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What Hendrix, VanHalen and Ywngwie were to modern guitar Deen is to drums. His over the top bombastic bass drum flurries soon made Deen the 16 YR OLD wonder kid as his band at the time. The Enemy went out as the opening act in front of Blue Oyster Cult and Foghat. Upon seeing an ad on TV for The Enemy, Kip Doran,(Evil Genius) Matt McCourt and Ja Reynolds (Malice ) went to see Deen at a local nightclub. "he was playin double bass in parts of Shoot, Shoot the UFO song, that actually made me like that song." remembers McCourt. I was really into drummers especially Billy Cobham and Neil Peart and here is this (then) Overweight kid takin up the whole stage playing and singing, the others in the band had to stand on the dance floor because his kit was so big. Kay, Deen's Mo, was his managing agent and she was determined to see her kid succeed, it was Kay who made the BOC/FOGHAT tour deal and was instrumental in backing the Wild Dogs, donating 15,000 dollars for staging, special effects, costumes, an more gear. After Making contact with Deeno, Jay ,Matt, and Kip recorded the first Malice demo it was 1982 and the NWOBHM had just begun, Brian Slagle started Metal Blade records and published a magazine. Mike Varney started Shrapnel and the indie record phenomenom was born.
Following Pete Holmes (and Jaime St James (Black-n-Blue) Deen joined the Wild Dogs who were starting to gain a global following after the release of U.S..METAL VOL2 on Shrapnel records. Shortly after Deen Joined the Dogs they hit the road, first stop was San Francisco where the group performed with Seattle's Culprit at the Stone. Parts were taped for an MTV segment on Varney which the Wild dsogs were featured. That was the begininning. Since the wild dogs 1st album Deen has played on a staggering number of releases (as soon as available we will post a discography.) Castronovo has gone on to back many arena acts including Bad English,Ozzy Osbourne( from which he was relieved of duty for an as yet undetermined reason.. the official press release was that Ozzy claimed "Athough Deen is a fantastic studio musician and is better suited to that than live performance"- and anybody who has ever seen him would attest that not only is his mastery of the craft obvious, his sense of showmanship is extremely high. juggling 4 sticks at once while his feet do the dizzy dance.
Currently he is with Journey who has been out on the road for a while and sounding better than they ever did. "They really know those songs well"-says Mccourt who along with Jeff Horton snuck into the rose garden arena in Portland to see their old pal Deen who famously forgot to leave the passes at the will call."one of the funniest incidents that happened on a road trip recalls Mccourt, was the time Sean Dawson got el-marko'ed by Deen after a long drive and the ensuing gig, then he was to meet a buddy north of S.F. where we played that night"well, Sean fell asleep in the crowded motel room and Deen drew all kinds of stuff on his face later, the friend calls from up north, we wake up Sean give him directions and send him off to a Denny's in California redneck country. after the 100th rude comment in the restraunt he goes to the bathroom and discovers the source of all this aggrivation. the next day he decided not to desert us, so he turned around on I-5 and came back, his face was bright red from him scrubbing- and we were late to a gig with Black-nBlue and Steeler at the Country Club near L.A where the backstage was filled with Metal Rockstars Dio, Blackie Lawless, and Chris Holmes from wasp, Jake e. Lee The week he got the Ozzy Job everyone you see on vh1 where are they now! ahh, the good old hostess donut and choco-milky tours"
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