Stevie R Pearce – exploring his inner hooligan, making history with the Dio Returns tour and playing with Jizzy Pearl’s Love/Hate - Your Online Magazine for Hard Rock and Heavy Metal

Interview by: Victoria Llewelyn

Stevie Pearce chats about the highs and lows of a lifetime of playing music, helping to make rock n’ roll history on the Dio Returns tour, and what’s next for him with Jizzy Pearl’s Love/Hate and his own band Stevie R Pearce and the Hooligans.

Singer, songwriter and guitar virtuoso Stevie Pearce has been making music since his teens, cutting his teeth on the Southampton punk rock scene and developing over more than twenty years to playing with bands like Warrior Soul and Jizzy Pearl’s Love/Hate. He also fronts up his own band, Stevie R Pearce and the Hooligans, a raucous bunch of intense, stripped-back rockers with a ferocious energy who are currently working on their next EP. Stevie is busy preparing for its release and a coinciding tour this year.

MGM: Stevie, you’ve been playing music in bands since you were barely out of school! How did you start out and what bands were you playing with?

Stevie: It started in earnest when I moved to Southampton in 2001 and flyered every house in the area looking for band musicians! I formed a band called Young Lust and we played the local circuit for a few years, getting ourselves known. After that I started a semi punk band with guitarist Rob Castle called The Black Bullets, we had no written manifesto as such, but we knew what we wanted to do, which was to punch a hole right through everything that was going on at that time! I think most people were a bit scared of us, but we built a good following, toured a lot, worked hard. We got endorsed by Extreme Sports TV, we got a reputation and a lot of attention. It was going great until Rob suddenly went out to LA, saying it was to help the band Stateside. He was gone for about six months whilst we had label interest, a big show booked and tour plans. No one heard anything from him, then one day a photo emerged of him in the Rainbow on Sunset Strip with Lemmy and Slash! We knew then he was never coming back, and it broke our hearts, so much so I decided to quit for a year shortly afterwards. A month later I was back though, standing in on guitar for Falling Red. Not long after that Kory Clarke saw me play at Bannermans in Edinburgh, he just happened to be staying there, we ended up partying for several days afterwards and by the end of it I was in Warrior Soul.

MGM: How was your experience of Warrior Soul and working with Kory Clarke?

Stevie: When Kory saw our show at Bannermans I asked him if he wanted to come up and sing Folsom Prison with us, he got onstage and shouted ‘Fuck you, I’m from Detroit!’ for the full three minutes! His explanation – he knew where the prison was but had no idea of the song! I was in Warrior Soul for three years; I didn’t expect it to be a long-term thing as that band always goes through line-up changes and Kory has so many good musicians that can play for him at the drop of a hat. I loved the ferocity of those Warrior Soul songs, and the way Kory sings them and means every word. When you go onstage and deliver that it’s intense and you get so involved. I miss playing those songs, and Black Bullets songs too, they were very similar.

MGM: You went on from there to playing with Jizzy Pearl’s Love/Hate? How did that come about?

Stevie: Kory’s bass player, Christian Kimmett, who now also plays with me in the Hooligans put me on to it, he was also playing bass for Jizzy and told me he was looking for a guitar player, why didn’t I give it a go? Jizzy had seen me play before, and the next thing I’ve gone from seeing his mug on the cover of Kerrang magazine as a kid to him phoning me up to talk about gigs! I love that about rock n roll, you never know what’s coming next. We rehearsed all the songs for the ‘Wasted In America’ anniversary tour in the UK, myself, Christian and Mickey Richards on drums, for about a year before Jizzy actually came over to rehearse with us – it was then we all learned the difference between rehearsing and practicing! Before Jizzy arrived, we had been practicing, thinking ‘ah it sounds close enough’; when he came in for that first rehearsal you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife! The performance levels we had been used to were way off those that he was used to. He brought us right up to where we needed to be, and I realised perhaps for the first time how technically gifted those original musicians are – John E Love, Skid Rose and Joey Gold, as Love/Hate songs are practically impossible to play. They fuse up punk, metal and rock, there are two, sometimes three rhythms plus a lead on each track, it messes your head up! They are by far the most difficult songs to play, but we got there, and the live shows went really well, and we recorded the album not long after that.

When you play with Jizzy you get to experience the inner workings of his brain, he hears things and then it’s up to you to bring out and enhance what he tells you he can hear. It’s a bit like having the headmaster mark your homework, you’ll get a thumbs up – what a relief, or a ‘must do better’. He has to get the best, and I’m a good enough guitar player to be able to carry it off, he relies on me to do it, but it’s intense!

MGM: JP’s Love/Hate have just announced their UK tour dates, what can we expect from the shows this time around?

Stevie: It’s dubbed the “Greatest Hits Tour” so I guess it’s in the name, it’s still a way off so at the time of writing this Kimmett, Charles and I haven’t seen a set list. People tend to think of the greatest hits as “Blackout” “Dope”, “Wasted”; but then you have “Angel” “Mary Jane” “Tumbleweed” “Fuel”, the list goes on, every song off both those records is a hit! I’m hoping we also play something of the latest record “Hell. CA” Because it’s a fucking killer record; not just because I played on a few songs haha….. they are meant to be played live. It’s a short run, playing a couple of the usual haunts, and a couple of new ones. I’m sure if Jizzy was able, he would add more. It’s been nearly four years since Jizzy Pearl’s Love Hate played these shores, or anywhere for that matter, I’m just excited to stand there and soak it all in again.

MGM: Being part of Jizzy Pearl’s Love/Hate allowed you the opportunity of a lifetime – the Dio Returns tour in 2019 where they first introduced the hologram experience. JPs Love/Hate were the opening band and as such you got to spend two months out in the States with some of your all time rock heroes! How would you describe that?

Stevie: We (Love/Hate) had just finished the 2019 tour, and Jizzy got a call from Jeff Pezzuti, the CEO of Eyellusion, the company behind the live music hologram creations. He explained what they were going to do and said ‘we want you to come out for two months and open the shows’. Jizzy thought he was winding him up at first, then when he realized Jeff was serious, he turned to me and said something like ‘you didn’t have any plans did you?’. There was a lot of controversy about that tour to begin with, that the hologram was in some way disrespectful to Ronnie. But it was because of these shows that people started to talk about Ronnie again, what he meant to them what he did for them. What he did for me was to give me a shot at opening for him even after he’s dead! We’ll never have that era again – Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rainbow – and we still look back on it with such fondness. It proved there was such a demand for people to come and see a Dio show, even after he’d passed away. Before I left for the States I had no idea of the magnitude of that tour and I’ll never lose sight of how grateful I am to have been given that opportunity. For a start, I didn’t know that it was actually going to be Dio’s band from the last 17 years before he died playing alongside the hologram – and being a massive Dio fan myself this was overwhelming. They had Simon Wright (AC/DC) on drums, Bjorn Englund from Yngwie J Malmsteen’s band on bass, Craig Goldy on guitar who’s played with DIo since the Eighties and Scott Warren on keyboards. Oni Logan from Lynch Mob and Tim ‘ripper’ Owens from Judas Priest covered the vocals.

The crew were all Dio’s too. And I got to hang out with them for two months. These musicians are like Gods, in our band we had Doc Ellis from Ratt and The Hellenbacks, and Mike Dupke who’d been in W.A.S.P. for ten years, so for someone like me coming from the arse end of nowhere, getting to hang out and share a stage with these guys was the stuff of dreams. They couldn’t have been nicer to everyone they met. There’s usually a Rock Star to be found in most bands these days – big ego, won’t share his kit, pain in the arse, and that used to bother me but when you’ve seen these guys in action it makes all that seem insignificant. Our last show was in LA and we played to about 4000 people. Three days later I flew home and played a Hooligans show to around 20 people. That keeps you grounded. It’s a lesson in humility.

MGM: Tell us a bit more about the Hooligans. You’ve got two successful albums out, a live album and a forthcoming EP. Between the last album and the new EP the line-up has completely changed apart from yourself. How did this come about?

Stevie: It depends how you define success I guess. My first Album put us on the map so to speak, it actually was received way better than I had anticipated, even now. “Major league” was supposed to be a continuation, but fell short- but that had nothing to do with the music, the songs, or the production. Another casualty to putting one’s eggs all in one basket that was left unattended. It’s a great album.

The Hooligans has changed a lot over the last 4 years …… always has. It’s been blessed with some great musicians …… we don’t do half assed here in the Hooligans haha. But that’s mainly down to me, it’s my name on it- it’s on my terms and the music is very important to me, forget the mild adulations and ego trips ….. it’s what the music does do me, and I feel if I stand still too long, I’m not getting better, so I keep searching and moving forward. You can’t improve if your stood still. Which is probably explains why I’ve been in 7 bands to date- each Hooligan line-up change creates a new band.

Christian and I have played together for years in Warrior Soul, Love/Hate and Thunderfuck and the Deadly Romantics. Charles had played for the Hooligans about three years ago, he is one of the best drummers around, so much so Jizzy agrees with that. We were all rehearsing like mad at the start of 2020 for the “Blackout” anniversary UK tour, which has been postponed until this year. Then there would be a glimmer of hope the tour would happen in 2021, then 2022; we would get together and play for days at a time to get up to speed again. There’s a chemistry that’s formed and certain skill set required when three musicians get in a room to learn and play material such as Love/Hate. It’s not only learning the parts by ear, but being able to go and perform to a lot of people and deliver like you’ve been playing them your whole life, often at a drop of a hat. Something was created in that room, and I latched on to it, it was a great energy.

I semi wrote “Educated Guesser” in one of those sessions, the others didn’t even know it had happened. It was just a moment in between songs, which is often how it goes, same with “No Reason”; I have a recording with Kimmett playing drums on that somewhere.

I knew what I wanted to do but needed a powerful rhythm guitarist and singer. Ash Tustain is someone I’ve known for ages; his band Dig Lazarus are exceptional and work very hard. We have been friends for a while so I messaged him, and he agreed to jump in. I couldn’t think of anyone else that could handle it. His sound and the way he plays has really changed the Hooligans sound, even the older material sounds fresh again. It’s an exciting time. They all keep me on my toes…

MGM: What would you like to see happen next for the band?

Stevie: I gave up on ideas of grandeur a long time ago! Now, it’s focus on the music and see what happens.

MGM: Apart from the JPLH dates, where can we expect to see you this year? Are you looking at playing any festivals?

Stevie: We have some select shows starting in spring, but that’s it. Festivals? I can’t see it ….. we always tend to fall out of the scope of the pack of bands that you see regularly at them. I don’t have the inroads to play the larger ones, to put yourself on that kind of map costs a lot in PR. The smaller ones, I’ve found it’s not too cost effective, for me or the festival. When you add up travel, fuel, hotels- I can’t take that value of people to a festival up North or somewhere, therefore the festival loses. That’s perhaps why you see them disappear. And I don’t want the exposure. I do have a solid base of fans around the country, our last run of dates proved that, it was the best attended run we’ve ever done. It’s better for me to go and play those towns, do our own thing. It’s better all round if I stick to what I know, and hopefully keep reaching new areas.

MGM: On a personal level, you’re known for being one of the most independent and hardworking musicians in the industry. What’s your take on this and where do you get your drive?

I don’t think I’m the “most”, there are people grinding this out every day as full-time musicians! That takes courage and a lot of work, I’ve done that, but as you get older there is life to take care of and rock and roll doesn’t pay the bills, it never has! I work hard at keeping the balance. That said, it’s either in you or its not, it’s in me- always has been, always will be. I just can’t seem to leave it alone, it’s a beautiful curse.

Stevie R Pearce and the Hooligans are:

Stevie Pearce, – Lead vocals, guitar,
Ash Tustain, – Guitar,
Christian Kimmett, – Bass,
Charles Evans, – Drums,