Post by Gilby Admirer on Sept 16, 2006 21:44:09 GMT -5
www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=9d84b60e-43f1-4f94-8a98-aa2547633b8f&k=7251
Shelley Fralic, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, September 15, 2006
LOS ANGELES — When it was all over, when the audience had gone home and the guitars had been unplugged, and Lukas Rossi had been crowned the new lead singer of Supernova — or, as Tommy Lee put it, “Lukas, you’re our boy” — the media had a few questions for the spike-haired powerhouse from Toronto.
They had dragged their cameras and equipment from Iceland, and Australia, and Malaysia and all over the U.S. to cover the finale of Mark Burnett’s hit reality show, Rock Star: Supernova, and they wanted to know one thing:
“Is there something in the water up there?”
That would be our water, Canadian water, because Rossi’s coronation Wednesday as Supernova’s frontman, after a two-month televised audition, was clearly proof that lightning can strike twice: In Season 1, Toronto’s J.D. Fortune won Rock Star: INXS.
Rossi, already at ease with the press, laughed.
“I don’t know, Canada has a lot of talent. But I heard that J.D. lived about four blocks from me. How weird is that.”
Turns out that it isn’t weird, or even something in the water, for that matter. Turns out it’s that Canadian swagger, that Great White North confidence and attitude, for which Fortune, and now Rossi, have found fame.
At least that’s how Rossi’s new bandmates put it. They picked him, they said, because he looks the part, he acts the part, and he sings the part. He has, they say, the rock royal jelly.
“He’s sexy, and he sings like hell,” said Tommy Lee, the heavy metal Motley Crue drummer who last spring formed the new band with fellow rock veterans, bassist Jason Newsted (Metallica) and guitarist Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses).
The trio needed a frontman, and after 25,000 international applicants, 12,000 auditions and 15 finalists (including Vancouver’s Jenny Galt), they found him.
For Lee, there was never any question that Rossi was the one.
“I realized he was the guy for us the very first day we met him. The first time I saw him, I was, like, ‘That’s my boy,’” said Lee. “All my life, I’ve always wanted to be in a band with a singer like this. You can’t teach someone to be a rock star. The way he moves ... you either have that, or you don’t.”
Newsted, who coached Rossi throughout the competition to resist his tendency to constrain his voice, agreed: “Lukas has a certain swagger. He always has his thing going.”
Added Clarke: “We were looking for something special. And he’s it.”
The second- and third-place finishers, South Africa-born Dilana Robichaux and Aussie Toby Rand, also harbour a dominant rock ’n roll gene, and will join the upcoming Supernova tour, fronting The House Band, which provided the live music on the show.
(Ironically, the Supernova moniker will likely be changed after a U.S. court ruled that an Orange Country band also named Supernova has rights to the name.)
When Rand wanders into the press conference, held right after the show on the empty Rock Star set, he’s wearing an Aussie flag and is instantly swarmed by Australian camera crews and newspaper reporters.
Rand is big news Down Under, and is shocked to hear about his celebrity status and the show’s ratings in his country, details that he and the other contestants were shielded from while staying in virtual seclusion in the hill-top Rock Star mansion not far from the CBS studios.
Rand, the gregarious 28-year-old, is gracious in defeat, partly because he and Rossi have become tight since the show began July 5, and partly because he intends to move to Los Angeles and exploit his 15 minutes of fame.
And, he says, Rossi simply wanted the job more than any of them, and deserves it the most.
“I’m walking out of here with a car (won for a special encore), some good friends and the opportunity of a lifetime.”
His brothers have brought his favourite surfboard from Melbourne, and he’s looking to find a place that he (single) and Rossi (who has a girlfriend back home) can move into, which will be “the bachelor pad from hell.”
As for Robichaux, she, too, is moving to L.A., packing up her truck, her Harley and her dog back in Houston and likely settling in a Redondo Beach house with a friend she’s made on the crew.
She also plans to accept offers from Clarke and show host Dave Navarro to help write, produce and play on her solo CD, so she can “kick a little ass of my own.”
The sassy dreadlocked 34-year-old was also magnanimous about losing, saying she just had a feeling that Rossi, with whom she had a few scraps but whose chops she admires, had a lock on No. 1.
“I knew it,” she said, “I’ve known it for weeks.”
Even serene Magni Asgeirsson, the first of the final four voted off on Wednesday’s finale, was taking things in stride, admitting he’d just as soon join The House Band, with whom he clicked from the start.
Instead, he’ll head back to his little village in Iceland, population 120, to re-join his fianceE and baby son.
The 27-year-old is already a star of some note in the country of 300,000, singing in a band called A Moti Sol. Now, he’s returning as a pop culture hero.
The Icelandic government even sent over a chef so Asgeirsson wouldn’t miss his favourite native dishes, and a Reykjavik journalist says there are parades and other country-wide events planned for his return.
“I think that I will be a king in my country,” says Asgeirsson, smiling into the cameras at his own understatement.
But Rossi’s the man of the hour, and everyone wants to know how he feels, whether he’s scared, if he had any doubts about winning, and how his voice will hold up.
J.D. Fortune, it’s noted by a reporter, had voice problems early in the INXS tour, and it’s a reality of the road that worries the band, especially Newsted.
But the new kid of rock has an answer, and it pleases the veterans.
“It’s an instrument, and these guys have taught me to look after my instrument. And I will,” said Rossi. “The show, the mansion, there was some partying. But, with these guys, this is now a job.”
There’s certainly no question that Lee and Rossi have a kinship. They’re constantly joking, hip-hop hugging, whispering and cussing like longshoremen. Backstage, they’ve been downing celebratory shots.
Rossi, in fact, looks like Lee, all tattooed and hedgehog hair, skinny pants, piercings and heavy silver jewellery.
Lee says even his own pre-teen sons, Dylan and Brandon, (with Canadian ex-wife Pamela Anderson), who wander about backstage in red hoodies with devil horns, think he made the right choice: “They’re, like, ‘Dad, that guy’s cool.’”
At 29, Rossi certainly won’t have trouble keeping up with the aging rockers, known as much for their partying as their playing. Already, there are stories about the debauchery at the Rock Star mansion this past summer, where the contestants polished off five kegs of beer, and where Lee was prone to jumping from a second-floor balcony into the swimming pool.
It is, of course, hard to say how long Rossi’s time in the sun will last — Clarke and Newsted have other bands needing their time — Newsted plays with Canadian band Voivod, and Lee has extra-curricular touring commitments.
And this, after all, is less an organic mating of musicians than a manufactured one.
One is reminded, during the show’s taping, of the ephemeral nature of instant celebrity.
Most of the show’s 15 finalists are seated together in the VIP area, where Storm Large hugs Jenny Galt who squeezes Ryan Star who busses Patrice Pike. At one point, Matt Hoffer — the first to be sent home way back on July 6 — confesses he’s still drunk from a party the night before, and leaning over to Josh Logan, says: “I just wish people would f---ing remember my name.
Even Clarke acknowledges that putting a rock band together on a reality show is a calculated risk.
“We don’t know what it’s going to be like when this show is all done,” he said. “But when we get together with him and play, like we did today on the show, it just feels right.”
And unlike American Idol and its spinoff, Canadian Idol, which picks its Season 4 winner Sunday night, the Rock Star franchise undeniably attracts a higher calibre of undiscovered talent.
The Rock Star rookies are all semi-professional singers with stage and recording experience — not the amateur pop music moppets of Simon Cowell’s Idol world — and it certainly doesn’t hurt television ratings when a heavy metal publicity-prone bad boy like Tommy Lee, or a revered musician from Metallica like Jason Newsted, steps up to lend their musical authenticity to what is really just another reality show.
Even Lee, at 43, feels the love, and has hope for the future.
He says the show, and finding Rossi, has re-invigorated his appreciation of rock ’N roll, which Navarro dubbed on the Rock Star website “a dying genre.”
“Lukas has been like a breath of fresh air,” said Lee.
For now, at least, the love is catching.
Several of the shows on the band’s initial 28-day tour, starting in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve, are sold out, including Vancouver on Feb. 19.
And Rossi was scheduled to be in the studio starting Thursday working on the band’s new CD, which will include some of his own original songwriting.
While Rand looks for their new L.A. digs, rock’s latest shining star is bunking at Lee’s house in the hills, while his host tours with Aerosmith.
“This whole journey has been stressful,” said Rossi, “and I actually thought that it might have been somebody else. But I came here to audition for an amazing band, and winning was overwhelming.”
Oh, and the Canada thing?
“I love Canada. They raised me and made me what I am.”
The Vancouver Sun
Shelley Fralic, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, September 15, 2006
LOS ANGELES — When it was all over, when the audience had gone home and the guitars had been unplugged, and Lukas Rossi had been crowned the new lead singer of Supernova — or, as Tommy Lee put it, “Lukas, you’re our boy” — the media had a few questions for the spike-haired powerhouse from Toronto.
They had dragged their cameras and equipment from Iceland, and Australia, and Malaysia and all over the U.S. to cover the finale of Mark Burnett’s hit reality show, Rock Star: Supernova, and they wanted to know one thing:
“Is there something in the water up there?”
That would be our water, Canadian water, because Rossi’s coronation Wednesday as Supernova’s frontman, after a two-month televised audition, was clearly proof that lightning can strike twice: In Season 1, Toronto’s J.D. Fortune won Rock Star: INXS.
Rossi, already at ease with the press, laughed.
“I don’t know, Canada has a lot of talent. But I heard that J.D. lived about four blocks from me. How weird is that.”
Turns out that it isn’t weird, or even something in the water, for that matter. Turns out it’s that Canadian swagger, that Great White North confidence and attitude, for which Fortune, and now Rossi, have found fame.
At least that’s how Rossi’s new bandmates put it. They picked him, they said, because he looks the part, he acts the part, and he sings the part. He has, they say, the rock royal jelly.
“He’s sexy, and he sings like hell,” said Tommy Lee, the heavy metal Motley Crue drummer who last spring formed the new band with fellow rock veterans, bassist Jason Newsted (Metallica) and guitarist Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses).
The trio needed a frontman, and after 25,000 international applicants, 12,000 auditions and 15 finalists (including Vancouver’s Jenny Galt), they found him.
For Lee, there was never any question that Rossi was the one.
“I realized he was the guy for us the very first day we met him. The first time I saw him, I was, like, ‘That’s my boy,’” said Lee. “All my life, I’ve always wanted to be in a band with a singer like this. You can’t teach someone to be a rock star. The way he moves ... you either have that, or you don’t.”
Newsted, who coached Rossi throughout the competition to resist his tendency to constrain his voice, agreed: “Lukas has a certain swagger. He always has his thing going.”
Added Clarke: “We were looking for something special. And he’s it.”
The second- and third-place finishers, South Africa-born Dilana Robichaux and Aussie Toby Rand, also harbour a dominant rock ’n roll gene, and will join the upcoming Supernova tour, fronting The House Band, which provided the live music on the show.
(Ironically, the Supernova moniker will likely be changed after a U.S. court ruled that an Orange Country band also named Supernova has rights to the name.)
When Rand wanders into the press conference, held right after the show on the empty Rock Star set, he’s wearing an Aussie flag and is instantly swarmed by Australian camera crews and newspaper reporters.
Rand is big news Down Under, and is shocked to hear about his celebrity status and the show’s ratings in his country, details that he and the other contestants were shielded from while staying in virtual seclusion in the hill-top Rock Star mansion not far from the CBS studios.
Rand, the gregarious 28-year-old, is gracious in defeat, partly because he and Rossi have become tight since the show began July 5, and partly because he intends to move to Los Angeles and exploit his 15 minutes of fame.
And, he says, Rossi simply wanted the job more than any of them, and deserves it the most.
“I’m walking out of here with a car (won for a special encore), some good friends and the opportunity of a lifetime.”
His brothers have brought his favourite surfboard from Melbourne, and he’s looking to find a place that he (single) and Rossi (who has a girlfriend back home) can move into, which will be “the bachelor pad from hell.”
As for Robichaux, she, too, is moving to L.A., packing up her truck, her Harley and her dog back in Houston and likely settling in a Redondo Beach house with a friend she’s made on the crew.
She also plans to accept offers from Clarke and show host Dave Navarro to help write, produce and play on her solo CD, so she can “kick a little ass of my own.”
The sassy dreadlocked 34-year-old was also magnanimous about losing, saying she just had a feeling that Rossi, with whom she had a few scraps but whose chops she admires, had a lock on No. 1.
“I knew it,” she said, “I’ve known it for weeks.”
Even serene Magni Asgeirsson, the first of the final four voted off on Wednesday’s finale, was taking things in stride, admitting he’d just as soon join The House Band, with whom he clicked from the start.
Instead, he’ll head back to his little village in Iceland, population 120, to re-join his fianceE and baby son.
The 27-year-old is already a star of some note in the country of 300,000, singing in a band called A Moti Sol. Now, he’s returning as a pop culture hero.
The Icelandic government even sent over a chef so Asgeirsson wouldn’t miss his favourite native dishes, and a Reykjavik journalist says there are parades and other country-wide events planned for his return.
“I think that I will be a king in my country,” says Asgeirsson, smiling into the cameras at his own understatement.
But Rossi’s the man of the hour, and everyone wants to know how he feels, whether he’s scared, if he had any doubts about winning, and how his voice will hold up.
J.D. Fortune, it’s noted by a reporter, had voice problems early in the INXS tour, and it’s a reality of the road that worries the band, especially Newsted.
But the new kid of rock has an answer, and it pleases the veterans.
“It’s an instrument, and these guys have taught me to look after my instrument. And I will,” said Rossi. “The show, the mansion, there was some partying. But, with these guys, this is now a job.”
There’s certainly no question that Lee and Rossi have a kinship. They’re constantly joking, hip-hop hugging, whispering and cussing like longshoremen. Backstage, they’ve been downing celebratory shots.
Rossi, in fact, looks like Lee, all tattooed and hedgehog hair, skinny pants, piercings and heavy silver jewellery.
Lee says even his own pre-teen sons, Dylan and Brandon, (with Canadian ex-wife Pamela Anderson), who wander about backstage in red hoodies with devil horns, think he made the right choice: “They’re, like, ‘Dad, that guy’s cool.’”
At 29, Rossi certainly won’t have trouble keeping up with the aging rockers, known as much for their partying as their playing. Already, there are stories about the debauchery at the Rock Star mansion this past summer, where the contestants polished off five kegs of beer, and where Lee was prone to jumping from a second-floor balcony into the swimming pool.
It is, of course, hard to say how long Rossi’s time in the sun will last — Clarke and Newsted have other bands needing their time — Newsted plays with Canadian band Voivod, and Lee has extra-curricular touring commitments.
And this, after all, is less an organic mating of musicians than a manufactured one.
One is reminded, during the show’s taping, of the ephemeral nature of instant celebrity.
Most of the show’s 15 finalists are seated together in the VIP area, where Storm Large hugs Jenny Galt who squeezes Ryan Star who busses Patrice Pike. At one point, Matt Hoffer — the first to be sent home way back on July 6 — confesses he’s still drunk from a party the night before, and leaning over to Josh Logan, says: “I just wish people would f---ing remember my name.
Even Clarke acknowledges that putting a rock band together on a reality show is a calculated risk.
“We don’t know what it’s going to be like when this show is all done,” he said. “But when we get together with him and play, like we did today on the show, it just feels right.”
And unlike American Idol and its spinoff, Canadian Idol, which picks its Season 4 winner Sunday night, the Rock Star franchise undeniably attracts a higher calibre of undiscovered talent.
The Rock Star rookies are all semi-professional singers with stage and recording experience — not the amateur pop music moppets of Simon Cowell’s Idol world — and it certainly doesn’t hurt television ratings when a heavy metal publicity-prone bad boy like Tommy Lee, or a revered musician from Metallica like Jason Newsted, steps up to lend their musical authenticity to what is really just another reality show.
Even Lee, at 43, feels the love, and has hope for the future.
He says the show, and finding Rossi, has re-invigorated his appreciation of rock ’N roll, which Navarro dubbed on the Rock Star website “a dying genre.”
“Lukas has been like a breath of fresh air,” said Lee.
For now, at least, the love is catching.
Several of the shows on the band’s initial 28-day tour, starting in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve, are sold out, including Vancouver on Feb. 19.
And Rossi was scheduled to be in the studio starting Thursday working on the band’s new CD, which will include some of his own original songwriting.
While Rand looks for their new L.A. digs, rock’s latest shining star is bunking at Lee’s house in the hills, while his host tours with Aerosmith.
“This whole journey has been stressful,” said Rossi, “and I actually thought that it might have been somebody else. But I came here to audition for an amazing band, and winning was overwhelming.”
Oh, and the Canada thing?
“I love Canada. They raised me and made me what I am.”
The Vancouver Sun
