WARRANT axeman Erik Turner was interviewed on the Wisconsin radio station 102.9 The Hog.
On how the music industry has changed over the years:
Erik: “It took us five years to get a record deal, but once we got a record deal, back then, the record company — if they believed in the record — would spend millions of dollars on marketing. Putting your video on YouTube and the Internet and Facebook doesn’t compare to having a multi-million dollar marketing budget and this huge distribution machine that was Sony, that could sell millions of these plastic discs. There’s no comparison to it, but leading up to it and getting your band name out there nowadays, there’s a lot of social media. There’s a lot of social media to dig through to find something to break through and have a million followers, as opposed to 1,100 or whatever. It isn’t going to have much impact unless you have some sort of big marketing machine behind you. But I’m old-school. We’re lucky — we have six songs that did really, really well for us, and we sold millions of records, and fortunately, people still like to come out, party, have a good time and hear all those songs.”
On the band’s current lineup:
On whether he’s ever visited a strip club and name-dropped the fact that he played on “Cherry Pie”:
Erik: “Well, I didn’t write it, but yes — ‘I perform in it. It’s our band. Would you mind dancing to our song? It brings joy to us like you wouldn’t even understand.’ Many many years ago, when I used to go to strip bars before I was married, we loved that. We’d bring our record in there, ask the DJ to spin it, start buying him some drinks, buying the girls some drinks, throwing money around… you can figure out the rest.”