Biography

VETERAN AUSTRALIA BASED SINGER/SONGWRITER RHETT MAY –
WHO GOT BACK IN THE GROOVE AFTER A 30-YEAR
HIATUS WITH HIS ‘CALCUTTA BOY’ PROJECT – CONTINUES
HIS ‘INSATIABLE’ DESIRE TO ROCK ON HIS LATEST EP


In a recent interview with Skope Magazine, veteran Australia based rocker Rhett May gave a colorful explanation of how his musical passions were rekindled in 2009, some 30 years after the split of his mega-popular band Lucifer – which opened for bands like Queen in the 70s – prompted him to leave the industry. “The music was always bubbling away subterraneous within my soul and psyche, and it got the point where I couldn’t see anyone perform live without feeling crazy low!!! Suppressing my love for music, my creativity and performing live was slowly driving me insane…without me realizing it,” says the multi-faceted singer/songwriter, who followed up his 2009 comeback EP Calcutta Boy (an ode to his cosmopolitan birth city) with his eclectic new EP Insatiable.

May flew from his home in Melbourne for a party in Perth celebrating a milestone birthday of Lucifer’s guitarist – and unbeknownst to him, his former band was the entertainment for the night. After 30 years, using all appropriate metaphors to explain his passionate transformation, “the buzz returned and the door to the dungeon was unlocked. The beast was unleashed and now all hell’s broken loose. I can’t stop writing and composing and recording in my basement studio at home, till all hours of the morning.” Veteran producers Stephen Wrench and Terry Nails, who run the multi-faceted Florida based production services company Musik and Film, found May’s music online and loved the way he contemporized the classic rock vibe he came up on and played in his earlier days.

May agreed to work with them, and sent them 30 songs, from which they culled to ten and finally the five tracks that evolved into the stylistically eclectic Insatiable EP. May is an accomplished producer himself, helming both ‘Calcutta Boy’ and its recent thematic follow-up single ‘Cute Calcutta Boy’, part of an upcoming project called Fast Cars and Sitars that he’s doing with his childhood friend Jimbo Payne. His desire to take the sonics to the next level on Insatiable prompted him to hand the reins to Wrench (who has worked with everyone from Vince Gill and Lynyrd Skynyrd to Bonnie Raitt, Survivor and Hank Williams, Jr.) and Nails (Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Rodgers, Axl Rose). Trading files digitally across the world, the artist and producers created what May likes to call “an EP of five different genres that flow well together yet are also potential standalone singles.”

The provocatively titled rocker “Cocktails and Cannabis” fits right into the popular discussion in the U.S. about legalizing marijuana – but its original title was actually the more sexually charged “Cocktails and Cannibals.” It’s about a band groupie who overindulged in mind-altering substances, increasing her appetite for various things. The acoustic, melancholy flavored “Insatiable” is about a short infatuation and fling that creates the desire to keeping going back for more. “Hey Peter” is a playful, upbeat reggae track featuring heavily reverb-ed lead vocals wondering whatever happened to an old ban mate whom May describes as a “cross between Keith Richards, Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper.” The dreamy and psychedelically Beatlesque late 60s’ flavored “Jenny” is actually the very first song May ever wrote, about a teenage girl (not actually named Jenny) who had a crush on him when he was growing up in India. The mystical, moody jazz-rock influenced closer “My Baby’s Got Style” is an unabashed romantic tune about something cool and revolutionary in the contemporary music climate: respecting womanhood!

As young teenagers in the mid-60s, May and Payne founded The Wooly Bullys, won a Calcutta “Battle of the Bands” and became a popular live act that evolved into The Flint Stones, India’s most successful and sought after pop group; their single “Be Mine/Happy B My Side” attracted the attention of George Harrison and Apple Records. They visited the Maharishi during the same era the Beatles did, and once played a private concert for the Queen of Bhutan and her family. Moving with his family to Australia in 1969, May won the Perth Talent Contest as a solo artist before forming the garage band Shakespeare Sarani – and then took on several other monikers before achieving their greatest national fame as Lucifer.

With Insatiable and his new project with Payne, May keeps his musical Renaissance going at an exciting pace. He says, “I love having the freedom to continue pursuing my musical dreams and the ability to explore what’s inside of me and share it with people.”