Danger Zone: From the Sunset Strip to Rocking Italy and Beyond

Danger Zone, one of the most popular, veteran Italian Hard Rock bands, began their musical journey in the early 1980s. After releasing several demos and undergoing numerous line-up changes, they debuted with their EP, Victim Of Time, in 1984 and four more studio albums to follow – Line Of Fire (recorded in 1989 but released in 2011), Undying (2012), Closer To Heaven (2016) and Don’t Count On Heroes (2019). The pandemic hindered the band’s ability to fully promote their album, leading to a temporary hiatus. They reconvened in 2022, resuming live performances and writing sessions. This new chapter in their musical journey is encapsulated in their upcoming album, Shut Up!, set for release on September 20th by Pride & Joy Music. In this interview, guitarist Roberto Priori discusses just why the album is called Shut Up!, their early days on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, recording for the legendary David Ellefson, and a whole lot more!  Read on…

Introduce yourself. Tell me what you do in Danger Zone and how long the bands have been together.
Roberto: I am the guitar player, one of the two guitar players of the band, and I actually founded the band in the beginning of the 80s. I started this band a long time ago at school with few other friends and then we had this thing that went on and on during the years and we had this breakdown, but I’m going to tell you this story later.  But yeah, I am the guitar player of the band and also, I am the producer of the band. And so, I do the engineering of the album of the band since I own a recording studio.

How did you wind up on Pride & Joy Music?
Roberto: Well, this is the third album that we do with Pride & Joy. We were previously working with another label also in Germany and Pride & Joy was doing all the stuff with the promotion for that label. We were in touch with Birgitt since the previous two album that we released. When we decided to change, we knew that the Pride & Joy was going to become a label. We thought that was a good idea since we had already established a relationship with them for the promotion. It was a good idea to work with Birgitt. So here we are, this is the third album that we’re going to do with Pride & Joy.

The brand new album is called Shut Up. What made you decide to call an album Shut Up?
Roberto: Well, this is the interesting thing. Right now, the music business – actually there is no music business for the rock music. As you probably already know. At this point at our age, with many records already done and everything – we had our own share of experiences in the past years, and so we really felt that we really need to do something that came from our heart. And we didn’t have to think about, we should comply to some rules or stay inside a certain range of style or whatever. We just said, let’s do whatever we feel is right for us and if the people are not going to like this album, we don’t care. That’s why also there is a song called I Don’t Care on the album. One of the phrases inside I Don’t Care is “Shut up!” I thought there was a cool way to make people understand that this is who we are and the kind of music that we like to do, even if nobody likes rock music anymore – or at least there are not that many people liking rock music anymore. And so, we said, shut up! This is what we do! That’s the point.

The first single is called Evil. What was the inspiration behind that song?
Roberto: Well, so, the idea was we had this song was kind of this cool, energetic rhythm and we liked it.  It was this kind of up tempo, and the music has a sort of a positive vibe. We decided to do something like, let’s call the song Evil. But we say the opposite. Just, we say evil, but I’m not that evil. It’s about this guy that trying to explain that is not bad as it looks. He is a good person. It’s a kind of a joke.

Ken: A Run From the Madness. What madness are we running from? There’s plenty of it. I’m sure.
Roberto: Well, in that case, we’re talking about something more serious. There is a lot of violence – there are a lot of things going on that are crazy – and even in relationships, there are a lot of toxic relationships. Where there are people that are hurting inside the relationship. The people that are supposed to love, so in this case is saying that you should run away from the people that are affecting you in a negative way or are trying to hurt you. The singer is saying you have to run away from that. You have to run away from the madness of the people that are trying to hurt you. That’s basically the idea.

How did the pandemic inspire the lyrics and the music for this album, if at all?
Roberto: Well, the thing with the pandemic was, it really affected the band a lot because we released the previous album on November of 2019. Just right after we did the first shows, everything just fall apart. Everything was closing. We got caught up in the middle of this storm and we couldn’t really promote the album. We couldn’t do the live show that we were supposed to do. It was tough for us because we spent so much energy, and we had some sort of expectation from the previous album that we couldn’t fulfill because of that. We left this album there with no proper live shows, no promotion, basically live. This pandemic thing really affected the band, so for a while we were just non reactive. We didn’t know what to do because other bands used that time where they couldn’t play live to work on new material. But it was too early for us because we just released the album. We were supposed to go live and enjoy that part of the being a band. We kind of stopped everything for a while, and so when finally, everything got back on track, we said, okay, what are we going to do? And then we started to work on new songs again, working a little bit at a distance because the singer and the keyboard player are not in the same town. So we started to exchange a few ideas. We said, okay, it’s the time to do another album. It’s time to write new songs and get again that positive vibe.  Get back together and write songs and exchange ideas – which is a cool process. It’s great for a band when you write new material. But you also need to go live and play.  Hopefully this time we will be able to play live more. Because this is what a rock band is supposed to do.

What are you looking forward to the most about the Danger Zone Record Release Show in September?
Roberto: We’re going to do the release show on September the 20th, the day that the album is coming out here in Bologna, our hometown. Then we’ll do a few other shows here in North Italy. Right now, we’re just looking to see if we can organize a few other shows maybe in Europe, but we don’t know yet. We’re in contact with few companies to see if we can make it happen. We were supposed to go in some cool festivals for the previous album, but of course, everything went south with the pandemic. And so hopefully this time we’re going to make it.

Has Danger Zone ever toured here in the States, or is that something you’d like to do in the future?
Roberto: Well, actually, let me tell you a little bit about the story of the band, because we started really, really young as I said, here and then, that was the beginning of the 80s. Basically like 40 years ago we started.

1984. Your first EP came out.
Roberto: That was the first. Then we worked on another record, and we actually spent a lot of time trying to get a deal in the US, and we actually moved in in Los Angeles. I lived in Los Angeles for two years years. We stayed with the band there. We did our first show at The Whisky in 1988. As you can imagine, it was a major thing for us. Everything was there. We said, “Wow, this is it. This is the place!” We came back and we recorded this album with some American producers, Jody Gray and Mark Coburn with the supervision of Stephan Galfass – that was the guy that did Stryper, China, Meat Loaf and many others. We were supposed to move in the US after the album. To make the story short, there were some problems with the publishing company and everything was slowed down. But then finally at the end, we decided to move anyway to Los Angeles, and we moved in 1992, and so we started to do like every other band was doing. Show after show on the Strip and in the valley. There were so many clubs – the FM Station. The Troubadour, The Whisky, The Roxy.

We did like the perfect life for a rock and roll band. We had our van, and we had our rehearsal place in South LA.  We were in West Hollywood, so we were really close to the clubs.  Every night we were going out passing out flyers like every other band were doing at that time. We had this kind of experience. For me, Los Angeles has been a really important part of my life. I came back to Italy for many reasons, but I was supposed to stay there forever. It’s a place that I have in my heart. I think about that almost every day.

40 years ago Victim of Time EP was released 1984. Looking back, what do you think of that recording now in retrospect?
Roberto: Well, we were young. That’s the main statement. That, of course, it’s good and bad at the same time. It’s good because you have the energy, the passion and everything. We were not really experienced musicians. It wasn’t a great record. But, there was so much passion and energy. We were doing a different kind of music anyway. We were really more into the new wave of British heavy metal at the time. We were more into the sound of Iron Maiden and all those bands that were huge at the beginning of the 80s. Then we got this bug for the hard rock scene that was coming from Los Angeles. We started to hear the bands that were coming from the strip, like Dokken, Ratt, and all those kinds of bands. For me, as a guitar player, of course, I always had Van Halen in my mind, of course. But listening also to those new bands like Dokken and Ratt, it was a major breakthrough. It was a major thing for us. We started a lot more to be into that kind of music. The Danger Zone of Victim of Time – we were actually a totally different band apart from myself, and we really were into something else. Then we moved to a more melodic hard rock kind of sound- the one that we are still doing right now. That was our main influence and that’s why we started to look into the American scene, and we wanted so much to be there. Because we knew that everything was happening there. That was the place to be. The kind of music that we started to do was different. Victim of Time is something that is really apart from all the rest of our music that we’ve done later on.

Roberto Priori of Danger Zone on Zoom!

In addition to being in this band, you also do recording and engineering.  One of the people that you worked with is David Ellefson. What was that experience working with David Ellefson on No Cover and the David Ellefson / Jeff Scott Soto project?
Roberto: We were laying down the drum tracks for him here, because the drummer that played in those albums is a musician that works here with me many times. His name is Paolo Caridi, and he’s a great drummer.  He plays with Reb Beach from Winger and Whitesnake, and he plays with Ellefson, and he’s a gifted musician. He asked me, “I have to lay down the drums for the Ellefson album,” and I said, “Okay, great, let’s do it.” We did the first record and David liked it a lot, and so we did the second one as well, the one with Soto. That was great. He’s such a great musician and all the musicians involved in the project are great. The guitar player, Andrea Martongelli, and everybody’s really great.  It was really fun.

What was it like teaming up with former Danger Zone member Francesco Di Nicola on the recent Anims and Crying Steel releases?
Roberto: Well, as you said, he’s been our former guitar player with the band Danger Zone back in the 80s. In the beginning we were really different at that time.  With Francesco, we have been friends for a long time. When he decided to do this project, Anims, he asked me if I wanted to work with him and it was great. He’s a great musician and he has some really cool ideas.  I really liked the way he thinks about the music. His style is really unique and is not something that you hear normally. I think that his style of composition and writing is something different – that you don’t hear it so often right now. It was really interesting to work with him again, and I always enjoyed him as a friend and as a musician as well.

Are you currently involved with any other bands or projects outside of Danger Zone?
Roberto: As a musician, not right now. I had a few other projects in the past, but since we came back with Danger Zone, I used all my time and energy to keep Danger Zone going. I did an instrumental album many years ago under my name, because I had those songs that I wrote for TV shows and stuff like that. I had those songs and many years ago I decided to make a record with it. I’m probably going to remix this album later on this year when I’m finished with Danger Zone and all the things that we’re doing right now. But besides that, no, I’m just working with Danger Zone.  And of course, I’m working here in the studio with other bands.

Do you have any messages for Danger Zone fans here in the States who have been following you throughout your career? Especially people out here in LA?
Roberto: I really would like to say hello to everyone in LA. I don’t know if somebody remembers Danger Zone back from 30 years ago when we were playing the Strip.  We really have Los Angeles in our hearts because it’s been our place.  And so I really would like to thank everyone that follows Danger Zone, and I hope that they’re going to send us some messages on our website or in the Facebook page – and tell us what they think about the new album. We really would like to have some feedback from them. We’d like to say hello to everyone there.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

Danger Zone is:
Roberto Priori – lead guitar
Giacomo Gigantelli – vocals
Mateo Minghetti – bass
Paolo Palmieri – drums
Danilo Faggiolino – guitar
Pier Mazzini – Keys

Danger Zone on Instagram