If we go back to the beginning. How
and when did Heavens Edge first get together? What was the first song you
guys wrote together?
Dave: The band first got together
in 1987 when Reggie and Mark noticed each other in their respective local
groups, "Network" and "Whitefoxx". At first, they simply decided to write
together for fun. The first song they ever wrote together was a song entitled,
"Never Too Hot". They really enjoyed working together and continued writing.
After writing approximately ten songs, Mark and Reg thought they might
attempt to put a band together. They held auditions looking for musicians
who blended well together. They wanted a band that could play, perform
and get along together.
Reg: Mark and I were both playing
in bands in the area (Network & Whitefoxx) and I approached him about
getting together and doing some writing on the side. The chemistry really
clicked and we decided to leave our bands and start a new band. I did not
think Mark would leave his band because at the time Network was the biggest
band in the Philly area. But I'm glad he did. The first song we wrote I
think was a song called "Baby I Not That Kind". or "Never Too Hot" It was
pretty cool.
Who came up with the name Heavens
Edge? I always thought that sounded like a great bandname.
Dave: The name was chosen by
a fan of Mark’s old band "Network". Apparently, they were holding a contest
to choose the name of a new band they were forming. Someone submitted the
name Heavens Edge. Well, the new band never formed and the name was not
used. Mark always remembered it though. Thus, he had it pegged for the
band he was putting together with Reggie. When the time was right, he informed
the band of the name.
Reg: Mark's band Network was
releasing a CD and had to change the name because some band in Canada had
the rights to the name. So they held a drawing for the audience to think
of a name and Heavens Edge was one of the names. I guess the band did not
like the name, but Mark remembered it and suggested it for our band and
I liked it so we went with it. It is funny that later down the road people
would say "did you get the name Heavens Edge from Evans/Reg?" We were like
"no, but that is pretty cool" So we ended up using Evans /Reg for our publishing
company.
The Network album has just been
released, and Reggie was in White Foxx before Heavens Edge. What other
bands did you guys play in?
Dave: George was in a band called
Public Enemy. He also did a stint in the legendary South Jersey powerhouse,
The Dead end Kids. Steve Parry was in a band called Able Kane. David Rath
was in a New York cover band called Rotten Candy.
Reg: George was in Ragdoll,
Dave was in Rotten Candy, and Steve was in Able Kane
I have a tape with the songs Eyes
Of A Stranger, Never Too Hot, Speechless, Bad Reputation. Was this the
first demo you ever recorded, or are there other demos that was recorded
before this?
Dave: That’s the first. Recorded
right in Reggie’s living room.
Reg: Mark and I both had 4 tracks
machines so we would put everything we had down on tape. We probably have
about 50 to 70 songs on tape like the demo you are speaking of.
How many copies were printed of
the Limited Edition Demotape, that you sold at your shows?
Dave: No one really knows. We
think there might have been about 3,000.
Reg: This is just a guess but
I would say 2000. I know that they sold like crazy.
The radiostation WMMR featured you
quite frequently. I have 2 full liveshows and 2 acoustic songs (Just Another
Fire, Some Other Place) played at the station. Are there other stuff available?
Dave: We did do a lot of live
radio stuff over the years. However, not much of it was recorded and kept
by the band. I’m sure someone has a few tapes hidden away. We did one on
a station in Baltimore when Jimmy was in the band that I really liked.
If someone has a tape of that, please let me know. I’d really like to hear
it.
Reg: I think within the guys
in the band, we have a lot of live videos and live tapes of us performing.
But I don't think anything else from WMMR.
What was the turning point when
recordlabels started to pay attention?
Dave: Labels started coming
out when the band started getting press in the industry trade magazines,
such as the Hard Report. Back then that was the best way to get labels
to pay attention. The band got the press because we were drawing nice sized
crowds in the clubs around Philly.
Reg: It kind of happened pretty
fast. After the first demo was released (Skin to Skin, Find Another Way,
Hold On and two live cuts) an industry magazine called The Hard Report
wrote a killer review on the band. (I have always wanted to thank them,
so THANK YOU). Within a couple of days the labels started calling. We set
up a showcase at The Troc here in Philly and 7 labels came out to see us.
We got an offer from everyone of them after the show. It was definetly
a night that we will never forget. We were in the dressing room and each
guy from each label would come in and give us their pitch. For example
the dude from Columbia saying "don't go with Atlantic, come with us)"and
so on. It was definetly dream come true. We chose Columbia because they
promised us the most, as far as promotion, money and support. Wow, were
we wrong!!
What other labels were interested,
and what made you go with Columbia?
Dave: Atlantic, Capitol, EMI,
Elektra. Once an offer came in, they all jumped on board - not all that
uncommon these days. We went with Columbia because our friends "Britny
Fox" were on the label. They seemed pretty happy so we figured we’d be
happy too. We had no idea how to make a decision like that. In the end
it didn’t work out for us there. Columbia was a great label though. When
they wanted to get behind something, they were pretty powerful. Luck and
timing are everything – ours just ran out.
What are some of the bands Heavens
Edge supported/played with? The support gig to DIO at the Spectrum arena,
was this the largest audience you guys played in front of?
Dave: We played with a lot of
different groups; Soundgarden, Faith No More, DIO, Childs Play. We jammed
with Sebastian Bach, from Skid Row. I guess the Spectrum was the largest
building we ever did. We loved hanging around other bands. Everyone was
always having a great time. Heavy Metal is fun music.
Reg: Not too many
bands because Columbia pulled the plug on us only six weeks after the CD
came out. But some bands we played with were: Danger Danger, Extreme, Faith
No More, Megedeth(at the Concrete Foundations Showcase). I think the Dio
show was the largest audience we were in front of. It was an awesome night.
I met Danny Danzi through the website.
He’s an extremely talented musician as well. He supported you with his
band Passion back in the day. What do you think of the fact that you guys,
and a crazy swedish Heavens Edge fan (that being me :-) actually indirectly
helped him get a record deal some 10 years later?
Dave: Dan is super talented.
We are very happy for him. The great thing about Dan is, he is such a great
guy. He deserves every bit of success. You never know what can happen.
Thank God for the Internet!
Reg: I am very happy for Danny.
He is one hell of a musician and great person. I use to enjoy watching
Passion. Not only for Danny's playing but I always like the songs. They
also had a great singer who sounded like Steve Perry.
Tragedy struck when G.G. was shot
by some maniac at the Empire Rockclub after you had played a gig. And obviously
George was quite ill for some time. Could you tell me a bit of the story
behind this.
Dave: Some idiot was thrown
out of one of our shows for fighting. In his anger he returned to the bar
with a shotgun hoping to kill the bouncer that tossed him out. Unfortunately,
George was the first person he saw. He blew off a few rounds, hitting George
in the abdomen. The gunman became frazzled and left. Believe me, everyone
was very lucky. It could have turned in to a total massacre. George is
lucky to be alive, we all are. George was laid up for a while. But, he
was tough, and the band was close.
Reg: Some guy got
kicked out of the club by the bouncers and he came back for revenge with
a shotgun and George happened to be the first one who walked out. He took
120 pellets all over his body we thought he was going to die. Because he
was in good health when it happened he was able to bounce back relativly
quick. He was laid up for a couple of months, which stalled the album for
a little bit. Which in this business a couple of months is crucial.
The cool thing is that George
ran a huge medical bill and had no insurance, so all these Philly bands
held a huge benefit for him. Guys from (The Hooters, Tommy Connwell, John
Eddy, Cinderella, Britney Fox, Tangier and others) all played and raised
a lot of money for the bills.
Heavens Edge were destined for superstardom.
You had the songs, the musical talent, the stageact, the looks, well everything
that makes a band successful. But for some reason Heavens Edge never really
made it big outside Philadelphia. I know the musicbiz isn’t fair, but in
my eyes you guys were one of the most talented bands out there. Do you
believe Columbia gave you enough promotion? John Mrvos leaving Columbia
right when the album was released, did that have any effect on you? Your
management, did they do a good job?
Dave: Thank you for the compliments.
One can always look back and see what went wrong. All of the reasons you’ve
stated are partially responsible. In the end it was two things. One: the
new label president, along with the rest of the industry, had soured on
Melodic Rock. He wanted to move the label in a different direction. Even
though Metal bands were still selling out clubs, the industry was convinced
that no one wanted to hear this music anymore. They shut it down. Two:
it was undoubtedly true that the tastes of the public were changing at
that time. There really was not as much excitement around the music as
there had been in previous years. It’s something that happens all the time.
Styles of music come and go. The bands that can adapt, make it through.
We were not very flexible or adaptable at that time.
Reg: Thank you for the compliment.
I am sure that John leaving Columbia had something to do with everything
falling apart. But, the main problem was that the president of the label
did not like us. He was brought in after the album was completed and I
guess to his credit, he saw the music industry going into another direction.
(Grunge) He has been highly succesful with Columbia so maybe he did the
right thing. Maybe management could of done things differently but I think
it just wasn't meant to be.
How did you get in touch with Neil
Kernon? He seemed like the perfect choice as producer.
Dave: He was producing our friends
band "Britny Fox". They seemed pretty happy with him. So we went with him
too. He really had quite a track record. He was a big time guy. We were
honored to work with him. He knew pop music, metal, classic rock…..everything.
Reg: Columbia gave us a list
of producers they would of liked us to work with. I think John Mrvos had
worked with Neil on prior projects. I was a big George Lynch fan and always
dug his tone so I was excited. Neil was awesome to work with. He is very
talented. We had a great couple months together.
Why didn’t Just Another Fire and
Rock Steady make the debut album? I think specially Just Another Fire could
have been a huge hit if promoted properly.
Dave: Bad choice on our part.
We never even presented it to the label. We were not convinced that an
acoustic song could be a hit. Brilliant!
Reg: I think Columbia felt we
had Hold On To Tonight for the ballad and I remember them saying they wanted
the debut album to be not really long. So those two songs were cut. I know
George and Dave did not like Rock Steady. So that was easy to cut that song.
I have the Skin To Skin video with
two different editings. How come that you made two versions of it?
Dave: Truthfully, we had heard
grumblings in the industry that MTV was frowning upon metal videos with
chics in them. So, we pussied out and shot extra footage and edited it
in, removing the models. We should have left it as it was. MTV was done
with metal anyway.
Reg: At the time all videos
were girls and sleeze and so on. Columbia felt that the video with the
girls was too normal at the time. I didn't like the girls in the video
because my whole life has been spent practicing guitar and when it comes
to my guitar solo on my debut video on MTV some chick was air guitaring
it instead of me. So I was cool with the idea of adding the live footage
instead of the girls.
Mark Evans say in the MTV Headbangers
ball interview that you were supposed to cut a second video for Find Another
Way. What happened with that one?
Dave: We shot half of the video
in Philly. We were on our way to LA to shoot the rest when Columbia decided
not to continue. We were blown away! That was the song that got the band
signed in the first place. The single had already been shipped to radio.
Weird. I’ll never understand that.
Reg: We cut half the video.
It was gonna have a huge screen behind us copying what we were actually
doing live. The dude who did all the Queensryche videos was directing it.
We shot all the footage for the screen when the president of the label
heard the song and pulled the plug on video. He totally hated the song.
He said it was the biggest piece of shit he ever heard. Pretty much blew
our minds!
How many copies did the debutalbum
actually sell?
Dave: Approximately 125,000
world wide.
Reg: About 125,000
worldwide.
At what point did you leave Columbia?
Did you have any other labels interested at that time? I heard something
about Capitol being interested.
Dave: After Columbia tanked
the Find Another Way single, we knew we had to leave. They would not let
us tour or anything. They wanted us gone, and we wanted to split. So, we
did. We took our settlement money and recorded a new domo. That demo is
the bulk of the MTM record. Fortunately, from that demo, the band got an
offer for a development deal with Capital. We recorded more stuff with
that budget. But, by then, the band had lost all of it’s spark. We were
getting tired of chasing the industry. When Capital expressed disinterest
in our new songs, we knew we were in trouble. We had nowhere else to go.
Reg: Even though we had a guaranteed
2 record deal with Columbia we felt it was best to leave the label because
we knew the president of the label hated us. The second one would of just
been a slow death. So we got out and started shopping to other labels.
Capitol picked us up and we did some demos for them for about a year but
grunge was starting to be real big and they knew our style of music was
on the way out. So they decided not to pick us up.
What was the reasons Steve Parry
and Mark Evans left the band?
Dave: Steve and the band were
not seeing eye to eye on a great many things. So he and the band parted
ways. If the career of the band was going along nicely, it never would
have happened. And, we thought we could jump-start the group with some
new blood.
Mark never left, the band broke up.
Reg: I don't know
why Steve left. Isn't that horrible? Mark never left. The band really broke
up and Dave and George decided to start something new and asked me to join.
That is how American Pie was started.
Jimmy Marchiano replaced Steve,
but was only in the band for a short period. What happened?
Dave: Jimmy was great for us
because he was loaded with enthusiasm. The only problem was, he was interested
in furthering his own career, not the career of Heavens Edge. He left to
join Dean Davidson’s new band, "Black Eyed Susan". That was a tremendous
blow because we were in the midst of a series of showcases with Capital
at the time. I can’t believe they signed us anyway. Every time they saw
us, we had a different guy in the band.
Reg: Two weeks before
we were about to showcase for Capitol, Dean Davidson from Britney Fox asked
Jimmy to join his band. I guess Jimmy thought the opportunity was better
with Dean, but it really was a bad situation for us. I thought the band
was really smokin up to that point and to bring in another guitarist 2
weeks before a showcase was a bad thing. We ended up doing the showcase
with another guitarist (Toshi Iseda) but we did not get the deal. By the
way, Toshi was an awesome guitarist.
You continued with another singer
Shaun Carmen and changed the name to American Pie. For how long did the
band exist? Did you regard this as a fresh start as you changed the bandname
allthough there were still 3 old H.E. members left?
Dave: American Pie was around
for three years. We really wanted to shake off the industry stigma of a
band that had under achieved. The best way for us to do that was by changing
the name and moving in a different direction. It was a lot of fun for a
while. But, in the end, it was simply a continuation of Heavens Edge. We
were burned out. Heavens Edge broke up and American Pie was together the
very next day. We should have taken some real time off to recharge our batteries.
Reg: We just wanted
to to do something different without having to sound like Heavens Edge.
We lasted a couple of years but could not secure a deal. Shawn is still
a very close friend. We wrote some great songs together.
Then you guys went separate ways
until Magnus Soderkvist of MTM one day calls you up. Tell me a bit about
your reaction to that first call.
Dave: Of course, we were surprised.
We were so happy to finally get those songs out there. The photo shoot
we did for the record was great. It was like we never stopped hanging around
each other. Magnus and the people at MTM really know what they are doing.
We are thrilled to work with them.
Reg: My wife told
me that some dude from Sweden was on the phone and my reaction was that
"who the hell is that" Magnus has been great and very supportive of the
band. I am very grateful to him for giving these songs a chance to be heard
because I thought they would just collect dust in the closet.
You recorded Cuts Both Ways and
Rollercoaster in spring ‘98. How was it working together as a band again?
Dave: Rusty. We were very rusty.
Reg: It was a lot of fun. I
think we were very rusty and it could of been a lot better had we had more
time. All the guys in the band are like brothers. We still all talk most
of the time. We recorded it Vortex Studios here in Jersey. Jim is a good
friend of mine and he did the engineering.
Some Other Place was released in
the U.S. through Perris Records almost a year after the European release.
What took so long?
Dave: It took a while for labels
in the US to realize that Metal and Hard Rock are still commercially viable.
Reg: We really did not start shopping for a while. It was until Rob from Ruffhouse
records started to help us out is when we got hooked up with Perris. I
guess we just thought there would not be that much interest on the band
here in the States.
Do you have other songs that hasn’t
been released? If so titles please :-)
Dave: Yes we do. I’m sorry,
but we’ll have to wait until the third record comes out for that.
Reg: Mark and I wrote around
75 songs for the first album and about 30 songs for the 2nd. Shaun and
the band wrote about another 30 songs for American Pie. I would have to
dig down thru tapes to get names. Sorry.
You also recorded the song Don’t
Go Away Mad for the Motley Crue tribute album "Kickstart My Heart" How
did that come together, and who approached you about it?
Dave: I’ll have to ask Reggie.
That recording was a lot of fun though. I think the band was playing like
the old Heavens Edge on that one.
Reg: Scott Bazzett had approached
us about doing it. He was friends with the label who was putting it together.
We got together and rehearsed for it 2 times. It was very strange for me
because I hadn't done any covers since I was 16 years old. In Heavens Edge
we use to mess around with Walkin The Dog but that is about it. It was
a lot of fun but I don't know if it was ever released. Steve also played
some great slide work in it.
Are there any possibilities that
you guys will make another album together?
I met Magnus up in Stockholm earlier
this year, and he mentioned he would like to see another album. And so
would also all the H.E. fans around the world.
Dave: As long as people are
interested in hearing Heavens Edge, we’ll put out music.
Reg: Mark has moved to Florida,
so trying to get together and write and record might be kind of hard. Maybe
we could work something out with using different studios (one here in Jersey
and one in Florida) but we have to look into it more. I would love to do
another album.
What about any livegigs? I get questions
all the time through the website.
Dave: We would love to. It would
have to be the right opportunity though. It could happen.
Reg: No live gigs are planned
at this time. With Mark in Florida it would almost be impossible. I really
miss playing out live.
What are you guys up to these days?
Has anyone of you recorded/released material together with other musicians?
Does anyone of you still play live locally?
Dave: Mark Evans lives in Florida
and works in construction.
Reggie Wu lives in New Jersey and
writes commercial music. He also teaches guitar and piano. His company
has worked on songs for Tropicana Orange Juice and Wriggly’s Chewing Gum.
He still does some producing and songwriting for many artists in the area
where he lives.
Steve Parry works for a CD manufacturing
company in New Jersey called Disc Makers. He also writes music and plays
with other local musicians.
George Guidotti lives in New Jersey
and has recently been playing with a couple of local bands. He has performed
with the band Drop Zero who have opened for 311, Kid Rock, Cypress Hill
and Rammstein.
David Rath lives in New Jersey and
has done some studio drumming for local artists. He has his own music management
company and currently manages an alt-country band. He is also the Director
of the Philadelphia Music Conference. It is the third largest music industry
conference in the US. Over 200 bands come in to Philly for three days to
showcase for record companies, producers, managers, lawyers and all people
from the music industry.
Reg: George was playing in Dollhouse
Puppett, Drop Zero. Drop Zero is Rage Against Machine type band and Dollhouse
puppet is a grunge band. He is not playing with either band now. Dave is
managing bands and got appointed Directer of the Philadelphia Music Conference.
Steve works at Discmakers in Jersey. Mark is in Florida with a painting
company. He is the head of the division down there. I am currently teaching
and doing background music for video productions and TV/Radio commercials.
It is a lot of fun and very challenging. The company is called Sound Farm
Music.
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