TRACII GUNS On JANI LANE: ‘I Almost Wanna Say He Was Overtalented In The Songwriting Department’

In a new interview with the Talking The Talk With Don podcast, L.A. GUNS guitarist Tracii Guns praised late WARRANT frontman Jani Lane, who died in August 2011 at age 47 after battling alcohol abuse for years. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, Jani, I almost wanna say he was overtalented in the songwriting department, meaning that not only did he understand rhythm and drumming and putting together the foundation of what a pop song should sound like, but he also understood metal. He understood vocal melodies and he understood marketing. The ‘Cherry Pie’ thing was massive. That was the all the right ingredients at the right time. It’s, like, ‘Look at this cake I made.’ And from Jani’s point of view, he was trying to really break big, and that was his objective. And so when you get to [WARRANT’s third album, 1992’s] ‘Dog Eat Dog’, the climate had changed, and he was a very metal guy. That’s the thing that people don’t realize is just because you’re in an ’80s hair metal band, well, the word ‘metal”s in it. That means that you have metal influence. That means that you did listen to [BLACK] SABBATH and [JUDAS] PRIEST and [IRON] MAIDEN and SCORPIONS. So, it’s, like, we’re all better at writing heavy music, ’cause those are our most intense influences.”Circling back to WARRANT, Tracii said: “That was Jani’s band. It was his baby. It was his thing. And he was unstoppable. But he took it hard [when the rise of grunge in the early 1990s forced most hard rock bands off the radio and MTV, with album and tour sales plummeting]. We toured with them in the golden age of NIRVANA killing us. We were touring and playing to 2,500 people a night. It was terrible. And I was with Jani a lot. I’m the one that gave him the fucking mohawk. But he was really a gentle guy. If it would have been a hundred years earlier, he would have been the sensitive poet. He was really that guy, and he just wanted to be accepted, he wanted validation. And he had some trauma in his life that led to where it led him to. But he definitely made his mark. Whether you love WARRANT or hate ’em, man, you know who they are.”Lane recorded several albums with WARRANT in late 1980s and early 1990s but left the group several times. The band’s seventh studio LP, “Born Again”, was released in 2006 and featured Jaime St. James as the lead singer. In 2008, Lane returned to WARRANT temporarily and toured with the group. In September that year, WARRANT announced that Jani had left again. The band replaced him with Robert Mason and released its eighth studio album, “Rockaholic”, in 2011 and “Louder Harder Faster” in 2017.L.A. GUNS’ new album, “Leopard Skin”, will be released on April 4, 2025. It will mark the first fruit of L.A. GUNS’ reunion with Cleopatra Records, a label known for its diverse roster and innovative approach to music production.[embedded content]