CRR:  Fitz played bass in Montrose?

Gary: Yeah. Ronnie started the band with Bill and then they found Denny and Sammy, Bill was the first guy to get kicked out. I remember Bill telling me that Ronnie called him up and said something like  Bill I m in a bad way, my wife left me, I m getting a divorce and by the way you re fired (laughs). So  Fitz replaced him, after the second album Sammy got fired as well. I d kept in touch with Mitchell Froom and he had met Ronnie and had played with him in his band Gamma, Mitch had been working with another band at the same time and actually came up to my place to record some tracks, Ronnie was there helping out and he somewhat jokingly mentioned that he had never recorded with the same band twice (laughs). Ronnie had a lot of talent though; it s too bad he didn t stick with one band. He was a great player.

CRR: Other than touring with Boston who you guys played a lot with from 1977-1979 who else did you enjoy playing with?

Gary: Yeah we played with a lot of people. I d have to say AC/DC was a lot of fun, we actually got to do shows with both singers, when Bon Scott was in the band and then later with Brian (Johnson). They were always one of our favorite bands to play with, we loved their energy.

CRR: How did Sammy break the news to you guys that he was joining Van Halen, were there plans to continue and follow up VOA?

Gary: Oh yeah we were absolutely going to continue. VOA was our biggest success at that point. Sammy said "Next year is going to be even better". We were a great live band and he felt that he could do anything with us onstage and I attribute this to something Sammy said to me later after he d played with Van Halen for awhile, he said "You guys followed me like nobody else, I could do anything, break into any kind of tempo and you guys were right there behind me and it s not quite that way in Van Halen". I ll never say that I m anywhere near the guitar player that Eddie (Van Halen) is but they were a different sort of group, they played things their way. Sammy had that ability to be more spontaneous with us. We knew that he d met Eddie out in L.A. and he hated to break up the band but it was an offer that he couldn t refuse, he felt it would take him to a different place so what are you going to say? We basically said "Go ahead go for it". Luckily there was no bitterness and it worked out fine for me because Tom Scholtz had heard about it, our last show with Sammy was at Farm Aid. Eddie came out and jammed with us to end that show. Tom called me up when he was working on the Third Stage album and he had one more song left to be recorded and asked me if I d come out to work with him on it. I said sure because I was now out of a job (laughs). I flew directly from Farm Aid to Boston, so I wasn t out of work for a day. I thought how lucky could a guy get. He told me that there would probably be some touring involved if the album did well, which it did and basically I m still here (laughs).

CRR: Was this also around the time you were trying to get Alliance off the ground?

Gary: No that was after. We did that last song "I Think I like It" and then he mixed and mastered it and the album didn t come out until 1986. The tours for the first two Boston albums were so grueling, the manager booked every place possible with out many days off and really beat them into the ground, Tom wasn t sure if he ever wanted to tour again. When the album came out it was very successful, it went to number one. It was the first Boston album to go to number one, so at first Tom felt like the band had to do some dates just to let people know that we were still around and give them a chance to see the band, his idea was to do maybe a dozen shows or something like that but when the album took off we ended up getting booked for 6 months solid. We did a record 9 shows here at The Centrum (Worcester MA) so it was a very successful tour. Tom had warned me when we were working on Third Stage that we would tour for it and after that he figured it would take him 4 years to make the next record, it took him 6 years to make the first album in his basement and he felt that they had really rushed him on the second album, he wasn t happy with that and wished he could have gone back and re-mixed it. Third Stage took some number of years to do as well although he started The Rockman Company and the other band members were suing him at the time so he felt it was gonna take 4 years to do the next record, so I said "Ok" (laughs), I has just gone from doing a record with Sammy in 12 days to 4 years. We did some shows in  88 in Canada and after that point I became more involved in Scholtz Research building amps and stuff like that which was a good experience for me and I enjoyed doing that while Tom was working slowly on the next record.

CRR: Tom always seems to be involved in things other than music; he s always working on his inventions as well isn t he?

Gary: Yes that s right. So I knew that I had time available, I d get together with the drummer every once and awhile and we d hash out some ideas on tape. Tom would hear it and say "This is great I m going to work with this" and months later he d come back and ask me to do some solo parts here and something else there and then I wouldn t hear what he had done for months after that (laughs). He s very thorough and has great ears; he tweaks things to the minutest degree to achieve the sound that he s looking for, that s what takes a long time. It s not that he s slow he s just very thorough.

CRR: He s ebony porn a perfectionist.

Gary: That s it certainly. I could see that I was going to have some time so I thought I d like to be in another working band with some other guys. The first guy I called up was Alan Fitzgerald who I d played with in Sammy s band. At that point Night Ranger had broken up or had stopped touring. I called him up and I hadn t seen him for many years so I called him up and told him I wanted to put a band together and asked him if he was in and he said "Yeah sure" then I called Dave Lauser and he was doing studio stuff and session work so I asked him and he agreed as well, Dave knew  Fitz from even before playing with Sammy so they were good friends. We were looking for a few other people; I had met Bruce Day who was the bass player with Pablo Cruise at one point. I always thought he had a great voice and he played bass which was what we needed. I called him up and he decided that he was in as well. I wanted to have one other element, I knew this girl who was actually once the girlfriend of Paul Taylor, who went on to play with Winger and Alice Cooper, her name was Emi Canyn, she was married to Mick Mars from Motley Crue. She had a great voice and was a wonderful person as well. We called he up and she agreed to come up to Northern California to work on some tracks, after about 3 or 4 days she got a call from Mick who wasn t too thrilled with the idea that she was working with a bunch of guys, he asked her to come back home and she did. So Mick kind of broke up the spirit, then Dave got busy and  Fitz got busy and things just kind of fell apart. It really fell apart due to logistics because we were all in different parts of the country. Unfortunately I had heard that Bruce Day was in a car accident and had passed away but I ve been unable to get that information confirmed. I ve been trying to find out from people that know him but no one seems to know for sure. So when we tried to get things happening again we had to look for another bassist and singer so we called up John Kalodner at Geffen and he said he would find someone for us, he had signed The Robert Berry Band, he had done an album with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer, he basically took Greg Lake s position and they did an album together called 3, he also played with GTR as well shortly before they broke up for good, so Robert was available. We all got together and the rest of us liked him immediately, plus he had a lot of song ideas. We ve done a few albums and are in the midst right now of doing another one.

CRR: What really stood out for me when I saw you guys live last year live is how much the vocals really stand out, they were amazing. It s pretty damn close to what you d hear on the records. What will you guys do for an encore this year; will you change the set list around a bit?

Gary: Oh yeah. We ll bring back some songs that we haven t done for a little while and we ll move some things around in the set. It s hard because we don t have time to play everything so we re trying to do things that we know that people have requested.

CRR: Any chance of a live album or a live DVD perhaps?

Gary: Yes to both. We ve been discussing these seriously. I d love to see them if for nothing else just for the historic value so we could get it down live for everyone to see.

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