If you’re wondering how Damon Johnson — the ex-Alice Cooper, ex-Thin Lizzy, Brother Cane frontman — ended up making one of the biggest, brightest rock records of his solo run, you can partially blame Iron Maiden. “The song ‘Battle Lessons’ started out with a riff my buddy Jim Troglin showed me,” Johnson says. “I liked it immediately because it sounded like ‘The Trooper.’ I didn’t like it immediately because it sounded so much like Iron Maiden.”
This is Damon Johnson logic: hate it, keep it, fix it until you can’t live without it. “Credit to Jim — he stuck with it. One day out of the blue, I sang that lyric, ‘When we were young, nothing to lose, we were invincible…’ and had no clue what it meant. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like a testimonial — bands, business partnerships, all the peaks and valleys. Maybe not the sexiest rock song content,” he deadpans, “but people can make it work for whatever trauma they’ve got.”
It’s a lesson in embracing the ghosts of bands past instead of running from them. “I’ve learned to embrace it rather than guard against it. I remember being in bands when I was young, and someone would say, ‘Oh, that riff sounds too much like Van Halen, that lyric sounds like Zeppelin.’ Man, you’ve got to wait. Let the song develop. It’s never gonna end up the way it starts.”
And these days, writing isn’t a chore for him — it’s practically a crossword puzzle. “I used to hate songwriting. It felt like work. Now it’s fun, man. Battle Lessons is informed by so many great riffs because I felt fearless — more fearless than ever before.”
And don’t even get him started on hearing his music blasting through a movie theater for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. “You’d hear our songs like background noise, but that final scene — they roll the credits and ‘Shine On’ comes blasting through the speakers? Goosebumps, man. It’s got so much mileage. Even my kids’ friends freaked out when they heard it.”
The talk drifts to music videos — the ones he’d make if the budget fairies delivered a blank check. “If I had the resources, I’d make a video for every song on this record. I see stories, characters, landscapes. I remember being obsessed with Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion records. It felt like they made a video for every song. ‘Estranged’ — Axl on an oil tanker, diving into the ocean, swimming with dolphins. It’s escapism, man. It’s beauty and art.”
Until Johnson has a budget to recreate dolphins of his own, Battle Lessons will have to speak for itself — a puzzle box of riffs, old ghosts, and the sound of a guy who finally stopped guarding the fun away.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
