By: Robert Cavuoto
Frank DiMino
Photo By Denise Truscello
One of my few regrets in life was never getting to see Frank DiMino and his ’70s hard rock band, Angel, play live with their extravagant costumes and visual illusions.
I was just a few years shy of being able to see them in their heyday of the mid to late ’70s.
By the time I did started attending concerts, they had broken up and disappeared in a cloud of smoke like one of their illusions.
Angel was on Casablanca Records, the same label as KISS and put out five LPs in their time on earth. They went out with more of a heavenly look with white and silver, compared to KISS’s black and silver. If ever there was a band ahead of its time, it was Angel.
Had they hung on a little longer during the ’80s instead of breaking up, MTV and the explosion of the L.A. glam metal scene may have carried them on to being a household name.
Leading Angel’s quest for stardom was legendary frontman, Frank DiMino.
Fast forward and he is now leading his own solo project, Old Habits Die Hard. Frank enters another realm of songwriting with songs that are tight, fast-driven, and neatly tied together. “Mad as Hell,” “Sweet Sensation” and “Rockin in the City” merge metallic riffs with an uncanny knack for melody that has been missing in rock for a long time.
Frank also enlisted help from some masterful guitarists on this debut CD like; Paul Crook of Meat Loaf, Oz Fox of Stryper, Eddie Ojeda of Twisted Sister, Rickey Medlocke of Blackfoot / Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jeff Labansky, Pat Thrall of Meat Loaf/Asia, and former Angel bandmates; Punky Meadows and Barry Brandt.
I had the opportunity to chat with Frank about his new CD, how he manages to merge his past roots with a modern rocking edge, and shed some light on one of rock ‘n rolls most asked question; “What happened to Angel?”
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Robert Cavuoto: There are so many great rocking songs on this new CD, tell me about how the opportunity to create a solo album came about?
Frank DiMino: It started when I was having dinner with a friend and he said “Why don’t you do a solo CD?” I told him I never thought of myself as a solo act, I’m a band type of guy. That’s always been my musical environment. But the more we talked, the more I thought it could be an interesting challenge. I felt I needed to approach it differently than I would do if I was doing it as a band.
In a band you’re writing towards a particular genre or the strength of the band, or the direction that everyone collectively wants to head down.
My approach for this CD was to stretch out a bit and not worry about those aspects. My philosophy was to write good songs and songs that I felt good about.
Ultimately your direction is always based on your background, so it’s always with you. Oz Fox, Jeff Labansky and I wrote all the songs on the CD except “Even Now” which was written by Barry Brandt.
Paul Crook played guitar and produced the CD, he worked tirelessly and always made sure each song was the best it could be. Whatever it took to make it happen we did, there were no egos of who would play what solo. It was for the collective good of the CD and that’s what I loved about making it.
Robert: You had some special guests play on the CD, how did that all come together?
Frank DiMino: It really happened organically; Oz, Paul, and Jeff where the main guitar guys and Paul brought in the rhythm section of Meat Loaf’s band. So, I really had a cohesive band unit to do all the bed tracks. As far as the special guests, I never expected that to happen.
When Oz and I wrote “Never Again” I was thinking of an Angel song and thought it would be great to have Punky Meadows play on it. I called him up and he said he would love to do it.
Things just started happening like with Eddie Ojeda of Twisted Sister; he was at NAMM when Paul told him about the CD and asked him to play some tracks on it. He took home “Tonight’s the Night” and the next day laid down the solo. It all worked out very nicely.
Robert: Why haven’t we had more CDs from you?
Frank DiMino: Like I mentioned, I have always been involved in a band situation and never had a steady group of guys. Even with the local band I have out here in Vegas with Oz called, Vinyl Tattoo, there is a lot of movement.
Scott Coogan who plays drums for us also tours with Ace Frehley and Oz has Stryper, so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to have a band.
Robert: The lyrics on the CD come across as being very personal.
Frank DiMino: I wanted to write songs that didn’t take a certain direction. I took a little more time with lyrics to give them a deeper meaning.
Not that the Angel songs weren’t, but with Angel we were trying to create a certain feeling. We were going after another world or atmospheric songs. With this CD I was attacking it like a songwriter, which gave me a little more freedom.
Robert: The title of CD is interesting, Old Habits Die Hard, tell me about it and what it means to you?
Frank DiMino: I threw out a lot of different title ideas but they always seemed to get back to the fact that I didn’t want to be prisoner of my past.
I wanted to say, “I’m still here, I come from a certain background, and I still haven’t forgotten it.” For the cover artwork, I used my Angel microphone stand and my old boots to drive the point.
Robert: Do you still have your Angel costumes?
Frank DiMino: No, [Laughing] but I just spoke to Felix Robinson [bassist in Angel] and he said he just found some old costumes in a road case. Some of them may be surfacing.
Robert: “Mad as Hell” is one of my favorite tracks as it seems to perfectly combine your innate sense of melody with the band’s ability to rock? Tell me about who played on it some insights into its creation?
Frank DiMino: That was the last track that we wrote. As we started to write it, it began to take on its own life. It’s a very frantic song. As you know when you get in the studio, songs can sometimes take you along it with that was the case with “Mad as Hell.” That part where we are all screaming in the middle of the song sets the tone for it.
What I thought it really needed was a metal guitar player; someone who will understand and hear what I’m hearing. Jeff Duncan from Armored Saint also subs on guitar in Vinyl Tattoo, when Oz Fox is not available or working with Stryper.
I know his playing and it was exactly what I wanted on the song. I told him that I wanted a dual lead so we went over to Paul’s house and the two of them traded Van Halen licks for about two hours [Laughing].
I finally had to say, “Hey guys, let’s focus on the task at hand here!”
From there, it only took about 20 minutes, but getting there was crazy. It’s two great solos, Paul’s solo comes up on the left side and Jeff’s is on the right side of the track.
Robert: Can we expect to see you on the road touring to support of the CD?
Frank DiMino: Absolutely, that’s what I love doing! I’m always singing somewhere since the Angel days. I have a great great opportunity for a band whether it’s the guys from Vinyl Tattoo if they are available or the guys from Meat Loaf’s band. I’m looking at doing some of the 2016 European summer festivals.
Robert: When Angel broke up did you ever receive offers to join any high profile bands?
Frank DiMino: When Angel was on the edge of first splitting up, Nikki Sixx called me up. I’m not sure what was going on with Motley Crue at the time, as that was in the early, early days.
Also, right when Angel got together I did some singing in the basement somewhere with Tom Scholz of Boston fame, at that time I think the band was called Mother’s Milk.
We started talked about putting together a band, but I already started working with Angel. I also worked with Paul Raymond of UFO when he was off the road with UFO and I was off the road from Angel. We did some recordings that are in the can somewhere. A lot of crazy stuff that never came to fruition, but it was all a lot of fun.
Robert: What do you think was the main reason Angel really never took off? You had a cool look and great commercial rock tunes similar to breaking bands at the time like Styx, REO Speed wagon, and Journey?
Frank DiMino: I wish I knew [Laughing]. When we first started recording, radio airplay was a little different as it was a lot more album oriented. They were playing “A Long Time,” a progressive heavy ballad, off the first album which you would never ever hear nowadays on the radio.
By the time the third album came out radio airplay was changing again and we got pressure from the record company to start gearing our music to it yet still maintain our identity. Into the fourth album, I think our approach to songwriting changed. The first two albums, Punky, Gregg Giuffria, and I wrote all the songs from our rehearsing and our roots. By the fourth album we were off with different band members, becoming songwriters rather than writing for the band.
Robert: I think if Angel could have held it together a few more years in the early ’80s with the explosion of commercial hard rock and MTV, you could have been monstrous.
Frank DiMino: I agree, we probably would have been a perfect band for MTV.
Robert: It’s interesting that Angel and KISS were on the same record label; Casablanca, but never toured together, why was that?
Frank DiMino: It almost came to fruition just before we did the “Marathon Tour” in 1979 or 1980 with Mother’s Finest, Mahogany Rush, Humble Pie and Angel. We were talking about opening a big tour with KISS, but it just never worked out. Timing is so important with bands and I’m guessing that had something to do with it not happening.
Robert: Tell me about Angel’s persona and was it intentional to be different than KISS and their image?
Frank DiMino: We had the idea of how we wanted to look when we first started out in Washington DC. By the time we got to L.A. to work on the album; we started to put together a show. The white thing was something that just distinguished us from everyone else. We didn’t want to go out wearing jeans and really wanted to do a show.
Back in the ’70s our approach was to do a show and make it worthwhile for people to come to see us. That’s how we developed the idea of the illusions. The illusions came in-between the songs not during the songs, it was important for us to focus on the music. So, it wasn’t really a conscious effort to be white to KISS’s black. It just worked out that way.
Robert: Back in the ’70s was there a competitive nature to outdo other band’s stage productions to sell out arenas?
Frank DiMino: Absolutely, back in the ’70s you were out there and everyone was protective of their property and ideas. Everyone wanted to do something bigger and better than the next guy. As we were writing for the album, we were also coming up with ideas on how we wanted to present them. That was the fun part of putting those shows together.
We had our 11 foot logo with the face and wings which we named George [Laughing].
Sid and Marty Krofft’s company help build it. It used to rise behind us and its eyes was open and talk to the audience. It was pretty wild.
Robert: You must have some great Spinal Tap moments being in Angel with all those illusions and props?
Frank DiMino: [Laughing] When we played Budokan in Japan, we had a small Spinal Tap moment.
On stage we would have all these towers as they were built they would light up and a band member would appear and walk out of it. The first guy who was supposed to come out that night was Barry Brandt, but he never came out. They were announcing his name and he didn’t come out [Laughing].
We all came out of our towers and were looking around for Barry. Turns out there were so many fans in the audience that he got freaked out and didn’t want to come out [Laughing].
