"When the wizard comes down, Lord, he’s gonna heal ya"

To friends, Romans, and assorted hangers-on, he’s ‘Showbiz Al’, the tattooed, muscled carpenter of the stars, the cat in the know with a hammer in one hand and a fistful of rock and roll in the other ; a weaver of tall tales, a breaker of hearts, the Iron Boss of Tinseltown. But to millions — alright, motherfucker, thousands- of true believers, Alex Mitchell will forever be known as the swaggering man behind the mic in Circus Of Power, the world’s greatest biker metal band. Poured out of the same New York City street thug turned rock star mold as the Dictators and Twisted Sister, COP roared out of the garage in the mid- 80’s and set the world ablaze with one of the purest doses of hard rock to ever climb on an American Hog and hurtle, hell bent for leather, right down the throat of the record industry. Part swamp boogie, part heavy metal thunder, part rock and roll hootchie-koo, Circus of Power wrote war dances for rock outlaws, and the victorious howling resonated all over the world.

Metal radio fed their anthems to hungry Camaros across the country. MTV wedged their videos in between LA Guns and Gunsn’Roses on the Headbanger’s Ball, and those glossies of the sub-literate, Circus and Hit Parader, regularly splashed their tattooed leather and shiny chrome visage on their covers. Although timing certainly had a hand in their success, Circus of Power were an entirely different breed of rock animal than most of the bands that they shared stages with. They bore no relation to the spandexed stragglers to the graveyard that lurked, panicked and outdated, on the edges of the Sunset Strip at the tail end of the hair band era. And even with Future Alice in Chains main man Jerry Cantrell in their fold during their latter days, they weren’t morose exiles from Coolville like the flannel faithful in the then burgeoning grunge scene, either. No, Circus of Power was a whole different game, untethered by the constraints of musical trends and corporate pecking orders; they were timeless, existing in that eternal Easy Rider vision of freedom through volume, speed, and indulgence. Classic, in other words.

In 1992, after a 7 year full -bore run, Circus of Power packed up their tents for good. They could have rode out the lean years with a down-shift into the minor chords and druggy stares that defined the era, but they opted to go their separate ways, insuring legendary status unmarred by any ‘Manifest Destiny’ styled compromise. News on the COP front has been scarce for the last ten years; guitarist Gary Sunshine’s recent unenviable gig as Axl Rose’s guitar teacher is all the dust I could kick up. That is, until New Year’s Eve 2000, when the Circus was back in town for a one-off reunion gig in LA. Although the sold -out show didn't lead to a full and righteous reformation, it did fan the flames that had been sparking in Alex Mitchell’s rocket skull for the last couple of years. With the recent reunions of COP contemporaries and fellow true believers the Cult and the Love Reaction in full swing, can the triumphant return of Circus of Power be far behind?

"I’m such an idiot that I just went out and got a "Freebird" tattoo on my stomach. It’s red, white and blue. That’s me in a nutshell." Alex hasn’t changed much since his days as the mouthy, self-effacing, quick- witted ring -master of the Circus, although his locale certainly has. I found Alex at home in Hollywood. "We’ve been out here for ten years, but I grew up in Florida, so I’m still East Coast, to borrow a line from the warring rappers", he assures me, "but I like it in California, it’s beautiful, and it’s easy to live here, you know?" Fair enough, but it’s not exactly the place I’d expect a New York Fool Killer to end up. Not enough bad asses to run with. "Maybe not in the music scene, but if you go down to the end of my block, you’ll see all the bad asses you want", Alex informs me. "LA is a weird place. If you have the idea that California is soft, you’ve got the wrong idea. There’s about 100,00 gang members in LA alone. And it does carry over into the music scene, too. I mean, you go to a Suicidal Tendencies show, you better wear some armor. Any of those bands, go to a Slayer show out here, it’s devastating. For awhile, they wouldn’t even let those two particular bands play out here because of the insurance, people would just tear shit up." Further proof that rock and roll is a fucking mess no matter where you go. Still, Alex has got to miss that familiar CBGB’s stench every once in awhile. "It’s different. I miss New York, but I can’t compare them, they’re just too different. I’d like to have enough money to live in both places. As far as musically, I always felt more comfortable in New York as far as going out and playing a gig. In LA people are pretty ambiguous. Any band that comes to LA and plays the Whiskey or the Palladium will tell you, it’s kind of boring. The people here just stand there, they don’t even clap, it’s kind of a yawn fest no matter what. And it’s weird, too. It takes couple of years to get used to the weirdness of LA. Like that scene with Suicidal and all those bands in Venice. Those guys are from the beach. To a New York guy, it seems really strange that hardcore punk music would come from the beach, you’d think it would come out of the city, like from Hollywood. But Hollywood is still about Motley Crue, you know. Which is too bad, because I love old school punk. X, Social Distortion, that kind of stuff, I love it. My favorite band of all time is the Damned, I love that band. Iggy Pop, too. To me, there’s no difference between that stuff and Lynrd Skynrd. It’s all just good music to me. That was kind of the spirit of Circus of Power. We played music that we liked."

Street cred confirmed, I ask Alex where the fuck he’s been for the last ten years. "I had to go back to work", he says in all honesty. " I burned through the money, and went back to work, and it was the greatest fucking thing that ever happened to me, to go back to paying my own bills. I started working as a carpenter on movie sets. It’s hard work, long hours, and it sucks. I mean, it’s cool that I learned a trade, learned to work with my hands, but the thing is, all of a sudden I realized how good food can taste, how cool it is to have a roof over my head, a lot of things I’d taken for granted. That was a good path for me. A lot of other guys stay spoiled, and live off strippers, or whatever. But I tell you what, if I was lucky enough to just be in band and play and be successful on any level again, I’d kiss the earth everyday in thanks, because it’s a really great thing, and I miss it a lot." At their peak, Circus of Power was one of the most popular heavy rock bands on the planet. Surely, all the money can’t be gone. "Well, c’mon, man. Cocaine’s expensive. We weren’t making a lot of money, but we didn’t have to work for 6 or 7 years. But you burn through money fast. I mean 5 guys, plus lawyers and managers, all these motherfuckers that take your money. You don’t pay attention to your long distance phone bill when you’re in a band, you know? You become very spoiled. But I’m glad things happened the way they did, because I was going down a bad path." That twisted road eventually toppled the mighty Circus. "Every band has that ‘Spinal Tap’ stuff going on", Alex explains. " I don’t see how bands can remain cool, and humble, with all that shit going on. I don’t know how you don’t become an asshole, because all of a sudden, you’re given everything- drugs, money. Some people can handle it, and some people become total assholes. We saw it happening to us, and it was just time to split." He talks about COP’s last days. "The passion wasn’t there anymore on anybody’s part, and we weren’t on the level of success that we should have been at that point. Basically, it was our fault for not putting out the album, the one that was going to put us over the top, and we just weren’t cohesive. I was the first one to go, the first one to say ‘Fuck it’. At the time, we had one more album to go on our contract, and we could have made some money out of it, but it was like, ‘I’m not into this. All the money in the world wouldn’t matter, I’m just not into it.’ Now I would. Now for half the money in the world I would, after being a working Joe for the past 8 years. Money for playing? Yeah, no problem. At that point too, there was still a lot of drugs and alcohol going on, which I don’t really have any problem with, as long as you don’t fuck up. I live in a town where almost everyone here is in NA." Alex chuckles. " I’m all for being straight, for having your faculties about you and not be addicted to heroin, but I’m also not about becoming part of a cult, some kind of bizarre group of people who are kind of self-righteous, and that whole ambiguous ‘higher power’ thing, that’s too LA for me, man. Too Dianetics for me."

"When we were good, we were pretty good, but even when we were shitty, there was something cool about that band", Alex says with obvious pride. "The thing I liked most about Circus of Power is that we were outsiders. We didn’t fit in with the LA scene or the New York scene. We had songs like "White Trash Queen" that were way more rootsy, way more swampy than the stuff that was popular. I mean, we weren’t "Cherry Pie", you know what I’m saying? Even when I was into punk, I was an outsider, though. I like whatever I liked, whether it was John Coltrane or the Bay City Rollers. I mean, people were on a whole Minor Threat trip. Well, I liked Minor Threat too, but if I wanted to listen to Donna Summers, then fuck you, that’s what I’m going to listen to." That outsider status was shared by a cabal of now legendary heavy- ass rock and roll bands that roamed freely outside of the mainstream circles in COP’s hey-day. Some of them are gone for good, some are back with a vengeance, and all of them are spoken of with reverence amongst rockers even today. And Alex knows exactly who they were. "The bands for that era that I thought were really good, and it’s funny because you see retrospectives on MTV, and it’s like they don’t get it at all. They always talk about bands like Poison and Cinderella, and nothing against those bands, I mean, I don’t want to turn this into a slag-fest, but the bands I like from that era are Gunsn’Roses, obviously. Raging Slab. You listen to their old EP "True Death", and their first two albums, that shit fucking killed, man. Zodiac Mindwarp, the Cult, Four Horsemen. Those were the bands from back then that I thought were really great, that got my motor going. All those other bands I never really cared much about." Alex couldn’t have come up with a more righteous and noble list of pure rock, and it should be noted that, in one form or another, all of them are back in the trenches, with one exception. The Four Horsemen, one of the most ferociously over the top and true to form hard rock bands ever, were silenced for good in 1999 when their lead singer, Frankie Starr, rode his motorcycle straight to Heaven. "I met Frankie Starr out here", Alex tells me. " Frank died a couple of years ago, he had a bad motorcycle accident. I used to visit him in the hospital, it was pretty rough to see him lying there, because that guy was a real loudmouth, you know, a real exuberant motherfucker. I actually worked with Frank, he’s the one the got me a job doing construction." Rock and roll suffered a devastating blow when he died. They don’t make rock stars like him anymore. "Oh yeah, man", Alex agrees. Frank was the real fucking deal. That guy had Novas in the front yard with no engines in them."

" It was hard to bill us with other bands. They put us on with Danzig, and all their fans were like ‘What the fuck?’ We opened up for Blue Oyster Cult, who I really love, but that’s not the right idea either. There were a lot of weird tours, and all the bad things that could possibly happen to us did." Alex is recounting the magic and madness of Circus of Power’s death and glory days, and how they size up to the rock and roll situation, circa now. I ask him about COP’s signature ‘Down with the Outlaws’ image, and how much they were actually involved in the biker lifestyle. "Probably not as much as people think. We perpetrated that more than we probably should have, because not everyone in the band rode motorcycles. That’s just one of those silly things you do, you know, like the record company said, "Hey, let’s throw in some Harleys in the pictures", and we were like, "yeah, why not?" and the next thing you know every bike club in the USA is coming to our shows, which can be a scary thing. But I know a lot of those guys, and those guys are OK with me. I go on a people to people basis, it’s something I learned- just because you belong to some sub-culture, it doesn’t automatically make you cool." One vital component remains from their biker days, however. The sense of community, of a rock and roll brotherhood, a loose but sprawling legion of die hard true believers that still wave the freak flag high, even now. Alex recalls a recent incident. " I was watching the hockey play- offs this year, and they show the coach from Edmonton. He’s all bummed out, he’s losing the game, and they show this maniac behind him, and he’s got his head painted half blue and half white, and his head’s shaved, and he’s got tattoos on his arm. They close up in the coach, and this guy’s right behind him, right? You can’t avoid him. Anyway, he’s got the sun from the first Circus of Power record tattooed on him! That’s the kind of fans we have", he laughs. " Maniacs at hockey games. That’s something I miss, just hanging out with people after the show. There’s a lot of real people, real salt of the earth people that came to our shows. But I’m still into characters like that, fast cars and motorcycles. I’ve got a Charger now, a 440. It’s actually in a Nashville Pussy video that no one’s ever gonna see. A friend of mine did the video for "Go Motherfucker Go", and he did it at this little club here in town, My car was, at the time, painted black with an American flag on the roof, and they all got into the car, with the guitars sticking out, like the Monkees or something on their way to a gig, and they pulled up to the club in it. Corey was driving, so that was a little scary." He chuckles at the memory. "Anyway, the car came out in one piece. I was also in the video, making out with some girl in the bathroom. But the video was kind of X-rated , so it never got shown. I love Nashville Pussy man, I saw them for the first time a couple of years a go, and it really made me want to play music again. I mean, they came out on stage and they were already sweaty, you know, and it was like Wham! I mean, they got this chick on guitar, she’s like Johnny Thunders on speed. They just laid it down for an hour and a half, it was great." Alex’s affection for rock has not diminished in the last ten years. He remains a voracious fan. " Oh yeah, man, as soon as I find out that a new album’s out by a band I like, I’m there." He still hates phony rock and roll, though. "All those bands they have on the MTV specials, well, they’re not rock. I’m not saying they’re good or bad, I’m just saying that all those heavy bands that sound like Alice in Chains, with Metallica and Slayer guitars, those are metal bands, they’re not rock. And all those rap-rock bands are rap bands. Calling Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit ‘rock’ is just stupid. There’s too much ‘bling bling’ going on for me. As soon as making money becomes your first issue as a musician, you lose it, man. I mean, I don’t give a fuck about your jewelry or your car. That music’s got no soul. I mean, Rammsteen is completely robotic, it’s like Nazi music. There seems to be a lot of hate going around, and I’m not into hate. I like my rock with a more hopeful vibe. When you listen to a Cult song, you can hear it. You can hear the light at the end of the tunnel. Sure everything’s fucked up, but you gotta hang in there." He also laughs off nu-metal’s claims of ‘The return of the rock’. "I’ve heard it a thousand times, I’m out somewhere and somebody will say, ‘Hey, metal’s back!’ and I’m like ‘What ? What the fuck are you talking about, man?’ I don’t care what’s back or what’s gone, as long as something good is happening. I don’t need anything to come back, I want things to go forward. And I want to be in this band. I want to do Circus of Power." He pauses, running though the band’s history in his mind. " I always wanted to make the one great album with that band. That’s kind of my mission right now. A lot of "Vices" came close, and some of the first album came close, and a couple of songs on the last one, but by that time, we’d already dissolved. I’ve got to tell you though, that was the best time I ever had in my life. I’m ready to get back into it."

Alex’s first attempt at a Circus of Power reunion happened in 1996. "We played a really great reunion gig about five years ago, here in a place called the Key Club, and it was magical. I mean, we were better that night than any other night that we ever played, and I was like ‘Wow, I guess we’re getting back together.’ I was naïve. I guess I’m an idiot in some ways, but I was just like ‘what the fuck?’ I mean, it wasn’t like Gary (Sunshine- guitar) and Rick (Beck-Mahler- guitar) had gigs in big time bands, they weren’t really doing anything. So that faded." Alex took the down time to bang nails and write a yet unpublished biography. "Yeah, so I started writing a book", he says. "Writing’s tough, man. This book was like 800 pages, but on my 8^th draft or something, I said, ‘all right, I’ve got to find an agent and get this thing published’, but I wasn’t successful at finding one. The publishing world is really tough. It’s a cool book, but I don’t want to put it out until it’s all done. Books are way harder to write than music. I mean, in music, you can throw a couple of bad notes in there and nobody notices, but with a book it’s got to be good or you lose people. Anyway, I kind of got back into the music, writing songs instead." Eventually, he rounded up the boys one more time for a one off show last year. "We played on New Year’s Eve, but the whole band wasn’t there, something was missing. It was fun to be on stage, and play all those songs, but the band wasn’t really together the way it should." He explains how the New Year’s show came together, and why it just as quickly came apart. "About a year a go, Rick called me up and said, "Hey, let’s get together and write some songs, and put out a CD, and go tour Japan", and to me it was like Hell had frozen over, because it had been 10 years where he didn’t even want to talk about the band. So I was guardedly excited, because for me the band is everything. I could have millions of dollars, and if I wasn’t in that band, I wouldn’t really care, you know? Anyway, that’s all I heard from him for like a year. I’d call him up and go, "Hey, I got this song, it needs a bridge, it needs a chorus", and he’d go ‘all right, I’ll get back to you on it’, and then he’d never call. So what I did is, I started writing songs with Gary instead. He was really hard on me about it, because we used to write songs at about 75%, so on all of our albums, there’s like 3 or 4 really good songs, and the rest are all half- assed. I mean, I always saw our potential, but I’ve got to admit, I was pretty lazy, and some of the other guys might have been too. But me and Gary worked really hard on writing songs for the past year. But then Gary did what Rick always did, and he sort of faded away." Although the band managed to play the show, personal differences prevented a full-blown reunion. "Rick didn’t want to play with Ryan (Maher) and Mark (Frappier), the drummer and bass player -and whatever Rick did, Gary kind of always went along with it, and I’m not putting blame anywhere, I’m just telling it like it is. I mean, Gary and Rick have to do whatever makes them happy, but Ryan and Mark are two of my closest friends, and I can’t sell out my friends. What would that make me look like to anyone that ever liked Circus of Power? It would make me look like a chump. So what I wanted to do is write the songs, get to the point where someone wanted to put out a record, and go, ‘Here’s the deal, we’ve got to play with Ryan and Mark or else.’ But it never got to that point. But you know what? I’m kind of glad that things worked the way they did, because know I finally have the batch of songs that I always wanted to have with that band. I’ve got 12 or 13 totally cool songs, and I’m going to go record them in Texas. And then I want to play some shows." So, undaunted by disappointments along the way, Alex is going forward as planned, with or without the original line-up. "I’m just working with Mark the bass player, and maybe Ryan the drummer. I only want to do it with people that really want to do it, and for a long time I really wanted to keep the integrity of the band, keep all the original members, that’s the way I thought it should be. But then, just recently I’ve been thinking- after I’ve just been through that whole experience, that would be wrong to do that, because the original band is just not together, not on the same page. So it would just be a pose to do it like that. I hope Gary and Ricky go on to do whatever they want to do. I mean, I’m not a bitter, angry guy anymore, like so many people walking around are, I try not to be that way. But I’ve got to keep going, you know? So, I’m definitely going to play some shows down in Texas, with Mark and Ryan, probably pick up a guitar player down there, just see what happens." When the record does eventually hit the streets, Circus fans will find an amped up version of the classic sound, as well as a few twists and turns along the way. "There’s a few songs that are harder and heavier than anything we ever did, it’s heavy stuff liked you’d expect, only the hooks are better", Alex promises. "Then there’s a song that’s more mid-tempo, John Lee Hooker -boogie kind of stuff, but real dark and with tribal drums, and then there’s a couple of slower, more soulful songs. I don’t want to call them ballads because they’re not, they’re not cigarette lighter songs at all, they’re more like old Stones or Faces or Replacements songs, kind of Otis Redding. The best part of these new songs is that they’re kind of hard to explain, which means you’ve probably got something original, or at least what you’ve borrowed is fresh", he laughs. " I’m way into them, I’ve been listening to the 4 track demos everyday."

Even with his indelible mark carved into rock history, Alex Mitchell has his work cut out for him. There’s no doubt that the sorry state of the rock nation needs Circus of Power now more than ever, but is he ready to give up the simple life and dive head first into the shark infested waters of the music industry again? I think we all know the answer. "I have no choice, really. Maybe for the other guys- I know Gary’s working for singer/songwriter types, and Rick sells guitars and makes a lot of money, but I have no choice. It’s a deal with Satan, and I have to hold up my end of the bargain." Amen to that, brother.