN news, The Virginmarys, Florence Black – “the next big thing out of Wales” and closing with one of Scotland's top rock bands Gun (start 9.05pm).
More on Monsterfest: https://monsterfest.rocks/
