(December 2007). PCM's Melissa talked to Erik Norlander, keyboardist, composer and producer for his wife, Lana Lane, as well as Rocket Scientists and, most recently, the band Asia, led by John Payne. The two talked about Erik's influences growing up, his various experiences and what it was like playing in St. Petersburg.

M: Hi, how are you?

E: Really good, how are you?

M: I'm fantastic. So where are you right now?

E: I'm in my home studio in El Dorado Hills, California.

M: Oh cool. How's the weather there?

E: It's beautiful. It's sunny and there's a really nice view of the Sierra Mountains and it's a pretty nice day.

M: Sounds like a good day for December.

E: Oh, definitely.

M: Here it's rainy and cold.

E: Oh boy. Yeah, I heard about all the hard weather going on around the country. So yeah, it's pretty nice here.

M: That's good. Um, so I have a couple questions for you. I guess - you've had an extensive career, so let's start at the beginning. I heard growing up you studied both jazz and classical music on several instruments. So what started your interest in music to begin with?

E: I started playing piano when I was eight years old. I took piano lessons and I just really loved it. When I got into junior high school I joined the school band and played some woodwind instruments there, and then in high school I kept on doing that but I also played piano in the jazz band. When I was around 15-years-old, I started working a really horrible fast food job. I saved up enough money to buy my first synthesizer and from there I joined a rock band and I started playing rock music as well. Yeah, it just kind of mushroomed from there. I continued studying music all through college and also playing in bands and doing sessions and all that. By the time I was, gosh, 18 or 19, I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life. I just turned 40 over the summer and, so far, so good.

M: (giggles) So how did you end up getting into synthesizing? You bought your stuff when you were a teenager?

E: Yup, growing up I just loved music with synthesizers. I loved Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Yaz and Yello; so many of those bands would use synthesizers in kind of an orchestral and cymbonic way, as well as an experimental and electronic way. So combining all of those influences: rock with jazz or electronic with progressive music just really resonated within me and I just kind of asked a lot of questions to people I met along the way, I hung out in studios a lot and sold a lot of gear - just kind of learned how everything worked, inside and out.

M: I think that's really interesting, how you can encompass so many different genres in your music. So, I heard that some of your influences are Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. How would you say that they have influenced you to help you develop your own sound?

E: These guys are basically my parents' age, so when I was a kid growing up, these guys already had very impressive, established careers. I would listen to their albums and occasionally see videos of them. I would just kind of awestruck at how you could take a Hammond Moog or a Minimoog synthesizer or a Mellotron or even a grand piano, and put it in a wrong setting, and really get these crazy landscapes of sound. And I would say it went from their playing to the specific techniques, down to the sounds they used and the instruments they used. I player like Keith Emerson - he plays very much outside the chord like a jazz player would. He uses a lot of dissonance and that kind of extended harmony in his music. And then you have someone like Rick Wakeman that's more of a classical player in that he plays very much inside the chord and maybe much more in the style of someone like Bach or Mozart or-

M: Somebody classical?

E: I mean, Emerson is very classical, too, of course, but his classical influence seems to be more from the modern 20th century composers like [Alberto] Ginastera or even Aaron Copeland. And then Jon Lord is also very much a classical player, but Jon Lord was mostly known for the Hammond org[an] and working in the Deep Purple. That was also really interesting to me, how all three of those guys could take an organ, which growing up and you go to church, and you hear this organ you go, "what a boring sound" - and then these guys would run it through like a Marshall Guitar Amplifier and just make the thing absolutely rock, you know, just like you would with an electric guitar. I thought that was just a really cool thing. So yeah, you combine the technique that all these guys used and the way they interpret music and harmony, along with the sounds they used, like the overdriven Hammond organ or the Moog synthesizers or the Mellotrons and that kind of thing. That's what really turned me on and that's what I've been doing and what I continue to do.

M: So yeah, they all seem pretty different, so to combine those things to develop your sound is pretty impressive. Aside from the keyboard, what else do you play?

E: I play bass guitar, my wife, Lana Lane, is a vocalist and I produced, gosh, about 15 albums for her over the years, between studio albums, live albums. On her newest album, Red Planet Boulevard, I actually play bass guitar on the whole record, in addition to doing keyboard, which was pretty fun. I also play guitar a little bit. I play woodwinds, saxophone and clarinet.

M: Wow.

E: That's about it.

M: So would you say that the keyboard's your favorite?

E: Yes, definitely. It's my favorite and it's the instrument I'm most proficient at. Some of those other instruments, I don't know if I would hire myself to play those. So I bring in the pros to play those most of the time.

M: So it's just more for fun.

E: Right.

M: Umm, okay. So you were in the Rocket Scientists in the early 80s? Can you tell me more about that experience?

E: It basically started with myself and a guitarist and vocalist.

M: Mark McCrite?

E: Mark McCrite. And we actually met in high school and we were roommates in college at UCLA.

M: Oh, okay!

E: We basically wrote songs and demoed songs and we put together a band and went out and played gigs in Hollywood on the Sunset Strip and around town. We went through a lot of musicians with the band, so basically it kind of remained as a two-person project with sidemen, basically, filling it out. We released our first album in 1993, which was called Earthbound, and we were trying to - you know, this is the early 90s and pop is king, and we're trying to make a name for ourselves and basically trying to make a living doing it. So we kind of downplayed our more esoteric and progressive influences and made a more commercial album. So we put out that album, and the people who really embraced it were the fans of progressive music, and they really encouraged us to stretch out a little bit more.

So when we did the second album, Brutal Architecture in 1995, we went for a much more progressive sound, and that's really stayed with the band over the years. Actually, next week we're going to be releasing a box set called Rocket Scientists: Looking Backward, and it's going to be a five-disc box set that contains the first three albums from the band - all the 90s studio albums - and a CD of new material. We got the guys together in the studio and we played a lot of the old songs live in the studio. The fifth disc is a DVD; we brought in a high-definition video crew to basically film those sessions and interview us and all that. And then we have a lot of historical footage on the DVD as well, so it's going to be a pretty impressive set.

M: It sounds really cool. So you still work with Mark? You kept in touch with him and stuff?

E: Yes, we actually did the Looking Backward sessions in February of this year, and we did our European and U.S. tour in, let's see, March or April of this year. So the band was playing as recently as April - no, April and May, actually - so we played through April and May and then came back home and we recorded a new Lana Lane album, just kind of looking after business and stuff.

M: How does performing live compare to performing in a studio, being that you have synthesized music?

E: I think in a live situation you have to reproduce the music, but you also have to give a performance. And we have to combine those things in a very confident and skilled way so that we put on a good show and don't look like a bunch of jerks up onstage. And in the studio you can be much more relaxed, take your time. It may take you three or four hours to lay down a solo, where live you have one chance. The solo section comes up after the second chorus and you either get it right or you don't.

M: It's more pressure.

E: For live, you're very much in the moment and there's a lot of preparation that has to go into it so that when that moment comes, you're confident and well-prepared.

M: So do you find the pressure of the moment to be invigorating, or do you prefer to work in a studio because it's more relaxed.

E: I prefer them both for different reasons. I think, ultimately, the studio is a little more creative because it's wide open; you're recording something that hasn't been recorded before. But at the same time, playing live is really invigorating and exciting because you're playing with great musicians onstage for an audience that's there to hear your music. It's kind of the culmination of everything; you've built up to that point so you're taking your catalogue of music you've recorded over 15-20 years and you're playing that on stage. That's a lot of fun, too. I don't think I'd be happy doing just one; I like both sides of it.

M: Well that's good. So another side is that you produce music for your wife. So what is that like - that relationship - working with someone so personal? Do you bicker or... ?

E: We bicker all the time, but not about music (laughs). I would say it's probably one of the smoothest musical relationships I've ever had because Lana and I met playing music. She actually hired me to be the keyboard player in a band she was in in the late 80s. I basically broke up that band; I guess I was the Yoko Ono figure. I told her that she was so much better than the other people in the band and she should go off and be a solo artist.

M: (laughs)

E: So she left the band and her band kind of dissolved. We started working on music for her, and that culminated in her first album in 1995. Since then we've done about 15 records for her, between covers albums, a ballad collection, live albums and seven or eight regular studio releases she made. So it's been a very productive collaboration and it may be kind of a unique one because we really have a lot of trust in each other as artists. She really allows me to produce and arrange in the way that I do; I really allow her to sing and phrase and right in the way that she does. We've been able to kind of nurture each other and be there in the end for the other, so it's been a very productive and fruitful relationship.

M: So producing for her kind of blends with creating your own music, or are they more like separate?

E: You know what, I'm working on a Lana Lane album right now. It is my own music. I do a lot of the writing and style, and I don't feel like it's a secondary project or a side project. Working with Lana is the main thing I'm doing at the moment. Just like when I'm working on my solo albums, I feel that way. When I'm working with Rocket Scientists, I feel that way. And the work I'm starting with Asia right now, it's the same sort of thing. It's like - imagine your doctor and you're going in to operate on patients. You don't have favorite patients; you go in and do the best you can. You just complete the operation and, hopefully, it's a success. Or an attorney trying different court cases; you treat each court case with care and skill, and that's how I approach the different musical projects.

M: So you're invested in the same way.

E: Absolutely.

M: As you mentioned, you recently joined the band Asia. How did you end up coming together with them?

E: I've been a fan of the band for years. My gosh, they've been around for over 25 years or something. I've always loved the band and I kind of followed the drama that went on within the band with them changing members and all of that. And I've met a few of the members over the years. I met John Wetton, the original vocalist/bassist, in 2001 and we stayed in contact for a long time. Then, let's see. It would have been over the summer this year - I was in Holland recording a new Lana Lane album, and I got an e-mail from John Payne who's the current bassist in the band. He's actually been the front man in the band for about 15 years now, I think longer than just about any position in the band, except for the keyboardist. He said that the band was reforming and they were looking for a keyboardist to come in and write songs and do arrangements; basically take on the role that Geoffrey Downes, the previous keyboarder, had in the band.

And so we exchanged a couple of e-mails and talked on the phone a few times and thought this would be a really great idea. We met up in Los Angeles and shook hands on it and set the whole thing in motion. That's kind of how it came to pass. It was actually really easy. I was so familiar with the band, and John was familiar with my work, so we had a nice mutual respect going on. There wasn't any audition or lawyers involved or anything like that. It was, "Hey, you want to be in the band?" And I said "yes," and that as pretty much it. I think that's how it should work, too.

M: I agree.

E: I think when you get to many managers and lawyers involved to isolate the musicians from each other, that becomes a problem. In this case, it's a real mutual-respect society and I think it's going to be a very fruitful collaboration. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

M: So you'd say it's been a smooth experience so far?

E: Definitely.

M: So what have you done with them so far? Have you started working together yet?

E: We've just dabbled in a few things, messing around with some song idea. John Payne, the front man, is actually in the middle of a tour right now in England, doing the War of the Worlds Tour, which was a really great concept album from the 70s. John is playing the role that was originally played by Phil Lynott, the bassist and front man for Thin Lizzy several years back. That's a pretty cool gig for him, and we're really proud of him for doing that. Right after the holidays we'll resume the writing and work on the new record. I know there are some live dates in the works, too.

M: Yeah, I was wondering if you were planning on going on tour, as well.

E: Absolutely, that's definitely in the works. You know, the way it happens with the live dates is that I'm sure we'll be right in the middle of recording the album and… then we'll have all these tour dates booked to kind of take a break from recording to come out and do the shows.

M: Would you just do previous songs, or the ones you've been recording?

E: I would say at the beginning we'd do previous songs by the band. John's been in the band 15 years now, so there's a lot of music he's been performing all these years. So I'll interpreting those songs as the keyboardist and keeping up the great heart that Geoff Downes created, and hopefully adding my own style to stuff, as well.

M: How would you say your sound has changed over the course of your career?

E: I think as I've matured as a human being, my sounds and my music has matured as well. I think I've gotten a bit more advanced in my music harmony, and not necessarily having to fill out every part of the chord, but rather playing the most important notes and then leaving space for the other instruments. When I was young, I'd play these huge keyboard rings and I'd have these 2,000 watt amplification systems, so I'd take these two big-handed chords and kind of just shake the live and all that. The problem with that is it sounds great when you're playing by yourself, but when you're playing in a band, if what you're doing is too thick, the sound man will have to turn you down so you can hear the rest of the band. But then all of a sudden your really huge sounds are only coming through a little bit in the spaces that are left by the other musician.

If you approach it from the other side and say, "Okay, here's where the guitar's playing; the guitar is playing in this register and the keyboard, and here's what the drum is doing rhythmically," and if you leave space for those instruments, then you put the keyboard parts in places where no one else is playing - now, all of a sudden, your simple melodies and your two- or three-note chords sound absolutely huge since there's nothing else competing with them. So that's probably the biggest thing I've learned over the years: how to fit the keyboard into the arrangement to make them sound as big and massive and effective as possible.

M: With writing music, what is usually your inspiration; how do you usually start?

E: It depends on the song, really, but generally it just starts with a melody and a lyric idea. Then I'll sit down at the piano and kind of build out the chord progression and build up the arrangement from there. My feeling is you have to have a great song, and you can't dress up a song with cool synthesizer sounds and big guitars or big drums to make it sound better than it really is. You have to have a great melody, you have to have a great lyric and a strong supporting chord progression, and if a song doesn't knock you up being played on a piano or an acoustic guitar, then building up a big arrangement around it doesn't help.

I've always felt you had to have the chord of the song first. You'd think if you take any of the great, hugely orchestrated songs - like if you take any of the Yes songs from the 70s or Lake & Palmer or Procol Harum and you break it down to an acoustic guitar and a vocal, they still hold up. You still hear those really great songs, and then when they make this massive, kind of symphonic arrangement around it, it just makes it that much better. But you still need to have the great song, the great melody. I think I just said the same thing like three times.

M: (laughs) I think that's the basic point, though, that it comes down to the basic music and, if you don't have it, everything else won't make it better.

E: That's right.

M: So, you've had a pretty expansive career. Over the course, you've recorded in various different genres, and I was wondering if you could tell me more about the rock concert album, the opera rock concert album that you created.

E: Live in St. Petersburg? Is that the one?

M: Umm, yes. Well, any opera rock I would like to hear about, so…

E: I'm sorry, say it one more time.

M: Yes. That album.

E: Okay. This was an album we recorded in St. Petersburg, Russia at the end of our 2004 tour. This was a pretty long tour - I think it was about four months long - which, for an independent artist, is a pretty long tour. I guess if you're the Rolling Stones or something you can tour for like two years. For an indie artist, a four month tour is pretty impressive. So we started in a festival in California and it was basically me doing a solo keyboard set with the big Moog modulation synthesizer and some other keyboards.

I brought in three vocalists to sort of go along with it, and it my wife, Lana; Mike McCrite from Rocket Scientists and Kelly Keeling, who is a vocalist I've worked with on some of my studio albums. We did that show and it meant over really really well, and I was invited to play some other gigs further east. Kind of making my way out east, there were some other shows along the way. Like I played this big festival in Wisconsin called Rock Fest, and it was pretty neat. We played with the Allman Brothers and Judas Priest. I forget who else was playing, but it was a big 3 or four day event, and it was really cool. After that, I added a drummer. I called up my friend Vinnie Appice, who is known from Black Sabbath, the 80s version of Black Sabbath. He went on to play for Ronnie James Dio, solo and all that, and then of course Heaven and Hell, which is sort of like a Black Sabbath without Ozzy Osbourne. So Vinnie came, then Kelly Keeling was the vocalist, and he also played bass. We had a power trio going on, and we did a bunch of U.S. dates for that. And then we had some tour dates in Europe, where Lana was also going to join us. So at that point, Vinnie had to leave because he had another tour with The Lizards that he had to do. At that point I brought on these two Dutch musicians that I worked with prior, as well...

So Kelly and Lana and I went over to Europe and rehearsed a little bit with these guys, and then we went on 17 or 18 shows across Europe. We went all the way up to Madrid and Barcelona, through France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and by the end of the tour, we finished up in Russia and the last show was in St. Petersburg. By this time Kelly and I had been playing together for four months; Lana had come on and made some guest appearances, as well, and then we had done about 16 or 17 shows with these Dutch musicians.

By the last concert in Petersburg, the band was really tight and we really had a nice vibe going on with all of the musicians. It was kind of an interesting show because it was staged in an old Russian naval academy building; it was kind of a big hall, almost like the hall in Harry Potter where they all have their meals and meetings and all that. It was like one of those cool, instrumental halls; it wasn't a traditional venue at all. And then they put up a stage at one end and video screens on either side of the room and lights and all that, and we put on a show there. It was just such a great show that we released it on DVD. It's just such a great way to summarize that whole year's worth of touring.

M: It sounds like a lot of fun.

E: Yeah, and actually, I got one of the - probably one of the biggest compliments I've ever been paid, and I don't know if it was meant to be that, but it was a DJ at the big rock radio station in St. Petersburg, and he went on his show to promote the gig and all that. After the show he came up to me and said, "Erik, your music really suits the architecture of the city." I thought that was such a cool thing to say.

M: Wow, that is really cool.

E: Yeah, and that's definitely not something you hear everyday. St. Petersburg is such a beautiful city. It's a port city and it has all of these great influences from all over Europe. It's got Italian influences and Dutch influences and Scandinavian influences, so-

M: That's a wonderful compliment.

E: Yes, and it was a pretty exotic place to play in, too, because when I grew up, there was still a Cold War going on. To go play in Russia, that was just something you didn't think of. So we started going to Japan in the 90s, and that was pretty cool, pretty exotic, but I think Russia was even a step above that on the exotic scale. It was just a really really neat thing to do, and I'm so glad we got to do it and film that DVD there.

M: Can you tell me about the Music Machine rock opera that you're releasing?

E: Sure. You know, as a solo artist, I've tried to do something different than just regular rock n' roll albums. I did Rocket Scientists and a ton of songs with Lana, and for the solo albums, I always wanted those to be something a little different and unique. For the first album I did Threshold, which was an instrumental, kind of progressive electronic album with just a keyboard, bass and drums. And then a few years later I did Seas of Orion, which was a completely electronic album.

So for Music Machine, I guess I just turned 35 and I had done a lot of albums and had some decent success. I thought, "I don't want to keep on doing the same thing and go stale. I want to stay active and push the envelope," and I thought, "What a better idea than doing a rock opera." I grew up with Pink Floyd The Wall, The Who's Tommy and Phantom of the Paradise and all of these great 70s rock operas. So you know, as a writer, when you're writing literature or something, they tell you to write what you know.

M: Weren't you a literature major or something?

E: I was, yeah, a literature major. I have an English degree, of all things. And they always tell you to write what you know; don't write about something that you've never experienced before. So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to write a rock opera that's based on my experience in the music business." I'm also a really big science fiction fan, so I kind of put it all in a sci-fi context, with this idea of a giant evil mega-corporation that creates this genetically-engineered rock star who pulls strings throughout his life and all that.

It's really a metaphor for how the music business works because so many great artists have just been crushed by the business of music and how record labels and business people have really manipulated them and taken advantage of them. So that's kind of what the album is about. You see this bright-eyed kid come on the scene and he rises to the top and has this massive fame, and then the rug is kind of pulled out from underneath him as the next big thing comes along.

M: That must speak to a lot of music artists.

E: I've never had any kind of mega success, but I've had ups and downs and I've gone and played really big gigs and had an album do really really well, but then a couple of years later, you're not really wanted anymore. You kind of have to reinvent yourself and build up a whole new type of band with new musicians and do gigs at new venues through new touring companies and all that. It can be a rocky road, and I've always tried to have a good perspective on it. Working on the business as long as I have, I've seen so many great musicians just devoured by the business and so many quit and you never hear from them again. It's not because their out of ideas, it's because they can't function in that kind of brutal world.

That's really what the Music Machine is about; it's kind of a light concept on the surface, but underneath there's some very heavy thing going on. I think the album actually has a lot of emotional power because of that. And the vocalists that we used - a lot of them are guys that have been around a long time and seen a lot and been through a lot. You know, Kelly Keeling, the guy who I mentioned was on the Live at St. Petersburg album, he's now touring with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which is a pretty cool project. Before that he did albums with Michael Shenker and also with George Lynch from Dokken. He's been all around. And then I have Buck Dharma from Blue Öyster Cult on the album, who's another hero of mine that I listened to growing up.

M: That must have been exciting.

E: It was great, and what's cool with working with those guys is when you meet them as peers - you meet them and, you know, you listened to them your whole life, you think, "Wow, these guys are just like superheroes to me." And they meet you and they say, "Wow Eric, I really like what you're doing. I really like your songs and I'd really like to work with you," that's a real honor.

M: That must have been a real honor. So have you ever considered another career, or are you happy with the one you've chosen?

E: I always thought rock n' roll was something kind of for younger people, that when I got too old and too tired and too beat up by the business, that I would retire from that and become a writer or a professor. Maybe an English professor; I actually started a masters degree in English, but took off and I didn't really have time to finish that. Maybe one day I'll finish that and write or teach or something like that, but so far it doesn't really show any signs of slowing down. I hope the music goes on for a long time. I hope one day to be working with orchestras and larger ensembles, too; that's something I've always dreamt of, so we'll see where it goes.

M: So, how involved with your fans would you say that you are? I know you share a MySpace page with your wife.

E: We have the MySpace page, we have a Yahoo group. Yeah, I stay in touch with everyone. A few times a week I'll kind of go on there and see what's going on, see what people are posting, answer questions and all that. A lot of fans have become friends over the years. My e-mail is not too hard guess, and if people want to write to me they can, and I try to return as many e-mails as I can. It's not like I'm Justin Timberlake or somebody with 2,000 e-mails a day, but it's sometimes hard to keep up with and I think everyone understands that. That's kind of why the MySpace page and the Yahoo group are nice because you can kind of stay in touch with a lot of people simultaneously.

And then when we go to gigs, depending on the schedule, I usually like to hang around for a couple hours after the gig and have a drink or two with fans, just kind of hang out and have fun because, you know, these people have the same taste in music that I do, and a lot of them are my same age, so it's just fun. Like I said, I've become pretty good friends with a lot of them over the years, so it's a real nice benefit to what I do.

M: Okay, so, thank you so much for this interview and letting us in on so many aspects of life as a professional rocker.

E: You're very welcome.

M: Um, it was really great talking to you, and you were a wonderful interviewee.

E: Well, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

M: Thank you. I hope to hear more from you and your experience with Asia. Have a excellent evening.

E: Okay, you too. We'll talk to you later.

M: Bye.