Introducing to the masses: from Belgium it's the amazing El Guapo Stunt Team. These friendly and talkative Rock n Rollers play an exiting mixture of styles, and have seen some interesting support slots like Danko Jones and Peter Pan Speedrock so far, but now with the new record entitled Battles Across The Stereo Spectrum, it seems eminent that the real good stuff is yet to come! Metalrage.com got a chance to talk to Chuck Nozem , Blind J Beef and the hilarious Stunt Man, backstage at the Paaspop festival.



We're here in Schijndel at the Paaspop festival. There've been quite a lot of jokes about this backstage area, which is surrounded by horse stables, and the smell of manure, is this progression for El Guapo Stunt Team?

I'm loving it, to us, everything is progression, haha. But no, this is a great festival, much more relaxed than all those big festivals. To us, it's great to be able to play here, even as an opening act. The tent was packed, a lot of people atended the show, that was great.


Metalrage had to miss the gig due to standing in line for the press passes, so how did it go?

Good, very well. We're not used to play this earlie a day, but it went just great. The energy was there, lots of people, and they all just flipped during the show, so yeah, it was great.


El Guapo Stunt Team has been around for quite a while right, the first EP dates back from '97 if I'm not mistaken?

Yeah, quite a while, 1996 I believe.


Things are going in the right direction these days for El Guapo Stunt Team, and you owe a lot to the massive succes of Peter Pan Speedrock in Holland and the healthy scene that is very much alive here, but how's the scene in Belgium, how come we never hear so much about Belgian Rock 'n Roll?

Well, there simply isn't a scene in Belgium, it doesn't exist. There's this alternative pop-rock scene with bands such as Millionaire and Soulwax, Sophisticated Pop if you will. The Belgians all love that stuff, but Rock N Roll... Led Zeppelin has rotted away in far, far in the back of their minds, I guess. But we're working on bringing that back!




No struggle in The Netherlands at the moment, you're playing bigger venues these days.

Like you said, we owe it all to Peter Pan Speedrock. If they didn't help us out with getting gigs and let us play their support slots, we would be nowhere.

There have been two big tours with Peter Pan Speedrock in Holland so far, Revenge Of The Rock N Roll Monsters (Peter Pan Speedrock/The Spades/Fury 161/The Apers) and The Jack Daniels Rock Night (Danko Jones/Peter Pan Speedrock), and during the Rock N Roll Monsters tour you opened to maybe a 50 to a 100 people in Tilburg.

Yes, that was quite a sad attendence at our show then, but the Jack Daniels Rock Night made up for that one. At those nights we opened to a crowd of 2.000, much better.


That Jack Daniels tour was a special event, especially the closing act with the three bands all playing together, doing covers from the Detroit Area.

Yes that was a lot of fun with Danko and Peter Pan, we had a laugh.


How did that thing come to existence?

Through e-mail saying stuff like "guys, this is our plan, playing that and that song after the last set", we all got a say in what songs we were going to play, and so we did. And  (sarcasm; ) US, THE BELGIANS DID MOST OF THE BLOODY WORK! Those lazy DUTCH! Haha, no it was great doing that stuff all together, realy cool.


Who decided on the theme of Detroit Rock City

That was Peter Pan Speedrock's Bart's call, it was his idea.


On to the new record, tell us about it, is it in the stores yet?

It's being released for the last two months now, but it's really coming this time. (it should be in stores as we speak -MR) In Holland and Belgium on Suburban Records, and on Subterean in Germany. We really did our best this time, it was the first time we sat in the studio for more than one day, hehe. No with the mixing process and everything included it took about five weeks to finish. It's the first album that we've recorded with three guitarists, that was quite cool. We also recorded a couple of tracks with Lightning Beat-Man of The Monsters, who are true heros of ours, and now he's on our album, that's just incredible to us. We once toured with The Monsters, thats how we got in contact with those guys.

So, yeah, beat up your mother, steal her money and buy the record, it's worth it. Just buy the thing already!



(In comes the (merrily drunken) Stunt Man to interfere) All those shitty bands that come here and try to sell their records, that's no rock n roll, they suck and we are El Guapo Stunt Team and we rock... So... That record will sell itself. Bon Jovi will be envious.


Your website displays a quite impressive tour-sheet, are you up for it yet?

The real tour is still to come, and untill that time we're playing Peter Pan Speedrock's support slot a ton of times. Time to show them how it's done, haha. And in fall there are some longer tours lined up for us. German and Swiss tours. And again some shows with our youth-idols The Monsters so a lot to look forward to!