John Novello kindly gave us some minutes to talk about his work with Niacin. During the interview we found not only a
great musician, but also enjoy John's openess and got a taste of his great sensibility.
RP: On John's involvement with Niacin.
JN: Well it actually started with my wife Gloria Novello a great vocal teacher and singer. Billy Sheehan and his whole
band Mr. Big were studying and vocalizing with her and that's how Billy and me met and then once he found out that I
played the organ Hammond B3 he said "one of this days we gonna have to do a project together" so he called me up and we did
some songs for Guitar Player magazine and we had so much fun doing it together that we wrote a buch of new songs and we decided
that we needed a very good drummer and both of us loved Dennis Chambers whom I've never played before, but we called him up
and there you go. That's great because we were really excited with the project since this was a labor of love, you know we
didn't mean it to be a commercial project, we just wanted to write music and have fun and we're really happy that the fans
have started to enjoy it.
RP: On his love for the Hammond B3.
JN: Well, the 60's and 70's were just full of Hammond sounds in all different styles. You had the Soul bands like
James Brown and Tower of Power and then you got Sly Stone and then you go over the rock world and you had the Vanilla Fudge,
EL& P and Genesis, so I grew up listening to all this bands and seeing them live and I saw the different B3 styles
like from Deep Purple to Steppenwolf, so I started playing the B3 and when Billy contacted me I was pretty much very knowledgeable
about B3 tones and the different speakers and things like that, so the B3 sound that we use in Niacin is a very "B stuff sound",
you know my B3 it's all modified and all kind of different things have been hooked up but basically it's the real B3 sound
since I never really play "clones" and that kind of stuff, I play a real B3 and on top I use a Cornswell 2600 for my piano
and that's it. I like the primordial sound of the B3.
RP: On his different musical projects.
JN: Well I love everything about music so I got totally into it and I am really well trained so I have another musical
partnership called Lunatek and I have my own big studio complex and that company is making film and TV music.I also put out
a cd called Lunatek which is all synth improvisations and synth compositions, everything on a synthesizers base, almost like
Tangerine Dream revisited on a modern way. I'm working with another synthesizer sound designer named Allan Howards who is
very famous because he designed all the songs for the Star Trek movies, Escape From NY and all the Halloween movies, so he's
a song composer and a sound designer and me and him teamed up to put this company together to do film scores and to write
this Lunatek music work, so we're working on many different records right now.
RP: On playing and recording with Niacin and other great musicians..
JN: Yeah of course with Billy and Dennis it's really fun to play, they're both great musicians and we'll probably keep
Niacin together forever because it's such a fun band and so easy to do a record 'cause it's a jam band you know, we write
some sketches, we get together and in about three or four days we have the whole reord and we're out of it. Before that I
have worked with Mark Isham who is an incredible composer who I love to play with, of course I have played some live dates
with Chick Corea and have played in one or two of his records. He co-wrote a song for one of our Niacin records (High Bias)
and he's definitely an amazing, amazing consumated musician and it's always great to play with him.
RP: On his tribute to his late wife.
JN: My wife passed away unfortunately in 2000 from breast cancer but she was a great vocalist and we started a project
together called Novello-Rusch so I really miss working with her. There's one song on one of the Niacin albums called "Glow"
that's actually a tribute to her, so what I did is I finished the record and it's a solo record now called "Tightrope".
I also wrote a book that it's called "In Hand Sight" that talks about all the trials and tribulations that we went through
fighting cancer and it's not a music book, but a book about relationships and love and recovery. You can drop by my web site
and get the book and the cd. I wrote all the music and played all the keyboards and everything and she sings so it's kind
of another jazz fusion project which I like to share with everyone.
