The Vanyaland 617 Q&A series hit an apex this year, with 18 brave souls sitting down for a run of six questions, asked to provide one recommendation, and fielding our tailored-to-the-individual seven of something. The format of the interviews wasn’t the only thing the subjects had in common; they all had interesting stories and revelations. Whether it was Alkaline Trio’s Dan Andriano ranking his favorite trios, Stone Temple Pilots’ third singer Jeff Gutt rating replacement frontmen, or electronic-pop sage Johnny Dynamite wistfully remembering how he originally wanted his band, The Bloodsuckers, to be hair metal, everyone delivered a fascinating nugget or four. To pull out a dozen of them, especially when Brain Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem probably had that many on his own, was a daunting task. But like the 617 Q&A itself, you just have to see it through. It is the Year in ReView after all, so here are 12 of the most interesting revelations from this year’s 617 Q&A series.
In January: ELO used to scare Juliana Hatfield
When Juliana Hatfield was a child, she loved to listen to the symphonic pop of Electric Light Orchestra, except for one song, “Fire on High,” the hard-rocking instrumental.
“That used to terrify me,” she remembered. “There are all these ghostly, that kind of eerie ghostly choir, all the musical changes. The scary backwards voices. It scared me, but it was also fascinating. I was like, ‘What is this?’”
She got over it, evidently, releasing the Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO covers album last year.
In March: Dandys are still down on Dig!
The Dandy Warhols were on the road this year to support their latest album, Rockmaker, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the documentary Dig!, in which they and The Brian Jonestown Massacre were the subjects. It certainly wasn’t planned. Even though the 2004 film is one of the most talked about music documentaries ever due to the heights the rivalry between the two outfits reached, Dandys frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor remains disenchanted with the whole process to this day.
“I was so disappointed and saddened,” he told us. “That was just such a bitter and fake thing… we let this wom– this person [director Ondi Timoner] – film us thinking that she was going to catch what our lives were and we’d be able to watch it forever. And really, she was not interested in that. She just wanted to get anger and bitterness and that’s what people are suckers for, obviously. You can tell what politics are now and everything. So yeah, I have no interest at all, and it just makes me more sad and feel stupid.”
In March: Billy Bragg knows we’re all gonna die one day
At 66 years old, Billy Bragg is hardly slowing down. Two nights after headlining the celebration of life for Gary Smith and the late producer’s Fort Apache Studios, he joined The Dropkick Murphys for a handful of songs at their annual St. Patrick’s Day show. Then he played a handful of New England dates in the summer before coming back through again in the fall, hitting the rest of the world when he wasn’t with a stone’s throw. Still, the English folk-punk singer/songwriter can’t help but think about his own mortality, especially given the recent passings of friends and peers Shane MacGowan and Sinéad O’Connor.
“Well, I think once you get past 60, you can’t kid yourself that you’re young anymore,” Bragg said matter-of-factly. “Up until you’re 30, you can get away with being young. Then from 30 to 60, you can get away with being middle-aged. But once you pass 60, you notice friends aren’t there anymore… I wouldn’t say it impinges on your thoughts, but it is something you’re thinking a little bit more [about].”
In April: Who wants a gothic rock + Gaga collab?
It was a big year for The 69 Eyes. Not only did the Finnish goth rock band return to tour the U.S., but they also wrote a new song, “Fade to Grey,” with legendary songwriter Diane Warren, the hit machine behind Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart” and dozens more chartbusters. Buoyed by the excitement of having worked with such a high-profile talent, frontman Jyrki 69 speculated on who could be next.
“If there’s a bucket list, well I’d love to do – if I ever do a duet – that would be cool to do with… well, Lady Gaga would be pretty cool,” the head of the Helsinki Vampires said. “Let’s just say after Diane Warren, I can aim higher, higher.”
In June: George Thorogood does not want ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’
We couldn’t help but fanboy out slightly and ask boogie-rock bluesman George Thorogood if he had ever drank the drinks in succession like the narrator of his popular take on the classic “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” Sadly, he burst our bubble.
“No, I don’t like scotch. I can’t stand the smell of it. I leave the scotch to Humphrey Bogart.”
In August: Brian Fallon doesn’t eat bread
Tired of feeling like shit, Brian Fallon tried cutting grain out of his diet and had a revelation.
“Every time I would eat, my stomach would hurt, and it would swell up and I’d get tired… and not just gluten. It was more than that,” The Gaslight Anthem frontman revealed. “And it was weird, and I felt weird, and I was like, ‘What? Am I dying?’ And then like, ‘Oh, you’re eating this stuff that you’re allergic to.’ Oh! Okay. Now I feel great and it’s good.”
He recommended taking a break from beer too – but just now and again.
“Don’t get me wrong! Beer’s not bad. We’re not saying that. Beer’s good, still good. You just got to be careful. Maybe just once in a while just say, ‘I’m taking a little month off or something.’ That’s all I’m saying. But other than that, beer’s great.”
It should also be noted The Gaslight Anthem announced their own beer a week after our interview.
In August: Creed guitarist noticed the backlash early
The resurgence of Creed was an unlikely story in 2024, but when we talked to guitarist Mark Tremonti, he thought back to the initial backlash the band experienced early on, around the second record.
“I think during [Creed’s debut] My Own Prison, we were still kind of the underdogs and still the new band that was on the way up and people are still rooting for you, and I think by the time we hit maybe ‘With Arms Wide Open,’ people were like, ‘Arggh,’” he recalled. “Once you get on top, so to say, people want to chop you down. A lot of people like to do that. I think it’s just a way of mankind, you know? You see the champ; you want to see them beat. You’re rooting for the underdog, but you want somebody to take down the champ.”
It’s a good thing everybody also loves a comeback story.
In August: Gavin Rossdale takes an ice bath… every day
File this under things that would’ve had us swooning as a teen. When it came time to tell us his one recommendation, Gavin Rossdale couldn’t have been more excited about his daily routine of infrared sauna-ing before jumping in an ice bath, despite acknowledging “it’s a bit of a cliché” these days. The Bush frontman admitted he doesn’t even like the process, but “there’s nothing greater” when it’s over. “Yeah, it’s brutal. I fucking hate it,” he said. “I do it every day and I hate the shit out of it. Up until I get out. When I get out, my body’s like, ‘Thank you.’” Miserable as it might sound, we’ll trust a guy who’s 59 and sprints around the entire arena – through the crowd – during a song each night.
In September: Filter singer pissed off a supermodel
The ‘90s gave us so much, like MTV’s Fashionably Loud, which saw musicians perform live while models walked the runway in front of them. Richard Patrick hated that he had to stoop to that level to market his band, Filter, at the behest of the record label. Doing it under protest, the group delivered jaw-dropping performances of the songs “Hey Man Nice Shot” and “Under,” all while Patrick was “super drunk and pissed,” leading him to have, ahem, no filter when it came to his actions.
“Well, Naomi Campbell walked up and I pretended to ejaculate on her with my water bottle, and that did not go over well because her jacket was suede and you can’t get suede wet,” he recalled. “And she was fucking pissed. She was fucking pissed.”
In September: Nothing’s shocking to Stephen Perkins
Ahead of the disastrous, tour-ending Jane’s Addiction show in Boston over the summer that made headlines around the world, drummer Stephen Perkins waxed on the excitement of having the OG lineup of the alternative icons back together for the first time in a decade and a half. But he also acknowledged how fragile the whole thing was, especially given such a messy history.
“We love making the music when it’s right and it feels right,” Perkins said. “And I think that’s a real lesson for everybody in the room. To me, I don’t know the future after today what it is, but tonight we have a show.” And it was likely the last one — and on his birthday, no less.
In October: John Christ almost joined the Misfits
Probably our favorite 617 Q&A sit-down this year was with former Danzig guitarist John Christ, mainly because he had his instrument present for the entire three hours and change, riffing off generous pieces of songs like “How the Gods Kill” and “Blood and Tears.” It came as no surprise when he said he semi-regularly hears from his ex-lead singer’s attorneys, anytime Glenn gets a whiff of something Danzig-adjacent where he’s not being paid. More shocking was the reveal that Misfits co-founder, bassist, and utility player Jerry Only asked him to join the band in 2010. Unfortunately, Christ had just begun a divorce and wasn’t in the right headspace.
“And I’ll always regret that,” the guitarist said. “[Only] had told me at one point that he went through a bad divorce, and he knew what it was like, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down to him face-to-face and shake his hand. But I’ve been to Jersey, Lodi Pizza, and I’ve told the guys, ‘Tell Jerry I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what I was doing.’”
In November: Robert De Niro didn’t intimidate Chazz Palminteri
According to actor and writer Chazz Palminteri, half of Hollywood was chasing after the movie rights to his one-man play A Bronx Tale in the early ’90s. He refused to sell, even though he had just $200 in the bank. Then Robert De Niro came along, who had to intimidate Palminteri a little bit – right?
“No, no. Not at all. You don’t understand. Everyone wanted it, Michael,” Palminteri said of the story, the film of which he wanted the rights to write and star in before selling. “I mean, look, this was an aberration. It’s only happened twice in entertainment history, Rocky [Sylvester] Stallone. That’s it. That’s it… It was something no one’s ever seen before, and I just felt confident. Look, I love Robert De Niro. I wasn’t intimidated by it, but I was so happy that he loved my movie and he loved the story and he wanted to play my father. I was over the moon.”
Lucky for us, De Niro happily acquiesced to Palminteri’s demands, and one of the greatest scenes in cinema was captured.