It wasn’t very easy to get Keith for an interview. This guy really has ‘merged’ with his guitar. He treats it just like a girlfriend. Under the condition that ‘she’ would be there too, we had the following interview with this sympathetic guitarist at the Tivoli, Utrecht, Holland on June 17th 1995.

Have you enjoyed your stay in Holland so far?
Yes, I’m having a lovely time, thank you. Everyone is very hospitable.

Is this the first time you’re in Holland?
No, I have been in Holland many times before, with a lot of different groups, like the Michael Schenker Group and Asia. Can’t remember all of them, but I have been over here quite a few times.

You have toured with and played for a lot of different bands. How did you end up with Paul McCartney?
At that time I was doing sessions for a lot of different acts. I was very lucky, I was getting big sessions. Paul McCartney’s management company phoned me up and asked me to come along and play with him. It’s difficult to describe what happens. It’s more like a big jam session which you record. Round about 1987, he was in to getting different people along and not doing it as a try-out, just for fun actually. So we got together and did that.

But he’s not just anybody.
No, I just couldn’t believe it! I nearly fainted when they called me. It was a real privilege, and I would love to do it again. 

So playing with Paul McCartney, touring with Asia and then..... Arena. How did that happen?
Arena? Well, they were in the studio with Mike Stobbie producing. A few years ago Mike Stobbie and I had a band together called Vera Cruz, and we have stayed friends ever since. Obviously, we are really good friends. Arena had some problems with a couple of guitarists that they were trying out on the album. They were on a fairly tight time schedule to get it finished, and Mike was nice enough to ask me to do it. I didn’t know anything about Arena at all. As far as I was concerned, when I first worked for them it was a strict session. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the music and feel a commitment towards it, and when they asked me to join the band I jumped at the chance basically.

Do you look at this as just another project for the time being, or do you look at Arena as a more ‘permanent’ job?
I am a band member. There are five people in Arena and it’s more than the sum of the parts. It’s a great band, not because of each individual member. I feel one fifth of that, I’m definitely one fifth of Arena and very committed to it as well.

So you plan to keep it that way?
Absolutely! No one is getting my job!

Were you involved in writing the Arena album?
No, not in any way. I did come up with ideas, some of the hook riffs, but it was really all of us working together getting the best thing out of it, because when I came in to do it, it was a session for me. It wasn’t until about two thirds of the way through recording the guitars that they asked me to join the band and I became involved. But it was very much all of us working together to get things right.

When you write music, do you write the kind of music we heard on your demo, and try to fit it into the rest of the music, or do you adjust your style?
I always adjust my style. I do a lot of different sessions from blues to jazz or funk sessions. I am big fan of black music like Stevie Wonder. But I like everything, I never close the door, if there’s any influence you can gain from, give it a chance. I basically like everything I listen to.

But if you write music all by yourself, music like the demo is what we can expect?
Not necessarily. It depends on how I feel. The demo has quite a few different styles on it, there’s a ballad on it, there’s a country tune on it and a blues tune, apart from the rock stuff. It’s whatever takes me at the moment. It’s really a case of enjoying music, and not putting any boundaries on it. 

I guess you would love to write an album with Steve Lukather and Simon Phillips?
Oh yeah! I really dig these guys. I met Simon Phillips years ago. I went to see Jeff Back play in Edinburgh, sneaked backstage and met the guys, which was good. I met Simon who was very nice, and I went to meet him at the hotel the next day to give him some of my demos. About ten years later I bumped into him at the rehearsal studios and he remembered me immediately. Yes, I would really love to play with these guys. I really like Steve Lukather’s playing, and I really like Simon Phillips too. I did Guitar Stories [Keith’s first solo album – eds.] a long time before I heard Candyman. I have written four guitar albums now, I have only recorded the first one. The first one was written about four years ago actually, and demoed for the first time four years ago.

So it has been on the shelves for quite some time now?
Yes, but I didn’t know what to do with it.

Release it, of course!
Yeah, well, it didn’t occur to me you know... Ding! Nothing really got in there. I had recorded all these things just to jam. Making an album out of the recordings didn’t actually occur to me until I met Mark ..... the drummer. He was inspired by the project and said that he wanted to be involved. I made a commitment and said to myself, let’s record one album and see what happens, just for fun. So it will be released soon now...

I assume you guys [ie. Arena] are planning a tour?
Yes, we’re really looking forward to it. We want to play around Europe for the moment, but we want to expand that to the rest of the solar system if possible. We’re very much into being a live band, and getting out there and doing as many gigs as we can. I do believe that we’re an extremely strong live band, every element works together with a bit of magic, and when you find something like that, you want to get the most out of it. That means going out and touring all the time, and that’s what we all want to do.

Do you want to be a headline, or maybe a support for another big name?
Personally I wouldn’t mind at all, I would happily gig anywhere, just to get a chance to play. But it would be nice to see the band move forward and start doing headlines.

You will probably play for smaller audiences than with Asia. Do you like small audiences?
I find an audience of twenty people or two people to be terrifying. I find an audience of 180,000 to be completely exhilarating. And anything in between those two is usually okay.

You have played for 180,000 people? There’s not a place in Holland that could hold so many people!
Yes, we did a huge Asia gig once. It was a big festival, and the first gig I did with Asia. In fact, we only rehearsed the set twice before we did it. It was a great gig. If people care enough to come out and watch us, you want to throw in your best performance, and whether it’s twenty people, or 200,000 people, it doesn’t matter. I’m quite selfish, because I play music for myself, and enjoy myself. I really don’t care what anyone else thinks, unless they booed us off stage, which would hurt. 

There have been critics who accuse Arena of making the same music as ten years ago. How do you feel about that?
I think music is timeless, what else can I say? It doesn’t matter when it was written, what year you wrote a song, what year you made an album. Music is timeless. I mean, we all listen to classical music. Modern composers just come along. Nothing on the album is the same as anything on Script For A Jester’s Tear. It’s just a timeless thing. It doesn’t matter when it was made. Trends come and go. The eighties were terrible for music. Programmed music, and knocking the soul out of it. That was a bad period for music. I don’t think going back ten years is a mistake, and I don’t really think we have done that. I do think that it is a current album.

At the end of the day you only follow your heart, and that’s what we’ve been doing. If you like it, that’s not a problem, if you don’t like it, don’t listen to it. It’s not ten years ago, it’s current, but the influences are all still strongly embedded.

You know of course about S.I. magazine (Dutch progressive rock magazine – eds.], they didn’t give your album a good review. They also accused Clive and Mick of using old material and using a drum computer.
Yes, I know about them. I feel pity for them because it’s simply not true. I completely believe that every single person on the planet should at least be honest. How can this person know that the drums have been programmed?

The guy says he can hear it instantly that the drums have been programmed.
Well, then he’s brilliant. Really, Mick Pointer is a great drummer. He will tell you he hasn’t done much work over the last ten years, but he has. He doesn’t want to give too much away. He wants to let people see the real thing when we do it live. I think that whoever wrote that review should really get a life, because it’s simply not true, and I’m sure that we could sue them for slander, but we’re not that pityful. If they want to take that course and dislike our music, fair enough, but if they accuse us of stuff that we didn’t do, that’s not right. 

We all have Songs from the Lions Cage now. Are there any future plans yet?
Yes, first of all, to get out on the road and gig. That is our first priority. We have already started writing the second album, but our priority is to get out and do lots of gigs and solidify our unit, our band. When we have done enough gigging to make us feel completely one hundred percent as a unit we’re going to record a new album, and that’s going to be a big step forward from the Lions Cage.

I have been very, very lucky in my musical career, I have had a lot of great breaks. I have worked with great people and I have done things that I never thought I would achieve. Of everything that I have done up to tonight, the thing that I feel most committed to is Arena. It’s the first time that I felt magic hap-pen in a band. As I said earlier, a great band is more than the individual members, and that’s what Arena is.

By: Michiel Koolen