Bullets and Octane Talk Shop With Steve Stevens

Bullets and Octane, the acclaimed rock band from Southern California, recently dropped their latest single/video “No One Gets Out Alive,” featuring renowned Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens. 

On the new single, vocalist Gene Louis raves, “Working with Steve Stevens on ‘No One Gets Out Alive’ has been an electrifying experience, blending his iconic guitar prowess with our relentless energy. Steve is not only a virtuoso but also an incredible collaborator who brought out the best in all of us. This hard-hitting track is a testament to our shared passion for pushing musical boundaries and delivering an unforgettable experience. Get ready to feel the adrenaline surge as we prove that with Steve’s legendary touch, nobody rocks harder than Bullets and Octane.”

The following is a transcribed conversation between Gene Louis and Bullets and Octane guitarist Clay Davies with Stevens conducted exclusively for Rock & Roll Globe. 

For more information about Bullets and Octane and their upcoming releases, please visit their official website. 

 

Gene: Hey everybody, this is Gene Louis. We’re talking here with Steve Stevens, legendary guitar player, and Clay Davies of Bullets and Octane. What’s up, guys? I was realizing last night, I was looking out at the stars, and I’m like, ‘Holy cow!’ In less than a few hours, we’re gonna have the brand new single, Bullets and Octane featuring Steve Stevens “Nobody Gets Out Alive,” and I was thinking, “How did we get here?” Clay and myself have been co-writing and producing songs for Bullets and Octane, and we just so happened to have that song ready to go.  Steve, as far as you remember, how did this whole thing come about with us talking? 

Steve: Well, really it was just you, Gene… you do your own inspirational social media posts in the morning. I was aware of the band and actually it was always hot girls telling me about Bullets and Octane. That’s how it usually happens, it’s girls first, right because then the guys will go where the girls are. I mean it’s the age-old story! 

I dug your positivity and your work ethic. On your social media, you would intersperse some of your walks in the morning with some stuff from the recording studio, so i was aware that you guys were doing new music. Then I started listening and I was blown away – I was like, this stuff is really really cool. It can’t be pigeonholed, it’s not just great rock ‘n’ roll and I identified with it. It’s well-written, super well-produced, great guitar playing. Gene you know you’re a badass as a as a lead singer and I just think I reached out to you.

I had left a message, I said “Hey, keep going guys” or something. And then you messaged me and said “Hey, is that really you?” and I said “Yeah, man, I’m following what you guys are up to.” And then obviously you had the song, which you guys had already recorded. Clay did all the heavy lifting on it, and I just played the solo. It just seemed perfect, like, “Oh yeah, this is easy.”

Gene: I appreciate you saying that, I mean that really does go a long way and it’s amazing. Clay – Bullets has been around for you know I feel like since the beginning of time. The funny thing about even meeting Clay – there was word around the street like, “Hey you know clay wants to work with you” and it’s just like some old Sunset Strip story where I literally pulled up to the Whisky a Go-Go and he was out front with this mohawk. I just walked up to him because I recognized him from this little face on Facebook. I’m like… that’s Clay Davies I could recognize that chin strap and mohawk anywhere. It was literally same with talking to you, Steve. I am just kind of at this point in my life and career where I am just like, “I’m just gonna talk to people and get right to it” you know what i mean? So I went up to Clay and i’m like, “Hey man, let’s do some stuff together.” As soon as I started working with Clay (i told him this the other day) he really reintroduced me to hard work again. Like I’ve been around a lot of people where we just write stuff really quickly, we record it really quickly, and then we look at each other and go, “Why aren’t we on the radio?” That’s what Clay really brought out in me was like this whole another level that I really needed to reset the bar inside of me of what to expect from myself. 

 

 

And so us having that song at a certain level and then you and me connecting, Steve, and I’m thinking like, “Man, it just so happens that we happen to have this song that is brought to a certain part where it’s ready to be heard by somebody.” And when I sent it to you and I’m like, “Well, it doesn’t have a lead guitar part on it yet.” You know, it’s like… if it would have been any other time, we wouldn’t have had something to necessarily show you.

Clay: So, and I couldn’t believe – literally within 12 hours, eight hours! You sent over a guitar solo, and by the time I got back, I had a solo to listen to. And that’s when I knew it wasn’t an AI-generated fake Steve Stevens. Gene calls me; he’s like, “Hey, Steve Stevens wants to possibly do a solo on that song,” and I was like “Oh shit!” We were wondering if this is an impersonator or what, it can’t be Steve Stevens! And we get the solo back and we’re like holy fuck it is Steve Stevens!!! It happened so quickly man, I think one of my favorite moments was the day of making the music video. I remember we’re up like four floors up in that warehouse and we’re you know we’re trying to shoot this whole video in, like, two or three hours – who does that? And I remember looking down from the window and I see this black SUV; if I’m not mistaken. And then there you go getting out with your black hair; and I knew I was like, “We’re actually doing this!” 

Steve: I think I saw about three songs’ videos on YouTube that you guys have done previously, um, and my thought was, who’s producing this? Because this is so much better than… I’m not going to name names… but all these other bands that are out there. I just thought it was so much better. And I’m not just saying that; it’s just like you guys are a really good team, you’re bringing out the best in each other and you seem to you seem to not only connect musically but there’s a feeling there that when I hear this stuff, there’s a cohesiveness and there’s a support thing. You know man, I’ve worked with so many different musicians over the course of my career and that’s what it’s really about – you know you have to find a good partner and you have to find people that want to contribute to the big picture. 

Gene: What stuck with me was that I remember you saying, “Man, watching you and Clay work together kind of reminds me of Billy and myself a little bit.” Clearly we’re not exactly where we thought we would be at this age and this stage in our careers musically, and I know the climate of music as a whole and society has changed. In such a scary way that we’ve never seen before, but on that note, I think when him and I came together, we had both on our separate journeys in life where we’ve tried everything, and we’ve done everything, and we’ve made a lot of mistakes, and we’ve done a lot of substances. So I kind of feel like we’ve learned a lot of lessons. When you find somebody else who has been through the ringer and tried everything, it’s really easy to sit down and go, “Alright, man, are you ready to do this thing?” Where we do it right, let’s do it together. We both have got a lot of pavement behind us, we’ve done stuff. And it really goes every day, text messaging songs back and forth. There’s no pride, there’s no ego; it’s like, I don’t know about that or that’s great. And we just… we just work on it that way. 

And that only comes with a little bit of… you know the maturity that comes along with going through bullshit.  

Steve, I definitely want to talk to you about if there’s advice you’d give to us from where we’re at at this point. Maybe talk about what you went through in the past that we could you know maybe learn from a little bit. 

Steve: I get a lot of messages from guitar players just starting up and guitar is not certainly like it was in the ’70s and ’80s where it was at the forefront. The thing I say is you got to be willing to do it whether you make a million dollars or you make one dollar. You gotta want to do it because you want to create.  There’s a lot of legacy bands out there that are putting asses in seats, but they’re not doing new music. That’s the one thing that Billy Idol and I have always done we’ve continued to do new music because we have to. I think with all the ingredients you have and all the goodwill and all the positive energy, that things are going to grow for both of you guys.  

The ‘90s hit and it wasn’t cool to be a so-called Glam Rock guitar player. Fortunately with Billy Idol we kind of skirted that to some extent because our records had a bit of heavy guitar, but also they were pop records, there were dance elements and all that. We were sort of able to escape the Hollywood thing like that. We were in the ‘80s, and it’s come back around, and we’re back to playing big venues. But it never occurred to us. We never talked about that. We just said, “Hey, let’s make some new music. Let’s do this. Let’s go out and play.” We’ll do the House of Blues, okay, great, and some of those gigs, I will say we did a a duo thing at a tiny little theater on La Cienega. You know, he had released his book, and he was doing the audio version and asked me to come along in a company and we play acoustically. There were only 200 people there at the most. And that stood out, and that spearheaded a lot of what we do now because it allowed us to not just play songs; but also tell stories in between. Let people know how the song came about.

I mean you know I’m not a record company exec, I’m not a record company geek or anything; but I see good things happening for Bullets and Octane!

Gene: I love that, and Steve, I appreciate when you say that. The other day, I was like, “Okay, well, it’s gotta happen now, Steve Stevens said it’s gonna happen!” So, I started picking up my Rolls-Royces. I started thinking, “It’s like, now I gotta make it happen. We can’t disappoint everybody.” I remember as a kid, literally, my next-door neighbor, one of my best friends growing up, his family had a little bit more money, so he had MTV. So I remember with the babysitter being there, we would watch MTV and I remember specifically looking up at the TV and, and you know, “Cradle of Love” was on. I remember I can be in that moment right now in my head and it’s just so insanely strange to even just be in this moment. Life is just very weird. 

 

VIDEO: Billy Idol “Cradle of Love”

In the ‘90s; it was kind of like my generation, you know? I was a young person going into my teens, and that’s when you call it yours, right? When you’re becoming a teenager and stuff. But knowing how important weird shit was, like haircuts, you know? So the fact that you had long hair and Billy Idol had short hair, that was a big thing for me. And I remember, it was kind of a weird thing back then. I remember Metallica cutting their hair; it was like they killed someone. So you guys kind of skated through without getting the full-blown, like, ’80s hair band, you’re done!

You guys did have a dance thing, he had a punk rock thing, you had the big hair thing, you know. And young people judge when a band, like STP comes out, and people say they sound just like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. I’m gonna buy the CD and put it right next to my grunge section on my wall, you know. Young people have to compartmentalize things in a strange way, like that. So it’s really weird that you guys did kind of like find a niche. 

Like if you put you guys on in Spotify and stuff like that, you’re gonna hear a lot more of the new wave stuff. So I put on Billy Idol radio and I was expecting to hear you know maybe some Mötley Crüe or Cinderella, or I don’t know, but it was all like New Order and you know, different stuff like that.  

Steve: Looking back, there was definitely a lot more pop involved inthe writing of those records. Well, we were really fortunate that our record producer, Keith Forsey, came from doing Donna Summer’s records and really was an English pop disco producer. We all said it was almost like a gumbo. Billy brings the punk, Keith brings the dance elements, and by being a dance producer, the grooves were amazing, you know, I mean, he was such a stickler with the drums. That’s why our records had had great bass and drum, you know, underpinning all the other stuff. Where a lot of the rock records didn’t have that sonic thing, and they weren’t doing dance remixes like we were. I think Def Leppard was one of the first to actually start doing dance remixes of the rock bands. But interestingly, I’m old enough to remember when I started playing and playing out gigs I was in a cover band and we were doing all the classic 70s rock stuff you know Mott The Hoople, Queen, Aerosmith all this stuff and living in New York and then suddenly it’s Blondie and Talking Heads and television and then The Cars and it was like all my other guitar playing friends were cutting their hair and you know getting skinny ties.  So I was noticing that they were playing the same stuff maybe, but playing it uh a little bit differently using more effects and things like that.  I had seen the changing of the guard before and I always looked for the good stuff, you know, and when the 90s came as you mentioned STP. What I heard in Dean DeLeo was Jimmy Page, I mean he sounds very Jimmy Page influenced, yeah, and then obviously Soundgarden.  I was like oh my goodness, it’s Alice in Chains, and, you know, and when I heard Nirvana, I heard Beatles influences. Those melodies!  I’ve never been one of those guys to be scared of change.  Good music is good music. I mean, you know, the, the guys working in my garden playing some Mexican music, and I’m going, yeah, shit’s pretty good, actually, you know, the fucking rhythms are, like, happening, so, yeah, I just always look for the good in music. And if it’s stuff that I don’t like, I just, you know, don’t listen to it. 

Gene: Yeah, God, what a sweetheart of a guy, like, you’re just, like, the nicest dude, it’s really unbelievable. 

Steve: Tell that to my wife! 

Gene: Back to the whole thing of having Billy Idol music being clumped in with, like, some of that New Wave stuff, when you hear Spotify and stuff like that. There’s not really too many other, like, rock legend guitar gods that came from what you would call, you know, new wave, so to speak, right? I mean, is there anybody else that is known for being a guitar, like, you know, even, like, solo stuff? Is there songwriter guitar players and stuff like that? 

Steve: Sure, but when it comes to, like, actually being a guitar person, like, on the cover of Guitar Player magazine, I don’t really hear a lot of stuff that was clumped into new wave where anybody else kind of, like, took that spot and went, ‘yeah, this is my area,’ I guess, you know? For many of us guitar players, it was Andy Summers, because he introduced this new sound, and the Police, there was no bigger band than the Police in the 80s, I mean, playing Shea Stadium, and you know, I remember I saw them before the second record came out, and they were all amazing musicians, you know, Stewart Copeland and Sting, and it was like, the second coming of like Rush or something. English guitar players, for a very long time, didn’t want to show off.

It was almost, they were embarrassed to be good. It was like I can do this, but I don’t really want to show you, it’s an English thing. Yeah. In the late ’60s, it was Clapton, Page and Beck who were the guitar heroes. But since then, a lot of the English guitar players don’t want extended solos, and, you know, they look for another way to do it, I mean, Matt from Muse is an incredible guitar player, but he’s found a new way to introduce it sonically! You know, so I think the English thing, because so many of those bands, we played a lot of shows with those bands; you know, you know, A Flock of Seagulls and Thompson Twins and all of those kind of bands, and we were the only ones with distorted guitars.

Gene: Who else did you guys tour with back then? 

Steve: You know, we played dates with Duran Duran. And I became friends with Andy Taylor, who was the first guitar player to mention me in the English press; he liked Rebel Yell, this is before Rebel Yell was successful, there. And we played a couple of dates with them, and then we became friends; we hung out and did a lot of nefarious stuff. 

Robert Palmer was the first rock star I ever met; my previous band recorded in the Bahamas, and I met Robert there.  So then when Andy was looking for an outlet to shred  like what I was doing, they put together Power Station. 

 

VIDEO: The Power Station “Some Like It Hot”

Gene: I love that stuff, man, that stuff’s great! Wow, that’s so cool, yeah, yeah! You know, I was thinking about um, we have so many things to to get to here, but I was thinking just to touch a little bit more on the Bullets and Octane music video, “No One Gets Out Alive.” I was watching it again this morning because you know, like I said, it’s like holy cow! It comes out tonight, this is amazing. And I was, I’m watching it, this guitar porn of a music video, and I’m like, there’s Steve Stevens, and then there’s Clay, and there’s Jack, and it’s just this row of guitars.

And then sonically, listening to it, you know, I’m like, this is pretty intense. I’m pretty excited about the assault that you get with this song because there’s an element, like you know, straight up rock and roll, you know, like there’s some Billy Idol stuff for sure, right? Like, we’ll always have that, and it’s besides the hair. Some of that part in the bridge and the the building up to guitar solo has some of the Queens of the Stone Age in it. Some of these things that Bullets and Octane have been doing in recent stuff is very adventurous as you say.

You’ve got to make songs two minutes and 30 seconds now for people’s attention spans. And on the other hand, you have people talking about that it’s coming back around, that these younger generations are listening to some of those early Led Zeppelin albums and things like that. And so, you know, getting a little bit deeper is going to be something that’s going to be sought after very soon. You know, I mean, you do what you gotta do; you do what you do anyway, regardless. But it is kind of an interesting thing when I hear it and I’m like, ‘It’s coming out’ and you know what.

Steve: When something comes out, you try to imagine people listening to this are hearing it for the first time and I think it checks all the boxes, you know. Oh, great melody, great, great production. I think a key thing is for any lead singer, you’ve got to have a great scream, you know. I mean, and I remember reading that Steve Albini when he first got Nirvana demos sent to him or whatever the thing that sold him was Kurt’s scream; he didn’t care about anything else. There are a couple of little things that are really unique to what you do, I think. It’s very unique, there’s no mistaking who it is; it’s kind of like your fingerprint. And so I think this song has a little bit of everything in it you know, uh, and then there’s me, you know, screwing it up with a guitar solo. 

Gene: Yeah, pretty big chance we took. By having two breakdowns in one song, but we couldn’t live without it. Couldn’t live without it, yeah.

We tried. That’s one thing that I will say about Clay and myself is we start off with just one cool idea, like that’s a cool riff or that’s the cool chorus, let’s build around it. And then we end up with too much, you know? And we’re trying to cut down as much stuff as we can, like can we squeeze it all in now and not hit the four-minute mark where it sounds like uh, you know, an Anthrax opus or something crazy, you know? But I think we… I think it’s pretty fun and exciting. And I gotta say, personally For myself, I can’t believe it came together. I’m so excited with the direction personally of where Bullets and Octane is now at and where it’s going.

Clay: And we also should add that you know, it was mentioned that Steve did the solo, but he also played rhythm on the right side that’s Steve playing rhythm. 

Gene: You know, and it’s weird that you talk about like my like my voice or my scream or something like that. I don’t know, I never really you know thought of myself as like a vocalist more than more of like an entertainer type of singer and you just have the voice that you have right, I mean you can’t really choose that too much.

Steve: This is even before editing or any of that stuff. The main thing, is watching the reaction of the producer: Is it believable? Do I believe it, uh, is that person selling it? And to me, that’s the key about what you do: You sell every line and every word, and you mean it, and that’s what separates the men from the Boys.  

Clay: I’ll write some ideas, send it to Gene maybe I’ll maybe I’ll send him a verse without me singing on it and see what he comes up with. A lot of times I’ll write the whole thing but I don’t want him to hear it because I don’t want to influence what he’s doing and I don’t want to influence what he might do, so then that’s right and say do what you what you. Would do, and then later I’ll be well. Here’s what I did, and then usually Gene will be like, “Well, why don’t we put them both together?” Yeah, exactly I think that. Yeah, I think that’s that’s the way that’s usually the way it works, is, uh, you got to go with your instincts, and and then you mix them up, and uh, you know a lot of times, you know, with uh, with guitar parts and stuff,

 

VIDEO: Billy Idol “White Wedding”

Steve: You know that whole thing in “White Wedding,” that Spaghetti Western thing, that’s Billy’s idea; he came up with that. That was the last song to be recorded on the first record. We didn’t have a single, so our producer locked Billy away and we were in L.A., and about 9 in the morning Billy knocks on my hotel room door and he’s got the boom box, I think I got the single! Then he played me a 10-minute version of “White Wedding” – his demo and that guitar was there I mean that that whole spaghetti western. It’s a really hard thing to write a single if you take your whole life to do it. But let alone when the label says, “We need it by the end of the week.”

Fortunately, we had a producer that allowed me play all the guitars on it, even though on the record he didn’t have the single. He gave me the opportunity and when we didn’t have a single, didn’t call in some, you know, ‘song doctors’ or songwriters to come in.  He believed in what we were doing and just told me “Don’t come out of the studio until you got one.”

Gene: So I did have to ask you because Rock and Roll Globe wants to know. You got the 35th anniversary of Atomic Playboys, what are we doing?

Steve: Yeah, well, you want to talk about an expensive hobby! That record was the obvious 80s big-budget album, you know, spend a lot of money on all this other stuff and consume a bunch of drugs and all that. It’s the Behind The Music standard blueprint. Unfortunately, my producer walked out on the record before we mixed it, so I was kind of left holding the bag on that. But we’ve been in talks with Warner, who have the catalog, about remixing it because it’s like virtually no bass on the record. Because you know one of the pitfalls of cocaine is the bottom end. So I’d love to remix it and possibly put on a couple of songs that we had that never made it onto the album. It was never brought to fruition after the demos, but there were additional, additional tunes on that. 

 

 

 

Gene: I mean, is that… does it trip you out though? Like, next year is the 20th anniversary for Bullets and Octane’s In the Mouth of the Young. I just think to myself: where, where on God’s green earth has those 20 years gone? Dude, regarding the 35th anniversary of Atomic Playboys, does that even seem weird anymore or is it like just another 10 years? 

Steve: Well I mean the crazy thing is I’ve worked with Billy Idol for 42 years. I’ve been around a lot of musicians who made their career in the ‘80s and it always devolves into war stories. Billy and I – we never do that, we just have our relationship.  It is healthier than it ever was. There’s more honesty, there’s no bullshit. We work together because we choose to work together – we like each other’s company. We go out to dinner and it’s genuine.  

We are a team and it’s fruitful but we don’t reminisce. Maybe because we can’t remember. I mean there’s probably something healthy about that, too, because I’ve been around circles where I didn’t realize it at the time, but we start talking only about the past. And you know there’s not a lot of forward movement in that because what are you going to do? You know, I think I battle with that stuff personally all the time, when living in the past. And I’m like, this is getting in the way of me enjoying the present and planning for the future.

I’ll tell you what helps. We work with young producers and young engineers who weren’t around at that time, they enjoyed the records, but they don’t have any war stories with them and they constantly bring a new perspective to stuff. They like what we did, but also have something new to add, so it avoids the dwelling in the past. 

 

VIDEO: Bullets and Octane feat. Steve Stevens “No One Gets Out Alive”