“I looked at him like he had two heads and said, ‘Let me get this straight – you’re going to fire Jake E. Lee from his own band?’” Greg Chaisson waited years to reunite with Jake E. Lee. But then he had to quit, and couldn’t say why

Greg Chaisson.

Before he became Jake E. Lee’s trusted confidant in Badlands and Red Dragon Cartel, Greg Chaisson nearly joined Ratt and Ozzy Osbourne – but music had never been part of his plan. “I really had no musical aspirations at all,” he says. “I was a baseball jock.”

But he has no hard feelings about that long-lost sports career; and it’s easy to see why, as albums like 1989’s Badlands and 1991’s Voodoo Highway testify. “The records speak for themselves,” Chaisson says. “They stand up. I would stand on stage while Badlands were playing and think to myself, ‘Wow, I’m in the best band in the world!’”