intervtroy

 

TROY GREGORY

FORMER MEMBER OF
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM & PRONG.

Troy Gregory is a creative bassplayer and musician. He has been a member of a bunch of bands and his career has spanned three decades. In 1986 Troy auditioned to replace Cliff Burton in Metallica, but Metallica chose Flotsam and Jetsam's Jason Newsted so there became a vacant spot in Flotsam and Jetsam too and after trying out different bassists Troy Gregory joined Flotsam and Jetsam in 1988. Troy recorded two albums with Flotsam before leaving in 1991, he plays the bass on the legendary No Place for Disgrace album as well as the follow up When the Storm Comes Down.

After his time in Flotsam Troy decided to join Prong and he plays bass on their third album; Prove You Wrong. In the mid nineties he also had a short stint with post-punk legends Killing Joke, since then he has played in a bunch of underground bands of different styles, most recently The Witches. In this interview we will discuss his audition with Metallica, his time in Prong and Flotsam and what he's been up to lately.

We can begin with a small presentation of your yourself...

I was born in Detroit. I had my first band at age ten. I play guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, violin and cello but prefer singing above all of them. I taught myself. I enjoy producing my own records as well as others. I do artwork, design and paintings. I write, direct, edit, score and act in film. I have been in over 30 bands. I have played with thousands of musicians. I have had over 500 music students. I have also had over 30 jobs that include draftsman, journalist, marble and tile construction, book stores, record stores, projectionist, apple picker, etc, etc.

I have written well over a thousand compositions. I am usually doing three projects at once. I do not take days off. I am constantly evolving. I also enjoy studying the science of sound and light. I am a silly man.

Troy Gregory

You have played with a dozen of bands, can you tell us a little bit about them.

I float in with random groups of folks from Detroit to Hollywood to Arizona to New York to London to Australia, back home to Detroit and wherever I may go next. They have band names and their own practices of survival and sound. I know these people for short amounts of time and help them during that time to create a mutually desired result.

I tend to get along with everyone and live in this new habitat until I feel that I must move on. Some remember me as being extremely unpredictable in both wonderful and horrible ways and they are correct. I don’t believe in rock stars.

Tell us about your new band The Witches.

The Witches are the type of band I have always imagined doing since I was three. But it took me until 1996 to do it. Since then there have been five albums and a compilation. I am working currently on a new album. There is no set agenda of what choices of instruments, mood, tone, implement or atmosphere will construct the music. “Genre” is a tool used for the marketing fishing of desired demographic wallet for life.

It is a limiting and deadening confinement , robbing the creative spirit of it’s infinite potency bound to nothing but being. It was supposed to be a cartoon but I ended up meeting real people that wanted to add their own personal perspective to the mural. It has taken so long between albums because I am usually involved with about three projects at once always. Now I am only focusing on this as it is what I only wish to do. It is fulfilling for me on many levels.

As this is a thrash metal site lets go back in time, After Cliff Burton's tragic accident you got an audition with Metallica. How did that happen?

I had just graduated high school and moved to Hollywood where I was attending Musician’s Institute. I met a guy there named Scott Earl who had the audition, I hitched a ride with him up to San Francisco because I never been there and wanted to check it out. We drove all night and stayed with some friends of his. In the morning he didn’t want me to go with him to the audition. I was curious and pushed myself to go with him, assuring that I did not even have a bass on me. I didn’t have an audition, I didn’t even know how you would even get one of those at the time. I came from playing the bars in Detroit - things like managers, lawyers, big record company workings - that was all elusive and even repulsive. At the audition studio I got into some real great discussion with this biker gentleman that worked at the studio. We got along well and he questioned if I was auditioning. He got me a bass from the studio to use - a Rickenbacker 4001 (which is also what I happened to play).

Seven or ten guys were ahead of me in a line when it was announced for everyone to go home and that they were done for the day. For some reason I yelled at the guy to tell Metallica that if “those fucks don’t audition me, that they are making a big mistake”. He looked at me and laughed (I looked about 15 at the time) and he told me to hold on a second. Meanwhile everybody is glaring dirty looks at me, including Scott. The guy told me to come back. I played two songs. they wanted my number, I told them I didn’t have a phone. Because I didn’t. Lars gave me his number. As I left in the parking lot they asked me to come back in again. We played for about another hour or so. I went back down to school in L.A and talked a few times on the phone with Lars and then he said they got some guy and I said ok and went back to studying.

It must have been strange to be around three grieving guys. Tell us more about that audition. You where pretty close to become a member of Metallica?

I heard I was close. I always hear conflicting things. Regardless, it was quite a fun afternoon.

You met Jason Newsted on that audition? Or did you know each other from before?

I had never met or had heard of him. I met no one at the audition except for the biker and Metallica. I met Jason briefly after his first concert with them at the Country Club in L.A …which Metallica were kind enough to invite me to. I actually did not really meet him until about 2 years after that when he was visiting friends in Arizona. I believe it was a Flotsam picnic. We never really knew each other at all. Talked a few times, got along it seems ...but ..we're pretty much strangers.

Had Jason Newsted anything to do with you ending up as his replacement in Flotsam and Jetsam?

None at all. We never knew each other. I knew Chuck Behler from Megadeth when Chuck was still living in Detroit and we played a few gigs together. It was him and another Detroit cat named Ken Wagner that suggested me to Flotsam.

The Flots-cake... From left to right: Troy Gregory, Edward Carlson, Michael Gilbert, Eric A.K. & Kelly David-Smith.

How was it to join Flotsam and Jetsam, I guess that the connection with Jason Newsted and Metallica was something the band always was recognized for.

I have always looked at music and me being a musician as self expression … so I don’t ever gauge myself to anyone else to whatever it is I am being or becoming. So that type of thing has never been an issue for me. Although I was quite thrilled to step in for Youth on a Killing Joke tour that he couldn’t do. I didn’t know anything about Flotsam or their history either, until I joined. Then I knew a lot about them.

You play bass on their legendary No place for Disgrace album. How was that and how do you feel about that album in retrospect?

I really enjoyed Bill Metoyer as a producer and especially as a person. It was the first time I had recorded a record like that though. What I mean is the recording every instrument separate and on different days. I was used to recording the whole band at once in one day and mixing at night. So it was strange for me to do a 45 minute album over the course of months. That is the way many records are made and the standard norm it by and large. Yet I still prefer a room full of the musicians playing as you would on stage or at rehearsal basement …having all the frequencies kicking in the same room in real time. That to me is exciting. But I remember enjoying myself. I hung out with my brother Todd a lot.

No Place For Disgrace

Flotsam and Jetsam has recently re-recorded that album, have you heard the new versions and what do you think of them?

I still have not heard them. I have been meaning to. I think it was actually a cool thing of them having Michael Spencer do it. After all, he was the guy that they started writing this record with in the first place. I hated what the cat who mixed the album did with the bass tone that me and Bill Metoyer had …he made it so thin and clicky dull with no bottom. So I am curious and hopeful that they changed the dreadful bass sound of that album. I bet it was fun for them to do.

You also recorded the When the Storm Comes Down with Flotsam and Jetsam, how was that and what do you think of that album today?

I don’t know. I was going through a massive transition in my perspective of life at that time.
That’s all where my head was at. I went for long walks and sometimes I was a lot of fun. I drank a lot and studied Majick. I wrote and burned about ten novels around this time. I worked at a record store in Phoenix and I also slept in the Flotsam practice storage facility on top of some drum cases. I stayed on everyone in that bands couch or floor at one time. I was in Flotsam the way most people are in college. I chased girls, drank heavily, had a zillion laughs and philosophized all through the night about death and love. I was just passing through and this band meant everything to them … bless ‘em.

You must have toured with Flotsam during this time, what bands did you tour with?

We had a fun one with King Diamond. Everyone got along quite well. Used to love having conversations with King Diamond about records. Super nice guy. Mickey Dee was on drums and a lot of fun to hang out with. Megadeth, Testament, Sanctuary. Tons of bands have been on the bill … Violence, Forbidden, Fates Warning, Sacred Reich And Prong.

After that you left Flotsam and Jetsam for Prong, how come?

I left Flotsam first because we all knew that it wasn’t really working. They needed someone that was on their wavelength and desire to make that band happen. I wanted a new environment and I wanted to record the dozens of songs I had written that didn’t fit in with Flotsam. I moved back to L.A and tried to find musicians to play with ..after that didn’t happen I followed my then girlfriend up to Portland for a short time. After the ex girlfriend I moved back to Detroit and started a band with a guy that I started my first band with.

His name is Matthew Smith. I worked with him in Crime And the City Solution, Kim Fowley, Andre Williams, Outrageous Cherry, Sixto Rodriguez and numerous other projects since. He was also in The Witches for a bit. So I am back in Detroit and working on a band a year after I left Flotsam and I get a call from Tommy Victor asking me to join Prong. I thought it would be fun and I had the Detroit thinking that I can be in a few bands at once. Of course, I was so busy when I was with Prong that I had no time at all to do another band and plus I had to move to New York.

Prove You Wrong

What do you think of your time in Prong and why did you leave the band?

It was time well spent. Had me some fun, learned some life lessons, broke a lot of bass strings. I left for the same reason that I left Flotsam, The Dirtbombs, Crime And The City Solution, etc — all those bands had a sound that was theirs and a path they chose to follow long before I joined …I come in and accompany  them on that path,  for awhile … I always write and I find singing more personally desired for how I spend my life on earth …eventually  after the amount of time I play with someone , I have more than enough songs that mean quite a bit to me to be involved with the manifestation of ..and usually those songs are not on the agenda of whatever entertainment organization I happen to be involved with. I also think it is selfish and rather mean of me to stay in a band if I have lost interest. I don’t want to be phony and just mail it in…. If someone was not having fun playing in The Witches , I would encourage them to move on and pursue what would make them happy. I don’t  wish to be anyone’s flat tire. So I move on and see what the universe throws at me next.

Are you listening to thrash metal today or is it a thing of the past?

I listened to side one of Mercyful Fate’s Don’t Break The Oath just last week and I played Celtic Frost at a event I deejayed last night.  I also teach music so I always have some guitar student that loves metal or is discovering it. I taught a metal class that played Slayer, Venom, Exodus, U.F.O, Accept , Maiden, etc. So I had to learn everything on guitar and bass to help teach them. So thrash pops up daily for me it seems.

No plans for a new thrash metal band featuring Troy Gregory? ;)

I did some recordings two years ago called TORAKIS. I did these with my friends Paul Torakis and Mike Alonso ( who was also in my first band as a kid and he now drums in Electric Six ).  A few of these songs are on Soundcloud online. So yes, there is new thrash I have done ..it’s just not on the radar. We just put it up and that’s about it. I suppose if it got some attention we would pursue more recordings when the guys have the time. But we are all broke here in Detroit..or at least my friends are ..so we are always working.

What's the highlight of your career?

Putting a blind student of mine behind a drum set for the first time and teaching him the beat to Human Fly from the Cramps and then jamming on that with me on guitar and singing for about a half hour version of that song. His smile that entire half hour was genuine. I felt useful and happy for him.

What's your plans for the near future?

New record album from The Witches this year ..a new film that I am preparing to direct , one of two books I intend to complete … a lot of show with The Witches ..hopefully a tour. More teaching …maybe a few random shows with The Dirtbombs ( played with them as a guest at the Metallica Orion Festival here in Detroit last summer ) …finish the records I am producing for three different artists. Try to spend time more time with my family. Listening to the universe.

Have you got any funny story to tell, if anything weird has happened?

I am sorry but I have too many to mention and everything is weird.

Any last words for our readers?

Do something nice for someone today without expecting anything in return. Create with a unbiased imagination. Embrace how strange and beautiful all existence is. There is nothing disrespectful about smoking pot at a funeral for a friend.

By/ Ruthless

(25-03-2014)