Beautiful Creatures

Gigz with Kenny, Anthony, DJ, and Joe from Beautiful Creatures @ Metropol

end of summer/2001



RC: Hey, we're here hanging out with Beautiful Creatures,
     fresh off the Ozzfest tour. They're touring with 
     Tantric, and we have...
Kenny: Kenny, I play bass guitar.
Anthony: Hi, I'm Anthony Fox, rhythm guitar.
DJ: DJ Ashba, I play lead guitar.
Joe: Joe LeSte, I'm hung over.
RC: Well isn't that typical for a rock n roll band like 
     you guys. Now this CD is some rockin stuff, from 
     begining to end. You guys came together in LA and
     you're from all over. How did it all come together
     so quickly and end up on Warner Brothers.
Joe: Well with the climate of music at the time a lot of 
     rap/rock and a lot of techno and stuff like that. I 
     just wanted to be in a rock band. I just wanted to 
     sing, I went over to DJ's house-got him-and we said, 
     "let's just do a rock band". Our intentions we're 
     never to go out and catch a big record deal or any
     of that. We just wanted to play shows. We never even
     played shows a lot, we just stayed in the studio a 
     lot and practiced. From DJ and myself we got Kenny
     and Anthony and Glen. We went through a bunch of 
     different people till we all found the right people,
     that could live and be the way that we are today.
     The rest is history. We never really played any 
     local shows in LA. I mean our first thing was opening
     for Kiss. We didn't even really have a name at the
     time, we just continue to play and do our thing.
RC: How did you swing that?
Kenny: I worked for Kiss for a while. I knew the guys, so 
     I called Doc up and said I got a kick ass rock band
     together with Joe and DJ and everybody. Give us a 
     shot, let us open up for 1 show. It just so happened 
     that Ted Nugent couldn't play the show because he had
     said some derogatory things towards the hispanic and
     gay communities.
RC: Not Ted, not that rebel on the radio.
Kenny: He couldn't play the show so they gave us a shot,
     we played the show in Houston, they liked it and 
     brought us back for Detroit and East Lansing. They
     wanted to give us the last 10 dates of the tour but
     we had to go back into the studio and do the album
     so we couldn't do it.
RC: Did you even have a demo to give the guys?
Kenny: No, at this point we didn't even have a name. I 
     think we came up with the name on the plane down
     or something the night before.
RC: Were you looking at the KISS album Creatures of the 
     Night or something?
Joe: I had a card in my pocket that said something da da da
     beautiful creatures, and I thought that would be cool.
     The name was just thrown out off the top of my head.
     Later on the line as we started doing shows and things
     like that, Glen always thought it would be cool that the
     name refers to the fans and not the band. Our fans are 
     beautiful creatures, that's what we look at it like.
RC: Especially the ladies.
Joe: Oh yeah, the beautiful creatures are the fans and we're
     sea-donkeys basically. We're just a bunch of ugly dudes
     that get out there and rock and do are thing.
RC: Now how do you entice Warner Brothers?
Joe: We had a manager at the time, who obviously had relation-
     ships with different labels and stuff, and he said let's 
     showcase this stuff. And we're like uh showcase it! we 
     weren't even thiking, like I said, nothing was precon-
     cieved. There was no idea of well let's go get a record 
     deal. Next thing you know a couple of labels, I think 
     Island Def Jams and Columbia or something like that, one
     offered us a demo thing. Then Warner Brothers came in and 
     the guy watched us. I think when the guy who signed, Jeff
     Blue, I think the whole reason he signed us wasn't really 
     the songs. It was the vibe and the fact that everybody 
     could play well and do what they did well. I don't mean
     to sound boastful or anything.
RC: Oh well, there's some proficient musicians in this band.
Joe: I do believe that. I think he saw that and saw a future
     for it. It's mind blowing! We're still sitting here today,
     we can't believe we're on this bus, we can't believe we're
     doing what we're doing, we can't believe people are out 
     there are buying our record. Nothing was planned. I mean
     we were on the Ozzfest, it's all crazy to us, yah know?
     We're just living the life. We're very, very, very fort-
     unate and we count our blessings each day that we're fort-
     unate to have what we have and do what we do.
RC: And be able to give it back to your beautiful creature fans.
Joe: Well we wanna be able to give it back to them, we wanna 
     fulfill everything for them.
RC: (turning to DJ and Anthony)Now you guys got some phat slabs
     and some beautiful acoustic work. Tunes like "Wish" a 
     song I relate to because I wish I could start my own video 
     network. You can have your own envisionment of how it fits
     into your own life. A lot of the songs have some good 
     acoustic work, I mean I want to go to New Orleans now and
     hang with Kenny for a little bit. Now you're the lead 
     guitarist?
DJ: Yeah
RC: You bring a a lot of the melodic type leads in, which is 
     really bringing back a technical aspect, that has not been
     seen in quite some time.
DJ: I think when I went to do the leads on the album it wasn't
     about being flashy. It was about what are the best notes 
     for each song and trying to tell a story  within the lead
     itself. I've noticed, I've played guitar for quite a while,
     you get more response and touch more people holding one 
     note than 50,000 notes that go by. But you can use that 
     for seasoning here and there.
RC: Yeah, that's always nice. A lot of the bands in the later 
     80s did a lot of the lead playing, it was just a billion 
     notes a minute. Do you think that that was what kind of 
     took the enchantment away from the rock? Where it just got
     to be fretboard masturbation, so to speak?
DJ: Yeah, I think so. People worried about how many notes they 
     could hit and they kind of lost the feel. There's a lot of
     great guitar players out there, but from my experience you 
     get more response off of a feel than speed.
RC: (turning to Anthony)Do you write a lot of the rhythms or is
     that a coherced effert?
Anthony: Joe and DJ come up with the songs, they'll bring them 
     into rehearsal and we'll work on them. But they originally
     have the songs pretty well controlled first, before they 
     come into the studio. Basically they'll come into the studio
     with the songs, pull them out, and we'll start working 
     together with them.
RC: Everybody adds their own little piece to it?
Anthony: Yeah
RC: Is there anything scheduled for when you finish with the 
     Tantric tour?
Joe: We'll continue to tour and tour and tour.We're more of a 
     touring band. We're not really a video/radio kind of over-
     night band. We want to be like Metallica.
RC: That's what I like about the video, it's very raw and very in
     your element.
Joe: Well that's what it is. It's like an undergound thing. We 
     want to be a band that comes from underground and builds a
     solid fan base, like I said, like Metallica. Before they 
     ever did anything high budget and did anything big it was...
RC: Ten years of hard work.
Joe: Well, if that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna do it then,
     yah know.
RC: Were a couple of you guys in Bang Tango?
Joe: I was years ago, it was a cool band. It was a good run.
RC: I had a friend mention that to me. He knew the whole rout-
     ine. It surprises you in a town where they tell you things
     are so limited, but people do know a lot of stuff. I think
     sometimes corperate rock undercuts peoples musical aware-
     ness. This little show we do, I just try to get it out 
     there and get people to check it out.
Joe: We appreciate it, any form of media that we get that people
     are gonna come and listen to the band or see the band. It's 
     really important to us. It's great that you're here doing 
     this and it's great that we get to do this.
RC: Talk about showing how appreciative he is, he even got up 
     out of bed to do this.
Joe: Well I had to get up at some point. I was up really late...
DJ: We stayed up all night trying to watch our commercial on TV 
     for HBO's Reverb. It's like 10 seconds long so we would sit
     through like half a movie to try and catch it, but we kept
     missing it.
RC: What was your most memorable Ozzfezt moment?
Joe: Mine was the last show that we did. They gave us a set of
     rules for each band and we pretty much broke every rule,
     every day. After a while they were like hey we don't really
     care, they're  having a good time let them do their thing.
     But at the last show we were on the second stage, the Levi's
     stage. From where where we were at, I believe about 25 yards 
     away, is a big reflective pool. Like a knee deep pool, al-
     most Olympic size, and they surrounded the thing with secur-
     ity guards. So we're playing our show and we had a really 
     good slot, around 1:30 or 2:00. So about that time it was 10
     to 15,000 people. We just told everybody this is the last 
     show we're all going in the pool. And we're all wireless you
     know. We go here's the deal, you have to help us get past 
     those security guys. The security guys are looking at us like
     yeah right. I look over thinking I'm gonna dive out into the 
     crowd and go straight into the pool. I look over and all of a
     sudden I see DJ standing by one of the security guys. He ran 
     down the ramp and around the back of him. And he's standing
     there with his guitar...
DJ: The guy didn't know I was standing on the ledge right next to 
     him, he didn't even realize it. They had no idea I was still
     playing.
Joe: Yeah, so me, myself, Kenny, and everybody went out there and 
     went into the pool. Then all the fans followed. We had the 
     whole pool full of people just having a big water fight. And
     the security guards were just looking at us, they didn't even
     do anything. They were really actually cool, they just looked
     at us and went oh God, I can't believe this. Definitely a 
     memorable moment.
RC: Any wild things happen to you DJ?
DJ: Oh a lot, I think the most probably Spinal Tap thing that 
     happened to me was the other night before the Kiss show. We 
     had like 15 minutes to go on stage and it was like a good 10
     minute run to the stage. It was down the hall, down a flight 
     of steps, and through the backstage. It was our first Kiss 
     show and we're all nervous and freaking out. I just got my 
     brand new guitars in, and I didn't know much about them. I 
     wanted to change the strings really fast, so I clipped all 
     the strings and the bridge shot out of the guitar like 20 
     feet. So we're all searching for peices of my guitar to put
     it all back together. That's probably the most nerve racking
     Spinal Tap moment I've had so far. But we go it together and
     had a good show. 
RC: (turning to Anthony)Now you've been writing E-Mails, logging
     whats going on at Ozzfest with you guys, on your website. 
     Which was cool, do you have any stories?
Anthony: We had a lot of funny things happen, a lot of exper-
     iences. One morning Joe ran to the wrong stage, a lot of
     various things happened. We made a lot of friends, a lot of
     parties on the bus, just a lot of memories.
RC: Well that gives you chance to network some amongst the other
     musicians, on such a large venue like Ozzfest.
DJ: It was great, we got to see a lot of bands we've heard about,
     but never seen them live. We gained a lot of respect for a
     lot of new bands.
RC: There's kind of like a revolving door there, where a band 
     will be on for a couple of weeks then another. It's a great
     way to hook up, make friends, and hopefully you can put
     together your own tours later on.
Joe: Yeah, that would be something great to happen for us. It's
     a very eclectic line up this year, I believe, and we're 
     definitely different than everybody else out there. Every-
     body kind of has that angry rap/rock thing. We did some
     Manson shows, some Crazytown shows, it was all good.
DJ: Yeah, great summer.
RC: That's cool man, we'll let you go, thanks.

For More Info go to www.beautifulcreatures.net

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