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Calling all classic rock fans! Justin Stewart Cotta is a triple-threat you’ll really want to keep your eye on.
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The singer-songwriter, pianist, and guitarist has quite the storied career. As a founding member of Memento and the guitarist & keyboardist for VAST, he toured with the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age, Marilyn Manson and Ozzy Osbourne. Now, he’s set to take the scene by storm with his solo work, specifically his latest single, Sketches. Before it dropped, we caught up with him for a chat. Read on.
Hysteria: Give us the rundown of your musical journey.
Justin: Mum still reminds me that my first concert was The Rolling Stones, literally in utero. My Dad is a guitarist and he played a flamenco version of Stairway To Heaven at my baptism. As a child everything from Mozart to Deep Purple was booming out of the lounge room stereo. My parents separated when I was 3 and I went to live with my grandparents. They had a piano, and it became my best friend very quickly. Music was my first love without question. Guitar and rock were taboos in the gran’s household, so of course that’s what I gravitated towards! The meticulously trained juvenile classical pianist was secretly listening to AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Bowie, Metallica, U2 and Queen with schoolmates.
I moved back in with my Mum as a teenager, and took up guitar with a gleeful vengeance. Ultimately it’s the guitar that got me a gig with VAST, and my time in VAST sparked me into forming Memento. I wrote about half the Memento record while still on tour with VAST and Queens Of The Stone Age, shaping the main riffs at soundchecks across America. Fun fact, it was Nick Oliveri (QOTSA bassist) who talked me into forming my own band, (while drinking me soundly under the table!)
Memento released the album Beginnings on Columbia followed by tours with Korn, Marylin Manson and Disturbed. The sudden internal collapse of the band was the beginning of an unintended odyssey that took me from AA meetings in LA, to cross-dressing in Kings Cross, to acting opposite Martin Sheen, to busking at dingy train stations, to performing live at the Sydney Opera House. Fair to say I’ve taken some rather colourful detours enroute to delivering this year’s debut solo album …
I reckon it’s time we started championing and encouraging that next wave of real bands and real artists.
[ Justin Stewart Cotta ]
You’ve shown a lot of range on your last few singles, tell us about the decision to go back to your heavier rock roots on Sketches.
Sketches feels like the perfect bridge between my heavier rock roots and my passion for classic soulful rock. One of the things I love about so many of those classic rock records is the stylistic diversity within the one album. Like morphing chapters in a book that you just can’t put down. I really do appreciate your acknowledgement that there is some diversity within the singles so far. That tells me I’m staying true to myself.
There’s so much focus for up and coming bands these days on ‘branding’ and ‘knowing your market’ and ‘sticking to a sound’. The obsession with ‘analytics”, the constant ‘get more spins’, promotions on Instagram & Facebook pushed by wannabee music moguls who are trying their best to turn music into some kind of bizarre Anthony Robbins hosted reality show dystopia. It’s beyond puke-worthy!
One of the things that has always cut through the garbage and the bullshit for me is authentic rock. Punk. Metal. I reckon it’s time we started championing and encouraging that next wave of real bands and real artists.
Did you run into any major challenges putting your recent music together in the COVID era?
To be completely honest, far from being an inhibitor, Covid was actually the inspiration and the motivating force behind the upcoming album. It’s hard to admit in a public forum, but a couple of years prior to Covid, I had given up on music and on myself. I was broken and exhausted.
Then early in 2020, there was a moment where it felt like Planet Earth itself was also falling apart. And, not to trivialise it at all, but there was a part of me thinking ‘That’d be right … it’s the End Of Days, the universe is caving in, it’s a global catastrophe, and you never even finished your fucking album, you muppet!!’ I just couldn’t accept the idea of floating in purgatory for eternity, with that nagging monkey on my back. The practical side of making a record remotely came together quite easily once I decided I was going to back myself in and renew vows with my greatest love. Music.
Your partnership with Marti Frederiksen is a big one. Tell us how that came together.
One of the pieces of treasure to come out of the ashes of the Memento/Columbia experience, is my ongoing friendship with Matt Messer. Matt has a tonne of experience as a publisher and label guy, and has had my back more than anyone. A true friend. Matt had a gut feel that Marti and I would click, and that Marti could take the initial Sketches motif to another stratosphere. Not only is Marti Frederiksen a cut above the rest as a musician/songwriter/producer, he is a true gentleman. My favourite collaboration to date by far.
Do you have a bucket list of musicians/creators you’d want to work with?
Marti Frederiksen (again), Rick Ruben, James Hetfield, Nick Cave, Jimmy Page, FKA Twigs, Mike Patton, The Finn Brothers, John Frusciante, Tori Amos, Layne Stayley (RIP) Chris Cornell (RIP) and Janis Joplin (RIP).
But look, if it all ends tomorrow, (touches wood), I already got to tour with my heroes QOTSA across America, and I can live with that.
What do you want listeners to take away from the single?
I’m hoping to pass on through experience that sensitivity is not weakness. Vulnerability is your greatest strength. The pain of losing a loved one eventually softens, and you’ll wake up one day and they are just ‘there’ more present than ever. With you always. Not gone. Even more present than when in the flesh. I’d also love the song to inspire some young musos to momentarily abandon their laptops/gadgets, and actually get together and jam with mates. With actual humans. With actual instruments. With actual amps and drum kits. All played at an extremely high volume!
What else do you have in store for us this year?
Well, if I don’t give in to the legion of self-sabotaging, self-doubting voices in my skull, and if I don’t succumb to paralysis born of perfectionism, you will see and hear a fourth single after Sketches, followed by my debut full length solo album mid year! I’ll tell you the title next time we chat! I’m already recording the second album at Hercules Studious in Sydney. And, purely for shits and giggles you can see me as a frustrated FBI agent on NBC’s new series Young Rock, and you can check out my psychopathic russian gangster in the film The Ascendant, in all Hoyts Cinemas April 8th. Thank You for having me Hysteria. You guys truly rock!!
FOR FANS OF: Aerosmith, U2, Daughtry
