Kevin Dubrow on Quiet Riot’s Pre-Fame ‘Metal Health’ Days

Quiet Riot’s Kevin Dubrow on Rudy Sarzo, Chuck Wright and the pre-fame ‘Metal Health’ days. The excerpt below is taken from an old school full in bloom interview w/ Quiet Riot frontman Kevin Dubrow.

full in bloom: Didn’t Chuck Wright record most of the bass tracks on Metal Health?

Kevin Dubrow: Not all of them. It depends on the song. Actually, stuff like “Cum On Feel the Noize” was originally tracked by Tony Cavazo, Carlos’s brother, then Chuck put the bass on there and then we replaced Chuck’s part. Songs like “Don’t Want to Let You Go,” Chuck was on bass and then Rudy (Sarzo) replaced it. Rudy’s playing was not right, but we had erased Chuck’s part, so we couldn’t remix it. We had to use a demo version of the song on the album. We could never remix the song with Chuck’s bass part because the idiot erased it. They tried to do the same thing with “Bang Your Head,” but I loved the way “Bang Your Head” turned out with Chuck on bass.

There were issues with Rudy in the studio. I’m not going to go into it, but they weren’t good issues. So I said, just leave it the way it is, don’t touch a f****** thing on it, it sounds great. “Bang Your Head” is the demo mix and that’s what is on the record, with Chuck on it. We didn’t remix it, we didn’t redo anything, it was just Carlos (Cavazo), myself, Chuck, and Frankie (Banali).

full in bloom: Tony Cavazo, who later co‑founded the band Hurricane with Robert Sarzo.

Kevin: Yeah. That was after Quiet Riot. He was in Quiet Riot or Dubrow, one of the last versions of it, so he and Chuck were in and out of the band at the same time. Carlos’s brother was there out of convenience; he wasn’t really considered. It just happened to be a time when Chuck was out. Chuck was in and out; there were issues there, but never musical ones. He was always really, really good.

full in bloom: Drug issues?

Kevin: No, no, no. Just loyalty issues. (laughs) Nobody had drug problems back then because nobody had any money. The punishment didn’t come until after we became stars.

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