Sometimes an album lands in my inbox that just instantly strikes a chord and that was most definitely the case with “Turning Time” by The Exiles. It really is a fantastic album! When I read through the e-mail it became clear that “Turning Time” was actually a much-enhanced re-release of an album that first appeared in 1996 as “The Exiles” by Sean Manning & Paul Rafferty.
I was so intrigued that I arranged an interview with guitarist Sean Manning on Zoom on 11th August to talk about The Exiles and the album. Sean is an English guitarist who has also performed with Quiet Riot and Hurricane in the past. We had a great chat about The Exiles, the “re-release” of the album and Sean’s musical journey from his arrival in LA through to his decision to leave the music scene behind in the late 90’s after working with artists such as Kevin DuBrow, Kelly Hanson, Paul Shortino and Neil Giraldo.
It has been transcribed and and can be read below.
It’s also available on the NI Rocks YouTube channel.
Friday NI Rocks Show 14th Aug
THE EXILES – Rainmaker
BLACKLIST UNION – Madame Butterfly
Interview with TONY WEST from BLACKLIST UNION Pt1 (5min)
BLACKLIST UNION & LORRAINE LEWIS – Jackson
Interview with TONY WEST from BLACKLIST UNION Pt2 (7min)
BLACKLIST UNION – DIRTY HALO
BLACKLIST UNION – Mississippi Moonhound
Interview with TONY WEST from BLACKLIST UNION Pt3 (6min)
BLACKLIST UNION – Read Between The Lines
THE SAVIOR COMPLEX - Halo
Promo for KRIS BARRAS BAND album “Monsters We Made” Pt1
KRIS BARRAS BAND – Beautiful Lie
Promo for KRIS BARRAS BAND album “Monsters We Made” Pt2
THE EXILES – Turning Time
Interview with SEAN MANNING from THE EXILES Pt1 (7min)
THE EXILES – Soul Woman
Interview with SEAN MANNING from THE EXILES Pt2 (12min)
THE EXILES – Friend
Interview with SEAN MANNING from THE EXILES Pt3 (10min)
THE EXILES – Richmond Castle Wall
HURRICANE – Heart Made of Stone
FEMME FATALE – Waiting For the Big One
FASTER PUSSYCAT – Poison Ivy
NI ROCKS – Hi Sean, thanks for taking some time to talk to me. I wanted to talk first of all about the album “Turning Point” which has been released by The Exiles. First of all, can you tell us about how you and Paul got together originally?
SEAN - Well, thanks for having me on. Paul and I got together in the early 90s. It was a friend of ours, actually a mutual friend in Hollywood, California, Jon Sutherland, who was a big European music fan and English blues music fan and he knew of my background and he knew of Paul's voice and he thought it would be a really good pairing so he was the one that actually brought us together initially.
NI ROCKS – The name The Exiles was initially used when the band was formed in the early 90’s but by the time the album was released in 1996, “The Exiles” had become the album name and it was released actually under the name Sean Manning and Paul Rafferty. What was the reason for that?
SEAN - Well, when we originally put it out, it didn't come out as a band per se, because it was a number of demos. It wasn't a finalized piece. It hadn't really been completely fully mastered. And at that point in time, we had a number of different drummers and bass players in the rhythm section that were contributing to the material. So, it wasn't really until this last year when I had an opportunity to go into the studio and master everything and make it a cohesive project to release it under the band name.
NI ROCKS – There were some big names involved in the original project, Neil Gerardo of Pat Benatar fame was involved and Myron Grombacher from the Pat Benatar Band and Greg D’Angelo from White Lion. Who else was involved at the time?
SEAN - Back then we had Terry Mascall from the UK. He was a young English drummer who we flew over and an English bass player who was living out in Hollywood, California by the name of Paul Andrew Stanley. And then I brought in Jeff Jacobs from Foreigner and Billy Joel to put keyboards on it on the final product this last year.
NI ROCKS – That 1996 release. Was that only in the US or what was the score there?
SEAN - Yeah, it wasn't really a release, to be honest with you. It happened right around the time of grunge. And so there was probably 1,000 CDs that were printed up. There was no record company behind it per se. There was no marketing. There was no publishing. Nobody really knew that it came out. So for all intents and purposes, this is a brand new release. But we had to call it a re-release because a product had been at least made before.
NI ROCKS - You said that it probably came out at the wrong time. It's a good album, but it probably just came out at the wrong time musically. Grunge was the the rock scene at the time, so just great album, wrong time for it.
SEAN - Yeah, yeah. I mean, stylistically, we'd just gone through everything in the late and mid '80s; the big hair bands and by the late '80s it was getting a little bit ridiculous. And at that point in time, the industry needed to change. And grunge happened, which was the equivalent of the UK punk scene happening in the '70s to change it. And so stylistically, the music at that time, because the record industry at the time, it’s a little bit different now, but they were the ones actually that controlled what the population was going to hear. So, it was the business guys that made that determination.
NI ROCKS – Jumping forward, what prompted the decision to do a re-release of the album 30 years down the line
SEAN - I got a phone call from a friend of mine in Switzerland, Chris (Leibundgut), who'd been on the scene in California in the late '80s and early '90s. He reached out and he'd worked with Leatherwolf and a number of other bands. And he said, this music is too good not to hear. There's a company out here that would like to get in contact with you and kind of re-release it. So I said, okay, great. And then they got in contact with me and afforded me the opportunity not only to re-release the music, but to actually go into the studio here in Dallas at Empire Studios and completely remaster everything, add new tracks to everything, re-record a number of things, add backing vocals to it. So it's a completely - if you have the original and you have the new version and you play them next to each other sonically they sound completely different.
NI ROCKS - I did look online and it's quite a rare album / CD to find. There weren't that many copies pressed at the time so that is quite rare.
SEAN – Probably, honestly Nigel there's probably about 150 or 200 out there; that's it! Of the original version.
NI ROCKS – And who else was involved in this new version?
SEAN - Well I brought Jeff Jacobs in; he's the Foreigner keyboard player, a friend of mine, we played before and he played with Billy Joel too. He added orchestration, he added strings for the orchestration that I was hearing in my head and keyboards, Hammond and Mellotron, D3, piano to all of the tracks. And then Alex Gerst here at Empire Studios in Dallas, who's the owner of Empire Studios. He's also a drummer as well. So he helped me with some drums on some tracks that were not on the original. So “Turning Time”, the album “Turning Time”, which is this product, has five more songs on it that were not on the original as well. So there's five completely brand new songs on this album.
NI ROCKS – We’ll play a track from the album now. Do you want to pick one and tell us something about it?
SEAN - Yeah, actually, if you want to play “Soul Woman”, that's a single that was released actually this last week. That was a song that I had completely forgotten about for 20 years. It was it was drums, vocals, scratch guitar track and bass on the master two inch. And that has now had four more guitar tracks added to it, it's been mastered, Jeff came in and added some Hammond too and I put back in vocals on it. So that's a really hard driving rock and blues track
NI ROCKS - It is a fantastic track.
NI ROCKS – Going back a few years again. You’re originally from England. How did a 21 year English guitarist end up playing with Kevin DuBrow in Quiet Riot?
SEAN - I actually came over when I was about 18. I came over to go to music college in California, and I came over to study jazz. I was studying jazz infusion a lot in the UK before I left. I was professional in the UK when I was 17 and playing in Southampton at the big ballrooms down there. And we were doing four nights a week, three sets a night, everything from 50s music, 60s music, 70s music, and at that time 80s, which was top 40 music. I came over to study jazz and then a really dear friend, good friend of mine, Rowan Robertson, got the gig with Ronnie James Dio. And then because of that, my circle out here changed and Ronnie and Wendy, both of them were very gracious and offered to help me. I didn't know what I was going to do after completing music college. I was going to go back to London and do session work and that type of thing. And Ronnie said, I'll help you. Do you want to stay here? And I'm like, yeah. So I stayed out. And then I think it was through that connection that Kevin heard about me. And that was actually through Jon Sutherland originally as well. And Kevin was looking - he was looking specifically for an English guitar player. When I first got together with him he actually called….. John Sykes had told him - because Whitesnake toured with Quiet Riot in the mid 80s - John had told him to get an English guitar player. And Kevin was a huge fan of Humble Pie, Steve Marriott, huge Humble Pie fan and everything. So he actually called him and said I've got an English guitar player! So he sat me down on his couch and he said I want to reform the band. At that point in time, Kevin wasn't in Quiet Riot - the band! Paul Shortino had just finished an album and funnily enough right before I got together with Kevin I did some sessions with Paul Shortino and Sean McNabb in the studio out here as well. So it was probably going to be one or the other anyway. So he said he wanted to reform the band because he didn't know what was going on with the name at the time. They were going backwards and forth legally with the rights of the name of the band, him and Frankie. And he said, I want you to be the guitar player. I want to reform the band. Let's start writing songs for it. So we started writing songs together. And we brought in my old bass player from a project, Kevin Hillary, Kenny Hillary. And we auditioned drummers, and we found this just great drummer from New York, Pat Ashby. And to avoid any publicity, we went out under the original Quiet Riot name, which was Little Women. That was the name that Randy had come up with for Quiet Riot originally. So we did that, and we did gigs on the East Coast and the West Coast of the USA, to kind of workshop the songs and that type of thing. And at that point in time, I had kind of had about as much of it as I was going to take. And I left and ended up joining the band Hurricane out here. I love Kevin. I love Kevin. And we wrote some great songs together. But musically, stylistically, it wasn't where my heart was at. It wasn't bluesy enough for me. It wasn't really challenging enough. So it was time for me to move on.
NI ROCKS – You’ve probably answered the next question. You did obviously write some tracks with Kevin which ended up on the Quiet Riot album “Terrified” which was released in 1993. Do you regret not getting to play on a Quiet Riot release or was it just not your thing?
SEAN - No, not at all. No, not at all. I mean, frankly, I didn't even know who they were when I came to the USA because they weren't big in England at the time. I've seen them in Kerrang a couple of times and that was about it. And then I heard over here you know, the song that they were initially famous for, which was “Come On Feel the Noize”. And I'd already heard Slade. So to me, they were nothing more than a cover band, honestly. And then, you know, you have to remember I was a musician. I didn't come out to be a rock star or do any of that crap. I was a musician. So when I heard the music and, you know, “Bang Your Head, Metal Health”, I was like, okay, I'll play it. But I really didn't have a lot of love for it. Let's just put it that way. I was at that time, I was, you know, I was raised on “Rainbow Rising”, Black Sabbath, Neon Knights, early Coverdale with early Whitesnake. I was raised on real blues and Zeppelin and heavy stuff, you know?
NI ROCKS – You mentioned Hurricane there. After you left Quiet Riot you joined Hurricane and worked with Kelly Hansen on the album “Liquifury” which was released in 2001. What was it like working with Kelly on that album?
SEAN - Those were songs that we had written together in the early 90s. So what happened was when I left working with Kevin, so Kelly, Jay (Schellen) and I got together with Tony Cavazo. They were auditioning guitar players at the time because Doug had just left and I think was doing House of Lords and they were auditioning guitar players. They were going to try two guitar players initially so Jeff Young and myself - Jeff from Megadeth - we were we rehearsed with them together and then they decided that they wanted you know they wanted one guitar player and we got on really well in terms of songwriting and stylistically; so we were moving forward with that project. And then, again around that time I think Jay was doing some work with Unruly Child and then Kelly and I, so it was just Kelly and I, and then we were looking for a rhythm section. So he called me and he said, Greg (D’Angelo) and James (LoMenzo) from White Lion were looking to put a project together because White Lion had split up at the time. So the original version of The Exiles was actually Kelly, myself, Greg and James from White Lion workshopping some songs. One of the riffs ended up being one of the riffs I ended up taking for the Exiles project but Kelly moved on to… prior to working obviously with Mick in Foreigner, he was initially working a little bit with CC Deville in his solo band; and then Jay, like I said, had gone off to work with Unruly Child and then at that point in time, James and Greg were both working with Zak in his band Pride and Glory at the time as well. So, it was all kind of coming to an end and that's when I got in touch with John. He put me in touch with Paul; and Greg was actually our drummer initially for a while. I still have band pictures with Greg in them as the drummer, and Greg actually played drums on the first song that Paul and I wrote together, “Rainmaker”, which is a really cool, heavy vibe song. Greg DeAngelo is playing drums on that and he did an incredible job.
NI ROCKS – I thought we’d play something from the “Liquifury” album a bit later in the Show. If you had to pick a track from “Liquifury” which one would you pick?
SEAN - Well, “Heart Made of Stone” is a song that Kelly and I wrote together pretty quickly. “In my Dreams”, we wrote together relatively quickly as well. They were both cool. But I ended up, I think I had three songs on there, but played guitar on all of it with them. And they had some incredible songs. “Torn” is a great song that they have on there. And a number of other songs that I came into the studio and played the guitar on; I didn't write them, that were awesome songs. Actually I was quite pleased with the range of work that I was able to do on that album, because they had some really cool vibes going on. I think if that album had have come out either immediately after their “Slave To The Thrill” album or if that album had actually come out instead of the “Slave To The Thrill” album at that time, because the timing would have been different, because there's a lot of really good commercially viable songs, heavy songs on that “Liquifury” album.
NI ROCKS – Yeah. Which one would you pick? You get to pick one to play.
SEAN - I'd probably pick “Heart Made of Stone”.
NI ROCKS – Getting back to The Exiles. You mentioned that the album features 5 new tracks, and you've mentioned that one's kind of an old track you picked up. But in terms of those five tracks, are they all new or are they the tracks that you've picked up bits of or what's the story?
SEAN - No, they're all new. So “Soul Woman” is a brand new track, “Ain't No Fool” is a brand new track. I'm just looking at the CD here. “Feminine Side” is a new track, “I'm the One” and “Soul Has No Home”. “I'm the One” is going to be our next single. It's very kind of early Whitesnake “Come and Get It” vibe - Paul Rogers, Bad Company. But “Soul Has No Home” is an acoustic track that I had the scratch for when I heard it in the studio out here in Dallas. So I added vocals, double vocals, I added backing vocals on it added some more guitar uh and some rhythm. I love that song – it’s very reminiscent of early Rod Stewart - Jeff Beck sort of Faces type of vibe - very raw. That's a great song. I do love that song and it's very un-heavy you know. So the “Turning Time” album has everything on it from really heavy tracks like “Rainmaker”, “ Richmond Castle Walk”, which is very much like a Led Zeppelin “Kashmir”. It starts off with a mandolin and a folk guitar and then goes into really, really heavy stuff to, you know, “Soul Has No Home” and “High Old Times” is like an old Sam Cooke R&B number. I will say this, Nigel, I've never really listened to any of my work before. To tell you the truth, I go and I'll record the album, I do it, and then I go on to the next project. But this album I've been able to listen to, especially with headphones. And the more I listen to it, I actually hear a lot in there. So I'm very grateful of the opportunity to have made it because it was a closed chapter of something from 20 years ago. But there's a lot of really good, lots of great musicians on there. There's some killer musicians on there, Pat Benatar’s band. And I mean, yeah, so I'm quite pleased with that.
NI ROCKS – We’ll play another track from the album now. Again do you want to pick one and tell us something about it?
SEAN - Yeah, actually, if you want something different, “Friend”, I really like “Friend” a lot. It starts off just with a solo telecaster guitar on Paul's voice, and then it kicks in and it's very uptempo. It's very uptempo. It's very feel good, very Faces type of vibe. And yeah, I love the lyrics. Paul wrote it for a friend of his with a debilitating disease. And so it's got a lot of meaning to it, “Friend”.
NI ROCKS – Am I right in thinking that you totally stepped away from the music scene in the late 90’s or thereabouts. Is that right?
SEAN - Yeah. After I did the work with Paul, at that point in time, I knew that the industry was going to be where it's at now. The music industry now is nowhere anything close to what it was like in the late 80s, obviously. And I knew that it was going to end. I was driving through, actually in Beverly Hills with Tom Whalley, and Steve Jobs had just been pictured on the front of Rolling Stone magazine. I think it was holding up an iPod, the first iPod or whatever it was that it was called. I think it was an iPod. And I said, that's it. It's done. And Tom was like, no, it'll be fine. I'm like, no, it won't. And at that time, I remember Lars Ulrich from Metallica was fighting the whole Napster thing. And I'm like, there's no way you're going to be able to stop this. Because when we were kids, if we bought an album and you had a cassette player, you could record it. But the only people that could get it were the people in your village or your town that you could get to on a bus or a bicycle. That was it. In terms of piracy, it wasn't doing anything at that point. Now it's the click of a mouse and it's all over the world. So, I knew back then I was like from a business perspective. Plus, I'd been professional since I was 17. And I was very lucky to have achieved quite a lot by the time I was 21 in the music industry and playing with a lot of great musicians, some of which were quite obviously well known. And it was going to be too restrictive for the person that I was going to become. So I knew I needed something else. And from a professional perspective, it's all I'd ever known. I've been professional since I was 17, and I was like, I've got to do something else. I needed to do something else because it wasn't giving me; I was not going to get into the grunge thing. I was not going to put on a checkered plaid shirt, wear a pair of Doc Martens, and be something that I wasn't. (Laughs) And I wasn't going to go and play. I played clubs and played jazz and done all of that. And most of the really great jazz players that I knew, a lot of them were heroin addicts and stuff. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to do that.
NI ROCKS – Did you maintain any links to the scene or keep in touch with any of your fellow musicians?
SEAN - Oh no, totally, totally. I still have my dear friends that I was playing with. I spoke to Jay last week from Hurricane. Whenever Foreigner would come to Dallas, I'd go see Kelly. And Rowan and I have always been close. He was 17 when I first met him. I was 19. We used to take guitar lessons together in London. and so yeah my musical friends that I was in professional situations with a lot of them I'm still friendly with you know. But it's like anything you know as you get older your circles change as your life changes and that type of thing. But I've got great memories with all of them - Paul specifically. He and I were very very close and wrote some incredible material in a very short period of time. This has been a great opportunity because he lives in the south of France. He's an incredible artist. Incredible, absolutely incredible artist. In fact, one of the greatest gifts; because he called me about a year ago and he said, look, because Tom Whalley had our master tapes from Interscope and Hollywood Records. And he asked Paul if he wanted them. So Paul called me and he says, Manning, do we want these master tapes? I'm like, yeah, send them to me. So when Tom was gracious enough to send them to me, when I opened the 2” masters, all of Paul's original lyrics fell out; that were handwritten in there on all the studio notes and a lot of his drawings and his doodles. So we'd be in the studio and he'd be writing lyrics and he'd be doodling stuff because he's an artist. So actually a lot of that art is in the artwork that I put together because I designed all of this and put that in the CD as like a 24 page booklet with a lot of Paul's original artwork in there. So that was really kind of cool. I got a chance to tie all of that up.
NI ROCKS – It’s on Amazon, just to do a plug for it, you can get itD on Amazon in the UK, I think, can't you? the CD?
SEAN - You can, yeah. It's now streaming globally all over the world and it's available on Amazon, the actual physical CD. And I do encourage people, if they like, if you like Led Zeppelin, and you like Bad Company and you like the band Free and any like blues classic rock that there should be a number of things on here that you'll like because I'm a fan of that music. I love early Whitesnake, you know, before 87. I love early Whitesnake. My whole life was music. I have every single Kerrang that was ever printed, the first one, every single sound. I was a huge fan. So I'm a fan of that style of music and you don't hear a ton of it now. So I figured there was to be some people out there that like that style of music that haven't had anything new for a while.
NI ROCKS - Obviously get sent a lot of things by promoters. And when I put that on, first track thought, wow, that's fantastic. I actually played two tracks last week too.
SEAN - I'm glad you like it, man. And what I recommend people to do as well is - I remember the first time I heard “Hysteria” by Def Leppard. Initially I went through and I kind of listened and I'm like, oh, there's a bunch of hits on here. There's a bunch of hits on here. And I got more into it and I heard more of it, but it was very different than the first time that I heard “Rainbow Rising”. When I heard “Rainbow Rising”, I got the overall vibe, but the more I listened to it, especially on headphones, the more I actually heard in there, if that makes sense. There's some albums that just knock you over the head immediately. And then there's like, you know, some of my favorite Zeppelin albums are the songs like “The Rain Song” - they're not the most commercial initially, but the more you listen to them, the more actually comes out. So I wanted that experience. I'm glad you like when you put “Turning Time” on too when you heard that first one because that originally had no slide guitar on it whatsoever, it had no backing vocals on it and I really think the slide guitar that I was able to add out here in Dallas really drives it with Myron just drumming and everything so I'm glad that you enjoyed it when you put it on.
NI ROCKS – Has the re-release of The Exiles album ignited any desire to work on other projects or will you sort of sit back again now and let that be there?
SEAN - Well, I think, I mean, for me, honestly, the most important thing that I was able to actually make the album that was in my head; that I wasn't able to make years ago. And the way that I look at it is I wanted the music to be put out there because there's people, I know there are people that would really appreciate that style of music. I did enjoy the producing process in the big studio here and going through that. I really did enjoy that. You know, I don't have any massive desire to run around on a stage at this point. Who knows what will happen? You know, I'm always open to anything with whatever creatively, you know, wherever creatively things take me. But I did enjoy, I love this style of music and it really, funnily enough making this had me go back and listen to a lot of old Zeppelin again on headphones and listening to “The Rain Song” and listening to how organic and soulful those albums were because they there was no AI back then, there was no digitization of everything, it was all it was all vibes, you know it was all vibes and we recorded a lot of this album actually in Sunset Sound the same place where Zeppelin recorded a lot of their stuff and the Stones and everything. We wanted to catch that vibe. So we'll see, you know, I'll see wherever he brings me. We'll see.
NI ROCKS – I thought we’d finish with another track from the album. Do you want to pick one that we haven’t played so far and tell us something about it?
SEAN - Yeah, I think let's end with “Richmond Castle Walk”. “Richmond Castle Walk” is a very unique six / seven minute kind of epic of a song; it starts with acoustic guitar and mandolin,h then there's actually low in the mix monk chants that I put in there in the background. It starts off in an English folk vibe and then it gets really heavy, almost Zeppelin heavy and then ends up with the mandolin and the acoustic again and it's very unique. It's got strings in there - a big nod of the head to Jimmy Page and “Kashmir”. So yeah, I hope people like it.
NI ROCKS - Again, thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Sean.
SEAN - Yeah, of course, mate. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the music, you know. So yeah, God bless you.