Sandi Murphy
The list of bands that have been together for three decades and still retain all their original members is mighty short. Seemingly obvious choices such as Rush and ZZ Top experienced early lineup changes, which perhaps leaves just U2 and King’s X.
“From the very beginning, each of us believed in what all three of us had to offer,” says Jerry Gaskill, the man who has played drums in King’s X since the band’s beginnings in the mid-1980s with vocalist/bassist/guitarist dUg Pinnick and vocalist/guitarist Ty Tabor. “This is my dream band, and to break that up just doesn’t make sense to me.”
A part-Beatles, part-Black Sabbath power trio that ranked No. 83 on VH-1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock,” King’s X hasn’t released an album of new material since 2008’s XV but has achieved cult status and still tours on the weekends. The band will make a rare stop in Madison at the High Noon Saloon on June 26 as part of a four-day trek that also includes shows in Milwaukee and Chicago.
“We all live in different parts of the country now, so we don’t rehearse,” Gaskill says. “But our set represents the expanse of our career.”
King’s X released its debut album, Out of the Silent Planet, on Megaforce Records in 1988 and enjoyed hits over the next few years with “King,” “Summerland” and its only Top 10 single, “It’s Love.” Other songs, including “Black Flag” and “Dogman,” generated radio play, but by the late 1990s, King’s X had abandoned the mainstream in pursuit of diverse solo projects — including the Jelly Jam, KXM, 3rd Ear Experience, Platypus and Jughead — while releasing new albums as a band every two or three years.
Jimmy Fuson
dUg Pinnick of King's X
“Few hard rock bands are as widely respected yet criminally overlooked as King’s X,” writes AllMusic’s Greg Prato. Why King’s X didn’t achieve more commercial success remains a mystery, even to band members.
“I don’t know the exact answer,” says Gaskill, who survived two heart attacks in 2012 and 2014 and released his second solo album, Love and Scars, last fall. “If I did, we would be the biggest band in the world. [But] we make music that isn’t easy to digest. Musicians get it, and they were able to take that influence and make it palatable to the rest of the world. Had we become huge, though, we probably would not still be together now.”
Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, two pioneers of the grunge movement in the early 1990s, are among the bands whose members cite the low-tuned heaviness of King’s X as factors in their own sound.
Even though Pinnick is 65 years old, Gaskill is nearing 60 and Tabor turns 55 in September, King’s X is likely to keep going for as long as possible. “We definitely talk about making another record,” Gaskill says. “But we all have to be focused and not preoccupied. There’s always music coming out of us, and I do believe there will be another King’s X record.”
