Kevin Bronson on January 8th, 2019

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Alain Whyte is far from the first rocker to pontificate on “The Death of Rock-N-Roll,” but he is uniquely qualified. Whyte co-wrote more than 80 songs with Morrissey starting in 1992, including the likes of “Glamorous Glue,” “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful,” “Alma Matters,” “Tomorrow” and “Irish Blood, English Heart.” He played guitar in Morrissey’s band for 16 years. And the longtime L.A. resident has co-written songs for many a pop star since, including Madonna and Chris Brown.

This week marks Whyte’s first foray into solo material (unless you count his short-lived trio Red Lightning, which released an EP in 2005). His new EP, “The Experiment,” finds the songwriter knee-deep in the earnest Brit-rock of his music lineage — and questioning his own place in it. While “The Death of Rock-N-Roll” looks wanly at the past (and sounds cut from mid-1980s Smiths cloth), Whyte looks at his own possibilities on “Crossroads.” And in the video for title track, he stands atop a Southern California hillside and asks, “What is the meaning of life?”

We caught up with Whyte for a chat about his self-produced EP, which features contributions from Dean Butterworth (a former Moz drummer who now plays with Good Charlotte), and what lies ahead …

But first, the video for the title track:

Buzz Bands LA: You’ve titled this work “The Experiment” — what’s experimental about it?

Alain Whyte: The name comes from how I wrote the song of that title. I found this little keyboard riff I liked and started expanding on it. I laid down drums and bass, and “The Experiment” was just a working title. All of a sudden I got to a certain section and put it on hold. But when I came back to it later, I had all these lyrical ideas, so I just layered the different parts together. [The process] wound up being very inspiring.

Since you’re a guitarist, I find it interesting you’d build a song around a keyboard riff …

It’s true, most songs I’ve written are ideas that start on acoustic guitar and then get tracked to electric. This time I was messing around with a keyboard riff not too dissimilar to “Dear Prudence” and it went from there. It just happened that way.

You ask a pretty big question in that song …

Well, as one who’s open-minded to life after death, and all kinds of ideas and religions, it felt like a good question to ask. What is our goal and our purpose? Why is everything the way it is? You know, like the Chameleons song, “What Does Anything Mean? Basically”

I know that your trio Red Lightning released an EP back in 2005, but what took so long for an Alain Whyte solo release?

Just life, I guess. Truthfully, being a family man, I often thought about just hanging up my boots. I took a long hiatus and concentrated on writing songs for other artists. But having written steadily over the years, I have quite a number of songs sitting on the shelf. It made sense to finally go solo. I’m not getting any younger, and it seems silly not to have my music out there. This EP is the first of several I would like to release every three months or so.

And this is truly a solo effort?

Except for Dean Butterworth, who plays drums. We went to Treehouse Studios to track those. I played everything else and recorded it at home. Produced and mixed. I DIY’d it, I guess.

You follow a long line of people who proclaim “The Death of Rock-N-Roll” …

It’s actually not an obituary. It’s an homage to all the 20th-century icons — some of whom aren’t with us anymore — rather than what we have now. It’s more a reaction to the state of music and the music industry, and I remain hopeful that’s going to change. The way we did things in the 20th century can’t succeed in the 21st century … And when they cart you off to the old folks home, that’s the death of rock and roll.

People need to stop complaining about what a record costs when they spend 10 bucks every day at Starbucks. A record can change your life. Most of the songs on the Billboard charts are garbage. Much respect to those artists, they’re good at what they do. But it’s a crime that somebody like Ryan Adams, or a young band like Warbly Jets, are not being heard on the radio.

This all sounds very familiar, though. Isn’t this just shouting into the abyss?

I think we’ve been shouting into the abyss since about 2006. That’s about the last good year we had in music.

The song “Crossroads” seems to seems to have a vintage feel that might speak to one of your original loves, rockabilly …

I don’t know about that, but it does have more of an Americana vibe. There, you hear some of the people that inspired me, like Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and Paul Simon. It’s a reflection of being stuck where I am — I’m 51, with two kids, on the verge of a big life change, and there’s a fear of opening yourself up.

I’d like to think that the music I’m putting out comes from a true place — and every artist thinks that. So these songs are my truth.

||| Stream: “The Experiment”