Photo courtesy of Dee Oliver
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Arguably best known for his lengthy tenure as the lead vocalist for 1980s hard rock veterans Danger Danger, multi-talented musician Paul Laine has been honing his craft since his teenage years. His skills as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer have also led to collaborations with some of rock’s biggest names, including recording and arranging backing vocals for bands such as the Scorpions and Poison. In 2016, Laine reunited with former Danger Danger bandmates Bruno Ravel (bass) and Rob Marcello (guitar) to form The Defiants, releasing the band’s self-titled debut album that April.
Three years after our last conversation, Laine sat down with me and my now-21-year-old guitarist son, Zach, to discuss his latest solo album, The Long Road Back, as well as took the opportunity to reflect upon the lessons he’s learned through decades of musical evolution and unexpected career turns, including taking over as lead singer for Canadian Music Hall of Fame group Trooper in 2024. Our conversation also ventured beyond the music, touching on the growing influence of artificial intelligence, the challenges facing today’s emerging artists, and what it takes to build a lasting career in an ever-changing industry.
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Elliott Gordon (All Music Magazine): You’ve described The Long Road Back as a return to your roots after more than three decades since Stick It in Your Ear. What did you discover about yourself as a songwriter while making this record that you don’t think you could have discovered when you were younger?
Paul Laine: Boy, that’s a good question. I think the difference is that age plays a part. You look at the world differently. When I wrote the Stick It In Your Ear material, I was between the ages of 17 and 18 years old. That album is a young man looking ahead to his life with all that infinite possibility that you have when you’re young. You feel that way, whereas this record was me looking back on my life. The difference in terms of writing, gosh, I think I’m a much better writer now than I was when I was younger. You don’t know who you are when you’re that young and composing. You’re just composing. You don’t have this wealth of music knowledge that you gain along the way, right? I think the other thing that’s changed is I’m way more comfortable in my skin now. I think I have found my sound as a writer with The Defiants records and, of course, now with this new release. I know who I am. I know who I am musically. I know who I am as a person, and I’m much happier with my skills as a writer and a singer now than I was back then.
Elliott (All Music Magazine): You’ve now spent time fronting Trooper in addition to your work with The Defiants and your solo material. What has stepping into another band’s history taught you about the difference between interpreting songs that already have an identity and performing material that is fundamentally your own?
Paul: I’m going to answer this in a two-fold way. First of all, all the guys that toured with me when I was a solo artist — back in like 1990, when I started touring the Stick It album — we opened for Trooper. So, when I left to join Danger Danger in 1992, one by one those guys got picked up by Trooper as they fired different band members (laughing). To go play with them was like joining my high school band. (laughing) It’s like, “Hey, you want to play with the same guys that you got started with in your career?” There was that whole sentimental aspect of it.
Number two, I realize that a lot of American folks don’t know who Trooper is, right? But in terms of Canada, they’re one of the biggest bands that ever played here, and the fact that they still have a career — I mean, we’re playing 20,000-seat shows — everybody in this country knows all of those songs. So fronting them, as opposed to doing my own material, I just try to honor that material and get into the performance side of it. That’s all I can do, because, as you correctly pointed out, I didn’t write those songs. But I can inhabit those songs. They’re songs I grew up with, so they already exist in my heart anyway.
Zach Gordon (All Music Magazine): You’ve spent your career showcasing that the value of a song isn’t just the finished recording but the people, experiences and relationships behind it. As AI becomes capable of generating increasingly convincing songs, what do you think musicians ultimately have that AI can’t replicate?
Paul: Well, they have the human experience. Look, if you’re going to follow an artist — an actual human being — you have the relatability to that other human being and what they’re writing. That is the one thing that we have over something that’s computer-generated. There’s actually a human being with a story. This is how we bought into all of our artists, so I think there’s still going to be this whole need, and really, you’re somebody who could actually answer that question. How many younger people are going, “You know, AI, it’s cool to hear these songs being made, but is it something that I can believe in?” It’s not something that you can believe in; it’s just something that you can like. I think there’s always going to be a desire for the human connection, and maybe that’s archaic, I don’t know. I’m the age I am, so maybe I’m irrelevant with my answer, but I do think that people will want to have that human experience, whether they’re viewing a painting, watching a movie with their favorite actors, whether they are going to a concert and watching a show, or buying records. But I do agree, AI makes some pretty cool music.
Zach (All Music Magazine): When we last spoke to you in 2023, you talked about the difficulty younger rock bands face even when they can build significant audiences online. Three years later, where do you think the biggest opportunities or problems now exist for emerging artists?
Paul: I think the biggest problem is still the same problem it was three years ago. It’s great that you can use the platform of social media to release your records, or your singles, or whatever, but it’s really about rising above the crowd, right? And then there are people who are creating AI-generated songs, saying that it’s theirs, which isn’t really true. You’ve got to meander through all that wasteland and get proof. I think that the cream rises to the top, always.
Look, when I got a record deal, there were record labels signing artists. It’s not that that’s not happening now, but you have to be an artist who already has a million hits on a song, right? Without a record company’s help, you already have to have the amount of viewers it takes for them to give a chance to you. When I got started, I raised money, and that was the risk and the gamble I took. I think now you also have to risk the amount of time you’re going to spend promoting yourself. Art and commerce don’t always go hand in hand; meaning, you can have a great songwriter, but if they don’t have the ability to get that song out there and figure out how to use social media and whatever platforms are at their disposal, it’s just going to lay there and do nothing. I think the challenge is still the same. I just think there’s a huge amount of background noise to get through in order to rise above. That is why labels like Frontiers are important, because they at least have an audience that’s large enough to get people to move ahead in their careers.
Elliott (All Music Magazine): Returning to The Long Road Back, after spending so much of your career writing collaboratively, particularly with Bruno Ravel in The Defiants, how did the creative process change when you were making a Paul Laine solo record and deciding what belonged specifically to you?
Paul: When doing a Defiants record, as you mentioned, that’s Bruno and I throwing the ideas back and forth to each other. The process for me is just ‘me minus Bruno.’ I think there’s maybe a misconception about how much involvement I really did have in the writing of The Defiants, but it’s a lot. I have a lot to do with that. Therefore, I am partially responsible for creating that sound. To carry on just doing it on my own without Bruno on the writing side, well hey, that’s easy. Besides The Defiants, I’ve been composing in film and television for the last decade and, as you say, writing for other artists. So, I’m perfectly comfortable sitting down and making a record on my own, as I did with this one, but I’m never going to stop writing with Bruno as well if he wants to continue composing. It just works. Part of the reason I asked Bruno to just be involved with the solo record is because we finish each other’s sentences musically. We understand production. We both have the same kind of ear for the sound that we want. I know that my solo record is not so far off the way a Defiants record sounds. The different component is just me writing it, but the sound is what I hear in my head.
Elliott (All Music Magazine): The uninformed could argue your career has taken some pretty unexpected turns — Danger Danger, The Defiants, Trooper, television, film, production and now a new solo record. Looking back, which of those detours ultimately changed the direction of your life the most, and why?
Paul: Well, I guess I would say when I got involved with The Defiants, that probably was the biggest shift, but I’ll answer this in the best way I can. I’ve always made my living off being in the music business. I never once took another job to do anything else. It paid for my house. It paid for my life. When The Defiants happened, I thought that wasn’t going to do anything. I just thought, “Hey, man, we’ll make this record. It’ll be fun,” and it was a riot. It was pretty effortless making that first record with Bruno, plus he’s one of my best friends in the world. But that led to a company in New York discovering me because of that first record and asking if I would consider composing for film and television. That afforded me the ability to keep doing music, to stay in the game on a different side, so that was a huge shift. I never thought I’d be composing for film or television. If I wanted to quit playing live tomorrow, I would go right back into my crazy 12-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week composing schedule for film. But part of the reason I did the Trooper thing, not only to honor that band and play with my friends, was that it takes a lot out of you writing three to five songs a week for film and television. It’s an insane workload.
Zach Gordon (All Music Magazine): How do you mentally switch between the different creative worlds of performing, songwriting, producing, mentoring younger artists like myself, composing for film and television, and what does each one give you that the others don’t?
Paul: Yeah, that’s a good, involved question. Number one, working with other artists is exciting to me, especially if they’re younger artists, as that’s typically who I tend to work with, because it gets me psyched to see them psyched to work on music. I think the most important thing as a writer, especially as you get older, is to pass on the knowledge if you do have knowledge to pass on. Second of all, stay in love with the craft. Stay in love with writing music. I think that’s part of the reason why I’m still here is I’ve never lost that, for lack of a better term, childlike wonderment on creating a brand-new piece of music. There is a rush with doing that, especially when you know it’s something that’s good, right? At the end, when you’ve finished that song and you’re moving on to the next, you go, “Ah, this is still the same feeling I had when I was 16 years old and wrote my first song.”
Now, how do I manage all the different aspects of it? I think there’s a different kind of love for performing than there is for composing, because they’re two very strictly different things. Writing is an introvert kind of mentality that you’ve got to lock yourself in a room and just get the job done, whereas performing, to me, that’s the playground, man. Playing arenas and giant shows is the best life you can have in this business, in my opinion. I’m an introvert as a person, but I get to not be an introvert when I’m on stage and that’s a fun thing to address. Performing is another art, right? It’s another avenue where you can feel quite fulfilled, especially when the audience connects with you. One of the most human experiences I’ve ever felt in music is sharing either my music or somebody else’s music with a big audience.
What is cool about film composing is that it’s the only real time I get to really stand outside myself. I’ve written polka music. (laughing) I’ve written 70-piece orchestral music. I write country music. I write metal. I write industrial metal. I write techno metal. I write pop, and the challenge of it is the thing that I loved about it. I went, “Okay, I’m going to really grow as a writer by doing this,” because I don’t know what my capabilities are until I’m forced into doing it. It made me nervous. I like things that make me nervous as a composer, because you can just write one way the whole time, and that becomes a crutch, so it opened up my brain to just all sorts of music, and I pull from everything I’ve learned for what I do now.
Elliott (All Music Magazine): Wrapping up — as you think about the rest of this year and going into 2027, what makes you look at a new project or opportunity and think, ‘I have to do this,’ so us Paul Laine fans know what we can look forward to.
Paul: Well, first of all, when I decide to work on something, it’s because I can’t help myself. If I hear about an artist who wants to work with me, and I listen to what they’re doing, and I feel like I can add and I get excited about doing it, that informs my decision of why I do it. I only want to do the things that I want to do now, man. I’m 58 years old — no, I’m 59! — sorry, I had my birthday last week. (laughing) Time matters, and I want to work on the stuff that I want to work on and that still gets me excited.
I’m going to Europe next year and playing some shows over there. I’m going to continue to perform here and look at all the opportunities that are given to me. Now that this record has come out, my inbox is filling up with potential shows, so that’s a lovely thing to happen. I just signed a contract to play Frontiers Festival, so I can announce that. That’s going to be in Milan at the end of April, beginning of May. So, back to Italy, this time without The Defiants, but just on my own. I’m really looking forward to this next year because I can finally get back out and play my own music, and it’s been since, gosh, I think 2019. That’s too long. That’s seven years, but I’m in a good spot right now. I have three weeks off before I head back out on the road, and I’m just chilling as much as I can.
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Elliott is a music photographer covering shows in Atlanta, Georgia, and the surrounding area. The highlight of his photography career was back in the early ’90s, when he sold Neil Diamond the rights to his negatives from a show and then purchased a set of tires for his 1979 280ZX during college with the money.