Faith, Hope, Love and King's X

They've scored a hit single with "It's Love" and are in the middle of a national tour with AC/DC. Not bad for a bunch of guys who used to be a U2 cover band.

Originally published in FootNotes Magazine/Atlanta, 2/13/1991

For King's X, the road to the top 20 hit, "It's love" was a long one. A decade long to be precise.

In the course of those 10 years, the band had evolved from being a college cover band, paying tribute to U2 and the Police, to a band with their own sight and sound. They did a u-turn after relocating to Houston, TX from Springfield, MO where Doug Pinnick (bass/vocals), Ty Tabor (guitar/vocals) and Jerry Gaskill (drums/vocals) originally met.

Recently the band did their own headlining tour in the States before going abroad on a "Metal Hammer" concert package with Iron Maiden and Anthrax. Now back in the U.S. opening dates for the AC/DC tour (that hits Atlanta this week) and a hit single on the charts, it seems that King's X may be embarking on the pinnacle of their career.

Sitting on the back of a tour bus, Ty Tabor, the band's soft spoken guitarist provides some insight into the band's history and, more importantly, where they're headed.

Ty: We all moved to Missouri for different reasons. To tie it all up without a lot of boring details, we ended up meeting each other eventually in Springfield. Through musical circles, we all became friends and formed a band.

We started out playing originals, but couldn't get gigs outside of Springfield. We got a new manager who convinced us to start doing covers to get into clubs. So, we spent years listening to everybody else until after about five or six years, we were just totally miserable trying to please everybody but ourselves. All that time we wanted to be an original band but were playing covers and were getting real bored with what we were doing.

Around that time, somebody from Texas offered us money to move down to help out an artist on a record label there. We moved to Houston to do this studio project and tour with the artist for a short time. As a trade off, they were going to help us record and try to get a deal. It didn't work out. Eventually we parted ways, but there we were in Houston so we decided to stay.

We met Sam Taylor, our Manager, when we were there. He was involved with the ZZ Top organization. He did all of their video stuff, won an MTV award.

TA: Was this the turning point for King's X?

Yes, it definitely was. We got back on track.

We started experimenting and writing stuff that was different from anything we had ever done as a band before. I thought that nobody was going to like it. All this weird crap was coming out of me. One of the songs was "Pleiades." It was the turning point song, really.

Doug was writing some stuff too and his songs were falling in line with mine, with the same type of feeling. It all fell into the particular groove and felt natural for us for the first time.

TA: Prior to Faith Hope Love, you produced two critically acclaimed albums for Megaforce. 1988's Out of the Silent Planet and 1989's Gretchen Goes to Nebraska. Would you say that you and band are still somewhat naïve about your success so far?

We never take anything for granted. I'll put it that way. Our following is definitely growing, really fast it seems. Things have changed considerably just within the last several months since the third albums release. Faith, Hope, Love is kicking butt. We can't believe it! We got our first top 20 hit ever with the first single "It's love."

TA: Was it anticipated that "It's Love" would be the single off the record?

We thought it would be a single, but none of us knew it would be the first one. One the first two records, we chose everything, but on Faith, Hope, Love, we sent four songs out to various radio people asking, "What do you think?" The berdict came back unanimous for "It's Love." So, obviously, we went with it.

I was asking, "Are you sure?" because this was probably going to be the biggest exposure we had gotten yet. And for it to be a song I sing, it might be strange?

TA: Because bassist Doug Pinnick is the primary vocalist?

Yeah, I felt weird about it and had trouble with it at first. But, I had to say, That's King's X too." And this is just what we do.

by Teresa Anderson

Photos Lee Smith

Footnote: When I was pursuing my musical quest in the 1990s, I also wrote for local music magazines and zines, including Footnotes. I was lucky enough to interview Ty from King's X and this is a reprint of that article. Plus, I always got press passes to the shows...so cool...probably the reason I did it! haha