Achi news desk-
Formed in 1987, Gun released three increasingly successful albums and toured with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard before splitting 10 years later.
In 2008 the band reformed, initially playing the old songs before deciding to release new music in 2012.
As they prepare for release Mentheir first album of all new material since 2017, frontman Dante and brother Giuliano ‘Jools’ Gizzi will be performing acoustically in a number of record shops across Scotland.
That will be followed by full band shows in Montrose, Glasgow and Dunfermline, as the group get back into the swing of things after celebrating their 30th anniversary before the Covid lockdown.
Dante tells the Herald: “I think after the Favorite Pleasures album we had a few years of touring and then when we were starting to write new material the pandemic happened so it took a bit of time.
“I try to look at the positives of it. It’s quite difficult to be creative in that kind of environment of not knowing what’s going to happen, so it was quite difficult for us to get the creativity flowing.
“It was intermittent at times in the writing process but I think Jools and I just worked through it and went back to the songs that worked.
“We don’t want to just put out an album of filler, every song has to really work for us.
“So it took a while but we just wanted to get the right album.
“We’re still hungry, that’s the thing. We’re still hungry to let people hear new material and you want to be active and get the fans out there to get the music, that’s very important to us .”
It was only in 2010 that Gizzi took over vocal duties for the band, following the departure of second singer Toby Jepson.
He had gained experience as a frontman with El Presidente, his own project while Gun was on hiatus, which means that the change from bass to singer was much smoother than his first shows as a singer.
He said: “El Presidente was the first time I had ever been a frontman.
“That was very much like being thrown to the wolves! The first gig I did was at King Tut’s to a background CD, it was just me on stage with this CD deck.
“It was at the time where you could smoke so, being El Presidente, I had a big cigar because I didn’t know what to do with my hands when it came to the solos.
“I was totally kicking myself, he was totally blown away too because there was quite a bit of buzz about the band.
“I remember someone posting a couple of days later: ‘I came all the way down from Aberdeen to see a guy perform for CD’. I only had eight songs and I didn’t have a band at the time – I was going to go…
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“The management at the time threw me in at the deep end, this CD is playing and I’m just standing there in the individual section having a puff on my cigar and drinking brandy.”
Before they broke up Gun had been riding a wave, with a second LP Capable reached number 14 on the UK chart and its follow-up, Swaggercracking the top five and producing four top 40 singles.
Things got off the rails with a sequel 0141 632 6326. The title itself – the phone number for an update line on the band – is, let’s face it, naff. Furthermore, the climate was not quite ripe for classic rock.
The 1990s had started with INXS, Rush and Aerosmith dominating the rock charts but by the middle of the decade things had changed significantly. On the side of the Nirvana state It does not matter and Green Days Dookie made grunge and pop-punk the zeitgeist respectively, while the UK was at the height of the ‘Cool Britannia’ Britpop era. Classic rock wasn’t cool.
Last but not least, the recording sessions for the album were full.
Gizzi says: “Oh God, that was a tough one.
“I think that’s another reason why we wanted to come back with a new album, we didn’t want to leave it as it was with that album – we hated it. Jools and I couldn’t stand it.
“Andrew Farris from INXS was producing it, and there were times when Jools and I were like, ‘Oh God what is this?’.
“We were at The Manor, which I think was owned by Trevor Horn, it was a big residential studio here in London and I remember there was a period when Jools and I were like ‘this is difficult’.
“We would take things to him and he would want to change it and it just didn’t feel right.
“We argued with Mark over it, because Mark… didn’t side with Andrew Farris but maybe sat on the fence a little bit.
“Jools and I just felt it didn’t feel right. We wanted this big rock album, because he (Farris) was a big part of the INXS writing process so we wanted something like Listen Like Thieves or Kick.
“Jools and I were ready to go on the road one night, I remember that, because at that time the management, the record company and Mark wanted to stay with him – a lot of money had been spent on him.
“We really know where we want to go with the material these days, we’re very adamant about that in order not to allow anything like what happened in the past to happen again.”
Hombres is released on 12 April 2024, via Cooking Vinyl. Gun will perform acoustically in record stores across the country from April 12 with full band shows in Glasgow, Dunfermline and Montrose later this month. Find out more details here
