Looking back at these archival tapes from Jul. 5, 2013, the raw energy coming off Greg Fraser is almost a physical force. It’s the sound of a musician rediscovering a vital piece of his own history. At the time, Brighton Rock was little more than a memory for most, a casualty of the grunge-era purge that sidelined so many melodic rock acts. But a spark had been lit, and Fraser, caught between his solo project Fraze Gang and the pull of his past, was right in the middle of the blaze.
The whole thing started, as these reunions often do, with an unexpected offer from overseas. A gig at Firefest in England. It was a long way to go for a band that hadn’t played a proper show with all five original members since the early nineties. But the idea had legs. Before heading to the UK, they booked a warm-up show in Toronto. It was a test. A proof-of-concept. And it exploded.
“The crowd was going crazy,” Fraser says on the tape, the excitement still fresh in his voice. “It wasn't a humongous... place was sold out, but it wasn't like, you know, thousands of people, but the crowd was just so intense. It just brought back all these memories.” That intensity was the catalyst. Immediately after walking off stage, singer Gerry McGhee turned to the band with a simple, powerful declaration: “I wanna do a record. You guys wanna do a record?”
Just like that, Brighton Rock was back in business. The subsequent show in England only cemented the feeling. But it created a classic artistic dilemma for Fraser. His project Fraze Gang had been his primary focus for years, a vessel for his own voice and vision. He knew, with the brutal honesty of a road-worn veteran, that he couldn't serve two masters. Something had to give.
“When I do something, I gotta do everything 100%,” he states plainly. “So I can't be 100% in two bands. Something's gonna suffer.” With the Fraze Gang album cycle running its course, he made the call to pour his energy back into the mothership. The decision was made to start writing a new Brighton Rock record, their first in over 20 years.
For Fraser, this wasn't just about dusting off old riffs. He identifies as a songwriter first and foremost, a craftsman whose creativity isn't bound by genre. He’d write country songs, classical pieces, and wimpy ballads, none of it fit for the Brighton Rock machine. But now, with the band reactivated, his writing had a specific, powerful target: Gerry McGhee’s voice.
It’s here you hear the sheer relief and artistic freedom in Fraser’s tone. With Fraze Gang, he was both guitarist and vocalist, a role he admits he took on reluctantly. “A lot of times I'd write a song, it was like, this is a great song, but I couldn't sing it the way I heard it in my head, so I'd have to alter the song, whether change keys or just sing it different to make it fit in my range,” he explains. “But now that with Gerry, there is no range, I mean, the guy can hit the stratospheres.”
That voice. It was the band’s signature, and its absence was the very reason Brighton Rock ceased to exist in the first place. When McGhee’s name was being floated for the Mötley Crüe gig vacated by Vince Neil in the nineties, the band faced a crossroads. The job ultimately went to The Scream’s John Corabi, but the writing was on the wall. McGhee was exploring his options, and for Fraser, there was no Brighton Rock without him.
Right now, Brighton Rock isn't the number one priority in our life, you know, now we have families and stuff like that... But this is a great diversion, and it's really really feels good to revisit the past and and make a new future for ourselves.
He was adamant. “A lot of guys were going to me, well, you're not gonna... just let Gerry go to LA. Why don't you keep the band going? Replace the singer just like AC/DC and Van Halen,” Fraser recalls. “And I said, well, you know what? Every time this happens, people always say those two names, Van Halen and AC/DC, because they're the only two bands that have been able to pull that off... The other 98% of the bands could never pull it off. To me, if I get another singer, I gotta change the name. It's because it's not Brighton Rock, and that's just the way it is.”
This unwavering conviction speaks volumes about the band’s chemistry. It was a brotherhood, not a business entity. During the long hiatus, Fraser stayed deep in the Canadian rock trenches, writing with members of Triumph after Rik Emmett’s departure and logging nearly four years as a sideman for Brian Vollmer in Helix. He saw the industry from every angle, but the burnout was real.
By 2013, the landscape had changed entirely. Fraser astutely notes that melodic rock never truly died in Europe, a fact proven by the rabid reception at Firefest. But in Canada, the avenues for a band like Brighton Rock had vanished. “Rock radio, all the big rock stations, they're all safe now,” he laments. “They won't play a band like us anymore.”
Here lies the one slight miscalculation in his otherwise sharp analysis. While he was absolutely correct about the death of traditional gatekeepers like MuchMusic and terrestrial rock radio, he was speaking at the dawn of a new era. The digital communities and niche streaming markets that would later champion legacy rock were just beginning to flex their muscle. The band's rediscovery of their global fanbase via Facebook was a sign of things to come, a new model they were just starting to understand.
Their first foray back into the studio perfectly captured this spirit of rediscovery and reinvention. Tapped for a KISS tribute album, A World With Heroes, they took on a heavy, aggressive track from the non-makeup era: “Creatures of the Night.” Instead of a faithful, by-the-numbers cover, Fraser deconstructed it entirely.
He stripped it down, cut the tempo in half, and raised the key. He envisioned a haunting, atmospheric piece. When he presented the backing track to McGhee, the singer was baffled. “When he first heard the track, he went, ‘What the hell is this? I can't sing on this.’ He didn't like it right off the bat,” Fraser laughs. But once McGhee found his footing in the new arrangement, magic happened. “He loved it. So then we mixed the song, sent it back to him, and he said, ‘Oh my god, it's a masterpiece, I can't believe it.’ Now he's like, you know, totally changed his tune.”
That session was the first time all five original members had recorded together since 1988. It was a moment over two decades in the making. The vibe, Fraser says, was immediate. “It's like no time has passed at all... within minutes, it felt like, you know, just where we left off, and it's great, man. We were always brothers.”
Of course, the reunion wasn't a simple rewind to the eighties. Life had intervened. “Back in the eighties, that was a full time life for us,” Fraser reflects. “That was us 24 hours a day... Right now, Brighton Rock isn't the number one priority in our life, you know, now we have families and stuff like that... But this is a great diversion, and it really feels good to revisit the past and and make a new future for ourselves.”
The conversation is a fascinating snapshot of a band navigating a new reality. They were fielding interest from Warner and Universal but also considering a modern independent release. They were wrestling with the diminished value of CDs and even the embarrassing technical flaw on their debut album's initial CD pressing, where a mastering error left it quiet and dull.
This 2013 interview captures the precise moment of rebirth. Fraser’s excitement about writing new material with keyboardist Johnny Rogers, the two of them high-fiving in a garage over a new song, is infectious. He talks about a potential 2014 release, a deadline that would ultimately prove optimistic as the band took its time to get it right, with the album finally emerging in 2019.
But the timeline is secondary. What this tape preserves is the sound of possibility. It’s the sound of five musicians remembering why they started in the first place, driven not by market pressures or label demands, but by the simple, powerful thrill of creating music together. It was a new spark, a new life, and you could hear it in every word.
519 Magazine Archive: We are thrilled to officially unearth the Rockstar Weekly Digital Vault. This isn't just a re-post; it's a high-fidelity restoration of a pivotal era in music journalism. By pairing original print dates with modern retrospectives, we’re bridging the gap between historical rock-and-roll grit and the lightning-fast performance of today’s web. These stories—once locked in physical print and lost URLs—are now back, fully searchable, and optimized for a new generation of fans.
We are thrilled to officially unearth the 519 Magazine Digital Vault. This isn't just a re-post; it's a high-fidelity restoration of a pivotal era in music journalism. By pairing original print dates with modern retrospectives, we're bridging the gap between historical rock-and-roll grit and the lightning-fast performance of today's web. These stories—once locked in physical print and lost URLs—are now back, fully searchable, and optimized for a new generation of fans.
