Few of the bands that emerged from the Sunset Strip Hard Rock scene during the 1980s struck the same nerve as L.A. Guns. Formed in 1983 by Guitarist Tracii Guns after he bowed out of Hollywood Rose (a band that would eventually morph into Guns N’ Roses), L.A. Guns may not have attained the massive commercial success of others like Mötley Crüe. Still, they are arguably as important to this Hard Rock/Metal era as any other.
A band with grit and rawness, L.A. Guns is defined by just wanting to have fun. Classic members Tracii Guns and Vocalist Phil Lewis captured the key ingredient to longevity in their reunion in late 2016. Nearly nine years ago, the second chapter of L.A. Guns has been intense, with consistent touring and the release of five more albums, including their most recent, 2025’s Leopard Skin.
Still remembering to enjoy the moment, L.A. Guns continues to write some great Rock-n-Roll that deserves attention. Proud to still be able to do what he loves, Tracii Guns sat down to chat about his journey in music, L.A. Guns’ legacy, and much more.
Cryptic Rock – You have had a very long career now in Rock-n-Roll music, and you have also been very prolific. There is your work with L.A. Guns, but it expands beyond that. Before we dive into things, how would you describe the incredible journey you have been on?
Tracii Guns – Everybody has something they like to do, whether it’s eating donuts, which I also enjoy, writing, or just having some sort of hobby. Playing the guitar and recording are my hobbies. It’s what I’m going to do anyway, no matter what. It takes me to good places. You hope it does, but never expect how things will turn out. Nobody’s that clairvoyant.
From project to project, I just do what feels comfortable. I don’t try to reinvent anything or stress myself out by saying, “Oh, this has to be a certain way,” or “This has to be mind-blowing.” Just do what feels right at the time. I don’t really think about the audience. I think about, “Hey, what do I want to do? What little dollhouse do I want to build this time?” It’s really more about that.
Cryptic Rock – Understood. It shows that you stay true to what you want to do because it bleeds through in the passion that you show in the music. LA. Guns is obviously your longest-standing band that you have been with for years. When the band hit in the ’80s, people started to recognize them, and they were different from the other bands on the scene in terms of what was happening. People called it Glam Metal, but on the scene, you guys were very different.
Tracii Guns – I think so. I think back then, anything I was involved with from sixteen to twenty, a lot of thought went into that type of stuff. You want to fit in, but you also want to be unique in your own way. Back then, image was really an important thing. It was so easy to look like somebody else.
By the time we had it figured out right before we got signed, it was really this blend of Ramones leather and denim, but also meets The Stones and Aerosmith. We were just trying to put those pieces together with a little bit heavier music. We were a lot more calculated, especially on the first two albums, about what we were doing and how we were going to cut through.
In many ways, I look back and think, “Oh, we’re a five-piece Mötley Crüe.” It’s easy to look back and define something. Musically, we always straddle the line between Punk Rock, Heavy Metal, and Classic Rock. Those are the things that I like, so that’s what I write.
Cryptic Rock – Right. Well, as said, it stood out among the other bands. So many bands were making a mark then, but L.A. Guns seemed to have more grit than the others.
Tracii Guns – I think we were snottier. We had Phil Lewis singing. Having a British singer during the American Hair Metal boom also made us unique. He certainly is transparent with his thoughts in society, and was back then. We were very young. We had a healthy appetite for all the fun stuff, and we just didn’t give a fuck. That’s really how it was. We play shows, and they would sell out. Don’t think about it. Just do it.
Cryptic Rock – Absolutely. You spoke about Phil. It was around eight years ago that you and he officially reunited to do LA Guns. It was exciting for fans because the band was not the same without you two together. Many considered you two to be signature pieces. What has it been like working with Phil again, and what inspired that reunion?
Tracii Guns – We tested it, not just committed to it. When you’re so close to something, you can’t see outside. Especially with the internet, you had Team Phil and Team Tracii and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Phil and I were offered this gig as LA. Guns for this big Hair Metal festival. They wanted to put us on the main stage, in the middle of the day, where it’s hot and miserable. I’m like, “No, no, no.” If we could headline the second stage, we could test to see if the band will draw all those people over from the main stage and see how it works out. Phil said, “That’s a great idea.”
We hadn’t committed to anything. All we did was commit to a photo shoot, three rehearsals, and putting the band together. Our friend, Walter Ino, played keyboards on that gig. We had a full-range band. It worked out perfectly. We played on that stage. We drew all the people from the main pavilion. I apologized to whoever was playing on the main pavilion at that time. I always do. That was our test. The audience completely blew us away. Your first gig is to like eight thousand or nine thousand people when you haven’t played together in twelve years. They’re all going, “Yay.” We’re like, “Okay. Okay. This was worth doing.”
We just took it from there. It proved to itself that L.A. Guns, whether you were Team Tracii or Team Phil, everybody shut up after that. All of a sudden, everybody was team everybody. It’s a good idea to have the guy who sang the songs on the albums and made those songs hits in the band. It’s a really good idea.
Cryptic Rock – Without question. It did excite the fan base when that happened. Since that reunion, you have put out five albums! Black Diamonds was in 2023, and that was a phenomenal record. Now you are back in 2025 with Leopard Skin. This one seemed slightly different than Black Diamonds.
Tracii Guns – It is different. It was all intentional. The previous four records were The Missing Piece in 2017, which was heavy, and The Devil You Know in 2021, which was really heavy. Then we started lightening up a little bit with Checkered Past in 2021. Then, Black Diamonds, which is a precursor to this record. It was like, “Hey, let’s throw a little bit more Rock-n- Roll into that one. It still has some heavy ones.” This one doesn’t have any real Heavy Metal stuff on it. It has more of the swingy Classic Rock with a little bit of Disco and Funk. It is just Rock-n-Roll, really. Anything you can find in the Aerosmith and Stones catalog is on this record.
I was all intentional. I wrote everything without my normal heavy guitar sound. I wrote everything with just a Les Paul through a Marshall amp, which is a very standard Classic Rock thing. When you’re writing to the sound of the instrument, you do different things. I do different things anyway, because that’s what naturally happens.
Adam Hamilton, the drummer, and I work remotely. We have lots of discussions. I write these arrangements, and he sends me drum tracks. Then, I rewrite what I have already written over those drum tracks. That’s where each song starts. We do one at a time. I don’t start with a batch of riffs, songs, or anything. We finish the first song, and then we go, “Okay. What should we do next? We did this. Let’s not do this again.” We go all the way down the line like that.
There is stuff like the song “Runaway Train” on there, which we didn’t talk about. I was working on it on my own. When I finally had an idea of what it was going to be, I recorded it and sent it to Adam. He was like, “Wow, what are we going to do with this?” I went, “I don’t know.” Oftentimes, there are a couple of things I have been working on previously that I’ll really make happen. After Adam and I have done three or four songs, I’ll work on stuff I already had ideas for.
Lepoard Skin is a very different record. I say different, but it’s an Enya record. (Laughs). However, it’s certainly not The Devil You Know, for example.
Cryptic Rock – It has a different vibe to it. That is the first thing that immediately grabs your attention. L.A. Guns has never done the same thing over and over again. If you look at the catalog and all the records the band has put out, there is diversity. You hear it through the years, from the ’80s records into the ’90s, etc.
Tracii Guns – That really comes from growing up listening to The Who, Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Beatles, and The Stones, and all that stuff. They had the sound, but it was mostly the vocal sound. The music was all over the place. Queen’s a great example of a band that can go from a piano solo piece with just Freddy singing to “Stone Cold Crazy,” with no segues. It’s like, “Wow, okay.” I always just felt that’s the right way to do it.
There are very few bands, two of them being Iron Maiden and AC/DC, that really maintain the same structure and sound of each song and the same attitude all the time. It really worked for them. Those are two of the biggest bands ever.
Cryptic Rock – Right. It works for them, like you said. Sometimes it does not work, and it gets a little monotonous. This is not only for the audience but also for the creator. You start to feel, “All right. How many times are you going to do the same thing over and over again?”
Tracii Guns – That was the cool thing about the first time we toured with AC/DC, the first sound check, we went to see them. They just played a couple of Stones songs. It really woke me up to AC/DC. Wow, these guys love The Stones too much. They played two Stones songs at soundcheck. It just goes to show how much an original artist’s music is influenced by their heaviest influences. It’s not rocket science. It’s like, “Well, what did they do? Okay, I’m going to do that, but I’m going to change.” That’s it.
Cryptic Rock – Right. It’s interesting when you talk about influences because you go back to what some people call Hair Metal. The term Hair Metal, in a way, is derogatory because it lumps people into this blemish thing. Hard Rock, early Metal, and Blues influenced many of these bands.
You can hear the Blues and Hard Rock in L.A. Guns. The Hair Metal thing is pigeonholing many bands into something inaccurate. A band like Cinderella is not necessarily Hair Metal, even though they had the image. Like you said, it was more about the image. These are Blues Rock bands.
Tracii Guns – Yeah. I like the term Hair Metal because it defines a time. Other bands that really fit in are when Led Zeppelin would play heavy, and they looked like Hair Metal. Hendrix, with all the perms and everything, all that stuff the guys in the ’80s did, we just looked at those guys. We just looked at all the blue sheer and these bands with these outrageous hairdos. I like it. Fuck yeah, man. We’re a Hair Metal band. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of horrifying, horrible Hair bands. I just don’t think that L.A. Guns is one of those horrendous, horrifying Hair bands.
Cryptic Rock – Oh, absolutely not. From the standpoint that sometimes people make it a parody. The same thing applies to the term Yacht Rock.
Tracii Guns – It’s fun. It is derogatory. Bands like Steel Panther do it so well.
Cryptic Rock – Good point. They do it with tongue-in-cheek.
Tracii Guns – Right. In reality, that style of Hair Metal band should have been tongue-in-cheek, and they would have had the success of Steel Panther. Musicians, especially Rock and Rollers, really have this take themselves too seriously disease. Take your instruments seriously, but lighten the fuck up. That was the coolest thing about Van Halen. They obviously took their music seriously, but when you heard their interviews and saw them live, they were having fun. Let’s look at Poison, for example. They projected fun. Brett Michaels has always projected fun. Behind the scenes, they had their share of seriousness, reality, and stuff like that.
Music is supposed to take people away from their reality, the problems, and stuff like that. L.A. Guns, we’re not as fun. I think Leopard Skin is really fun, but we’re certainly guilty of writing suicidal ballads and things. That’s the type of band we are. We’re not the ultimate happy Hair Metal band.
Cryptic Rock – You are right. There are a lot of fun songs on Leopard Skin, too. You mentioned that this record has more of a Rock-n-Roll feel as opposed to a Metal feel. You hae done some more Rock-n-Roll leaning music in recent years with different projects. You worked with Michael Sweet for Sunbomb and released the album Light Up The Sky in 2024, which is good too.
Tracii Guns – Thanks! That’s super Metal.
Cryptic Rock – People should look into that project as well. You have remained busy, no question. Watching your career in recent years, you have L.A. Guns, Sunbomb, you did the album with Great White’s Jack Russell, and you have Blackbird Angels, with which you released Solsorte in 2023. What is it like to have all these outlets like that?
Tracii Guns – It’s great to have them because you get to sculpt them. When I was doing those, I did those with Frontier’s records. They like to load up their catalogs with different stuff. The guys that they know are capable of being fast and having good chemistry, they put us together. As you said, I did the Jack Russell record too.
Cryptic Rock – Yes, it came out in 2024 under Medusa. Also, a very good listen.
Tracii Guns – Thank you. That’s very Rock and Roll. Like I said, playing guitar is really my hobby. If it makes sense, I will say yes to any opportunity I get to write and record something eight out of ten times. Right now, L.A. Guns has had such a great time in these past seven or eight years. It’s hard to stray now because I’m finally at a point in the band where it’s very fulfilling. I don’t get bored. We don’t get stagnant.
My biggest mental problem is when I get stagnant. I want to create with somebody else. I haven’t felt that way since we got rolling. The other projects I did were like hired projects, things that I probably wouldn’t have sought out on my own.
Cryptic Rock – Seeing your name on many different things is great. You talk about being a band from the ’80s. The ’90s were a difficult time for many bands that came out in the ’80s because many of them felt tossed aside. A lot of bands disappeared during a certain period of the early ’90s. Bands like Alice in Chains came around, and it was see you later to all those other bands, which is unfortunate. What was your take on what was going on?
Tracii Guns – I took it a little bit differently. We weren’t that big. We weren’t like a Mötley Crüe or Def Leppard-sized band. We were a B band, if not a C band. We played clubs and theaters. Our satellite fans diminished; the casual, trendy fan. The core of our fan base stayed very loyal. We continued making records. We broke up. I had different versions of the band making records. We were still okay. Things are obviously way better now. Phil and I got back together and all that stuff.
I really dug the stuff that came out in the ’90s – particularly Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. Those bands were like the hangover from the party. The ’80s were the party. Those bands were the hangover, and I love the hangover. That music was fucking amazing.
I watched the documentary, Nöthin’ But a Good Time, that I was also in. I didn’t realize how hard it hit some bands. Some of them stopped for a while. When you go from selling fifteen thousand tickets to two thousand, that’s a big hit. I think we went from selling one thousand tickets to selling eight hundred tickets. That’s the ratio. That’s also the benefit of being a band that’s non-committed to any scene. I call us Hair Metal, but obviously, we fit in a lot of categories. The music comes first.
Cryptic Rock – That is an excellent point. LA. Guns is a band with a niche audience, as you said. It would not be as impactful because that niche audience will follow the band all the way through, as opposed to a band with a lot of casual fans.
Tracii Guns – I feel like Poison didn’t suffer. Poison also had a niche following. It happened to be a big one. They had a lot of radio play. Many people know of a band because they’re big on the radio. Let’s say you’re a band, you’ve been playing arenas to fifteen thousand people every night, the local radio stations are playing your music, giving away some tickets, and advertising it constantly. That’s the difference in the advertising. You go back to play that. Well, now the radio’s not playing your music. They’re not really pushing your show. They’re pushing Alice in Chains, for example. They’re pushing that show instead. Of course, you’ll sell fewer tickets because you’re not getting the airplay. That’s why it affected those bands more than it affected us.
We’ve always had very minimal airplay. We get some. We still do. We always did. We only had three top 40 hits in our whole career. We were never forced down anybody’s throats. We were never used to, “Hey, the big LA Guns show.” It was never any of that. It was like, “Okay, there’s this cool-ass band coming to town. Yeah, we know who LA Guns is.”
I saw in the Nöthin’ But a Good Time documentary that it hit home, and what a bloodbath it is. That’s how business is. It’s not necessarily because of the music. It’s the perception the media puts out there, like everything else. They will tell you – This isn’t cool anymore, so we won’t advertise it. Let’s advertise what is cool. That’s in any business.
Cryptic Rock – That is the truth. For many generations, that has been how art has suffered. Unfortunately, like you said, that is the way it happened. You talk about how things change. We are fully enthralled in a digital music age right now. Most people stream everything. There is nothing like a physical format to appreciate having the music in hand while listening to it. Maybe it is old-fashioned, maybe it is ritualistic, but there’s something special about that.
Tracii Guns – Yeah, there’s nothing cooler than a record album. Our sensibility about that is that we probably had to seek the album out when it came out. We handed over money. Then we owned a thing. It’s like buying a Lego. It has a purpose. You listen to it, you look at it, and you keep looking at it even though it’s the same thing over and over again. It’s so mysterious and cool.
Cryptic Rock – Exactly true.
Tracii Guns – It’s made quite a decent comeback. Not enough to overtake the digital world, certainly. As time goes on, it’s certainly ramped up to the point where some bands are making cassettes. I think that’s fun. The record album is certainly something that should remain something that everybody can buy for every album that’s released. It seems to be.
Lepoard Skin is the first record we’ve done, out of the five most recent, where the vinyl and CDs sold everywhere before the release day. It is really impressive, just from a business point of view. We were all made aware of it because people were receiving the album a week earlier than they were supposed to. Then, on release day, other people were writing, “Oh, my record’s not coming today. It’s coming in a week or two weeks.” We were like, “What the fuck?” Then people started, “Yeah, it’s sold out everywhere. Can’t get it. It’s not in the shops. It’s not on Amazon,” or wherever people buy it. That is pretty heavy-duty.
I saw the Record Day chart. We had the ninth biggest selling physical album of the week, over everybody. In the Top 10, three of those products were Elton John and Brandi Carlile. Number eight was the Richie Kotzen and Adrian Smith (from Iron Maiden) record. I feel really good about that. Damn, the least expected thing ever. It’s worth it to do it.
People always say, “Why do you make records? Why do you record music? Number one, I do it for myself. Number two, people buy that shit. They listen to it. It’s crazy. Last year, on Spotify alone, we had eleven million streams or something, new music and old music. Why would you stop making music? It’s crazy to me.
Cryptic Rock – You do it because you love it, you are a creator, and people are still paying attention. Like you said, that is impressive about the record sale.
Tracii Guns – Yeah, that’s crazy, right?
Cryptic Rock – Congratulations. It is easy to be doomed and gloomy about a younger generation, and to think they do not care about music. There are still plenty of young people who love going to record stores and actually buying music.
Tracii Guns – Oh, big time. We have Amoeba Records about half a mile from my house. I don’t go in there very often, but when I do, it’s packed with people in their early twenties, late teens. They’re in every section. They’re looking everywhere.
Again, when you buy something and take it home, it will last forever when it comes to art. That’s where the digital thing is really a bummer. It obviously has its bonus. I can take my phone on tour and listen to whatever I want, and that’s amazing. I had one hundred cassette boxes and one hundred CD cases in the old days. Can’t take that stuff on an airplane. You pick five cassettes and ten CDs and figure out a way to make them small. Younger people are a lot hipper than we give them credit for.
Cryptic Rock – There is still hope. Moreover, the physical format teaches you to pay attention. It teaches you to respect that someone slaved over this music. It instills in you that someone put their heart and soul into it. It is more than something disposable that you stream, where it is instantaneous to you. That teaches the value of appreciating art like that.
Tracii Guns – That’s a great way to look at it, for sure. I wish more parents would do that. I have two sons, and one is five. He’s been into music since he was born. His mom collects vinyl records, but mostly 45s. He’s grown up thinking, “You put this disc on the thing and the music comes out.” That’s a good brainwashing. You want to hear the music, put the disk on the machine, and then you’re happy. I love it!
Cryptic Rock – It also helps with anything, not just music. Things are not so disposable. We’re living in a time where we do not have to yearn for anything. Everything is instantaneous.
Tracii Guns – Oh, man, yeah. We’re spoiled.
Cryptic Rock – That is an understatement. So, Leopard Skin is out, and you have shows lined up.
Tracii Guns – Yeah. Right now, till the end of the year, we have sixty shows. Then a couple more are being added. We’re booking next year already. There’s going to be a lot of support touring for this record. It makes it difficult to put a set list together because when people react to an album that’s diverse, that means they all want to hear different things live. Somebody might love a certain type of vibe. Other people, “Oh, no, I love this.” We have a past career as well as a five-record new career. It makes it very difficult to do it.
The shows are always great and exciting. People know every song regardless. We try to respect our audience live and not pull out the slow, more uber-depressing things that we get requested to play. We’ve tried playing some of the drippier stuff. It just puts everybody to sleep, including us. Not in a boring way, but it alters the mood of a live performance so much that we stick to the high-energy Rock and a couple of things.
Cryptic Rock – It must be hard to pick a set list of materials when you have such a plethora to return to. As you said, you have two chapters here. It must be a hard thing to juggle.
Tracii Guns – Yeah. It is. We open for Tom Keifer a lot. On those shows, we only get forty-five minutes to an hour. An hour is the longest that we can do. That’s cramming eleven songs. We try to change it up from night to night. It keeps it interesting. We are not just like a band with a set list; we do not do the same every time. We keep it fresh for us and try to do our best for the audience, what they want to hear. We certainly can’t do a three-hour set. I don’t think we can make it three hours.
Cryptic Rock – That is a long show. A few bands do that. One of them is The Cure. It feels like The Cure plays forever when you see them live.
Tracii Guns – Yeah. Once you hit stadium level, in the artist’s mind, they feel people paid a lot of money to see a giant show in a huge place, and you’ve got to give them what they paid for. I’ve seen some stadium shows that go on past two hours. I was like, “Fuck, stop, man. I’m dying.” I love a good seventy-five minutes to an hour and a half of an epic Rock band, which is plenty.
Even Zeppelin. There are so many live shows of theirs on YouTube, and audio, too. Some of their shows are four hours long. I literally can put on the audio at 11:00 PM, wake up to pee at 2:30 AM, and they’re not even done with the set yet. It’s just like, “Wow.” They’re brave, man.”
Cryptic Rock – (Laughs) That is wild!
Tracii Guns – Think about it. I look at it this way. In 1970, ’71, ’72, ’75, ’76 – what else was there for people to do? Nobody was in a hurry to return home to hop on their phone, check their Facebook, or anything else. There was nothing else to do. It’s like, “All right. We’re going to go hang out with Zeppelin for six hours. You’ve got to drive there.” It made more sense then.
Now, I feel people have a really short attention span. It’s just the way it is. I can never pronounce their name, but I saw this band the other night play for an hour and a half. It was badass, man. I was engaged for the entire hour. I’d never seen them before, though. They had a big video production and stuff like that, which you’re not just focused on the band the whole time. That’s about as long as I can go.
No comment