{"id":1770,"date":"1985-12-01T00:00:44","date_gmt":"1985-12-01T00:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2013-05-28T16:25:43","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T16:25:43","slug":"feature-kix-mf15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-kix-mf15\/","title":{"rendered":"KIX – Are For Kids (MF15, 1985) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

KIX – Are For Kids<\/strong><\/span><\/span>
\nDave Shaw<\/span>
\nMetal Forces, Issue 15 (1985)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kix (l-r): Donnie Purnell, Jimmy Chalfant, Steve Whiteman, Ronnie Younkins
and Brian Forsythe<\/em><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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1985 hasn\u2019t really been a good year for classic releases; maybe five or so LPs stand out in my mind, including Icon, Illusion, Aerosmith and Kix. Those who read my Kix review in Metal Forces<\/em> issue #14, will know that I think that Midnite Dynamite<\/em> will be the one to break the band from Maryland into the big time. And recently I spoke to bassist Donnie Purnell, with Kix having just played the Bayou Club in Washington DC, where by all accounts \u201cthey had a hell of a show\u201d.<\/p>\n

I first asked Donnie to give me a brief history of the band? \u201cI started the band with Ronnie (Younkins), our guitar player. We borrowed a $100, found out about Brain (Forsythe; guitar), then got a drummer by the name of Donnie Spence who lived in Hagerstown. We also started the band with a different singer than we have now. We played like that for two or three months, before we got rid of the first singer because he was dumb. Then we heard about Steve (Whiteman); he was a drummer at the time but he sang a lot of stuff, so we stole him from the band he was in and made him our singer. Finally, we got rid of our drummer and got Jimmy Chalfant. After about a year with this new line-up we got our deal with Atlantic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which leads me to my next question, how did the deal with Atlantic come about? \u201cWe made lots of demo tapes and sent them to different record companies, and the first company to see us was Atlantic. The guy liked us, but didn\u2019t have the power to sign us, so he arranged for us to fly to New York and do an audition for all the big wheels at the record company. So we set up all out gear and played for 50 minutes, and after the third song the President and Vice President of the record company took our manager outside. At first we thought they weren\u2019t interested, but we didn\u2019t give a fuck. We kept on looking at each other and I was telling Jimmy, they\u2019re eating this shit up; I thought we totally bombed. At the end of the whole thing the guy said \u2018Do you want to be on Atlantic Records? We\u2019ll
\nbe happy to sign you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve just released a new LP, Midnite Dynamite<\/em>. What\u2019s the response been from the fans? \u201cThis has been our most successful LP. I\u2019m most proud of this record out of all of them. I think it\u2019s real consistent and there are no questions when you listen to it about what we do and where we\u2019re coming from. We learned a lot from the first two LPs because none of us had any studio experience. Also, we had a good producer on this one. We\u2019re getting fan letters and everyone is real positive about the album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midnite Dynamite<\/em> sees you go back to more straight ahead rock\u2019n\u2019roll, like on your the first self-titled LP. Your last LP, Cool Kids<\/em>, seemed more pop than hard rock; was this anything to do with the producer, or did you want to go for a more sleazier sound? \u201cWhen we made that record we had a different manager and the songs on the album really rocked out. But when we were done recording and it was time to mix, our old manager came down and he thought it had to be lightened up because he thought it was too heavy to get played on the radio. Between him and the producer they brought the guitars down and added keyboards to it \u2013 it burnt me up. We can do those songs on the second album now and they sound so much better live than on record because we don\u2019t have a keyboard player. We make it much more powerful. Those songs were originally powerful, but they took some of that power away by trying to get it on the radio.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was it producer Beau Hill\u2019s idea to bring in guitarist Mike Slamer and drummer Anton Fig to work on the album? \u201cMike Slamer was a friend of Beau\u2019s because he had just done the Street\u2019s album. The reason we had Anton come in was because Jimmy had a pinched nerve in his arm and he had to have an operation before we recorded the last two songs. Before we sent Jimmy off to the hospital, we had him do all the drum parts on a drum machine. Then Anton came in for one day and played a real drum track to those two songs. It was pretty strange but it worked out really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re an East Coast band with a West Coast image; have you ever thought about moving to LA? \u201cI don\u2019t know. We\u2019re going out there to see how everything goes, but we do so well over in Maryland, Baltimore and New York \u2013 it keeps us alive. We probably have that opportunity to come here, to make big bucks, be rock stars and have lots of fans. But we have considered maybe going to more of a music hub, like LA or New York, just so that we have daily contact with the music world.\u201d<\/p>\n

How important is the image to you? \u201cIt\u2019s fun; I would never want to have no image. Some people say that image shit is just bullshit, and it doesn\u2019t make the music any better or any worse. Which is true, but it makes it more fun for us and more fun to a lot of people to look at a band that is a little different than everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you pay much attention to bands like Ratt and M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce<\/a>? \u201cI like Ratt\u2019s two LPs. Of all the bands like Ratt, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce, Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot, I like Ratt the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are your influences besides beer, women and pizza (much laughter)? “I like AC\/DC, Rolling Stones and Aerosmith. We\u2019ve toured with Aerosmith a lot; they\u2019re real easy to work with, they don\u2019t screw us around like some bands. I like some punk too\u2026 the real fast stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are you getting much airplay, and what do you think of these people who want to put stickers on the records warning people about the lyrics? Wouldn\u2019t that stop some of your songs being played on the radio? \u201cI hope that moral shit dies down, because I can\u2019t take much more. Like these religious heavy metal bands; I can\u2019t stomach that stuff (Kix have just played a few dates with Stryper). For a rock\u2019n\u2019roll band to get up and say we got a new scheme and play God for an hour\u2026 I can\u2019t handle it. Rock\u2019n\u2019roll to me is the same from the day it started \u2019til today. It still has the same reason. It\u2019s meant for youthful people with a youthful message, like going out and having a good time. It shouldn\u2019t be a podium for people to express their political and religious views. If I want to hear someone make a point, I\u2019ll watch 20\/20.\u201d<\/p>\n

The LP was delayed for some months; why was that? \u201cWe were going to do the first half of the record with Beau and then find another producer to do the second half, because Beau had to do the Ratt LP. But while recording the first half of our record, we were trying to talk him into doing the whole album because he is really good and he knew what we wanted. Anyway, he then went to do the Ratt record and we convinced him to finish our album rather than turn it over to another producer. It was worth it for us to wait until the Ratt record was done, and then he come back and finished our LP.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally Donnie, what are your plans for the future? \u201cWe\u2019re going to do this LA thing. We\u2019ve just come back from New England, where we played with Soft White Underbelly (Blue \u00d6yster Cult) and Heaven. Then we did a lot of our own shows and every one we did was a success. Our live show is really happening; we picked out all the best songs from the three LPs and put them in a nice order, and we did little things to make our stage show visually exciting. We\u2019re dying to get in the game, and so far It\u2019s working real good.\u201d<\/p>\n

I for one really hope Kix can break out and make it big, and that they play England one day. One thing\u2019s for sure, this kid will be there.<\/p>\n

Interview taken from Metal Forces, Issue 15 (1985)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KIX – Are For Kids Dave Shaw Metal Forces, Issue 15 (1985) Kix (l-r): Donnie Purnell, Jimmy Chalfant, Steve Whiteman, Ronnie Younkins and Brian Forsythe 1985 hasn\u2019t really been a good year for classic releases; maybe five or so LPs stand out in my mind, including Icon, Illusion, Aerosmith and Kix. Those who read my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-kix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11728,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/11728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}