Lead singer for the popular '80s band Ratt, Stephen Pearcy, sat down recently for an interview with ToledoBlade.com. Read some choice excerpts from the interview below.


ToledoBlade.com: RATT has a new album coming out ... Is there going to be any kind of different sound or anything that you think fans will notice?

Pearcy: Well, it's going to be RATT music, but it's going to be back to basics. Very happy with it. No outside writers, and it's RATT circa '84, '86. It's exactly what everybody's going to want but a lot more.

ToledoBlade.com: Who is your audience today and how do you think that compares to back when you guys got started?

Pearcy:
Our audience today is quite variable. Even like last night's front row,
there's got to be this kid, must have been like 12 years old or 13 or
something. I mean, my daughter, she's 13. It's the youth and it's our
fans from 25 years ago who are now probably 45, 50, who knows. Our
audience is a wide range, which is good. We're in all these video games
and things, so the audience is a wide margin now.

ToledoBlade.com: What do you think attracts [kids] to that kind of music these days.

Pearcy:
I tend to think it's the same thing that attracted them in the
beginning. It's colorful. It's exciting. It's dangerous. It's all these
elements that make rock entertaining.

ToledoBlade.com: Do you guys blame grunge for pushing out heavy metal?

Pearcy:
No, not at all. We did it in our own screwed up way. I pulled out and
we really didn't break up and nobody really did anything to pull the
band out of the scene. We pulled ourselves out, which is a good thing.
And then we came back.

I think the '90s and even early 2000s
were all about cookie-cutter bands - not really exciting and not really
colorful. You didn't know if the crew guy, the roadie, was a band
member, you know? At least you have some identifying characters with
our genre of music.

ToledoBlade.com: So what were you up to in the years when RATT wasn't together?

Pearcy:
I was doing side projects, getting my label developed, and just kind of
trying to do something different than "Ratt 'n' Roll." I like trying
different things and doing different things and that's exactly what I
was doing - getting into my auto racing and entertaining myself instead
of each other.

ToledoBlade.com: You mentioned "The Wrestler" and the music that you did for that. That's a movie
about coming to terms with past fame.  As a group that has put our
four platinum over the years, is that an issue that you ... have dealt
with?

Pearcy: The music business per se, it's an up and
down thing. We did arenas for so many years and we still do. If you get
into it seriously and you're fortunate enough to have success you'll
see it'll go up and down and you hang in there and you'll ride it up
again because what comes around goes around, you know?

To read the interview in its entirety, Click Here.