Interview with Helios Creed
By: Andrew Mullen
June 1, 2004 – Part 1

A. Mullen: I wanted to ask you a little bit about the early days, when you first joined Chrome, I understand that you came in halfway through Alien Soundtracks…

H. Creed: Well, actually, there wasn't an album made yet. There was a few songs that needed to be fixed up, you know, that the other guys played on, Gary & John.

A: What was the deal with…was his name Mike Low?

H: Yeah, Mike wasn't on Alien Soundtracks. He quit…well, they all sorta quit when I joined the band. They were very jaded.

A: Were you well received by the band when you first tried out? Were those guys threatened by you or anything like that?

H: Damon & Gary liked me, I don't think John & Mike thought I was right for the job. They quit because of that, I think. Plus, The Visitation didn't sell good at all and everybody just sorta gave up.

A: Yeah, to me, The Visitation almost sounds more like a demo record. I understand Damon shopped it around and nobody liked it. But, you & Damon got along pretty well from the beginning?

 H: Yeah.

A: On Alien Soundtracks & Half Machine Lip Moves were you guys recording on Damon's equipment? Or were you in an actual studio?

H: We were in a living room!

A: That's actually what Damon mentioned, that those two albums were recorded on 4-track in his living room.

H: Right.

A: So, what are you working on now? Are you working on any new material?

H: Slowly, yeah, a new Helios record…I'm sorta in hiatus right now. I've been doing this for 30 years so I don't think the world is in any hurry to get a Helios Creed record anytime soon. Maybe they'd like a Chrome record, I don't know, but that will be awhile.

A: Ghost Machine did okay didn't it?

H: Yeah, yeah. Actually Angel Of The Clouds sold out already. There was 5,000 and they're gone.

A: I'm sure Manfred is pleased about that.

H: If you don't have that record, if somebody doesn't have it, they should probably get it now because it's gonna be gone and I'm not sure if Manfred is going to repress it or not. And, I don't know how Ghost Machine is doing, it got a lot of good reviews on it…a lot of people that have it like it.

A: So…you live in, is it St. George or Manhattan?

H: St. George. It's barely a town! I live in between St. George and Manhattan. It's beautiful country. I just about live out in the country. Manhattan has a college and Lawrence has a college, which is 80 miles away.

A: It seems that there would be a lot of college students who are into recording projects and what not.

H: Not really like California, a lot of these kids are into the hip hop crap…kids on the coast are into hipper music. But, I have done quite a few shows in the area…Omaha, Lincoln, Lawrence, Kansas City… I've even done a show in Manhattan. We turned some kids on to it, they bought the records and appreciate what we've been doing. Around here, I've been doing that, turning on the heartland, you might say.

A: It really seems like, with the new Chrome stuff, a lot of people in Europe & Japan would really get into an international Chrome tour. From personal experience, I played a lot of Chrome records for friends in Japan and they absolutely could not believe what they were hearing, they were totally blown away!

H: Yeah, I plan on doing a European Chrome tour, a US Chrome tour, and a Japanese Chrome tour in about two years