RATT Guitarist Says Makers Of VH1's 'Behind The Music' Were 'Not Interested' In Actual Story

Mark Morton of Heavy Metal Examiner recently conducted an interview with guitarist Warren DeMartini of Californian rockers RATT. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Heavy Metal Examiner: What was the impetus for doing a new record? I am asking, because bands like RATT had a massive heyday in the 1980s with tons and tons of hit singles. But nowadays, a lot of people are simply not interested in new music by these bands and just want them to remain in the past. RATT has effectively ignored all of that, plowed ahead, and created an album with incredible, reinvigorated energy.

DeMartini: I think one of the exciting things about the art form and the industry is that it's hard to create a sure-thing. They still have to fall together. One of the things we were conscious of was staying in the mindset, tempos, and the brightness of something that could have come out in between "Out of the Cellar" (1984) and "Invasion of Your Privacy" (1985). The idea was not to spend too much time on any one thing; to go with our guts. The only boundaries were to keep it up-tempo and as bright as possible. When I look back over our catalogue, it's pretty clear that we didn't want to keep recording the same record over and over again. So we explored darker themes, looser and slower tempos, just to try things we hadn't done before. But for this one, "Infestation", it was all about getting back in and simply doing what we always set out to do, which was to play rock!

Heavy Metal Examiner: In 1999, you guys made a first attempt at a rebirth, and the critics destroyed you for it. What makes 2010 the right time to get back into the game?

DeMartini: Well, when I look back at that project, I think we really went off the road, so to speak. We were trying to fit into a record company formula that worked with other groups, i.e. there's a different co-writer on every song. It was a situation where we were trying to create something that was strictly commercial. The A&R person said that they had great success with this formula and another heritage act, but it just did not graft to RATT. And the difference is striking when I listen to "Infestation", which we did without any outside writers. All the ideas were created by the band members.

Heavy Metal Examiner: I don't know if it was something you were conscious of, but I noticed too, that when listening back through the RATT catalogue, the more that outside writers became involved (be it Beau Hill, Desmond Child, or whomever),it seemed like the albums became less and less focused.

DeMartini: There was a big difference between making records like the "Ratt" EP (1983) and "Out of the Cellar", when no one knew how well RATT could do or how valuable RATT could be, compared to doing records after that point. It just completely changed the game. And that was something that we weren't necessarily expecting. We ended up with more fingers in the pie, so to speak. And the longer it went on, it became more of a tangible commodity. Add that to the breakneck tour schedule that the band was doing — we were doing a record, then a tour, then a record, then a tour — it got more and more difficult to form the ideas than when we had enough time before the band got busy. And that was one of the challenges we didn't always win, looking back. I think the stuff still stands up, but I can hear what you're talking about. It's definitely obvious when I look back at the way "Infestation" was recorded. There is one track on there that our producer, Michael Baskette started. But other than that, every song is completely written by the band. It seems like with RATT, leave it alone and give it enough time to set up, and something interesting will happen.

Heavy Metal Examiner: As the gears get going, it is very probable that VH1 will jump on board to create some buzz and awareness to RATT again by re-airing that "Behind The Music" special they originally put together in 2006. Was that actually an accurate portrayal of the band? I was always bothered by that particular special, because it didn't really seem like a true history of the band — it ignored the music and the creative process and focused wholly on the dirt and controversy.

DeMartini: I actually do not like "Ratt: Behind the Music". I don't think it's fair to call it a documentary, because it was written by someone who was not even a fan of hard rock. Parts of it I have the same objections to, and I hope there becomes a reason to do a proper "Behind the Music", because they were not interested in the actual story, which in and of itself was unusual. For example, there was a whole part of how RATT got signed — there was an L.A. DJ named Joe Benson who created a show that would get unsigned bands played on the radio every Friday at drive-time, 5 p.m. Anyone could get played on the radio; the only rule was that you couldn't have a record contract. "You Think You're Tough" from the "Ratt" EP got on there, and that got the attention of Atlantic Records, which led to the president of Atlantic flying out, seeing a show, and signing us that night! And there's no mention of that in there! They had gone through the trouble of shooting an interview with Joe Benson, but as it turned out, "there wasn't enough time to get to that part," because they wanted to focus on stuff that I would not consider appropriate for a documentary — because documentaries are NOT supposed to be biased.

Heavy Metal Examiner: I see exactly what you're saying, because when I watched it, what I took from it was not anything impartial, factual, or fascinating — as you would find in a documentary. What I saw was a case study for Los Angeles excess in the 1980s.

DeMartini: That's exactly right. And it debuted with the PANTERA one, which didn't talk about their music, either. What you end up watching is something written and edited by someone who truly did not like or appreciate the art form. I don't agree with it, and I don't support it at all.

Heavy Metal Examiner: I noticed your talk points in it were very minimal.

DeMartini: I provided them with a lot of footage from my archives, and I could tell by the footage they were picking, that they were building a smear campaign. Maybe we'll get lucky and they will get a CEO who actually likes the genre, and we'll see what happens then.

Read the entire interview from Heavy Metal Examiner.