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Kellz: We all know what the music scene was like in Seattle in the 90's but what was it like in the 80's specifically the metal scene?

Jonathan K.:When you talk about the music scene in Seattle there are two levels. National and local.
On the National side things were rocking. There were several venues to choose from depending on the act and what was available. The largest was the Kingdome an indoor sports arena with a capacity of about 75,000. The acts that played there were few, and the sound was always terrible the security way too tight. Most acts played at the Seattle center coliseum (seating 14,000) the Seattle Arena (seating 7,500) Tacoma Dome (seating 16,000) there were a couple of refurbished theaters with seating of between 1,500 and 3,500 the most famous being the Paramount. Many acts also blew through quickly and played at the larger clubs or road houses they held between 1,500 to about 750 capacity. I saw for instance The James Gang with Tommy Bolin at a local club one time. Every act you can think of from the Rock or Metal world played here and in the 80's Metal was King. Everyone listened to all the established acts, the shows all sold out quickly. AC/DC did three shows in a row at the coliseum in 82' and word was they could have done five nites if their schedule had permitted. Maiden, Dio, Whitesnake, Ozzy, KISS, Crue, Van Halen, Scorps and anyone else you can think of were here like clockwork every year sometimes twice a year until the hammer fell. If you could afford it (or were on the guest list) you could see a great metal act or two every week all year long. It was a great time. There were three or four radio stations vying for listeners, contests all the time, and it was ALL HARD ROCK and METAL! Everyone dressed in leather. The chicks in Spandex and lace. (Or my fave very tight jeans)

It was the best of times, especially if you were a musician. As I relate this, you can see that when it comes to national acts the local fans were monstrous. Everyone loved metal. There was only one problem the fans were young. 13-30 with the majority being under 21. To be a local musician wanting to break out you had to get on a show at one of these venues so people could see you and that was tough (impossible) without a record contract. So many bands starting out only had a couple of choices. Play the bars with an act that was also starting out, or play the few smaller venues that your fans could get in and do a showcase in hopes you could create a buzz and talk some A&R person to come and see you. In the 70s and most of the 80's being from Seattle was like being from Mars. Record exec.'s rarely came to town. After Jimi Hendrix, the band Heart was the only notable rock act that had actually made it on their own terms. They too had worked their way through the bar scene to reach stardom. The local radio stations did not as a rule play any music from local acts. I don't know why. The music scene here was very vibrant and the musicians were very competent. I have played with many over the years and believe me there are many a musician in town now selling cars or real estate. Be that as it may. The fans loved metal, the musicians loved metal, the radio people loved metal, Seattle loved metal. But if you were local, a band had to be extraordinary to get any interest from a record company.
Floyd Rose and I decided to try something a little different. We had just left The Core a really cool metal band with a lot of really good songs. We had played the last year doing one set a night five or six nights a week opening for The Ronnie Lee group fronted by Ronnie Lee who had been with the all girl group The Runaways. Lita Ford etc. Our drummer and Bass player were very talented but their interests were swerving to powder if you get my drift. Floyd and I felt that as a song writing team if we could just record a demo and get it to someone we would be in. So that's what we decided to do.

The metal scene in Seattle was rockin'. Plenty of groups came to town. It was hard to go more than a week without seeing some national or international act at one of the many venues here.

Locally it was different. There were very few bands playing original music and fewer places to play. There was absolutely no support from local radio stations for local musicians. The saying was if you want to make it as a musician in Seattle, Leave!
The metal fans in Seattle were like fans around the world. They loved to Rock. Any excuse for a party was fine with them. It was the best of times.

Kellz: Q5 & Queensryche both appeared at around the same time; was there any rivalry between the 2 bands or any contact?

Jonathan K.:I think naturally there is always some competition between local bands. Queensryche and Q5 were at the forefront during unusual times in Seattle. As I have said, Seattle bands just were not signed. Now all the sudden there was this interest from major record labels in a couple of bands. Our drummer Gary Thompson had grown up with a couple of members of Queensryche and we bumped into each other at parties, They were good guys and a great band. I always felt that there was plenty of room at the top so why be bothered with the petty stuff. I also felt that Q5 and Queensryche were unique enough in their sounds that it wasn't like two bands that were exactly the same competing for one prize.

Kellz: I had always assumed that Floyd Rose was the leader of the band but in researching my review of 'Steel The Light' I discovered that it was you & he that formed the band. Was it a group effort or was it very much his band?

Jonathan K.:Floyd and I started the band coming out of THE CORE. For the first year or so we made decisions together and met frequently. For a time I even lived at his house. After we signed our management deals and production deals and record deals Floyd became the ad-hoc leader of the band and the decisions were made by him although we always met as a band to discuss major problems. Still later in the band history even that changed as Floyd simply made all decisions and we were notified later. I am even now just finding out about some things I wish I had been consulted about. But it's all water under the bridge. In Nightshade Rick and I make an effort to talk with each other and all the members regarding all aspects of band business so as not to make the same mistakes we did in Q5. It's also just a good thing to do. We're all friends after all.

Kellz: What were the band's objectives from the start?

Jonathan K.:Q5 had simple goals at first. We wanted to play music live in front of lots and lots of people. We wanted to write songs that lots of people liked, or liked to sing to, or play loud in their stereos. We wanted to have fun. I don't think that really changed ever for me. That's about it.

Kellz: Was the material for the first album tested on audiences before recording?

Jonathan K.: Most of the songs on the first album were tested before audiences. We used to play in this funky old club called Flannigan's. We played for two or 21/2 hours on Friday and Saturday nights playing songs we had written during the week along with a core set of 10 or 12 songs that we were sure should be on the first album. There were a couple of songs that were never really tried out in that setting. One of them was Steel the Light. Steel is probably the last song we wrote before we went into the studio. I kind of wish we had kept up at Flannigan's for a couple more months as our song writing as a band was really starting to mesh.

Kellz: Did the album's success in Europe exceed your expectations

Jonathan K. Yes. I only wish we had been told exactly how well we were doing.

Kellz How did this compare to the U.S.?

Jonathan k. The US was a harder nut to crack. If we had been told how well Europe and the rest of the world were doing we would have pursued that fan base harder and the US would eventually have followed suit. I was not consulted on those matters and the decisions by then lay with others.
Our signing with Polygram and Q-Prime was to address the US market specifically. They had great success with Def Leppard and Metallica. We did well in the U.S., But we did not take advantage of the opportunities offered to us.

Kellz: Did the band tour much & were there any European shows?

Jonathan K. We did a number of shows. Our Europe tour was cut because our drummer went skiing and fucked up his knee.

Kellz For the second album (When the mirror cracks) you went for a radically different sound, more keyboards, a slicker & more polished production. Was this just a natural progression or were you aiming to be more commercial?

Jonathan K. When the Mirror Cracks was a very bizarre album that I could talk about for a long time. It was an album that started as one thing and ended as another. In a way it was a result of having unlimited studio time available to us so lots of things were tried on what was originally metal or hard rock songs after awhile I had to change my presentation of the lyric and melody to fit the music. The album was made in pieces. I would get a call to come to the studio and was shown various parts of songs that just last week had sounded completely different. I would go into the vocal booth with my lyric and play with the song and lay down a rough track. I would come back another day and find the song completely different again. It was wild. Eventually the song would be in some sort of final arrangement and I would lay down my keeper track. I am proud to say that I remember doing three songs off that album each in one take on the same day. "Your Tears" "In the Rain" and "Mirror Cracks." Unfortunately the time it took to complete this album contributed to the change in sound. While I like this album very much as a stand alone, it is not what I thought it was to sound like when we had started it nearly two years previously.

Kellz: Among the highlights from "…cracks" were 'Let Go' & the title track both of which ROCKED. Looking back is it these or the keyboard led tracks that you prefer?

Jonathan K.: I like all the songs on the album for various reasons. "Mirror Cracks" and "Let Go" were two songs that retained the flavor of their original writing. One of my personal favorites is "Your Tears." Rick and I wrote that song in his living room and the original version was a heavy metal song kind of like "Rock On" from our first album. I do love the final melody and lyric for personal reasons though. Shows a what a lota time and a few keys will do to a song. My other is "Never Gonna Love Again" simply because we made the lyric too obscure. It's about a man who wakes up one day and he is the only person left alive after a nuclear holocaust. The verse that explains this never made it on the song.
Question 11. After "…Cracks" nothing much was heard of the band until you formed Nightshade what happened in between?

I go into some of that on the website (www.intonightshade.com). I was under the impression that we were to finally start a major tour. I am a front man even more than a singer I have been performing on stage since I was six years old. I loved to go out and feel the music under my skin, to bring the power and glory of Real Rock to anyone that would listen and I was ready. We did some shows and they were spectacular I was in my world. We had just spent a couple years basically playing to microphones it was time to show what we were all about. Instead certain decisions were again made to WAIT!
Polygram had just signed us and they wanted to hear new music even though "Mirror" had only just been released. To certain people that meant writing, rehearsing, and recording a finished album to submit to Polygram although later I found out that is not what they meant. Somewhere between record company, management, and band, the message was not getting to us. So once again we found ourselves in a rehearsal hall writing songs. We eventually recorded 10 or 12 full songs and another 10 or 12 parts of songs. This album was much harder sounding than "Mirror" I was liking it a lot but again tempers, egos, and personalities were starting to be strained. It's very hard to explain and it would take way too much time. Lets just say we spent another year or so doing the recording of our third album, Polygram and Q-prime had not heard a note of it yet. So Floyd took it to them and they turned it down flat. Not what they wanted to hear. So we had a meeting. One of the first in a long time and one of our last. Write and Record more!! I felt we should just go out and play. We began recording some of the other songs. I lasted about another three months. I called a meeting of my friends that I had been working with for seven or eight years and told them I couldn't do it like this anymore and I quit.

Kellz: Can you tell us what has happened since forming Nightshade & what your plans are?

Jonathan K.:Rick and I formed Nightshade in 1990 or 91 so lots of stuff has happened. There were a couple of years after Q5 that we both kinda bummed around trying to figure out what we wanted to do. Our first album "Dead of Night" was released by the same label in Europe that handled Q5 (The now defunct 'Music For Nations-Kellz) and it did very well. Rick and I are both a little gun shy of over production and over management so we make music we like and put it out for anyone that likes our sound to listen to. Of course the Music Scene changed massively as I've said, right after we formed Nightshade and that was a blow to us along with every other established Hard Rock/Metal band on the planet and it seems like only now that some of the "Classic Rock/Metal" bands are starting to recover. Our second album Blood and Iron has done well in Europe and we have had some invites to tour again. We played the Head bangers open Air in Germany last year and we are working on setting up a bigger tour in Europe next summer. We have a website http://www.intonightshade.com where you can see more and learn more about Nightshade and Q5. Our plans are to keep playing as long as people still want to hear our music. We will be recording our third album this winter and we will put it out in Spring of 2005. And as a wise sage once said "ROCK ON!"

As mentioned in the interview you can find out more about Jonathan, Q5 & Nightshade at www.intonightshade.com

You can purchase all of the Q5 & Nightshade albums from Hellion Records