The Farmer's End

Gary Shea is an American rock bassist best known as a founding member of New England and Alcatrazz. A powerful and melodic player, Shea began his professional career in the 1970s with New England, whose self-titled 1979 debut was produced by Paul Stanley of KISS, and spawned the radio-friendly single “Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya.” He went on to co-found Alcatrazz in 1983 with ex-Rainbow singer Graham Bonnet and New England keyboardist Jimmy Waldo, performing alongside guitar virtuosos Yngwie Malmsteen and later Steve Vai on the band’s classic recordings, "No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll" (1983) and "Disturbing the Peace" (1985).

Over the course of his career, Shea has also worked with KISS's Vinnie Vincent and other notable rock musicians. His playing combines the power of classic rock with a strong melodic sensibility, influenced by bass legends such as John Entwistle, Paul McCartney, James Jamerson, and Bernard Odum. Shea continues to perform and record with New England and Alcatrazz. In 2025, he published his memoir, "No Bass No Party: Sketches of My Life in Music."

This is a deep cut interview that has never been published before. I dug deep into the archives ( i.e., a box of cassettes) for this one. Though not a household name, Patrick Klein is well know in the New York music scene, having first cut his teeth with French Lick, an incumbent band to Bon Jovi at Tony Bongiovi's legendary Power Station studio in the '80s. He went on to become an in-house engineer at the Power Station under the tutelage of Bongiovi, before subsequently joining The Lizards on guitar. With The Lizards, Klein was more like the band's Swiss Army Knife, handling an array of duties besides guitar, including songwriting, recording, mixing, and backing vocals. Ever since, he's continued engineering at Electric Randyland on Long Island and composing music for High 5 Games, an online gaming company. This interview was originally conducted in a Starbucks cafe and recorded on cassette, so there was a lot of background noise to clean up (it was originally intended for print publication). There are some dropouts as a result of cleaning up the audio, so I will also publish the written transcript on Subtack in case you want to follow along there. It was also conducted a while ago, and platforms such as Spotify didn't exist just yet, so there is a lot of commentary on the state of the music industry, which is interesting to hear in retrospect. To be clear, Patrick is not a bass player by trade (Although I did see him gig on bass one night in NYC). He's a primarily a guitarist and lead vocalist, but the nature of the interview transcends a guitar-centric perspective, and delves into the many facets of being a team player in a band, making it completely suitable for The Farmer's End. Enjoy!

I dug deep into my archives and came across an interview I did with Ronnie James Dio back in 2006/2007.

Long before I joined The Rods, and well before I moved to Ithaca and started working in Cortland, I was assigned an interview with Geezer Butler regarding Black Sabbath's recently released Dio Years Box Set and subsequent tour, under the then-newly rebranded Heaven & Hell moniker. The run of dates culminated with a now-legendary performance at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, which is part of the recently released Breaking Into Heaven Box Set under the Heaven & Hell name.

Because Dio was originally a bass player, and performed on Elf's eponymous debut, I finagled an interview with him as well, which was intended to be a side bar addendum to the Geezer Butler interview. Unfortunately, due to print restrictions, I was only ever able to incorporate few sentences of Dio's interview, so after digging through some boxes and cassette tapes, and working with lalal.ai to clean up the background noise and tape hiss, The Farmer's End is able to finally present this interview in its entirety.

Listening back to this I'm reminded about how much I miss hearing his voice, which is one of the biggest reasons to publish it. I'm sure others miss hearing him too. It also illuminates how essential bass playing was for him as a songwriter, how much respect he had for his musical peers and colleagues, and how gracious he could be as a person. I hope you enjoy it!

Sometime in 2023, The Farmer's End caught up with Kip Winger to discuss the release of Winger's boxed set, Chapter One - The Atlantic Years, among other things, including chops versus song craft, singing and playing, and plugins versus going direct. Dig in!

In 2023, The Farmer's End caught up with Juan Croucier hot on the heels of RATT's The Atlantic Years boxed set release. As one of the truly unsung heroes of '80s bass playing, Croucier shares his thoughts on playing, songwriting, singing, recording, and more... Check it out!

The Farmer's End caught up with inimitable bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes in late summer of 2023 just as he was embarking upon the US leg of his 50th Anniversary Burn tour, celebrating his iconic debut album with the legendary Deep Purple.