Warrant is coming to Hard Rock Live on May 1st, 2025, with Lita Ford. I recently caught up with Warrant guitarist Joey Allen to talk about the show, possible new music and more. Joey and I jumped into just a little bit of joking around before we got down to business.
Joey is the guy in the band who writes their setlists. He told me right away that it has changed recently. Joey explained it now goes deeper on the first album “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich” and “Dog Eat Dog.” He did make sure he told us that we’d still get all their big hits as well as some deep tracks. He chose to keep those deep tracks to himself for the surprise factor for anyone attending the show.
With Joey mentioning the first album we discussed how Prince had financed Warrant’s demo which had two tracks that landed on that first album. The songs that made it from the demo to the album were the singles “Down Boys” and “Heaven.” Joey also added about how Prince liked the songs and the demo but how he passed because he was looking for something different at the time. We also discussed how “Heaven” was later remixed to make it sound bigger for radio. The song was originally heavier on their demo and producer Beau Hill didn’t want to record it with them. The song was popular in the LA clubs when the band played it live so they fought for it to be on the album.
“Cherry Pie” came together in 15 minutes on the back of a pizza box at 4AM. The way it happened was they had their album complete, and it was going to be called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The label president asked singer, songwriter Jani Lane for a song in the vein of Aerosmith’s “Love In An Elevator.” Joey was with bassist Jerry Dixon at a charity golf outing when Jani called them and played the song over the phone to them. He told them they needed to get back to record the song. Joey said they hopped a plane and were in the studio the next day. The song changed the entire trajectory of the album.
We also took some time to dive into if there is new music coming from Warrant and if so, how will they do it. From there we jumped into talking about what it’s like when you get five guys into the studio who are all creative forces unto themselves. The latest Warrant album was eight years ago. They are discussing doing a lot of things. Joey feels “It’s time.” How will it look is up in the air. Joey mentioned a song or two, possibly a full record. Then he mentioned possibly a box set with stuff from the late Jani Lane or new stuff with current singer Robert Mason.
With Jani’s name being dropped I enquired if there was stuff in the vaults that Jani worked on before his passing. Joey said, “Not a lot, but there is definitely some.” He then went into a little detail of the large job it would be to get to that material. Then he added “But we would love to do that for people that are fans of the band.”
In speaking about the live show, we did also, after some joking of me doing a gig in his place, talk about how Joey uses just one guitar during a show. Joey takes responsibility for his guitar himself. Not many artists at this level do that. He said that he changes his own strings and jokingly said he sleeps with the guitar nightly. We also spoke about his amps and pedals for all the gear junkies.
Our conversation turned to early influences and Joey quickly spat out “Priest, Maiden, Def Leppard.” For Iron Maiden he said it was when Paul Di’Anno was with the band. He spoke about the Judas Priest album “Hell Bent For Leather” and even dropped Michael Schenker’s name in there. He also sang the praises of Cheap Trick and Rick Nielsen as well as ELO and Joe Jackson.
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