There's a new music video coming out soon.
Well, sometime in the future.
And it's for I'm Not A Vampire.
Ronnie confirmed it.
Yeah, be excited.
 

There’s a line in The Shawshank Redemption where hardened jailbird Red Redding (played by Morgan Freeman) asks the newly incarcerated Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) why he murdered his wife, and Dufresne claims he was set up. “Hell, you’re gonna fit right in then” replies Redding. “Everyone’s innocent in here. Don’t you know that?” Of course, during the course of the film, the viewer finds out that Dufresne was, in fact, innocent, but was caught up in a corrupt system.

The Falling in Reverse frontman (then the frontman for Escape the Fate) claims he suffered the same fate as Dufresne. In 2008. Radke got into a nasty confrontation in the Las Vegas desert. The rocker went there to take part in a showdown with a thug who was threatening him and Escape the Fate’s bassist Max Green, so Radke brought some friends for protection. Unfortunately, so did his rival. Shots were fired and two men were shot, one fatally. Police found brass knuckles on Radke and charged him with concealing a deadly weapon. Everyone else, he claims, got off scott free.

“I was told if I pleaded guilty to one felony count of assault and battery I’d get probation,” Radke says. “I actually didn’t hurt anybody. But I saw it happen. I should have gotten a gross misdemeanor. I didn’t shoot anybody. I would never even carry a gun. That’s crazy. I didn’t even know anybody had a gun. I don’t know why else everybody got off. They were making an example of me.”

Radke received probation, but the terms included being clean and he was addicted to narcotics at the time and unable to kick. He also had to have a 40-hour-a-week job and remain in the state, which meant he couldn’t tour with Escape the Fate. “I was high on drugs and I was depressed so I didn’t listen to anything the judge was telling me I did whatever I wanted.”

Busted for violating probation, a judge sentenced Radke to 18 to 48 months behind bars. Partway through his sentence, he got a prison tattoo and shortly after got into a fistfight with inmates who didn’t appreciate his rock-and-roll tattoos and quasi-celebrity status. When guards checked inmates hands after the fight, not only did they notice Radke’s scraped, bruised knuckles, they saw his freshly healing prison tattoo. Since both fighting and tats were against the rules, Radke was put into solitary confinement. With nothing else to do and no one to talk to, he wrote songs in his cell without the use of an instrument or tape recorder. When he got out of jail after two and a half years (half spent in solitary for belligerence), he put a new band together, Falling in Reverse, and entered the studio with producer Elvis Baskette. A few months later, they had recorded The Drug in Me is You, which came out July 26 at number 19 on the Billboard album chart.

Instead of talking about how he found his bandmates, created the record, and what it was like to be a free man working on a new album, Radke talked to RevolverMag.com about something far more practical: Things not to do if you find yourself behind bars.

1. Don’t have fans send letter to your jail cell.
“I got thousands of letters while I was in jail and the guards hated me because they had to do extra work to sort through shit. When I left, they made me throw away three out of six boxes of fan mail because there wasn’t enough room in the van they were taking me out. The letters I got from fans were crazy. They were so passionate. A mother wrote me because her daughter was sick. She had some type of disease and she asked me if I could go to her birthday party in Texas because she was dying. I got a lot of mail from people who cut themselves and they said my music made them stop. I also got so many love letters and proposals, but most of them said I helped them a lot with the lyrics I write and they loved me and couldn’t wait ’til I got out. I couldn’t believe they would do that for me or that they’d even remember me.”

2. Don’t tell the guards you’re calling your lawyer when you’re really calling home.
“I said I was making a legal call to call my lawyer. They give you the phone every time if you say that. But I couldn’t get hold of him, so I called my dad and then I got in trouble for that because they were listening in. They took my TV and phone away for 60 days.”

3. Don’t do anything to piss off the Chief Executive Officer of the jail.
“I was in the visiting room and I got mad at the CEO because I asked for my release date and she wouldn’t give it to me. It was sitting right on her desk. I got 30 days of extra time for that.”

4. Worry about dropping the soap.
“It’s pretty gnarly, but there are no rapes or anything in prison anymore. That stopped happening when the structures of prisons changed. Now there are cameras and people got shotguns and stuff.”

5. Don’t get involved in a prison gang.
“People get stabbed that way. I saw that happen in gang rivalries a couple times. I saw somebody get stabbed in the neck. A guy just stuck him and he was bleeding everywhere, but he survived.”

6. Don’t do drugs.
“I used to be so fucked up on drugs. I was doing heroin, Oxycontin, cocaine all mixed together. I should be dead, actually. I overdosed in 2005 on Oxy and Xanax, which is a lethal combination. I took three shots of vodka and I don’t remember taking the Xanax. But when I got to jail, I just said, ‘I hate all drugs’ and I stayed away from ‘em. The title of the album is a reference to myself. I looked in the mirror one day, saw death staring me in the face, and realized I’m my own downfall. The lyrics are me talking to myself, realizing what I’ve become. I realized that instead of the drugs being the problem, the actual problem was me and that I could change it. I told myself that when I got out, no matter how I felt, I wasn’t going to do any drugs. I was afraid I was fooling myself because I’ve always been told that’s the kind of person I am. But I haven’t even thought of scoring drugs. I have no cravings or anything.”

 
Falling In Reverse's tour with We Came As Romans, the dates and links for ticket purchases can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/fallinginreverseofficial?sk=app_123966167614127


 
It isn’t everyday that a band is surrounded by as much as hype as Falling In Reverse were before even playing their first show. Formed by ex-Escape The Fate lead singer, Ronnie Radke, while he was still in prison the band had high expectations to live up to and many critics to silence. While recently releasing their debut album, “The Drug In Me Is You” and heading out on their first live tours, the notorious Ronnie Radke took sometime out of his busy schedule to chat about all things Falling In Reverse.  

Hey Ronnie, Thanks for chatting with Kill Your Stereo, how are you?

I’m doing great, I’m very tired. I just played Warped Tour, it’s a big festival and the sun was out, it is quite tiring, it was really fun though.

Your band’s debut album, “The Drug In Me Is You” was recently released. What was the build up like?

It was extremely awkward and nerve wracking while waiting for it to come out. I was excited too. I think I felt a whole bunch of emotions combined into one thing. But mainly very excited. I was stoked when it came out. 

It isn’t often that a band’s debut album has so much hype surrounding its release. How did you and the band deal with the expectation? 

I was fuelled by all the expectation, I just did it you know, I wasn’t even nervous while we were making it all, I was just nervous as the excitement built up to it. I knew it was going to explode but I didn’t think it was going to be like that though. It did pretty good numbers in the first week, especially for a band that had never played a show. Yeah there was a lot of pressure before it came out.

Have you found that people knowing who you are has made starting a new band easier or more difficult?

I think a lot easier. Because over two years we formed, ya know, we formed a band over two years. It has made it way easier; cause our guitar player Jack he was a fan and he is like the best guitar player and I’m a fan of him now. You know, he is AMAZING, he is such an amazing guitar player, if you have heard the record, he is so good. It is extreme, so it’s just really awesome.

All the songs on the album are very personal to you. How did you go about writing the songs? 

I pretty much wrote the whole thing in prison and then I went to the studio and let it all out there. How it translated in the studio was pretty much how it got written. I wrote all the instruments completely by myself, I sang the guitars and I played the drums with my hands on my knees, it was easy to sing the melodies and stuff. 

What does it feel like being in a band and recording again? Have your past experiences in the music industry helped you a lot?

I came out today; I walked out on stage to 3000 people. It was the most intense thing that has ever happened to me. I walked out in front of 3000 people all screaming, it was insane. I couldn’t even walk because people were tackling me. It has never been like that before. I was so happy, it was so amazing. I got more popular when I went to prison.

There has been a fair bit of positive feedback to the album. Was that the kind of response you were expecting?

Of course. When I made the record I was thinking ‘This is going to blow up” I knew it, I knew it. It was gnarly. It was very expected, I knew in my heart that it was going to blow up. 

You guys recently played some secret shows under the name “Goodbye Graceful.” What was it like finally getting to play with a band again?

The shows were just a warm up, incase we had any mess-ups or anything like that. Just some warm up shows so we could get our feet wet. The shows sold out both times, we were really happy.

What is your favourite song off the album and why?

I’m not sure, I pick all of them. I can’t decide yet, I have tried to decide but I can’t. I love them all. 

Are there any plans for a Falling In Reverse Australian tour in the near future?

I plan on doing Soundwave in February, we are open for it 

There are so many fans that have stuck by you throughout your journey. Did that kind of positivity help you out a lot in the decision to get back into music?

Oh yeah, they have definitely helped me out a lot. It was definitely thanks to them. I can’t believe they were so strong, that’s gnarly that they would do that. I didn’t think they would stuck with me, I thought that they would have forgetten about me, but it’s pretty cool that they didn’t. Last time I played back in 2007 I walked out to about 1000 people, right now I walked out to 3000 people. It was just amazing. 

What are the next few months going to be like for Falling In Reverse?

I don’t know, we will see. We are going to go on a headlining tour in September then we are going to do another tour that I am not allowed to talk about right now in November, but it’ll come out soon. The next couple of months will just be touring for the album. 
Do you feel like Falling In Reverse is in some ways stuck in the shadow of Escape The Fate, with all the comparisons that are being made? How do you deal with trying to start afresh?

I think everyone can tell the difference from the first record to this record, and I wrote the first record and I wrote this record. And if you listen to Escape The Fate’s second and third record it is obvious that there has been a drastic change. When I left the music drastically changed. Their first record sounds kind of like this record and that’s because I wrote it. I pretty much wrote the first record by myself, obviously the rest of the band was there and they helped with the riffs and stuff, but for the majority it was just me. What made me angry was that no one ever gave me credit for it, and now I am finally getting that credit. People, like big industry people, are saying “Okay, now I understand, this guy writes pretty good music because this is his second shot and he has again made another amazing record” as opposed to when I left [Escape The Fate] which saw the slow decline of the band. And it was blatantly obvious.

Is there anything else you want to say to your Australian fans that have stuck around and are really excited about this album?

I just want to say thank you so much, I can’t wait to see you all, all you Aussies, I can’t wait to see you guys. I want to eat a meat pie. I can’t wait to come to Australia, I want to live in Australia. I will be there soon, I promise. 

 
Falling In Reverse will be doing a live studio interview tonight on DJ Rosstar's Show
Make sure to check it out here at 7PM PT
http://www.stickam.com/djrossstar