DJ's Spotlight an interview with Paradise Rose pt 1

Hello everyone DJ Dizzy here & I recently sat down with Brad Thorne the co founder &  guitarist of the band Paradise Rose who are a cover band of Guns & Roses.  This is jut the first out of a couple parts. Enjoy!

How'd you get started in music?  

I was fascinated by electric guitars at an early age.  I remember being fascinated when I saw a neighbor's band playing in his basement when I was about 4; and I was assessed with the guitar ever since.  My father was an organist and pianist, so he gave me piano lessons as a kid.  Then I started playing guitar at age 12 when I started taking guitar lessons at an after school program.  But I quickly got bored because my parents heard it was better to start on an acoustic guitar and then switch to electric later, so that's what I had to do and I hated it playing that acoustic guitar!  But I finally started up lessons again a couple of years later, and finally got my first electric guitar soon after and started my first band when I was about 15. 

Who are your main inspirations or influences? 

My first love was the Beatles, but it was Kiss who got me playing in a band.  I wanted to be like Ace Freely, and even today my main guitar is a sunburst Les Paul!  My first band used to play most of the songs on the Alive album, and then we moved onto other bands like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, etc.  I grew up in Amherst Massachusetts, so I used to listen to classic rock stations like WAQY in Springfield or WCCC in Hartford, which I recently found out quit being a rock station back in 2014.   

I'm definitely a hard rock guy; but I also love bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top.  I always felt the Skynyrd guitar players were under-rated. My first concert was when I saw 38-Special and Foreigner open for Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Springfield Civic Center on June 15, 1977.  Man, what a show.  Then Ronnie was dead only 4 months later, what a shame.  I've seen them numerous times in various configurations since.  I haven't seen the newer version with Rickey Medlocke though, but I want to.  And don't get me started on Billy Gibbons!   

And of course Guns N’ Roses and Slash has been a huge influence, and even more so lately due to Paradise Rose.  Don’t get me wrong, I was always a Guns fan. I mean, I remember exactly where I was the first time I ever heard Welcome to the Jungle.  I was like, that’s it!   So since then they have been one of my favorite bands, but I never played much of their stuff because not many vocalists can handle their songs.  I played Mr. Brownstone in a band back in Lowell Massachusetts but that’s about it.

But when I saw Stephen's ad looking for a guitarist back in December of 2016, I figured it could be a great fit.  I’ve always played with a style similar to slash; melodic blues-based hard rock.  I’m happiest when I’m improvising leads, even though I have to capture Slash’s iconic stuff pretty much note-for-note when I’m playing with Paradise Rose.  

How would you say music has impacted your life? 

Well, there would be a big hole in my life without music.  It is really the thing I have always wanted to do.  When I was in high school, I was the lead guitar player in a pretty good band called Blanny.  We had around 20 original songs, but never quite got to the point where we recorded an album.  I wish we didn't give up on that band when most of us went off to college - we kept it going when we were freshman at Umass, but eventually we drifted apart.  What a shame, I think it we had kept it going we could have gotten somewhere.  I still have about 5 originals and a few covers that we recorded one weekend on a 4-track, and I still love to play those songs once in a while; there are a couple that are pretty good.  

I played in bands on and off for years, but after I moved to Jersey I hadn't really done anything until pretty recently.  I tried to put bands together many times, but found it just wasn't as easy as it used to be.  So in 2011 I got into recording in a big way when I got Garageband on my first iPad.  And from there it is history; I got bitten by the songwriting and recording bug.  

So today, in addition to Paradise Rose, the Guns N' Roses tribute band, I also have my own solo thing going.  I've released two solo albums under the name Thorne.  The first was Thorne - At the Edge, which featured Mark Alan Dooley on lead vocals.  And the second was Thorne - Thurtis Creed, with vocalist Staffan Karlsson from Sweden. 

Paradise Rose has been a lot of fun already, even though we’re still a new band.  We've played some pretty cool gigs already; our first gig was at the Stone Pony, and recently we played the Queen in Wilmington.  What a great venue that is to play!

What advice would you offer aspiring performers? 

Well, one big thing is that I let my parents convince me to play it safe and go to college; have a back up plan.  But what I didn't do right was, I should have had a back up plan that was parallel to my love for music, not instead of my music career.  So I ended up becoming a plastics engineer and a quality engineer, I should have majored in music or become a SOUND engineer.

The other thing is, I wish I had learned more music theory.  I mean, I actually took quite a bit of theory in high school and college.  I just never applied it to my guitar playing nearly as much as I should have.  I pretty much play completely by ear.  I know you hear that a lot, but it is really true.   

For aspiring songwriters, I highly recommend a songwriting and music collaboration website called Kompoz.com.  But beware, it can become addictive!   But I met all of the players on my first three albums on that website.  

And get good at social media!

Any new gigs or works in the future?

My number one project right now is definitely the tribute band.  Paradise Rose has shows on Saturday May 19 at Dingbatz in Clifton NJ, Saturday July 14 at Paul's Tavern in Belmar NJ, and Saturday August 18 at Bar XIII in Wilmington DE.  I just heard today that we got another show the first weekend in June at the AquaMania Music Festival up in Lake Hopatcong.  

We're also working on shows at places like Debonaire Music Hall in Teaneck, and a few other places that will hopefully be announced soon.  One thing I really want to play this year is the Roar to the Shore Motorcycle Rally in Wildwood.

I have another Thorne album called Worlds Apart that should be released soon, it also features Mark Alan Dooley on vocals.  I think he is going to mix the album also; he mixed most of the songs on my first album, and I really like his mixing style. I’ve also recorded a couple of songs with a vocalist from Australia named Mark Farmer, and I'm hoping we'll have enough songs to release an EP soon.  

Plus I have a metal anthem in the works called Hail Heavy metal, that I think is going to be really cool.  And I've started working with a local vocalist named Sonny Zackeo on some new original songs.  Sonny used to be the vocalist for a couple of original Metal bands from Jersey called Midnite Hellion and Iron Front.

Finally, I'm looking to start a local original hard rock band to record an album and then hit the road.

So here's to you Paradise Rose I wish you nothing but luck in all of your success & hope that yo keep going strong. Well that's going to do it for me so until then I'll catch you on the flipside be radically righteous!