Earlier this week, drummer Bobby Blotzer announced that he had formed a new version of Ratt and implied that, after five years of legal wrangling, he had the rights to the name.
On Friday, guitarist Warren Dimartini told Blotzer to just hold on, saying that there was no agreement in place over the Ratt name and that he preferred he didn’t use the name as part of his “tribute band”.
Dimartini issued the following statement:
Back in March Bob Blotzer phoned me and said he wanted to form a Ratt tribute band and call it something like “… Ratt Experience”. I suggested he not use Ratt in the title and call it something like Bob’s Cellar as Ratt’s debut record Out of the Cellar has rounded its third decade. He said something to the effect that he wanted to use Ratt in the title “like Jason Bonhan’s Led Zeppelin Experience”. I said I had no problem with him playing songs he recorded with Ratt, but I didn’t agree to him using the name in the title. He used it anyway.
Now he is soliciting his tribute band as Ratt which he is completely unauthorized to do. I am totally against it, and steps are being taken to prevent any further misuse of the name as well as representation about future Ratt performances.
Neither Dimartini or Blotzer were in Ratt when they first formed with Warren joining in 1981 and Bobby in 1982; however, they were full members at the time that the band recorded their debut album, Out of the Cellar, in 1984.
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