Bridge 5 – Excerpt From “Planetary Alignment – The Story Of Gil Jupiter”
By Gilbert Juspeczyk and Steve Bennington
The first time I walked into a recording studio it was magic. The dingy walls, the smell of old smoke and the like. I thought of all the people who had recorded here before me and the stories that this old studio could tell. Some people live for the stage. People like TK and Kyng who just turn it on the second they’re in front of an audience. They can command the stage like very few others, and I’m lucky to have them. But I found my haven in the studio. No other place am I as comfortable as the recording studio. It never mattered which one, they all have different sounds and different smells, but they all mean the same thing… genesis. Songs are often created before they even reach the recording studio, but they are born the moment you record them for others to hear. I bring music to life in the studio and that is why it’s my sanctuary, even in the worst of times.
That first dingy studio was called Ghostwood, a fitting name if I do say so myself. We had a shoestring budget and no time, but we had songs. From the first chords to the last it felt like I was playing with everyone who had ever played in that room. Their power was my power and I used it to drive the band further than ever before. We recorded it basically live in the span of 3 days. Six total songs of raw energy and fury. We had no idea who we were or what we wanted to sound like, but we knew the songs and we played like our lives depended on it. They probably did. That EP which most people referred to as “Do Not Cross” saved my life. It gave me the career I always wanted and introduced me to the most important figure in my life, Nigel Rodgers.
Nigel saw something in my songs that nobody did up. He understood what I was trying to say and recognized that, despite the rudimentary fashion in which I was telling the story, I still had a story to tell. And like me, he felt it was an important story. I remember when we played this club called the Shetland in Glendale. There were maybe 50 people in the audience, but they were enjoying the show and were pretty loud. We were mostly just a cover band in those days, but we threw a few originals in just to keep it interesting. We usually ended on Night Blaster, a song from that first EP. It has a crushing bass line and a real driving riff so it was a great track to play. That one night we were really feeling it and it just turned into an extended jam. The whole song wound up being about fifteen minutes long, and by the end we were spent… but in a good way. We finally got off the stage and this guy in a pink shirt and white suit tells me that we had just blown him away. I told him that I was blown away that he would wear a pink shirt and white suit in Glendale. That was Nigel Rodgers though, never one for convention, but he knows what he likes.
Nigel took me out to a late lunch the next day and told me that he was planning on starting up his own label and was interested in Crime Scene being the label’s first band. Now lots of people have told me that I was going to be successful, but nobody managed to sell it like Nigel. He has this way of giving you the stars, but in a believable way. He told us that we would have to work for it, work harder than we ever have in our lives. He also said that if we listened to him and worked our asses off we could be one of the biggest bands in the world. He was right about that, but I’ll be damned if the cost wasn’t much higher than I ever anticipated.
Up until that moment, Crime Scene had been a largely unfocused unit. Much like our name, it was like we were trying to kill the audience with our music. We played with fury, not thinking about the way we looked on stage. The audience was there for us to destroy, our instruments became our weapons. Nigel knew that the songs could hit a broader audience, but he also knew that we had to change our stage show up a lot if we wanted to really sell ourselves to that audience. I never thought of myself as a performer until Nigel came around. Until that moment it was all about the music, and like when I was a teenager hiding in my room, the music was what kept me sane in a crazy world.
Nigel wanted us to sign a two album contract, which didn’t seem long enough. If we were supposed to be the biggest band in the world, why not four, or six, or even ten? But Nigel explained that this was in our best interests. We could get some seasoning and then we would be able to renegotiate a better deal after people had heard our first couple of albums. We were ready to sign on the dotted line when he dropped the bomb on us. He wanted a new lead singer in the band and he wanted me to take on another guitarist. Until that point I had always played lead and rhythm guitar in the band. They were my songs, and I knew the way they were supposed to sound. I’m not going to say that I was a great guitarist, but I got the point across and I conveyed the emotion of the music. I was worried that bringing in another personality would disrupt that emotion and we would lose the heart of Crime Scene. And I certainly didn’t want to lose Owen as our singer. We had been pals since the early days, in and out of bands like “Stripteez” and “Hotztuff”. He’s a great singer whose voice can just pound an audience. But as Nigel showed me, he lacked the big time charisma needed to get the band to the next level. Firing Owen was the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point and part of me regrets it to this day.