Scars

Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew just laid “Scars” on the turntable, and if you were halfway into a cold one when that dreamy intro rolled in, you already know the heavy part hits like a good bike pulling out of the gravel. This one comes from Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, working as Smith/Kotzen, off their self-titled debut. The record landed on March 26, 2021, through BMG, and “Scars” sits third in the running order, right after “Taking My Chances” and “Running.” It was the second single they let out of the barn, and it still feels like the track where the whole idea of the duo snapped into place.

Smith called the shape of it plain enough for a room full of record collectors. It starts off with a dreamy intro, then comes in heavy, a hark back to the bluesy rock of the seventies that the two of them had the most fun chasing. Kotzen has said he remembers “Scars” as one of the songs they wrote right at the beginning of the process. There is something moody and mysterious in the track that he finds engaging, and he figured it would be a fine one to stretch out live, the kind of tune where two guitar players can wander off into a long improvisation and still find the road home. When he heard the early take, he thought they were onto something special, something different from the day jobs that made their names.

The writing itself is a good story if you like watching a song get built in the room. Smith had the lyrics and the verse. When the pre-chorus arrived, Kotzen freestyled it after hearing what Adrian had sung. He has described his own part as riffy, almost the way a soul singer would lean into a line. The chorus idea, “open your arms, I’ve been scarred,” came to him without a neat little biography attached. He has said you do not always know where a line like that is coming from, and he did not sit down and picture one particular scar. Smith later put a cleaner frame on it. “Scars” is about the things you go through in life that really leave a mark, and how those marks start to shape the way you look at the future. On the same record he talked about reaching a stage where you stop clinging to the past so hard, the way the blues lets you get something off your chest so you can keep going.

The lyric sheet reads like a man at a crossroads who is not asking for a parade. Sometimes he feels like a helpless child alone in the night, far from the light, alone on an endless road looking for a sign. He is going to run from the world because he does not owe anybody, and he warns you he will not get too close. Then the chorus turns the corner and asks for arms, for help mending, for a heart that will take him from the start and let him follow to the end. The future is a mystery, and all he can see is rain blacking out the sky. That is classic rock poetry without the costume jewelry, the kind of writing that sits well next to Free, Humble Pie, and the older blues records both men grew up on.

They split the work the way neighbors do when the jam has already gone past polite. Both of them co-wrote, co-produced, and traded guitars and vocals. Kotzen also played bass and drums on “Scars.” Across the album he handled the sticks on five songs. Adrian’s Iron Maiden bandmate Nicko McBrain sat in on “Solar Fire,” and Kotzen’s longtime touring partner Tal Bergman played drums on “You Don’t Know Me,” “I Wanna Stay,” and “‘Til Tomorrow.” The black and white video was shot on both sides of the Atlantic, home studios in London and Los Angeles, outdoor footage set against the British Jurassic coast and the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu. The album itself was cut in February 2020 on the Turks and Caicos Islands, just before the world shut the doors, and Kevin Shirley mixed it. By the end of their first real writing day they already had three songs. Smith has said that when the chemistry shows up like that, you run with it.

The friendship that got them there is almost as good as the record. Kotzen has told the story of meeting Smith’s wife, Natalie, by chance at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles. A friend of his put on some music, Natalie listened, liked what she heard, and mentioned that her husband played guitar in a band. When Kotzen found out who that husband was, he could hardly believe it. He had been a fan. Dinner followed, then years of hanging around. Smith had bought a place in California and kept a music room. One of those gatherings included Taylor Hawkins and Metallica’s Rob Trujillo. Smith told them to come have a look, and pretty soon the room was full of Bad Company and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Another telling of the same friendship credits tennis player Pat Cash, a Kotzen fan, with helping the circles overlap. Either way, it was Natalie who finally said the two of them ought to try writing. They did. The first song was “Running,” and from there they hit on the idea of trading vocals. No deadline, no grand plan, just a circular motion where one man sent a riff and the other heard a melody.

If you want the longer road that led each of them to that room, it splits in two and then joins up in the blues. Smith has joked that he started on guitar because he wanted to be in a band and meet girls. He came up in east London, played in Urchin, and became one of the twin-guitar voices of Iron Maiden, with side roads through ASaP, Psycho Motel, and Primal Rock Rebellion. Under the Maiden banner he and Dave Murray had already grown up on bluesier rock, Hendrix included, but the songs in that band do not always leave much air. Smith/Kotzen gave him space, phrasing, and a chance to sing lines that wrestle with the past. Kotzen, born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and younger by a little more than a decade, wanted to be a guitar player because he wanted to play guitar. He was a teenage shredder with a technique all his own, then passed through Poison and Mr. Big before building a long solo catalog and joining the Winery Dogs. He listens to Curtis Mayfield and George Benson and still plugs into a Marshall. Smith has said the complement is natural. Kotzen is a virtuoso with a real sense of melody, and the two of them found common ground in classic and blues-based rock.

Kotzen has also said expectations are a bad reason to make a record. He wanted nothing from the collaboration except the music, and once it existed he was glad people could hear it. He has called it a big deal to see his name beside Adrian Smith’s on an album cover, and he has said the debut looks, feels, and sounds like one of those records he would have bought back in the day. The pair kept going after that first album, through the Better Days material and on to Black Light / White Noise, but “Scars” is still the early proof that the jam was not a one-night favor. Part-time Los Angeles neighbors, full-time friends, a healthy mutual respect, and a song about the marks that do not wash off.

You can dig further at the duo’s own home on the web, Smith/Kotzen, where the road from that debut to the later records is laid out in their own words. Richie keeps his own shop at richiekotzen.com, posts on Facebook, shares the road on Instagram, and checks in on X. Adrian’s corner of the picture show lives on Instagram. And if you want the deep cuts, the backstories, and the next record without somebody talking over the solo, you already know where the Zoo Freaks gather. That would be THE ZOO.