Interview: Paul Laine (ex-Danger Danger, The Defiants)

Rockin’ Interviews: How are you? 

Paul Laine: I’m good, how are you doing?

Rockin’ Interviews: I’m really good, thank you. Jumping straight into things, “Drive” is The Defiants first release since 2019, what can fans expect from this album and how do you feel the band has grown in those four years? 

Paul Laine: Every record we try to outdo the last one and with “Drive” we spent longer than any other record we ever worked on. The first record took us around three months and the second record maybe double that. With this record, it took two years to make. That’s a lot of OCD and I think we felt tremendous pressure to take it to the next level. I wouldn’t say we went in a different direction, I just think this record sounds really fresh. We probably wrote around 40 songs for the record and then paired it down to this kind of opus that we think sounds good and takes you on a journey. 

Rockin’ Interviews: You’ve released two singles so far, ‘Hey Life’ and ‘19 Summertime’, are there any other tracks in particular off of the album that you’re excited for fans to hear? 

Paul Laine: The next single, that we have a video coming out for as well, is a track called “Go Big or Go Home”. It’s a big rock anthem. I feel it defines what the quintessential arena rock song sounds like. I always love those songs that I know are going to go over well with the fans. For better or for worse and for how dumb they might sound, they’re still very fun to play. I’m completely unapologetic when it comes to writing a big dumb hook. 

Rockin’ Interviews: You and Bruno Ravel have known each other for around thirty years now, what is it like still getting to work with him all these years later, both on the recording and production side of things? 

Paul Laine: When I first started working with Bruno (Ravel), I replaced the singer (Ted Poley) in Danger Danger. Steve West and Bruno were the main writers in Danger Danger, but I had a solo career, that’s how they knew about me, and my own record deal. When I joined forces with them it was really weird for a couple of years, cause I felt like the third wheel in a marriage. We were all writers, but they hadn’t dealt with a third writer before. We only made one record that we wrote together and then we decided it was too hard for me to be the third wheel. I would just hand in my third of the album and then they would continue to write. Bruno and I always wondered what it would be like to write together, just on our own with no pressure. That always ran around in my head, even after I had left the band in 2004. Bruno and I always remained great friends, carried on our music business talk and our ridiculous humor filled friendship. The reason I love Bruno is because we’re both twelve *laughs*. We’ll phone each other with stupid jokes all the time. After I had left Danger Danger, Frontiers Records kept offering me solo deals that I kept denying. I said no for five years in a row and god bless them for caring about me and wanting to do that, it didn’t have anything to do with them. But one year, they discovered my friendship with Bruno and were like “aha, maybe we should offer these two guys a deal to write together.” So when they did that, it felt very sentimental to me, and wonderful that I got to make music with one of my best friends. We made the first record thinking that no one would care or buy it, but we had a blast making it. However, two weeks after it came out it made Billboard Magazine and we were like “what?!”. We then went off and played some big music festival and were drawing more interest in it. It was a wonderful thing to happen in A. our friendship and B. professionally. 

Rockin’ Interviews: Going back to the start, you released your debut solo record, ‘Stick It In Your Ear’ in 1990, what was that experience like and do you think that album still holds up today? 

Paul Laine: It was an amazing experience, I was very young when I got a record deal. I wrote most of that record when I was seventeen and then got the record deal when I was around nineteen. I got to work with Bruce Fairbairn as my producer on that album, who is my absolute producer hero. The only reason I got him to produce the record is because I had two other major recording deals offered to me and I was being really sneaky by saying “well the first person who brings me Bruce Fairbairn.” At the time he was the number one producer in the world, having produced “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey” by Bon Jovi, Aerosmith “Pump” and all that stuff. When I went into the studio to do pre-production, Aerosmith was there recording “Pump”. I got to be a fly on the wall and watch that happen and immediately felt like I should quit after watching Steven Tyler *laughs*. I was like I’ll never be that good and literally felt like running. He (Steven) was sweet and took me under his wing a little bit and taught me some things about the business and gave me some more confidence on how to approach writing, studio work and creativity in general. It was a wonderful experience and of course working with Bruce, I got to come in and work on the Poison “Flesh and Blood” album and the Scorpions “Face The Heat” record. He was like my coolest uncle ever. When he passed it was really really sad for me, he passed away too soon. To me that’s the heyday of my younger years. Other guys would be like “when I played football in college”, but that experience was my football in college. It was rock ‘n’ roll university and I loved it.  

Paul Laine: I do. I always know I’m going to have to write something like that, I think they’re the hardest to write simply because you have to dig deeper into the personal well. The older you get, when you’re writing those songs, you better be truthful, because otherwise it’ll never come off as being authentic. I think it’s really important to write, as cliche as it sounds, what you know and what happened to you in life. I love and hate writing those, they’re really emotional for me. You kind of have to relive something that you may not want to. But at the end of the day, if I hit the mark with somebody else when they listen to it, I’ve accomplished something. I feel like that’s the reason we write them. 

Rockin’ Interviews: Is there anything that you know now that you wish you knew back when you started out in the music industry? 

Paul Laine: There’s a few things. When I was younger, I let a lot of pride get in the way with business decisions in terms of my career. If someone fucked me over, I took it personally, I took it emotionally. I fired people over things that maybe should’ve just been a conversation. A lot of things in the music business, I would get so deeply hurt by, that I would be reactionary. I wish I had handled some of those differently, I wish I had handled myself differently. I wish I would’ve had someone there to guide me through things to make adult decisions, instead of being an angry twenty-one-year-old. I had a great manager, and great people around me, but no one took me aside and said “hey kid, there’s another way to look at this, you don’t have to take it personally”. That’d be the number one thing. 

Rockin’ Interviews: You joined Danger Danger in 1993, what was it like stepping into that band and filling the shoes of the lead singer? 

Paul Laine: It was really strange. First of all, I’m a west coast guy, so moving to New York was like a culture shock and then the reality of jumping into a well-established band. Replacing the lead singer is never easy. The first tour I went on, I got a lot of hate. I wasn’t expecting people to throw shit at me while I was onstage. When I stepped in and started making records with them, people slowly started to accept me. It’s also a strange thing as a young man, to receive all that hate. To tell yourself to bite your lip and take the punches because you’ll be better for it in the end. It was tough but joining Danger Danger kinda set up the rest of my life career wise. It helped open more doors for me in the music business, and I was able to continue writing. I also jumped into television and film, which I still do. I never have to leave the music business, I can always write music for something. 

Rockin’ Interviews: Were there any classic Danger Danger songs that were your favorite to perform live? 

Paul Laine: “I Still Think About You” was always fun to do. The “Live and Nude” album, that was my last night with the band. We were recording this record on a Spanish/UK tour we were doing. The last show was in London, and every last show of the tour we always got drunk, like a lot of bands do, play pranks on each other and be twelve. That’s the night that all the recordings ended up being from *laughs*. I was looking the other day at the Danger Danger Spotify and that version of the song is at six million streams, so I guess fans like that version too. It’s kind of special that I always connected with that song, and a lot of other people connect with that song as well. That’s always been one of my favorites besides the hard rock stuff. 

Rockin’ Interviews: Do you think The Defiants would ever play any live shows again in the future? 

Paul Laine: I’m hoping that we do. We were rocking along playing shows in Europe until the pandemic hit. The new record is coming out June 9th, so we’re a little late into the year to be playing shows overseas. So we’re hoping to book some for 2024. 

Rockin’ Interviews: You can collaborate with any musician, dead or alive, who would it be and why? 

Paul Laine: I would collaborate with Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys. He was my first love music wise as a child, and to write with him would be amazing. 

Rockin’ Interviews: Top 5 desert island albums? 

Paul Laine: Easy. Fleetwood Mac “Rumours”, “Hotel California” by The Eagles, “Born To Run” Bruce Springsteen, “Dream Police” Cheap Trick, and The Beatles White album. Very generic list *laughs*.