Official Press Release: “Legendary downtown NYC rock band, Living Colour, exploded out of CBGB's in the late ‘80s and landed all over MTV, the cover of Rolling Stone and stadium stages around the world with their Grammy Award-winning multi-platinum debut album ‘Vivid'. The band's follow up record, ‘Times Up', also earned a Grammy. In 2009 Living Colour is back and ‘fierce' as ever, still containing the original members Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, Will Calhoun and (since 1993) Doug Wimbish.

Recorded at Sono Studios during the fall of 2008 and spring of 2009, The Chair in the Doorway’s results stretch from the modern soul anthem ‘Behind the Sun' to the politically-charged, heavy rock of ‘DecaDance' to the sacred steel blues of ‘Bless Those'.  Living Colour will announce plans for a world tour shortly. With dates beginning in September, it will include their first North American tour in four years along with performances in South America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

Having helped to pave the way for a number of contemporary African-American artists to follow in their wake, ranging from Rage Against The Machine to Lenny Kravitz to Ben Harper, with a multi-dimensional sound that drew equally from Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, Talking Heads and Ornette Coleman, the success of Living Colour broke down the colour barriers in rock music. Guitarist and founding member Vernon Reid also founded the Black Rock Coalition to use his influence to further this cause.

Discovered by Mick Jagger who produced their first demo and later offered them an opening slot with The Rolling Stones, Living Colour would go on to create a repertoire that includes a multitude of classic songs, including ‘Cult Of Personality', ‘Elvis Is Dead', ‘Open Letter To A Landlord', ‘Glamour Boys' and ‘Love Rears Its Ugly Head'. With The Chair In The Doorway, the fifth album of their storied career, Living Colour expands the scope of their timeless body of work and, in the process, proves vital as ever.”

We caught up with Living Colour frontman, Corey Glover whilst out on the road in the midst of their current tour which will take them through North America, South America and Europe.

Hey Corey, well you are already a few shows into a tour that will take you to North and South America and Europe! How have the shows gone so far, is the band firing on all cylinders?

It’s going very well so far, we are starting off playing small venues and seeing if we can end up big.  We really need to reacquaint ourselves to the American market and they have to reacquaint themselves to us.  We didn’t want to go off with something really big and then not meet peoples expectations.  We are growing as much as the music is, so we need to take that into consideration.

 

With The Chair In The Doorway about 2 weeks away from being released, how are you feeling about the album and what are your thoughts on the finished product?

I think it’s great, I think it’s a really good record.  It’s a record that created itself, really.  We had this idea, we had a title for the album, before we actually had the album and as we were going along, the themes and ideas really took shape and it became a really good record and I am very proud of it.

 

You just mentioned that you had the title before the album, therefore, you obviously had a concept behind that title?

Well it’s something I say very often and it’s something that I say in the context of us as in Living Colour and what was going on with Living Colour.  You know, sometimes it’s like the most obvious thing that gets in the way. It’s like having a chair in the doorway, and nobody seems to want to do anything about it.  So you know it’s something I say all the time and Vernon thought it would be an interesting title for the album, and low and behold it is!

 

Can you give a bit of an insight into recording process for the album?

While we were on tour in Europe, we were doing a months touring and we had a ten day break in between, and there was this studio in the Czech Republic, outside of Prague.  It had this really good feel and really good equipment and it was really conducive to making music.  We spent a good ten days there first and we finished up some stuff, then we headed back there again in February and got with a producer named “Count” and finished off with the rest of it.  And as I said before, I must say it came up much better than I expected it to.

Focussing on the songwriting, was that pretty much similar to past albums, where it was largely shared amongst the band?

Well yes, it’s pretty much always been a shared thing.  We’ve always had some input into making what we do work.  So, this album is no differen’t to anything else we’ve done.

What did you feel that working with a producer could bring to the recording process of the album, rather than self-produce such as you did on your previous album?

I think we needed somebody to have some perspective.  We have made some records with a producer, we have had some without a producer.  Sometimes we need some perspective, sometimes we don’t.  For this particular record, we thought some perspective would be good for us.

 

Looking back now, do you think the whole process of recording Collideoscope was the “therapy” you needed (so to speak) in order to now make the album you just have? 

Yes I agree.  The reason why we needed to work on Collideoscope, for us, was so that we could work together.  At that point in time, we had really only gotten back together.  Whilst we had played together as a band, which is really what we do, as we are primarily a live band.  But to really get through some of those intimate moments of being in a band, you have to get together and be around each other and deal with each other and deal with how the other persons thinks in order to make that record.  That’s exactly where the expression “the chair in the doorway” came from, it was us working on making Collideoscope and from my part, how we were working together to make that record at that particular point in time.  It’s a necessary thing to get some real perspective on what you are doing.

 

With Cult Of Personality being featured on Guitar Hero III, have you noticed the impact that this may of had on bringing a new generation of fans to Living Colour??

Well, we’ve made a lot of music,  over the last number of years, we’ve done a lot of stuff!  Fortunately, it’s stood the test of time, Cult Of Personality has stood the test of time.  So, we have people that are appreciating our music for the very first time, some weren’t even born when we first released that song!  For them to appreciate it on that level is great for us.  I think that’s very cool!

You are heading over to South America later this year and Europe again.  Is Europe a really strong market for you?

We head over to Europe every year, at least twice a year since we got back together.  The thing about Europe and a lot of these countries is that they are not beholding to your last hit.  They are not working on reliving some past glories you had.  You know, the music takes more precedence over our celebrity status, or our last hit.  What is much more important to us is that we get to expand and expound upon the music that we make.

Do you have intentions of coming back to Australia to promote The Chair In The Doorway?

We are thinking about going out there sometime next year.  The issue we have been confronted with, is that if there is a real desire for people to actually want and come see us.  So we are in the midst of figuring out if people are interested in Living Colour coming down to Australia and New Zealand and that part of the world.

 

What are your thoughts today in 2009 when you look back at the beginnings of Living Color and the trail that the band blazed for not only a number of African Americans artists in rock music but the other bands influenced by Living Colour who have since followed in your footsteps?

I don’t know about the impact we have had on music, but I do know the impact music has had on us.  I can’t really talk about who has influenced who, and who has made what into what, that really makes no sense.  What I do know is the world has influenced how our music is made.  I hope now that we are ten years into this new Century that we will get more and more enlightened and with that, music will become more enlightened.

 

You arrived in the 80’s to a scene dominated with big hair and glam rock and toured with likes of Guns N Roses on the Rolling Stones tour, that sure must have been an interesting experience given the bands beginnings in New York!!

That was a real hope for us, it gave us the boost we needed, didn’t it?  It gave lot’s of people the chance to see this band and get what this band is about, which is a really good live band.  In terms of how it all went down, we were out on that Steel Wheels tour the whole time.  Guns N Roses came along after that towards the end and played the last four shows after we did.  We were really grateful to the Stones, as it gave us the shot of the arm in terms of the types of venues we were playing.  A lot of the venues we were playing on the Stones tour, well the venues where we came from were about 1/90th of the size.  You know, you could virtually fit all the clubs we played at, into one of those stadiums!  So we were very grateful.

 

You released a solo album “Hymns” about a decade ago and have had numerous other movie, TV and musical projects over the past years, obviously Living Colour is the priority right now, but what else is there that you would love to be involved with one day, that you haven’t yet had the opportunity?

I have done a lot of stuff.  I’ve done the solo record, I have been out in North America the last 2 years with Jesus Christ Superstar.  I would love to do more of that.  I have done a lot of theater stuff, a lot of movie stuff.  I would love to write actually - music, drama, television and get some of that under my belt.  I have a few ideas actually.  I think the sky is the limit, I’ve still got time to do a lot of stuff!