Boiling Point: Jeff Scott Soto Lets It All Out On 'Inside The Vertigo'

We all need to let off steam sometimes, right? That's certainly what Jeff Scott Soto does on 'Into The Vertigo'. The AOR hero and his new band have whipped up a barrage of bastardised contemporary metal, while venting deep seated anger and frustration that's been building for the best part of a decade.

The former Talisman, Journey and Yngwie Malmsteen frontman is regarded as one of the most decent and friendly blokes in the business. But Soto's recent debut album suggests he might have snapped. Fortunately, when we caught up with him he was as courteous and chatty as ever, answering every question thrown at him without threatening to climb down the phone in order to rearrange faces.

You've referred to this as feeling more like a band effort than a solo release. Why?

I was working with another manager last year and it was his idea. He said: “It just doesn't sound like a Jeff Scott Soto album.” He convinced me to choose a band name and I told him: “Listen, I've been through so many bands, projects and different names through the years I'm just going to add yet another one to the list?” He says: “Just call the band by your last name. It's identifiable to you, but by branding your last name you can call it a band the same way Dio, Daughtry and some other bands have done.”

It brands the heavier style of music too.

Exactly, it separates what I've already done but also introduces what I am doing. In that way, if I ever do another AOR album, I can keep that separation.

How did you go about making a modern metal album without sounding old fashioned?

I'm writing with young fresh blood who listen to and are influenced by a lot of the younger stuff that's happening now, and even trying to create stuff that's going to be the next wave. But then I have that kind of classic mould of where I come from, so it's a perfect marriage of the classic with the new.

And Break and Jealousy still have huge choruses.  

That's very important to me, it doesn't sound like something completely removed from what I would do. It was shocking to me that it was so different for my last label that they didn't want to take it and they basically gave me my walking papers when I turned in a few of the songs.

Has that freedom made this album completely uncompromising?

Absolutely, but I'm also keeping a degree of realism. I didn't want to do something overwhelmingly different. It's got to be me, but it's also got to make a new statement. And it goes back to what I was saying about the AOR thing. I love all the stuff that I've done, but if I'm doing albums like W.E.T why am I doing solo albums that sound like that? I'm competing against myself.

Let's talk about the songs, and Final Say is the perfect introduction to your new sound.  

I wanted to get out of the gates exactly like that.  I mean, there's some great opening songs on there, but that's pretty much the statement that sets the pace for the album.

You've worked with some great musicians and Gus G's work on Wrath is very dynamic.

That was a tough one because it's so heavy and Firewind sounding, and I wanted to make sure I had a hooky chorus behind it. Every time I heard that half time chorus he gave me, all I could think was: “What would Dave Grohl do with this?” That's what gave me that commercial hook.   

When you ask your collaborators to write a piece of music, is there an ongoing dialogue back and forth until it's right?

Very little, because a lot of my collaborators know what I'm looking for and strike gold pretty much from the get go. Wrath, for instance, the chorus section was like...I would call it a bridge. Much further down the line in the song. The song was really heavy all the way through and then this half time thing kicked in and I go: “Oh my god – that's the hook, that's the chorus.”  So I went into Pro-Tools, chopped it up and put it after a few bars of the heavy section.

How was End Of Days written?

That's where Connor Engstrom came into the picture. He's a 24-year-old guitar player and a brilliant writer who produces and writes his own stuff, but it's all soundtrack instrumental music. It's so epic. I went to him saying: “I want to do something that's kind of like a James Bond theme, a modern day Live And Let Die, where it takes you through so many different courses.”

It's got the up and down of the fast section, the softer section with a little Pink Floyd thrown in, a little Bohemian Rhapsody thrown in, a little Iron Maiden thrown in. I gave him all these references and he gave me this nine minute piece of music and said: “There you go! Have fun with it.” It was one of the hardest things I'd ever ever written, melodically and lyrically, but it's also one of the prouder moments of my career.

Even though it's not a prog album as such, there are progressive touches.

That was another part I was asking people I was collaborating with to throw in. I wanted to remind people that I do have more than just the typical pop, melodic rock set. I wanted to do something that was a little more privileged.     

The closest thing to a ballad is When I'm Older, but it's no love song.  

It's basically, if I'm writing this song as a 25-year-old and writing about where I'm at now, like I'm rewinding and erasing everything I've done and trying to look into the future at all the different things that have been happening and all the things that were about to happen – 9/11, terrorists, ISIS. “When I'm older is everything going to be better or worse?” I need a sign if there's any kind of hope for us down the road because at this point there isn't.

It's got a very uplifting hook, even though it's thematically dark.

That's a testament to my drummer Edu [Cominato​], because he listens to a lot of modern music. He helps me keep it from getting too dated, too much like something I've already done. And with this one he said “Y'know what – if you listen to a little more Shinedown and see what they do with with their melodies, I think that's where you need to go with it.”

The Fall is a great song and very 'fuck you'.

Pretty much. There's a lot of fuck you on this album. Hence, the initial statement I made about the aggression behind it. I've had a pretty tumultuous past few years – I want to say seven to eight years – and I wanted to let it out.

What made you so angry?

So many people that have let me down, that were supposedly close to me and would take a bullet for me. They just turn their backs to you, stab your back. I've also been through a divorce, basically starting from scratch when my last marriage split up as I was almost penniless. So you add that on to everything that I dealt with with Journey, losing my best friend Marcel Jacob [Talisman bassist], a lot of different things got me to that boiling point where I wanted to release it. And this music was a perfect way to get it out.     

At the time you were dignified about your dismissal from Journey, but didn't you want to scream your side of the story?

Oh absolutely, and that's the key thing – you have to choose which way you're going to go. You can go with your dignity, and that's obviously the best way because then it doesn't look like you're just a snivelling little baby. But on the other hand you don't really get to release your side of things.  With the whole Journey thing, I had to sign a gag order, there was the whole lawyer thing. There was no way I could truly express myself without throwing anybody under the bus. And it's not really my nature so I'd rather just put it in song and let people guess for themselves what the lyrics are about.

How long did it take you to get over it?

You never really get over it. I still, to this day, have dreams that we're in the middle of a festival somewhere and I'm going on stage with those guys because there was no closure. I've never had a situation where I don't have closure with bands, people or anything. It just keeps dwelling in my mind and it would be great to finally sit down with somebody, someday and find out what the hell really happened.   

There's a huge sense of frustration on the album. Is that about your experience of the music business?

Oh yeah. It's amazing because you're the only one that's actually really tapped into that and it's certainly one of the bigger equations of the lyrics.  I've been doing this for 30 years and by no stretch am I as big as Motley Crue or Metallica or any of the other bands from my time. As far as I'm concerned I'm still struggling and, of course, I feel a little let down, a bit like: “Hey, where was my time?” I put the time in, I put all the energy and the efforts in.  I was hoping to see a little more reward from it, but I can't look at it that way because I don't want anything to be given to me. I'm just gonna keep busting my ass and I'm gonna do what I feel is right for me, and that's what I've always done.

Your biggest success of late has been with W.E.T.  Everyone wants to know if there will be a third album?

At this point no, because the only way for people to take this new thing seriously is for me to put 100% commitment behind it. I think that by spreading myself too thinly everywhere, it doesn't give me, or the audience, a chance to just dig into one thing. And that's what I'm planning to do right now, just dive in and show that I'm totally committed to this.

And now you've gotten all this anger off your chest – how are you feeling?

I feel even angrier [laughs]. If this is accepted obviously it's going to show that what I have to say, musically as well as lyrically, it's something that people are accepting. So there's certainly more material in that direction.  And if it doesn't take off and people just blast it and  bombs, that's going to make me even angrier, so you never know.  

 'Into The Vertigo' is out now.

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