Music-News:
Billy, your current album ‘All Dressed Up… and Nowhere To Go’ has been praised several times as a solid piece of hearty rock ‘n’ roll - influenced by bands such as the Stones, the NY Dolls, the Faces and Mott The Hoople. These bands are obviously amongst your heroes, any particular reason?

Billy Miles Brooke:
Just being mentioned in the same sentence with any of the bands is mind-blowing, and something I'd always dreamt about, but never thought would actually happen, esp. after my ol' L.A. days when we (former band Tragic Romance) were always so close to that "million dollar deal"… I would also like to add that Tragic Romance once hung out with and opened for the late, great Johnny Thunders in Hollywood! Anyway, we finally signed to a verrry heavy and smaller specialty label, "Century Media", which was not a good fit at all, and soon disbanded after a brief U.S. tour (with some minimal airplay on radio and MTV). So yeah, being mentioned along-side those bands is a mind-blower, and recently I've learned that certain people connected very closely to both The Rolling Stones (an engineer/ producer on several of their major works) and The New York Dolls (a close personal associate) have really dug my CD, so that is beyond any and all expectations. These are obviously my favourite bands (plus David Bowie) and originally for this CD, my goal was to make the "great long-lost Stones L.P. between ‘Let it Bleed’ and ‘Sticky Fingers”. Hopefully, you can hear something along those lines, as well as a bit of Bowie, Faces, Mott and Gram Parsons thrown in there as well. One reviewer wrote that a couple of the songs were what he imagined the jams of Gram and Keith - during some very late and chemically enhanced nights at Nellcote (the French Riviera house where the Stones recorded "Exile on Main Street") would sound like. That was a huge compliment, 'cause that's actually what I imagined when I wrote and recorded them.

MN:
To be compared to the aforementioned bands is of course a big compliment, however, are you not worried that perhaps it could also be interpreted as ‘borrowing’ a little too much from their musical styles?

BMB:
I definitely hear what you're saying, and if my CD had come out in - let's say - 1980, or around there, yeah, it would have been too close to the original stuff and would have been written off as a ‘copycat’ or ‘wannabe’. BUT- it's been so long now since the great works of those masters (although the new Dolls album is excellent and the last Stones offering is pretty damn good as well), it is more a homage to that early 70's style and sound than anything else. So few bands or artists are going for this particular sound nowadays - it's pretty sad, and it feels like it may actually go the way of the dodo. Thank God for the Quireboys, The Black Crowes, and Tyla. But Hanoi Rocks has now permanently called it quits; it appears, so that's a major blow to the movement! Now there’s a guy in Las Vegas who seems to be the real McCoy, his name is Chris, and he calls his project the Fantastic Harlan Jones Band (www.myspace.com/thefantasticharlanjonesband). Really great stuff! It seems to be him doing most of the instruments on the tracks he's got there, but I've heard he's a great performer as well. I hope he reads this and writes me about playing together. We've go to carry the torch dammit! There's nobody else!
(At least out this way.)

MN:
You’ve certainly been around as a musician. In terms of your musical career, where do see yourself at the moment?

BMB:
Yikes! At the moment I see myself as an ant, sitting on a pebble, on the side of a hill of a deserted island, in the middle of a vast ocean (after all the other ants have left on a Princess Line cruise ship while I was off sleeping in the bushes after a ‘bad coconut’).
No, seriously- there is this whole Americana underground scene that has emerged and united, thanks specifically to a fine lady named Shilah Morrow and Gram's daughter, Polly. It's called The Sin City Social Club (just Google it) and it has really brought together an amazing amount of people that play the hell out of - or just love listening to - that genre. Shilah's actually a good friend of mine, but even in that situation I don't quite fit in. My feeling is that they think I'm too "heavy" or "glam" or something, so I'm not in the club, it appears. Oh, well, you never know... we'll see what transpires.

MN:
You live in Santa Fé, New Mexico. Do you perceive this to be creatively stimulating, or do you perceive it more as, well… all dressed up… and nowhere to go?

BMB:
It’s definitely the latter, unfortunately. There's a great scene here for, yet again, the aforementioned "Americana" (for those of you playing at home, "Americana is a mix of Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, early Eagles, The Grateful Dead, Ryan Adams (not Brian, not "atoms"), Willie Nelson, Gram Parsons, and finally and most importantly - The Band. But if you don't have four 45-minute-sets of that stuff mixed in with cover tunes, you can't get the gigs. I actually did this for many years when I first moved to Santa Fe, but now I'd rather just do my stuff and play real shows, like when I was asked to be the entertainment for the Black Crowes after-concert party a couple of months ago. Now that's something I wanted to do. Other than that, it’s all rather few and far between, I'm afraid. On a more positive note, I actually do have some airplay in France, Belgium, Denmark, and my old band is known in Finland (we did a brief re-union-type tour there in 2006.) So I'd love to come over there and do a tour or five. Is there anybody over there with the Stones/Faces vibe that would like to play some? Please let me know on my MySpace page.

MN:
Who’s your ultimate guitar hero then? What’s your favourite guitar?

BMB:
That one over there. No, not that one, the one next to it. Could you hand it over, please? Ok, I'm not much of an aficionado, but there was one guitar that really seemed special. It was an old '72 or '67 or something, REAL Fender Telecaster. It really did have everything you've always felt and heard about these well-made guitars. I was about to go off to Europe for an acoustic thing, so I sold it for about half of what I paid for it to my best L.A. friend, Chris Jones, from The Hookers (please check out ‘Calico’ by The Hookers on iTunes). Having said that, the CD pales in comparison to the one they made themselves pre-RCA records, which is a shame.

Player-wise, well, it's pretty obvious that it HAS to be Keith and Woody. I'm more of a rhythm player like Keith, but I can also whip out the killer lead once in a while, so don't write me off just yet. Ronnie is especially underrated as a lead player - all one has to do is see the Stones live nowadays (he was unbelievable on the last tour, as well as Mick, singing hard, high songs like "She's so Cold"). They are still the standard to try to reach, but if you check out any old Faces DVDs or LPs you'll find that Ronnie is one of the greatest players (esp. slide) around. And to play so well - and they really did - with that amount of "influence, joy, and other substances" in their systems - is beyond belief. It's not easy - believe me. I've tried it thousands of times!

MN:
Other than the already mentioned bands, what else inspires you to your song writing and music composing?

BMB:
Ants on pebbles on hillsides of deserted islands; some of them may - or may not - be holding large umbrella drinks and wearing sunglasses while reeking of coconut-scented 30-factor sun block.

MN:
You’ve had several bands going in the past, such as Tragic Romance or the Stardust Cowboys. Can we expect some new formation at some stage, or will you simply remain as Billy Miles Brooke?

BMB:
I am currently doing almost everything humanly possible to remain Billy Miles Brooke, although lately the moniker of "Her Royal Majesty, The Cheese Duchess of Holland" has been creeping up more and more - to the point where I’ve had to limit my cheese in-take (and factory production) by almost 22 %. But on a serious note, I've kind of given up on Sante Fe (and pretty much the USA). It’s really rather sad, but maybe there are some rockers over in the UK or Europe there - so I can find a band "that needs a helping hand"... Feel free to contact me on my MySpace:
Her Majesty, The Cheese Duchess of Holland
www.myspace.com/tragicromancerocks
(PS- I'm actually straight, I admit, but I really love cheese, not that there's anything wrong with it...)

Speaking of my previous band Tragic Romance, that was one of THE great L.A. bands from the late 80's through about '93. Even though The Stones, Faces, Dolls and Hanoi Rocks were my favourite bands, in those days - if you wanted to "make it" - you couldn't actually sound like that. And I moved out to L.A. to "MAKE IT", dammit! So we started off playing bands such as L.A. Guns, Warrant, Jetboy etc. etc. back in the big hair days. We were buddies with Poison (actually very genuine nice guys at the time) and Faster Pussycat (Taime always a star) and then around '89, got a lot darker and heavier. Kind of a mix of The Cult, U2 and Jane's Addiction, if you can imagine that. I'm going to get some videos up on YouTube one of these days from that era, 'cause we were just about untouchable. We were being talked about as being the "next big thing", but somehow that was always just out of our grasp. Anyway, we finally signed with Century Media Records (which is that verrry heavy label I mentioned earlier) who at that moment decided they wanted a more "radio-friendly" band (but soon regretted it). So we got one little tour, a little airplay, and I believe a couple of appearances on MTV as well as some other late night video shows. There are still posters and CDs on Ebay, which is amazing after such a long time. If you find a lunchbox, please let me know!

MN:
Of all the tracks on your current album, which one is your personal favourite and why?

BMB:
From the first playback, two songs have really stayed with me as my favourites. As a rocker, I absolutely LOVE ‘Queen of the Stardust Ball’ and actually kept the very first rough mix off the board as the final mix, something I pretty much never do. Usually it's a long, thought-out, critical process by people much-more in "the know" than I, but in this case, I just loved that first mix, and it made me dance around the house much more than any other "real" mixes. I'm sure the Stones’ engineer/producer that I've mentioned before could probably come up with a much more awesome mix (and of course I hope he does eventually!). In the meantime, booty-shaking, as a response, is greatly underrated but very important on the rock-a-meter-scale.

And then there is ‘The Raging Light of Dawn’. This still hits me right where I always wanted to. It's much more of a visceral thing. All of the songs are about real things that have happened in my life and my own personal history. As Hemingway said: “ Write about what you know" and I've tried to follow that. ‘Raging Light’ is about a great love of my life that slipped away. The real story - told here for first time - is that I had this girlfriend who I really loved. She got this chance to move from L.A. to New York City for a better job. I gave it some thought and decided that it was best to NOT try to have a long-distance relationship. So we talked it out and broke up. I took her to the airport and that was that, except for the subsequent mornings that haunted me afterwards for many months, as you can hear from the lyrics and guitar solo. I play about half of them on the CD, with the other half being played by my engineer and producer and guitar monster Michael Saint Leon. It's a nice weave, like Keef and Ronnie, doing a "weave" throughout.

MN:
Any plans for a tour?

BMB:
Not in the States, as rock n' roll is dead as far as I can tell (tears, moaning, several bottles of red-and other colours resembling red- and white wine.) But hopefully the U.K. and Europe offer some opportunities. It appears there are still pockets of rabid rockers in the U.K., in Italy, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and many other countries. As I mentioned before, if you have a REAL rock n' roll band AND want to rock AND need a frontman AND maybe some tunes, please let me know at my MySpace place.

MN:
Is your label still Toad Ranch Records, or how and where can people order your album?

BMB:
Yes, it’s still Toad Ranch Records (my own little label) I'm afraid, but if this Stones' producer/engineer comes through, it could be a whole new ball-game. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, please go to CD Baby or I-Tunes (Billy Miles Brooke) and buy so many CDs it'll make you giddy!

MN:
Many thanks for this enlightening and highly entertaining interview!
(Please read my Music-News review of Billy’s album).

BMB:
It was truly a pleasure speaking with you today, and thank you for rocking so hard!!!! XXOO Billy