Jake E Lee has revealed his favourite song on the debut Red Dragon Cartel album was written when he was just 13 years old.
He believed piano-led piece Exquisite Tenderness had no place in his previous projects – and he feared it would never see the light of day.
Lee said in the fan Q&A video below: “It’s my favourite. I wrote it when I was, I think, 13 or 14 and never knew what to do with it. It wasn’t an Ozzy song, wasn’t a Badlands song. It’s not a rock song. I always had and I never knew what to do with it, and I thought it would die with me.
“So being able to put it on this record, at the end of it, is a great closure and means a lot to me.”
The former member of Ratt and Rough Cutt was asked whether those bands would have been more successful if he had stuck around. He was also asked if he would liked to have worked with his his eventual Ratt replacement Warren DeMartini.
Lee said: “If it had been me and Warren, that would have been awesome. We’ve always talked about maybe doing something together. Back in the old LA days when we lived together, we’d stay up all night playing guitar. We’d come up with some pretty cool stuff.
“We’re both basically the same level, which is excellent. We both came up with some pretty cool stuff that never saw the light of day. That Ratt, if it had been me and Warren, we’d have taken over the world.”
In the rest of the video, Lee discusses his hiatus, his favourite band, and some of the other great musicians he has worked with.
