Alkana — Welcome To My Paradise 1978 (USA, Hard Rock)

Q. Hi Danney. Why did you become a guitarist?

Danney: «I started playing piano at four years old, and I loved playing classical. After that, the Beatles came along, and I got heavy into drums and I kind of got lost in pop music. At age fourteen I was still a drummer but got into playing guitar. I was over at a friends house and I heard Jeff Beck’s Truth album. I told my friend then and there I was going to get a guitar, there was just something about the album that I absolutely loved. I had a guitar within a week. I never forgot classical music. It’s just something that’s part of me, especially the Baroque era.»

Q. How did you get Alkana band together?

Danney: «Craig Williams (bass) and I had played together in another band for two or three years. Don Mclaughlin (drums) we found 30 miles away from where we lived. The three of us rehearsed until we were tight and then put an ad in the paper for a singer and auditioned four or five before Jack Rucker joined».

Q. The album sounds to me like impressively advanced heavy metal, more like the eighties than 1978. What would you say to that?

Danney: «The guitar riffs and the harmonized guitar parts I don’t know where they came from to be honest. I had done a single perhaps five years before as a stand-in musician or better said studio musician. So when I got in the studio to do my own album I kind of felt like I should have free reign so I did whatever I felt. Why it sounds advanced for its time I don’t know, it was just the mood I was in at the time.»

Q. What bands in heavy metal and hard rock were you listening to at the time that might have been an influence to you?

Danney: «The bands I was listening to at the time were all English bands. Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, UFO, Deep Purple, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.»

Q. Seeing as the band is named after you, I guess you were the main ideas person/writer, is that correct?

Danney: «Yes that’s correct, I wrote all the tunes on the album but the title track, I gave credit to Craig Williams who came up with the base line, and I wrote the music around it.»

Q. How was the album received?

Danney: «The reception to Welcome to my Paradise was quite good. It had airplay in several cities in the US. I never knew the quantity of sales exactly. Obviously since we are playing to 3, 4 and 5000 seat venues and filling them every night I imagine it’s sold fairly well. I was interviewed several times and enjoyed them all. Although it wasn’t an interview I would have to say my favorite piece of press was for the time we played the swing auditorium which was a 10,000 seater. My father never saw me play but was so proud of the newspaper write up on the band he went out and bought several newspapers and sent me the clippings of the write up. I did have an extensive interview a few years ago from Greece, I think the interview lasted a good two hours but I don’t know what happened to the write up.»

Q. What happened with Alkana, did you play live much or play with any other bands? Why did it split up?

Danney: We played several venues, most of them as headliners and a couple as the opening act. I left the band because we got tied up in a lawsuit when my manager hit the president of our department in the mouth trying to renegotiate a contract with MCA. This was quite discouraging for the rest of the band and myself and I decided if I moved on and made a new lineup things would get better. The lawsuit lasted for years but eventually in my new band Excalibur we were offered a contract with CBS London, but my co-writer & collaborator left the band. I felt at that time I wasn’t going to allow anybody else to deny me my destiny so I quit the music business and joined the straight world and became a businessman.

True to his roots, when Danney delved back into music fourteen years after Excalibur, he used his multi-instrumental talents on a neo-classical record called «Rock the Bach», for which he was personally congratulated and praised by Steve Vai.

Thanks Danney!