When and where were you born? Are you originally from Ventura, CA? What was growing up like for you? Do you have any siblings? When did you first begin to have a fascination with music and what was it about the drums that inspired you to pick it up? You’re a graphic artists as well, correct?

I was born June 29, 1956 in San Antonio Texas. My father’s family had a successful family-owned furniture business in Texas, which never recovered from the great depression. He knew this business well, and so that is what brought us to California, and he ended up managing a furniture store “Barker Brothers” in Ventura, California. I have a sister Heather who at one time was a drag racer, she and her husband Bob owned a company that built drag racing components, which burned down in the Thomas Fire here in California in 2017. My parents and grandparents were very loving and supportive and growing up was pretty much like in a movie. I always drew, painted and sculpted a bit. I studied art in college and worked as a graphic artist. I designed the layout for our first 3, and 5th album. I also drew some of the pen and ink artwork on our album inserts as in "King of the Dead" and the set list for the live album.

What groups left a huge impression on you early on? What would you and your friends do for fun in the early days? Did you participate in any groups prior to Cirith Ungol? If so, what were some of those projects and the experiences like for you?

I always loved music and was introduced to the heavier strains of music, as the 1960’s were ending with all those original heavy groups; Cream, Blue Cheer, Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors and Iron Butterfly, were playing in our area. I was too young to attend these concerts, but not too young to listen. Greg Lindstrom and I met in 7th grade at about 13 years of age, at an advanced literature class. We would meet before class each day and talk about music, automobiles, mostly Ferrari’s, and automobile racing. He turned me on to all sorts of new music and literature, and not long afterward we decided with classmates Jerry Fogle and Pat Galligan to start a band which we called Titanic. My father let us set up and play our first concert outside at the side of his furniture store facing a parking lot. I still go by there at least once a week! I was always intrigued by the drums and decided that’s what I wanted to play. Pat’s whole family was a bluegrass band and he was heavily influenced by The Beatles, so we ended up playing allot of that. Greg, Jerry and I wanted to play heavier music than what we were playing in Titanic, so we quit to form "Cirith Ungol". Pat went it on to play later in the famous punk band “The Angry Samoans.” We live in a beach town so for fun we hiked, rode around on bikes got high and listened to music, went to concerts and played in the band!

How did you initially meet your bandmates Jerry Fogle, Greg Lindstrom and the band’s roadie Tim Baker? What were your first impressions of him and how did you begin playing music together? Where would you guys rehearse and what was that first jam session like? What was the chemistry like right away between you guys? When/where did you make your live debut in Feb. of ‘78?

All of us went to school together at the same time, Anacapa Junior High School in Ventura California, that is also one of the first places we ever played. We asked the school if we could play outside near the parking lot and they said yes, well it was the 1970’s after all. I think this was the second place Titanic played after my dad’s store. Actually, "Cirith Ungol" started playing around 1971 and one of our first shows as "Cirith Ungol" was at an anti-war protest in May of 1971. We also played in February 1972 at a “Mini Pop Festival” on the football field of our local Ventura High School. At one point we practiced at everyone’s parents’ house until they all threw us out because of the volume. My parents were much more supportive and they let us play in several rooms in the house, finally ending up in my sister’s old bedroom after she got married and moved away. We have some really cool pictures from the local newspaper in that room I will share with you. We would get together two or three days after school and on the weekends and practice. I’m not sure how we did it because today my neighbors would call the police for doing the same thing, but back in those days things were a little bit different, and our nextdoor neighbors were my sister’s husband’s parents, so I think they put up with it a bit more than a normal neighbor.

We would put a carpeted board up in the window and we played almost the exact same times every day, so I think maybe some of the neighbors would clear out during those time periods! Our first singer was a good friend and classmate named Neil Beattie. Neil was a very good guy and an outstanding performer but we were looking for something a little bit different so after he left the band for a while we ended up playing as an instrumental group, even performing at two of the hottest venues in Hollywood at the time, The Starwood and the Whisky-a-GoGo. Tim didn’t join the band until later around 1976-77. He was a friend and fan of the band always doing sound for us at some shows and at one point we had him try out on one of the demos and we really liked his voice. Those times are pretty magical we would record songs and then later we would sit up in the closet of my sisters bedroom mixing them down and listening to them. We really thought we had something going, not knowing that the music business was more sinister and difficult to crack than we even imagined.

CU PLaza Park Anti War Rally circa: 1971.

Is it true the name of the band was inspired by the world of J.R.R Tolkien? Tell me about writing and recording the band’s classic, self-titled record in ‘78. Did the music only see a self-released cassette tape release? When and where did recording begin in 1978? What was that experience like recording that record and had you ever been in a studio before? What was the band’s process for writing as well as recording that first record? Can you give me a little background for each of the songs featured on that first album?

Greg and I were in an advanced English class in 7th grade, which would have made us about 16 years old. We were assigned to read the “Lord of the Rings”, which at that time was not the cultural mammoth it is today, but it was still three very long volumes for kids who were just teenagers. It was a big influence on us, and led to our discovery of many other "Sword and Sorcery" style literature and art. Many people mistakenly feel that because we took our name from the books that we were overly influence by the “Lord of the Rings”, or that matter the Elric series whose artwork by Michael Whelan is featured on our album covers. The truth is these incredible works of art influenced us, but were never intended to be something that defined us as a band, or our music! It was just imagery we felt something in common with. We were trying to get our name out there by playing as many shows as we could and we decided to do a demo tape in 1978 which eventually became known as “The Orange Tape” or later “The Orange Album”. It was all original songs that we recorded in the band room at my parent’s house using a Tascam mixer and a Dokorder 4 channel recorder. We recorded it using the closet as a control room and made up a bunch and gave them out to friends and sent them to local venues and record companies.

To be honest we didn’t receive much of a response except from friends and fans who liked what we were doing. Greg’s family owned a print shop and they printed the covers, and about this time we came up with our logo. Back then Greg wrote most of the material and brought it recorded mostly finished to the band room and then I worked on the drum parts and Jerry came up with the solos, and we recorded them again. A few songs I wrote the lyrics to, but the rest being written by Greg. I don’t want go into too much detail about the songs other than to say that a few of them ended up recorded properly on later albums including “Atom Smasher” and “Route 666”! Greg recorded several also in his solo band, “The Falcon”. “The Orange Tape” came out well, but we never considered it our first album just a demo tape. Amazingly we re-released the orange tape recently as people had been requesting it for years. It was sort of the white whale for our fans, something mysterious and unobtainable! Ha We were pretty surprised at the reaction because everyone seemed to want to get a copy of something we thought that was pretty primitive, being our first attempt at recording our own music.

What was the first order of business once the tape was recorded? Did you guys play any gigs, or tour to support the release? That following year ‘79 you guys released another cassette. Can you tell me about it? How did you guys want to approach this album that differed from the previous?

We were playing as many shows as we could considering we were playing hard rock/heavy metal in an area that wasn’t really receptive to that. Ventura is much more of a surf and country western town! That was the only tape that we mass produced, until what came to be known as our first album, "Frost & Fire" in 1981.

‘81 saw the release of ‘Frost and Fire’. Can you tell me about writing and recording that record and how the deal with Liquid Flames Records? What was it like to have an official LP release of the band’s music? It would be nearly three years until you guys release your follow up ‘King Of The Dead’ in ‘84 on Enigma. Can you tell me about that record?

After we received little response from our orange tape, we decided to put out what we considered the ultimate demo to get our name out there. We were going to pull out all the stops and release record as well made and produced as on any major record label at the time, including; production, photography, artwork etc. We won some recording time at a local battle of the bands, and a good friend of ours Randy Jackson loaned us the money to help produce the project. Our idea was to put our most commercially acceptable music on this demo, because back then all that really mattered was radio airplay. That is why this album it's not as heavy as our later efforts. We recorded the album at Goldmine Studios here in Ventura California, and we created the name Liquid Flames Records as our own record company. The album was recorded on an 8 track Tascam recorder and mastered and pressed and the best facilities in the Los Angeles area. We had never been in a real studio before and was quite a revelation for us and we ended up recording most of our next four albums there! They were put out of business by greedy landowners who raised the rent so high did the owner Jeff shut down the business and moved to Tennessee. It is really sad because the studio had quite a history including the first place that Katy Perry ever recorded.

We had a band room right across the driveway and it was pretty convenient being able to practice and record right next door to each other! We needed an album cover and Greg had loaned me the book "Stormbringer" by the English author Michael Moorcock. I looked down at the cover and I told the guys in the band if we could have this painting on our album, it would be the best album cover ever created. I contacted DAW books who had released the Elric book series and they put me in contact with Michael Whelan, which turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to the band. This was the beginning of an amazing relationship which saw Michael Whelan’s art on all of our albums except for the 2001 released "Servants of Chaos", which was a lot of early material that we wanted to get out there before the tapes disintegrated! Michael’s artwork is stunning and our band is very lucky to have been able to wrap our albums in his masterpieces! When we finally produced the album our good friend Brian Slagel (who would end up starting his own record label Metal Blade Records), gave us a number of a company and the Los Angeles area that was doing a lot of music importing and exporting to Europe, “Greenworld”. We showed them our album and they ended up buying all the ones we had produced, and we ended up signing a licensing agreement with them to produce and sell the album worldwide.

What started out to be a high-quality demo for the band, ended up by default being our first album, "Frost & Fire". Having our first real album out was very gratifying, after having been together for over 10 years, to be able to hold something solid in your hand was indescribable, especially since we conceived created and produced it! Right about the same time, Brian approached us to be on the first release on his new record label Metal Blade Records. It was a compilation album called “Metal Massacre One”. It was just re-released on it’s 40th anniversary had some pretty other well-known groups on there. Of course, I think our song "Death of the Sun" was the best, but that’s just my personal opinion! I wrote the lyrics to that song, and we had some other doomed themed songs which led some to call us the grandfathers of doom metal. What was shocking was one of the local radio shows in Los Angeles played a few songs off "Frost & Fire", they said they liked it, but it was too heavy for airplay which perplexed us, as we had put our most commercially acceptable material on that album. Since we realized that we are not going to get any radio airplay with our most commercial material we decided that for our next album we would put our heaviest material on there, and that album which was released in 1984, was "King of the Dead".

Where were you both personally as well as artistically at this point in your career? How much had changed since you had first gotten together? Tell me about ‘86’s ‘One Foot In Hell’ and ‘91’s ‘Paradise Lost’. What was going on with the band after ‘Paradise Lost’ until 2019’s reunion?

We were on a roll and of course we thought something big was going to happen to us because many other bands around us we’re actually doing really well. We are hung out with a bunch of the bands coming through Los Angeles including Rush, who has just arrived on the scene and were taking off. Little did we know that it was not really about the quality of music you created, but who you knew, and how much luck you had. After each album was recorded, we always had new material for the next album ready to go, but it took quite a time between our second, third and fourth album because we are constantly trying to raise money for recording, look for a new record company, etc. I borrowed the money from my Dad to record "King of the Dead", and paid him back with interest. For our third album "One Foot in Hell", we went back to our friend Brian and Metal Blade Records, who put that album out in 1986.

Once again, we thought it was the vehicle in which the band would take off, but right about that same time a lot of the thrashier speed metal was starting to happen which we really weren’t into musically or culturally. Being together so long without any success or monetary compensation took a toll on the band and this period saw several members leave including Jerry our original guitarist, and Flint our bass player. During this. We struggled, not with our own identity, which was perfectly clear in our minds, but for what was happening around us which didn’t fit with what we thought was legitimate, or true metal. On top of that the hair metal thing was starting to explode, which really was an anathema to everything that we believed in. To us that whole scene was one of fake posers degrading everything that we thought was real metal, and of course we were right in the middle of ground zero where that was happening. Until recently what really happened to us was basically being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What was strange we never ever stopped believing in the original true metal that we grew up on, and swore that we would hold that above us like a beacon for all to see, but around us people were listening to a different style of music, which we could not comprehend. The metal scene is a little different today were so many different types of metal genres can musically coexist. Back in those days before the Internet it was all about radio and big record companies, and fads, and when something like the hair thing exploded, it sucked out the oxygen in the room for everything else. Our fourth album saw us back at “Restless Records” which had sprung from the ashes of “Enigma” the record company that our second album was released on, which had sprung from the original company “Greenworld” which we had signed to all those years before. That album was a real struggle because even though we had some really good material written we had lost Jerry and Flint. We needed to replace them. We found a local guitar player Jimmy Barraza who is still in the band to this day, and a couple other guys that we met in the local music scene which really were not into our band or the music, and they left halfway through the production of that album. That album has some of our best songs on it, but also it has three songs that were written not by the original band but by the new guys and they didn’t really fit in with the rest of the music. The songs that really kick ass on that album are; "Join the Legion" and the trilogy; “Chaos Rising” “Fallen Idols, and "Paradise Lost". We also did only cover of the band ever did the song “Fire” by Arthur Brown which the original band members grew up with and really loved. Although it’s not one of our songs, we play it during some our sets these days and the fans seem to love it. We played several festivals a year before or after Arthur Brown played them, and we are hoping someday that we will be able to play on the same stage together!

What has been to like to make music with some of the guys again as well as a few new releases that have come out?

It has just been amazing, in 2015 we were approached by a local heavy-metal musician Jarvis Leatherby from a band "Night Demon" and a promoter of a big festival, "Keep it True Festival" in Germany Oliver Weinsheimer, both were trying to convince the band back together for a few shows. We had resisted any attempts to have this happen up till now, but it seemed like there was so many people they were clamoring to see the band we felt somewhat obligated to play again, and we all missed playing and creating music. The first few shows were awesome, and we were having fun so we decided, “Hey let’s see if we can take this a little bit further”. And so here we are seven years later still trying to forge the perfect blend of true metal! Of course, once we got back together again, we started writing material and what really surprised us the most was when we released the single "Witch's Game" and our 5th studio album “Forever Black”, that people were shocked that we were able to still write and create music that was equal or better than what we did when we were together before. In their defense many bands that have got back together after a long hiatus were not very successful in re-creating the magic that they had earlier in their careers. Even some big bands that have stayed together have a hard time recapturing that magic years later. Many consider "Cirith Ungol" an exception and I agree. I think because we were dormant for so long we were laying there just waiting like the ancient old one Cthulhu, who would rise up from under the sea when the stars aligned to bring suffering on all mankind!

What have you been to outside of the group? Are you currently working on anything both musically and non-musically? What are you most eager to express and explore with your music and/or projects as we step further away from this viscous pandemic?

The pandemic has really been hard on the band but I keep telling people if you’re in your 30s it’s three bad years out of your life but if you’re in your older it could be the last three years of your life. We consider ourselves some of the elder statesmen of Metal and before we fade beyond the veil we want to share some remnants of our unique alloy of metal to savy connoisseurs worldwide!

Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

I’d like to say that I was drawn to you from the name Primitive Man. I was a big fan of the band Jerusalem and their album had that song on it! I want to thank you for your interest in "Cirith Ungol". After all these years I’m still trying to spread the word of what we consider “true metal” with the masses. Some will not answer our call, but others will join the legion and we shall hoist up on our shoulders our vision of true metal for all the world to see. What I’d really like to talk with the readers about is our last two album’s that came out. Our fifth studio album, “Forever Black” was released in March 2020 just as the pandemic hit, many magazines and websites across the world picked it if not the number one album 2020 in the top five or 10, and some websites had us placed above other bands that we grew up worshiping!

I want any of our fans who I haven’t heard that or our EP that we put out in the middle of a pandemic, “Half Past Human”, to check them out. There’s some really good music on there. We have another new album material written just waiting to go record and I think it’s going to be even heavier than “Forever Black”. I promised all my friends and fans that we wouldn’t even record any new material unless it would rise to the same standard that we put all the rest of the music to it has to be heavy and it has to kick ass and I think everything we’ve done since we reunited meet those goals! Also, Metal Blade Records, re-released our first album "Frost & Fire" which came out 40 years ago. As with all the albums they have re-released they did an outstanding job, even creating a 50-page hardbound book with all sorts of color pictures, posters, memorabilia about the band from those days. Anyone who is interested in the band or our history should pick that album up. If you get a chance try to grab one of the deluxe book versions because it is just incredible.

Thank you for your interest in "Cirith Ungol" and if you read through all of this now you know a little bit more of our background and of our mission to create "A Churning Maelstrom of Metal Chaos Descending!"

Rob Garven

July 2022

At Cirith Ungol’s Secret Lair

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Dakota Brown

Robert Garven - Cirith Ungol

Joe Bouchard - Blue Oyster Cult

Dale Taylor - Bear Mountain Band