Billy Morrison on solo LP tracks and guest appearances of Ozzy, Billy Idol, others

By Patrick Prince

Guitarist Billy Morrison has one helluva résumé. He’s performed and/or recorded with quite an array of rock and roll luminaries. He has played guitar alongside Steve Stevens in Billy Idol’s band. He has toured with The Cult as their bassist. He is in numerous side projects with Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro. He is the ultimate collaborator, too. But his latest endeavor, the solo album The Morrison Project (The Label Group), has choice musical collaborations with the likes of Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes fame, Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor, guitar maestro Steve Vai, Idol and crew and longtime best friend Ozzy Osbourne. The Osbourne track in particular is the most potent — a love-gone-bad, all-out rocker called “Crack Cocaine.” Goldmine recently spoke to Morrison about the experience of recording this new solo album.

GOLDMINE: Listening to the new album, The Morrison Project — you are a riff master. Take a song like “It’s Come to This.” What a great riff and nice sound. If you had to choose a guitarist who influenced you as a riff master, who would it be?

BILLY MORRISON: There is only one answer, and that’s Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols. And here’s my reason why: Can you name me one other band that in 19 months and 12 songs — because that’s all it was — changed the course of rock history? I’ll take you for a steak dinner because there isn’t one.

Every other band, like the Stones, The Beatles, The Who — all of them — they had a trajectory. They had multiple records to hone their craft. The Sex Pistols were 19 months in existence. And that record [Never Mind the Bollocks] still stands the test of time today. Those are the greatest rock and roll riffs ever.

GM: On the song “Crack Cocaine,” Ozzy sounds great. How did you hook up with Ozzy for that? How did that go down?

BM: Well, Ozzy’s my best friend for 30 years. So you know we’re friends in the most truthful terminology of that word, meaning we don’t sit around talking about music a lot. We talk about what friends talk about, which is chocolate and the weather and where we’re going for dinner. But we’re both musicians, so over the years we have, on occasion, created music. And the interesting thing about Ozzy right now [is that] everyone’s talking about his health, and is he going to do this and is he going to do that. Well, “Crack Cocaine” proves he still has an amazing voice. He’s still the Prince of Darkness. And I just wish everyone could have seen him in that [studio] room when the record light went on, and me and Steve Stevens sat there and watched him sing that song in about 12 minutes.

There are reasons for that as well. There’s a chemistry. With Ozzy … we’ve just been around each other a lot, so there was zero ego. He knows Steve very well, too, because obviously I’m in a band with Steve. There wasn’t anyone trying to show that they were better than anyone else. It was about serving the song. And I believe we were granted one of those moments in time where a really amazing song is given to you by the universe.

GM: Let’s talk about Linda Perry’s involvement on the track “Chasing Shadows.”

BM: The thing with that track I’m most proud of is that first of all, Linda doesn’t do this kind of thing. If you look around, Linda does not pop up on random people’s albums very often. She’s too busy winning Grammys for songwriting with some of the greatest songs the world has ever had. However, I sent Linda the song at first — she’s a very close friend of mine — and I said, “Would you consider singing a song?” And she said, “Well, send me the track.” I wrote the whole thing. I wrote it on piano. I wrote the lyrics. I wrote the melody like it was a self-contained song. So there is a version of that song with me singing it, which the world will never hear because it’s sh*t. But I needed to communicate to Linda how this song went. And I expected her to say, “OK, come to my studio. We’ve got to deconstruct it. I want to rewrite the lyrics. It’s got potential here.” And the text that I got back from her was, “This is a perfect song. I don’t want to change a thing. I will sing this for you.” So as a songwriter, to have one of the world’s greatest songwriters tell you you’ve written a perfect song and doesn’t want to change the words, that’s pretty special.

GM: And then there’s the song “Mr. Dream.” Even though you’ve played with Billy Idol and Steve Stevens all these years, you know, asking them to do something … were they pretty cool about that?

BM: Funny enough, that’s another track where there is a version of me singing it because I wrote that, too. Well, we had a whole album, but interestingly enough, Billy was glaringly absent. His was [on] the last song to be done on this record. I was sitting there looking at the other 11 songs, and this is basically an album of me and my close friends on there. There was no hustling to get these people to be on the record. Everyone on the record I text all the time, and it was glaringly obvious that my boss in Billy Idol, Billy Idol, was not on the record, and it seemed weird. So I texted him and asked if he would do one [song]. He said, “Of course.” And I sent Steve [Stevens] the song. He made a few changes, which made the world of difference, and then I wrote the lyrics, sang it and sent it to Billy. He showed up and took about half an hour, and then he was gone. And he did it and, yeah, it was amazing. Another icon. I cannot imagine being in any other band. Billy Idol. I used to go and see him in Generation X. I’m the only person in Billy Idol’s band that saw Generation X. So, to end up not only being in the band, but also realizing how wonderful and truly iconic he is, and down to earth, I just could not imagine being in any other band.

GM: Finally, the song “Incite the Watch,” which you got Corey Taylor and Steve Vai to collaborate; that’s quite a combo there.

BM: I got to tell you, that was actually two songs that I put together to make one. I had the dirty, heavy industrial loop section, which I sent to Corey, and God love him, he has got one of the greatest voices in rock. What you hear on that is what he sent back. There’s no tuning, there’s no effects, there’s no nothing. It was absolutely perfect. But I also had this section of music which was the same tempo, and it was inspired by an English band called The Wildhearts. The Wildhearts are one of the greatest bands that never quite got there. They’ve released over 20 albums. And the main guy, Ginger, has this really unique songwriting thing where it’s all power chords, but there are key changes and rhythmic changes. It’s quite complex. And I had this section of music which was three key changes, rhythm changes and this whole mad riff. So, I stuck it on the end of the Corey bit, and it worked. And I thought, Well, I guess Steve would be really good over such a complex musical section. And that’s how the two pieces of music ended up being one epic journey for six-and-a-half minutes. Corey got up many, many times with my other band called Royal Machines. And yeah, he’s a wonderful man, too. I said, “Would you do a song?” He said, yes. It’s the only song we have no lyrics for because I can’t quite make out what he’s singing, and he hasn’t told me what the lyrics are. So basically, that’s the one song on the album where I’m singing it in my head phonetically, because I’m not quite sure what he’s singing. (laughs)

Go to Shop.GoldmineMag.com to get an exclusive, limited-edition 12-inch single of “Crack Cocaine” with a B-side etching.