New Quiet Riot singer James Durbin was a recent guest a Eddie’s Sirius/XM show, Trunk Nation. Portions of the interview appear below (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net).
On the feedback he has received since joining the band:
“I’ve been getting so much positive feedback, and so many people are just super stoked and super pumped about this lineup and about coming to see us. And so it’s all about keeping it on that wave of positivity. Yeah, there’s places where people congregate to be unhappy, but, you know, you can’t please those people, and those aren’t the people coming to our shows to begin with…What’s said is said, and I said what a lot of people have been thinking throughout the years. But, you know, if you wanna read more into that, there’s plenty of gossip sites that keep posting things about me, so they’re still talking. So that’s the name of the game — is press.” (Apparently, Durbin referred to blabbermouth.net posters as “supreme scum” for their critical comments regarding his new position).
Discussing the pros and cons of being on American Idol:
“Yeah, there’s definitely pros and cons to it, but you take the good and you take the bad, you take ’em both and there you have [it]. There’s definitely more good things that outweigh it. Of course, with anything, you’re gonna have people that love it, people that hate it, people that are indifferent, people that just really don’t care. And luckily, there’s much more positivity and much more people that are super stoked about this than the thirty people going back and forth on a gossip site…To hear all these things and have people keep posting things and making attention out of it, I’m getting a lot of support from the hard rock and metal community, from the actual people that are doing it, and have been doing it throughout the years — the entertainers, the artists, the creative minds themselves; not the people that take something that took so much time and so much love and sadness and energy to create, and then just completely s–t all over it. There’s no point to that. I feel like, coming from an artistic stance, you can be indifferent to things and you don’t have to like everything, but if you don’t like it, just shut your mouth. You know? If you like it, fire off. I wanna hear it. If you don’t, go away.”
He continued, “..For me, the whole Idol thing and everything all together, the reason I did was just so that I could be a working musician and play music for a living and support my family. And that’s who I’m in a band with. So it’s pretty cool. It’s come full circle. But nothing in this music industry or the rock and roll world or anything comes without a price to pay, so whatever the ticket price is, I’ll pay it. But you can guaran-damn-tee that I will be there every single night banging my head, making you feel the noise, and I will never phone it in, dial it in, make a gimmick of myself or this band, because they deserve it, Kevin DuBrow’s legacy and memory deserves it, and Quiet Riot deserves it.”
Quiet Riot announced last week that it would delay the release of Road Rage until this summer so that Durbin could replace all the vocals on the album with new lyrics and melodies.
8 Responses
Why would this guy, who does have a really good voice for this kind of music, want to get tied up with the sinking Quiet Riot ship? If he doesn’t have any better business sense than this, he isn’t going to last long in this business. Does he think having on his resume “10th Lead Singer for Quiet Riot” (or whatever number he is) is going to impress anyone? Why doesn’t he find some great musicians and create something new? Frankie is just going to fire the guy when this latest Quiet Riot record quickly drops into obscurity.