GUN
ON TARGET
Their debut album Taking On The World was a killer. After that, while circumstances have conspired to see them shoot wide occasionally, Gun’s aim has been true, and with new album Hombres they’ve hit the bullseye again.
Words: James McNair
STEVIE KYLE/PRESS
Giuliano ‘Jools’ Gizzi still remembers Gun’s first time on Top Of The Pops. It was August 1989, and their debut single Better Days had charted. Young Glaswegian upstarts in ripped denim and biker jackets, Gun were in seventh heaven – especially when meeting former Prince &The Revolution stars Wendy &Lisa, who were on the show with their solo hit Satisfaction. “I said to Wendy: ‘Can I shake the hand that’s touched Prince?’” Jools recalls, smiling. “She said: ‘Sure. You can shake the hand that’s slapped him a few times as well!’”
There was a touch of happenstance about this Prince-themed exchange, for Gun’s Better Days had actually been inspired by him. “Yeah, we’d been listening to Prince a lot,” says singer Dante Gizzi, Jools’s younger brother by eight years. “The verse of Better Days owes a lot to Mountains, off his album Parade.”
“It’s absolutely a heavier version of that,” Jools says in agreement. “Plus we tried to make the chorus a bit like Why Can’t This Be Love by Van Halen. Our management had drilled the importance of strong songs into us. We looked to the best for inspiration.”
Prince-meets-Van Halen? Way to go. And if Wendy &Lisa clocked Mountains’ palpable influence on Gun’s first hit, they didn’t let on.
Meanwhile, back in Glasgow, a certain Mrs Gizzi had told half the neighbourhood to tune in to Top Of The Pops that night. “I think that was when mum finally realised we weren’t wasting our time,” says Jools.
Today, Classic Rock is with the Gizzi brothers at Gun HQ, namely their own Morsecode Studios in Hillington Park, Glasgow. With the release of a fine new album, Hombres, more of which later, they’re ready to tell their whole story. In 1989, Dante Gizzi was Gun’s teenage bassist. Today he’s their frontman, having replaced original singer Mark Rankin for 2012’s Break The Silence. Gun’s story is one of heady highs and crushing lows, of hits, mega-tours and line-up changes. Ultimately it’s the tale of how two Scots-Italian brothers learned to become (largely) self-sufficient – and how they did it the hard way.