QUIET RIOT Frontman Says Recording Second SLADE Cover Was 'Stupid'

Legendary vocalist/bassist Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH) recently interviewed his good friend, QUIET RIOT frontman Kevin DuBrow, for ClassicRockRevisited.com.

Commented Dubrow: "I think I am one of Glenn's biggest fans. Glenn has people who will tell him every single thing he does is great. I think everything Glenn sings is great but there are better ways to do certain things. I am honest with Glenn about it. I don't know if he always appreciates it or not."

Hughes offered: "What I have done with my life, Kevin admires. Not just singing but the other things. I am like a big brother to him. He tells me about things going on with him that he does not tell anyone else. I feel like I am a bit of a protector of Kevin in a way. He is a wild man and he has gotten a bit of a bad rap. I know the sweet, funny, intelligent Kevin. I feel very comfortable around Kevin; he is one of my best friends."

An excerpt from the interview follows:

Glenn: You recorded "Cum On Feel The Noize" (a SLADE cover). Looking back, do you feel at all resentful that your most well known song was not one of your own? Did you ever feel like saying, "Man, we have a # 1 record. I wish we could have written it?"

Kevin: "Especially in a financial sense. You knew where the royalties were going. We saw the accounting and knew what was going on. I never loved that song but at the same token, I never thought we were the greatest songwriters in the world. We were trying to be rock 'n' roll stars. All my favorite bands made great albums and didn't really have hit singles, or maybe they had one hit per album. SLADE's version wasn't even a hit. I think it went to # 85. I just wasn't into bands like that. I was into HUMBLE PIE. There biggest hit was 'I Don’t Need No Doctor'. FREE had 'All Right Now' but you can forget that, I liked the album cuts. Growing up, I never thought about having a hit single.

"Remember FOGHAT? They had three albums and then the fourth one went big. We skipped all that and went right to gold. We were gullible and I was an angry guy at the time. Booze and cocaine didn’t help that much. I was a guy from Hollywood who was a pissant. I made a lot of enemies along the way. Fueled by the chemicals and being the age I was didn't help things a lot. But, there is a flip side to that coin. I got to live my dream. At 49 years old, I still get to live my dream. That song is greatly responsible for us having this conversation today. It was stupid of us to do 'Mama, Weer All Crazee Now'. Doing another SLADE song was a bad move. I now tend to look at the glass way more than half full. Because of that song we are still having this conversation.

"QUIET RIOT will go onstage before bands that have a greater back catalog of hits and a history of being more popular but we have those two songs — 'Cum On Feel The Noize' and 'Bang Your Head' — and most bands have a hard time following us because of those two songs."

Read the entire interview at this location.