Derek Smalls and his Schecter Stiletto Studio 5 bass enjoy the great outdoors. Your new album, Smalls Change: Meditations Upon Ageing, is your first solo release in almost four decades. why’d you...
Derek Smalls and his Schecter Stiletto Studio 5 bass enjoy the great outdoors.
Your new album, Smalls Change: Meditations Upon Ageing, is your first solo release in almost four decades. why’d you decide to re-emerge as a solo artist after all these years? —Elliot Chevron
Yes, it’s my first full solo album. It’s a Smalls World from the late Seventies was a “super EP” that was mastered on 8-track, so it’s lost to the world. As far as why now, it was a choice of coming back or going away. Spinal Tap was not going to come back, it seemed, and I was sitting, I was in Albania—I wasn’t sitting, I was walking around Albania, but sometimes I was sitting—at the home of a friend, Eddie Dregs, who is in Chainsaw Vermin, a near-death metal band that’s very big in Eastern Europe. It’s very slow, dirge-y music; it seems like it’s never going to end—and then it does.
I was sitting in from time to time because their bass player is prone to every vice known to man—and woman—and I just asked myself, “Is this where it ends, Derek? To be the sit-in bass player for Chainsaw Vermin?” Around that time, I saw an advert for something called the British Fund for Ageing Rockers, and you could apply for a grant, which I did, and it made all this possible. It was a combination of desperation and opportunity. The desperation comes first, though. That’s key.
Your new album features guest appearances by Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Dweezil Zappa, Steve Lukather, Richard Thompson and more. However, one six-string legend is noticeably missing, Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel. Why isn’t he on the album? —Damien Linotte
I opened the door to him. I did say, “Mate, if you