Long Way to Go

You are locked in with The Zoo, the place where album rock still gets the full treatment and a song is allowed to breathe. Right now the speakers are carrying "Long Way to Go," the track that opens Make Some Noise, the third studio album from The Dead Daisies, and if you have not heard this one in a while, turn it up and stay with it. This is not a nostalgia act dusting off somebody else's catalog for a payday. This is a working hard-rock band built the old way, with players who already had the miles on them, writing a record that sounds like it was cut for a room full of people who still know what a riff is supposed to do.

The Dead Daisies came together around Australian guitarist David Lowy, a lifelong rock fan who had already put in time with Red Phoenix, Mink, and Doc Neeson's Angels before he decided the world still needed a band that played big electric guitar without apology. The name stuck in 2012 and 2013, and the idea was never a fixed five-piece with a single logo frozen on a T-shirt. Lowy built a collective. Guns N' Roses men Richard Fortus and Dizzy Reed passed through. Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones was in the early mix. Jon Stevens of Noiseworks and INXS took an early turn at the microphone. By the time Make Some Noise was being written, the lineup had settled into one of the strongest versions the band has ever fielded: Lowy on rhythm guitar, Doug Aldrich, late of Dio and Whitesnake, on lead, Marco Mendoza, the Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake bassist, holding the low end, Brian Tichy, the drummer who has sat behind Ozzy Osbourne and Foreigner, and out front, John Corabi, the Philadelphia-born singer who had already fronted The Scream, Union, and, for one much-argued chapter, Mötley Crüe.

"Long Way to Go" was the lead single, out on June 17, 2016, ahead of the album, which Spitfire and SPV issued in early August of that year. The session was cut at Sienna Recording Studios with producer Marti Frederiksen, the man whose name sits on records by Aerosmith, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, and Buckcherry. Frederiksen did more than turn knobs. He was in the room writing with the band, and the songwriting credit on the original tracks runs across the whole crew: Aldrich, Corabi, Frederiksen, Lowy, Mendoza, and Tichy. Nashville in February and March of 2016 was the workshop. Aldrich later said they kept the guitars raw and punchy and skipped the usual pile of overdubs, which is exactly why the opener hits like a band playing in the same room instead of a file assembled on a screen.

The spark for the lyric was a line Lowy dropped on Corabi in the studio. Corabi asked how he was doing, and Lowy answered that they had a long way to go and no time to get there. That sentence became the hook. Corabi took it and wrote a song about a world that cannot sit down and talk, about left and right shouting past each other, about hate in the air and streets that feel upside down. He has said the words came out of the news cycle of that year, the race trouble, the political noise, the sense that everybody had a side and nobody had a middle. Lowy heard something else in the music itself. He has called the track an ode to his friend Doc Neeson, the Angels singer, and to the guitar influence of Rick and John Brewster. So you have a riff that bows toward Australian hard rock and a lyric that is staring at the headlines. That double reading is why the song still lands.

Musically it is a straight-ahead, take-no-prisoners opener, a little over four minutes, built on a heavy mid-tempo riff, Corabi's grainy tenor, and Aldrich's lead work cutting across the top. Suzie McNeil added harmonica and backing vocals elsewhere on the album, and Frederiksen sang backups, but the engine of this track is the five-piece. The video, directed by Lukas Hambach, was shot at Hessentags Arena in Germany on May 29, 2016, at a show tied to Johnny Depp and the Hollywood Vampires. Planet Rock in the United Kingdom put the single on the A-list. The album that followed ran twelve tracks and about forty-five minutes, ten originals plus two covers that tell you exactly which tradition the band was claiming: Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" and The Who's "Join Together." Make Some Noise reached the top forty in the United Kingdom, Scotland, Austria, and Switzerland, and climbed as high as number ten on the Swiss chart and number twenty-two in Germany. A live version later showed up on Live & Louder in 2017, and the song has stayed in the set and on the band's best-of.

Corabi's path into that microphone is its own rock story. He came up in the Philadelphia scene, formed The Scream, and in 1992 stepped into Mötley Crüe after Vince Neil's exit, singing on the 1994 album that hard-rock fans still argue about in parking lots. Union, with Bruce Kulick, followed. By the time he joined The Dead Daisies he had nothing left to prove and a voice that had gotten heavier and more lived-in. Aldrich brought the Whitesnake and Dio fire. Mendoza brought the pocket he had learned beside Thin Lizzy's catalog. Tichy hit like a man who had already survived stadium stages. Lowy, the constant, kept the rhythm guitar driving and the band pointed at the road. They had already opened for ZZ Top, Aerosmith, KISS, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Make Some Noise was the record that proved the collective could write its own anthems instead of living off the résumés.

The lineup never stayed still, which is the point of the band. Glenn Hughes later took the vocal and bass chair. Deen Castronovo sat in on drums. The catalog kept coming: Burn It Down, Holy Ground, Radiance, Light 'Em Up. "Long Way to Go" remained one of the songs radio and crowds kept. In the fall of 2026 the collective turned another page, with former Foreigner singer Kelly Hansen and Quireboys bassist Jimi Crutchley joining Lowy, Aldrich, and Tommy Clufetos. The song from 2016 does not need the original five to make sense. It was written as a statement, and the statement still fits.

That is the job of a record like this on a station like this one. The Zoo is listener-supported, commercial-free, and built for the deep cut and the story behind it, the way freeform rock radio used to work before the clocks got tight. If "Long Way to Go" just reminded you why a riff and a reason still matter, stay with us at https://thezoorocks.com/. The band keeps the full story, the records, and the road dates at https://thedeaddaisies.com/, with the bio page at https://thedeaddaisies.com/bio/. You can find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheDeadDaisies/, on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thedeaddaisies/, and on X at https://x.com/TheDeadDaisies. Fans also gather the official links in one place at https://linktr.ee/thedeaddaisies. Crank it. The song says there is still a long way to go. The guitar says get on with it.