Ok Richard, tell us about Canada and your hometown of Winnipeg,why punk rock and how did your hometowns first punk band start?

So you wanna know about Winnipeg huh Mike? hahahaha Well...Winnipeg's was a pretty isolated place back when I was growing up in the 60's & 70's... Nothing moved too fast there. Total working class town. Tough too. Why punk rock? Before punk I was into lots of rock bands, as long as there was lots of guitar I loved it. But back then, it seemed like playing guitar wasn't a possibility, it was for the "gifted". I sure proved that one false, eventually.... Lowlife started in late '77 I think. Mark Haldorson (drummer) & I met at school and we were just typical kids...bored as fuck. We sat around listening to all the early punk stuff plus Iggy, The Dolls, MC5, Bowie etc. One day we just figured-"If all these kids can pick up guitars and figure it out along the way...why the fuck aren't we doing that? So we did...The 45rpm single- Lowlife- Leaders came out in the summer of '79. Of course we'd broken up by then but...


OK Personality Crisis the band I know you from,I know you toured with the Romantics,tell us ALL!

Personality Crisis started in 1981 from the ashes of Le Kille. Mitch Funk was the singer, Jimmy Green & Walter Kot on guitars, Mark Haldorson drums and I was on bass.Mitch, Walter and Mark were from Le Kille, which was a very LSD influenced band. We were around from '81-'84. Playing mostly the west coast of Canada & The US. We somehow got asked to open for The Romantics in the dead of winter 1981. How we got that tour remains a mystery... I have a million stories about all this era Mike...I should write a book...

I know you met Duff McKagan during the Personality Crisis days...

Yeah, I met Duff in 1983 while touring thru Seattle. You ever meet someone for the first time Mike and just know that you're gonna be great friends? It was like that with him. We we're supposed to play a house party in Olympia I think but it got busted up by the cops so me & Duff hit a bar and drank 7&7's all night. We stayed in touch & in 1990 I sent him my then band- TT Racer's 3 song demo and he got us a demo deal with Polygram Records... The band moved to Los Angeles in 1991 & quickly fell apart... In 1992, Duff was recording his solo album "Believe In Me" & asked me to play on the Johnny Thunders song- "You Can't Put Your Arm's Around A Memory". After it was done, Axl Rose heard it & demanded that it go on the new Guns & Roses record "The Spaghetti Incident"


OK so Guns and Roses wanted it for, in my opinion their BEST LP "Spaghetti Incident" and it the LP went platinum! Then what happened Richard?

The record (The Spaghetti Incident) didn't come out until November 1993 and by then I was in Duff's touring band and we were in Europe opening up for The Scorpions. Duff had told me that the head of programming for MTV wanted "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory" as the video single but that obviously happen...likely cause Axl wasn't singing on it... The record did go platinum apparently tho... I was living in West Hollywood in '94 and I got a call from a friend where I used to live and he told me there was a package delivered for me there. I asked him to open it up & he told me it was a platinum record for "The Spaghetti Incident". It then stayed in my closet for about 6 months before my ex-wife put it up on the wall one day when I was out...

So after GNR went on hiatus,you toured with Duffs band and I saw you guys on Headbangers Ball with Ricky Rachtman - we need to know about this phase!

I was living back in Vancouver in the summer of '93 & I got a call from my old friend Joie Mastrokalos (RIP) saying I needed to get back down to LA to play in Duff's touring band. Doug Goldstein, Guns & Roses manager called me and set me up with a ticket for the following day. We rehearsed for 3 fucking months...to play 12 fucking songs over & over again. But...we were getting paid so all was right with the world... Yeah...We did a couple shows before we went to Europe. We played Oakland, San Francisco & then New York. We did Headbangers Ball & then played Webster Hall. Duff McKagan - "Believe in Me" Live On Headbangers Ball - 1993



OK tragedy strikes you in the form of an brain aneurysm, please tell us about that and I respect your spirit in survival and healing.

This is kind of a strange story... By 2001, my ex-wife, Erin & I had settled down and bought a house in Vancouver, that I was renovating... We were near the end of the renovation when Erin fell down the stairs in the middle of the night, smashing her wrist to pieces.. After taking her to Emergency they sent me home while she was being operated on. I was getting ready to go pick her up when out of nowhere I got super dizzy and my head felt like it was gonna explode... And it was...I had a cerebral hemorrhage happening in my right frontal lobe...I was paralyzed on my right side. Thank God my friend Buck Cherry (John Armstrong) happened to call and got me an ambulance. All the good karma points he got for calling me when he did vanished as they were taking me to the ambulance, a neighbor asked what happened & he replied-"It's a heroin overdose..." I wasn't thrilled to hear that but it was the least of my worries & it wasn't true...in this case. After numerous tests the Neurosurgeon came to my room and told me that I likely wasn't gonna make it...Apparently, he was wrong...


Please tell us what is important too you today!

After the Doctor told me that I wasn't likely gonna live and he left the room... I was left to ponder whatever fate had in store... All I could think of was that if this was it, the end, I had pretty much done what I had wanted to do all my life and had no regrets. I was OK with dying. I guess I had acceptance for the first time in my life but it wouldn't be the last time I had to deal with acceptance... Whats important for me today? Well...Family & friends, of course. I'm fucking so grateful to be able to have the ability to write, produce & play music everyday. It's who I am.

Get us up too date on whats happening musically now.

Me & Paula Tiberius (my wife) are finishing up our new record called "Lead Us To Temptation" Right now I'm also focused on finishing up our kids record which is called "Be Who You Are", with Paula. The new Pagans single "Hopped Up" on Get Hip Records which will be released in January. The Dogs/Jenna Talia (Glitter Trash) new split single coming out in a few months on New Fortune Records out of Detroit. I also sang backups on The Dogs song "Ain't Goin Nowhere" which is about to be released on Helvis Records.

In 2015 you have worked with The Dogs and The Pagans & you did the FUCK YOU FAME WHORE record,tell us about that,I have heard the songs, and they are great!

The Pagans record "Hopped Up" was a great experience for me. We did all the tracks except drums at my studio-."Into The Black". I produced, engineered and played bass, and guitars. The song turned out really fucking great and I'm very proud of it. That led to working with Loren Molinaire from The Dogs & Little Caesar here at "Into The Black" Loren had this song idea that we started working on & then he wanted to get Jenna involved & it kind of took on a life of its own....Tony Matteucci and Mary Kay of The Dogs played on it and we ended up with "Something To Be Believe In" I produced & played some guitar melodies on it. I'm also real proud of the FUCK YOU FAME WHORE record we did this year. It was only a very limited CD only release but it may get re-released again in 2016... Mike Hudson and I came up with the idea in early January to do this project. I had this song already written called "All Shot Down" that I thought Mike would sing the shit out of... I was right...He did a great fucking job and the video by R.d. Cane cemented the whole thing together. Fuck You Fame Whore - All Shot Down



Unfortunately...Mike got in a bad car wreck 2 days after we shot the video- "All Shot Down" and I had to finish the record myself. Here's the other video we did for the record- "Take The Money"



OK working with the wifey on the children's album recordings tell us about this and the successful Kickstarter campaign.

Cool! Its such a great project to be involved in. Paula and her friend Tara Samuels had this idea to do a Children's record called "Be Who You Are". They wanted me to be involved with producing it and writing songs for it. We decided to try doing a Kickstarter campaign for it to see if anyone was interested in helping out with it. We raised enough money to get a good chunk of the record done which is very exciting! We just finished sending 4 finished songs to the people who donated for it. They sound really amazing! The songs are all over the map in terms of "genre" but they all have the common theme of empowerment and finding out who you are and embracing that. Be it straight, gay, transgender etc. Some of the songs are really traditional kids songs and others are straight up rock n roll- think Fleetwood Mac meets Steve Jones from The Sex Pistols... There is even a radio play thats gonna be on there... Its gonna be a killer record. Having a child has really changed my life in so many ways....


Tell us what to expect from you in 2016 ?

First off I'll be going up to Vancouver BC to play a Food Bank Benefit on January 8th & also filming the new FYFW video- "All Tied Up" After that Paula & my record-"Lead Us To Temptation" is gonna released hopefully with distribution... Re-mastering some of the old Spent Idols songs with you Mike... In March I'm going to be producing a 5 song EP for my old friend Ron Kirsch. Maybe a new FYFW record...we'll see about that... Finishing off the kids record... After all that...I'm open to offers...

Thanks so much Mike for giving me this opportunity to be included in Ginger Coyote's Punk Globe Magazine. I've been a fan since 1982...BTW, what the fuck does it take to become Punk Of The Month????

How would I know? I am only Runner Up Punk Of The Month!