Billy Morrison - Biography

Biography

Morrison was born in the UK and is an only child. He was a member of the indie rock band, Into a Circle, however, his consistent abuse of drugs led to a long period of inactivity until he cleaned up and formed Stimulator in 1995.

Stimulator signed to Geffen Records and recorded an album that was never released. However in 2008, Morison released the album under his own name: "when I read about Tunecore, and when the business started to lend itself to home releases - the indie, DIY approach - I wanted to finally release it. All the hard copies sold out and it still does good business on iTunes. I would call that a success."

In 2001, at the request of Billy Duffy, Morrison joined The Cult as the band's new touring bass player. Although Morrison is primarily a rhythm guitar player, the idea of playing bass for such a seminal rock band was appealing to him. The Cult toured for over a year, visiting the UK and Japan, and partaking in an extensive US tour with Aerosmith.

During the following period of inactivity for The Cult, Morrison joined forces with Pitchshifter front man J.S. Clayden and formed Doheny. However, no material from the band has surfaced. In 2009 Morrison stated that the band "wrote some songs together, had a laugh and put a line-up together. But I think Doheny suffered from being over-rehearsed and under-funded! We played every note perfectly, and had no money to get out on the road and get out of L.A. That was it. But some great songs came out of those years. We should release them." At around this time, Morrison joined with Dave Navarro, Matt Sorum, Donovan Leitch and Scott Ford to form Camp Freddy. Alongside his performance duties in the band, Morrison also hosted a radio show, Camp Freddy Radio, on Los Angeles based station Indie 103.1 for three years (with Dave Navarro and Donovan Leitch).

In 2006, Morrison formed Circus Diablo, with fellow Cult guitarist Billy Duffy and former Fuel frontman Brett Scallions, on bass guitar. The line-up was completed by former The Almighty frontman, Ricky Warwick and Slunt drummer Charles Ruggiero. The band subsequently added former Korn guitarist, Rob Patterson and singer/songwriter Patrick Cornell to their line-up. The album was released in July 2007 and the first single, Loaded, reached number 29 on the Active Rock Chart. The video for the song was, for a period of time, the most viewed music video on YouTube with over 1,000,000 hits.

Morrison began acting in 2005 and delivered his first on-screen role in the independent movie Tripping Forward as drug dealer Sweaty Steve. Since then, he has made four more independent films Evilution, Basement Jack, "The Perfect Age Of Rock N Roll" and "K-11" (directed by Jules Stewart). More film work is scheduled for Morrison later in 2012.

In March 2009, Morrison stated:

I have a couple of exciting things happening later in the year that will become apparent. So I intend to release some music around those things - either another Diablo album or some solo stuff, whatever. So writing and recording is on the menu for me. I also hope to close a couple of things in the TV and film worlds that I have been concentrating on - and, again, once things are real, I’ll dish the details. Camp Freddy has some shows lined up which we’ll announce nearer the time, and the band also has plans for some “extra curricular activities.” So I suppose you could say that 2009 holds a lot of diverse possibilities for me.