Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob What set God Kiss.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Raiy Quiz, who has a new album,
Speaker 1: Colors and Passions. Prairie tell us about this album.
Speaker 2: Sees, I don't know where to start other than the
Speaker 2: fact that my sister was a big fan of Ken
Speaker 2: Norden back in the late fifties early sixties, and she
Speaker 2: turned me on to his word jazz records when I
Speaker 2: was a youngster. And over the years, I've always enjoyed,
Speaker 2: you know, poetry, writing poetry, and always went back to
Speaker 2: the memory of listening to his stuff when I was young.
Speaker 2: And one day my sister said, you should really maybe
Speaker 2: take up where he left off and do a spoken word,
Speaker 2: you know, collaboration with some of your friends and different musicians.
Speaker 2: And so I took it from there and listened to
Speaker 2: his album from nineteen sixty seven called Colors. She said,
Speaker 2: well you should. Just my sister, Leslie. I got to
Speaker 2: say her name, because he's one of my biggest inspirations
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 1: Ten years older.
Speaker 2: Was into jazz and beat beat music and was a
Speaker 2: beatnik and before that, you know, early rock and roll,
Speaker 2: and so I grew up with her and all of
Speaker 2: that kind of inspiration. So she said, yeah, you should
Speaker 2: maybe take off on where Ken Norden left off and
Speaker 2: do your version of Colors. And so that's what I did,
Speaker 2: and it's taken a while to get it going, but
Speaker 2: I finally have finished it.
Speaker 1: Tell us about this jazz artist again.
Speaker 2: Well, his name was Ken Norden, and he was originally
Speaker 2: he was a I think it was a disc jockey
Speaker 2: in Chicago in the fifties, and he came up with
Speaker 2: these these records called Word Jazz, and then he had
Speaker 2: Son of Word Jazz, and they were you know, his
Speaker 2: his beat, beat take on anything really just you know,
Speaker 2: like going to the refrigerator at midnight, getting a midnight
Speaker 2: snack and talking about it. And he had this beautiful
Speaker 2: resonating voice. And then he'd accompany these scenarios with some
Speaker 2: jazz music or or you know, just some sort of
Speaker 2: a little background. The kind of music was only the
Speaker 2: most important part of it, but the stories were what
Speaker 2: intrigued me. And and then when I finally heard Colors,
Speaker 2: it was much more about the relationship with the music
Speaker 2: and his description of these colors. And for example, like yellow,
Speaker 2: he would be talking about yellow and there'd be kind
Speaker 2: of a happy flute sound just accompanying his his poetry.
Speaker 2: And so I mean it's a long, it's a long.
Speaker 2: I started this like eleven years ago, So it was
Speaker 2: a long story starting starting in how to develop these songs,
Speaker 2: and a lot of it became you know, much more
Speaker 2: over overproduced than his simple versions of it. But anyway,
Speaker 2: that's what I came out with.
Speaker 1: Okay, the listening experience, how would you describe? Is there
Speaker 1: a story in every song? Is it more jazz music?
Speaker 1: Is it more free form? Well?
Speaker 2: I got to say that each songind Oft started with
Speaker 2: my idea about a color. Obviously I would have to
Speaker 2: give you examples because each song is really radically different
Speaker 2: from the next, and it was really about, you know,
Speaker 2: over the years, developing each one of these colors and
Speaker 2: the association with a passion also, so for example, red
Speaker 2: is a passion with desire, and I always thought that
Speaker 2: the color red kind of reminded me of sex and
Speaker 2: you know, desiring not only sex, but desiring something. And
Speaker 2: where am I going with I can't remember. So then
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, well, maybe I should collaborate with
Speaker 2: some of my musician friends and some of my relatives
Speaker 2: and come up with a way of producing these these
Speaker 2: one of these songs, it's one of these tracks. And
Speaker 2: so it was really a development series of pretty much
Speaker 2: improvisation for my friends that would come in. I would
Speaker 2: start off with maybe a drum track and a little
Speaker 2: bit of the of the poetry that I'd written about
Speaker 2: the song and the passion, and then have my friends
Speaker 2: come in and listen to that and then collaborate and
Speaker 2: kind of come up and improvise whatever they felt from
Speaker 2: that idea and the color. So it was really a
Speaker 2: very collaborative project.
Speaker 1: Okay, where did the words come from? I wrote?
Speaker 2: I wrote most of the words from poetry about what
Speaker 2: I thought about the color and the passion and how
Speaker 2: it made me feel and different relationships.
Speaker 1: When you laid down the drum track and your friends
Speaker 1: came in, were the words already written or wordten after
Speaker 1: the fact, They were mostly firse. Yeah, they were written first.
Speaker 1: It was like a poetry about this color and a passion,
Speaker 1: and then I would like take how I felt about
Speaker 1: how I wrote that piece and take a particular percussion instrument,
Speaker 1: which in each each track sort of features one particular instrument,
Speaker 1: although it builds with other percussion instruments, but the first one,
Speaker 1: for example green kind of dominated by the kongo drum.
Speaker 1: And each one of these tracks is associated with a
Speaker 1: piece of artwork that I did, depending on how it
Speaker 1: developed it got over the years, but I did paintings
Speaker 1: of each one of my drums and each one of
Speaker 1: the concepts. Okay, now we have the Internet, we can
Speaker 1: discover things. But for decades I was wondering where the
Speaker 1: hell did the name Prairie prince come from?
Speaker 2: Oh you really want to know? Yeah, So I'm a junior.
Speaker 2: My father's name was Charles Lomprier, Prince senior. I became
Speaker 2: Charles lomp Prier, Prince junior. And the word Lomprier came
Speaker 2: from a family name from the isle of Jura of Jersey,
Speaker 2: actually English Channel island that was French citizens mostly, but
Speaker 2: they were ruled by the English. So the lom Prier
Speaker 2: was a French name, but it was actually an English
Speaker 2: English governed. And when my dad was a little boy,
Speaker 2: he grew up in the South, in North Carolina, and
Speaker 2: he had this old guy named will that took care
Speaker 2: of the kids. His dad was a doctor, and they
Speaker 2: had you know, eight or nine kids, and my father
Speaker 2: was one of the younger ones, and this guy says, well,
Speaker 2: long Prier, that's what your mom wad calls you. But
Speaker 2: I'm gonna nickname you Prairie. And that's how I came.
Speaker 2: It's literally from old Will liking the word Prairie as
Speaker 2: opposed to loan Prier, which was I guess hard for him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: hard for him to do it. But before I was
Speaker 2: I mean before I was born, they were gonna name
Speaker 2: me Prairie anyway, they were gonna call me Prairie England.
Speaker 2: So I was never really called Charles or Charlie or
Speaker 2: Chuck or anything. It was always Prairie from the from
Speaker 2: day I popped out. So I did not make up
Speaker 2: the stage name.
Speaker 1: Okay, you go to first grade, is your name Prairie
Speaker 1: or Charles?
Speaker 2: Unfortunately it's Prairie, And uh god, I just wish they
Speaker 2: could have been a Mic or a George or Jim,
Speaker 2: but no, it was Prairie.
Speaker 1: And you know, I got a lot of got a
Speaker 1: lot of guf that's my question. Prairie is a cool
Speaker 1: name when you're old. When you're young, not cool. Not cool.
Speaker 2: And plus I got like fairy princess because my last
Speaker 2: name is prince right, and I got that a little bit,
Speaker 2: but you know, I called cocked some of those guys
Speaker 2: out in the recess yard later.
Speaker 1: Well, what kind of kid were you? Were you a
Speaker 1: kid who was you know, you have all these artistic pursuits.
Speaker 1: Were you a member of the group? Were you always
Speaker 1: an outsider? What kind of kid were you? Like?
Speaker 2: I mean, I grew up with my mom and dad,
Speaker 2: who were they thought outside the thing a little bit.
Speaker 2: I mean, my dad was really into music, so I
Speaker 2: really got a lot of my music theory and my
Speaker 2: ideas about music and especially jazz and stuff from him.
Speaker 2: And then my mom was really into art and we
Speaker 2: used to go to art classes and stuff. But no,
Speaker 2: I was a pretty normal kid. I had grew up
Speaker 2: in Phoenix, Arizona, which was pretty normal, and by then,
Speaker 2: you know, early fifties, it was pretty much just like
Speaker 2: living in the desert. So yeah, I didn't have much money.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any you know, necessarily, any like hoodlums
Speaker 2: waiting around the corner, although a few times there were,
Speaker 2: you know a couple of guys that wanted to I
Speaker 2: wanted to knock me out, but I ran. And what
Speaker 2: did your father do for a living? He was a
Speaker 2: cotton broker. He first in North Carolina. He worked for
Speaker 2: like the company store kind of thing and managed it
Speaker 2: and stuff. And then he got a job opportunity to
Speaker 2: move from North Carolina in the early fifties right after
Speaker 2: I was born and and start broking cotton in Arizona
Speaker 2: because there was a lot of business there from the
Speaker 2: Pima Indians and the you know, the Native Americans that
Speaker 2: were growing cotton way back day, way back when. Still today,
Speaker 2: Pema cotton sought after really fine, great cotton.
Speaker 1: Okay, the country is shrunk, but when you're growing up
Speaker 1: in Arizona, that's like off the grid. People aware there
Speaker 1: was a stayed out there California where they had Hollywood Arizona.
Speaker 1: All they knew was hot and there was Phoenix, and
Speaker 1: people really didn't know anything. So I realized that your
Speaker 1: only experienced for what was it like growing up in Phoenix.
Speaker 2: Like that like being a lizard the sun. You know,
Speaker 2: you had your boat bedposts in jars of formaldehyde so
Speaker 2: the scorpions wouldn't crawl up and bite you while you're asleep.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We didn't have any real air conditioning for the first
Speaker 2: probably four or five years, and had these swamp coolers,
Speaker 2: and yeah, your brain got a little bit fried. And
Speaker 2: we didn't even have a television yet. But when we
Speaker 2: finally did, you know, there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of indoor and air conditioning, a lot of indoor television watching,
Speaker 2: which has you know, kind of led me into the uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the tubes and the things that came later.
Speaker 2: But yeah, growing up being a vidiot and watching television
Speaker 2: and being exposed to all the advertisements and stuff in Arizona,
Speaker 2: and you know, but I think I'm not absolutely certain
Speaker 2: about this, but I think the first McDonald's was there.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a testing ground for a lot
Speaker 2: of the fast food joints or for everything. Was kind
Speaker 2: of try it out in Phoenix before you move it,
Speaker 2: move it, take it to La or anywhere else in
Speaker 2: the country. So it was kind of like a guinea
Speaker 2: pig area.
Speaker 1: Okay, Historically Arizona was a very conservative state, especially when
Speaker 1: you were growing up. Did you feel that, Well, I
Speaker 1: certainly my father did. I mean, he.
Speaker 2: Did not appreciate he was a full on Democrat. He
Speaker 2: did not appreciate the Republican onslot there Bury Goldwater and
Speaker 2: all that. Sure, Yeah, we all felt we all felt
Speaker 2: restricted and refined. I mean, I couldn't wait to move
Speaker 2: out of Phoenix when I was and they followed me
Speaker 2: as soon as I left in sixty nine, they followed
Speaker 2: me to San Francisco. So, yeah, we grew up running
Speaker 2: around dodging, dodging stuff all the time. Seems like we
Speaker 2: were hiding from the police or the principals or the
Speaker 2: you know, the the guards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So talk about this older sister. How many
Speaker 1: kids in the family.
Speaker 2: I have two older siblings, both of them girls. I'm
Speaker 2: my older sister, Leslie Prince Raymond, and she lives in
Speaker 2: the East Coast. Now my younger sister, her younger sister, Helen,
Speaker 2: passed away about five or six years ago from Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 2: She was a scientist and research you know, a genius,
Speaker 2: and she was a film editor and she got into
Speaker 2: arts and science more than anything. My sister Leslie ran
Speaker 2: the arts council in their city, Chestertown, Maryland for years
Speaker 2: and years with her husband, Vince, and they, you know,
Speaker 2: I did productions and I you know, did a few
Speaker 2: backdrops and some set designs for them over the years,
Speaker 2: and they're just you know, amazing to sick family. And
Speaker 2: my mom same thing. She was an art historian, and yeah,
Speaker 2: we grew up with a lot of wonderful resources for
Speaker 2: art and music.
Speaker 1: So what's it like having a sibling ten years older?
Speaker 1: They so into their life, they're ignoring you, or you
Speaker 1: precious because you're the young child. I am so precious.
Speaker 1: You're right, you got it right. They used to treat
Speaker 1: me like their little baby doll when they were a
Speaker 1: little d eight and ten years older. With my sisters
Speaker 1: and they, yeah, they both loved me, and I love them.
Speaker 1: I missed my other sister so much. But I still
Speaker 1: see my oldest sister, Leslie a lot, and she travels
Speaker 1: back and forth. She has granddaughters and sons that live
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and so she continues to travel. She's
Speaker 1: eighty five, just turned eighty five, and happy birthday, Leslie. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what comes first? Art or music? Well, this is
Speaker 1: one of those.
Speaker 2: And see you you picked those questions that I've tried
Speaker 2: to answer my whole life because they're always and.
Speaker 1: Let me let me clarify. Okay, did you take music
Speaker 1: lessons first? Or were you always drawing from a young age?
Speaker 2: The same thing, right, just next to each other. And
Speaker 2: I'm still doing it right next to each other like
Speaker 2: I took, you know, I took early drawing classes my neighborhood.
Speaker 2: We had a magazine and we would draw pictures of
Speaker 2: dinosaurs and had a little printing machine and we'd print
Speaker 2: them up and make little magazines. And that was you know,
Speaker 2: like fourth grade, I started taking snare drum lessons and
Speaker 2: drum lessons from the school band, and probably fourth fifth
Speaker 2: grade I was in the school band. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, my art teacher, whoever was teaching art at
Speaker 2: the same time, was just enjoying, enjoying watching me and
Speaker 2: teaching me art. And I would have millions of sketch
Speaker 2: books and coloring books and everything my whole life. So
Speaker 2: I guess you'd have to say, if you have to
Speaker 2: find me, it'd have to be a renaissance man in
Speaker 2: the wrong era.
Speaker 1: Okay, what inspired you to play drums? Because they come
Speaker 1: there with all the instruments of clarinet, the trombone. Why
Speaker 1: the drums? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Again, my dad inspired me when he was young because
Speaker 2: he used to tap dance in the kitchen. He would
Speaker 2: throw some sand down, do some soft shoe and a
Speaker 2: little tap dancing and claims I never really heard him
Speaker 2: play the drums, but he claimed he played drums along
Speaker 2: with silent movies when he was young, really young. He
Speaker 2: would piano player and he had a snare drum and
Speaker 2: he would play along with the Silent movies that were
Speaker 2: playing in the tournament. Whenever it was twenties, I guess, no,
Speaker 2: maybe earlier and so, and he could taught me how
Speaker 2: to handbone, so that was my first drum, really was
Speaker 2: my leg. And he taught me how to play the spoons,
Speaker 2: some spoons and yeah, that kind of thing. So I
Speaker 2: latched onto the drums. They tried to get me to
Speaker 2: play piano. I took some piano lessons for a few years.
Speaker 2: My other sister played piano, so she always had a
Speaker 2: teacher coming over to the house. And I started taking
Speaker 2: piano lessons, and I got to a point where I
Speaker 2: just went, really.
Speaker 1: Hate this music that they're trying to teach me. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just not good. I mean, Mary, Mary had
Speaker 1: a little lamb or something, but you know, can you
Speaker 1: just boogie woogiet it a little bit? Learn how you know,
Speaker 1: you just play it like that, and then the exercises
Speaker 1: the handle exercises hand and I think that's what they're called.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, one day.
Speaker 2: The phone rang and my mom answered, and she goes, well,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I tell you about your piano plate. The
Speaker 2: teacher just died, and he died in a car accident.
Speaker 2: I didn't laugh. I felt bad for the guy. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I got out of that. So that then right after that,
Speaker 2: I got a snare drum. They bought me a snare
Speaker 2: drum for Christmas, and that was it. And then I
Speaker 2: just started building up my drum set, you know, piece
Speaker 2: by piece for the next few years.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, you take drums in school, you play in
Speaker 1: the school band orchestra, whatever you call it. Yeah, were
Speaker 1: you playing in bands before the Beatles or was it
Speaker 1: like so many people you saw the Beatles that this
Speaker 1: is where I'm going.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Beatles definitely did that to me. For sure,
Speaker 2: I saw them. But yeah, I was playing in the
Speaker 2: school band and that was boring too, because it's like
Speaker 2: I was in the percussion section. So you play either
Speaker 2: the bass drum, the snare drum, or the symbol big
Speaker 2: crashing at the end of each you know, phrase or something.
Speaker 2: And then I saw the Beatles on but no, I
Speaker 2: wasn't in a band yet, but it was shortly after
Speaker 2: that I got into a surf band. But that's that's
Speaker 2: a different story. But yeah, I saw the Beatles and
Speaker 2: I just went, wow, that's just so amazing, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: a couple of my friends in my neighborhood started a
Speaker 2: little surf surf band. We were called the Regents, and
Speaker 2: I think it was nineteen sixty six, early nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: so the Beatles had already been out for a couple
Speaker 2: you know, at least a year and a half are already,
Speaker 2: so I was already really in tune with them. The
Speaker 2: surf band didn't last very long, and then I got
Speaker 2: a call from from who ended up being the guitar
Speaker 2: player on the Tubes, Roger Stein, and he said, I'll
Speaker 2: have this band. We're doing mostly Beatles songs and we're
Speaker 2: called the Bards bar Ds, and come over and try
Speaker 2: out for it. If I did. We had a band
Speaker 2: called the Bards and we played it was it was
Speaker 2: you know, we're doing mostly the Beatles, sixty five sixty
Speaker 2: six stuff, which was no reply and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. So yeah, I was in a Beatle band
Speaker 2: early on. How did you know Roger Steve? I knew
Speaker 2: him through somebody else that went to my school and
Speaker 2: he was in. He was the other guy in the
Speaker 2: Bards was knew me from my school and Roger was
Speaker 2: already playing with him. So I guess it was the
Speaker 2: guy from my school that said go come over an audition, so.
Speaker 1: He knew you were a drummer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he already knew I was a drummer because of
Speaker 2: the surf band. Yeah, I think we played. I think
Speaker 2: our band played at like the Junior prom or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: We wait the Bards or the surf band.
Speaker 2: The surf bands were called the Regents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Regents actually played some paid gigs. We we
Speaker 1: didn't get paid. I don't think actually we did. We
Speaker 1: got the first gig we did was I think we
Speaker 1: only did two. We did one at a Chinese restaurant
Speaker 1: on New Year's Eve and we got paid like fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty dollars or something like that. And then the
Speaker 1: school hired us for one of the dances and we
Speaker 1: did that and then lee guitar player's name was Quirky
Speaker 1: Kirky Anderson, and he was kind of a juvenile Blink
Speaker 1: when he went and got in trouble and so the
Speaker 1: band broke up. Are you with piand of surf music?
Speaker 1: I am?
Speaker 2: I am a big fan of surf music. And it
Speaker 2: was funny because we lived in Arizona and there was
Speaker 2: no surf. We just wanted to go, you know, be
Speaker 2: surfers and you know all that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 2: we actually, I mean I still believe that we started
Speaker 2: or kind of invented skateboarding because I hadn't really heard
Speaker 2: the songs about skateboarding, you know, sidewalk surf and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. Jana Deine and uh and we used to
Speaker 2: make our own and just go. There were these sidewalks
Speaker 2: out in the desert and we would skateboard on the
Speaker 2: sidewalks and make him you know, just make him out
Speaker 2: of roller skates and plywood. Anyway, where am I going?
Speaker 1: Am I going with this? Well we'll talk about grab
Speaker 1: were to go sidewalk surf, it would be so yeah.
Speaker 2: So I was a big surf fan. I started getting
Speaker 2: you know, in my bedroom, so I had my set
Speaker 2: drum set up in my bedroom. My parents were so
Speaker 2: wonderful because they they really stuck up for me. They
Speaker 2: the neighbors would go like, well, god, you know, he's
Speaker 2: banging on the drum set, you know, and we're trying
Speaker 2: to have our five o'clock news hour or something like that.
Speaker 2: My parents would go, well, usually you know, just you know,
Speaker 2: put some of your plugs in or you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know what. I don't know what they told them,
Speaker 2: but they they backed my neighbors off, and I was
Speaker 2: able to pretty much play anytime I wanted to, along
Speaker 2: with my stereo which was next to my drum set,
Speaker 2: and I put on Surf music ventures I recall Dick
Speaker 2: Dale and I just you know, play alongder that crazy
Speaker 2: surf and I have still have all my forty fives.
Speaker 2: I put my Surf forty fives and then you know,
Speaker 2: then that phased into the Beatles and the Stones and
Speaker 2: all of the English Invasion stuff. But yeah, Surf was
Speaker 2: my first love for learning how to play the drums.
Speaker 1: Listen. Surf was my first love. Janet d Oh, Janetded,
Speaker 1: I love Janed. Yeah, yeah, I could talk about I mean,
Speaker 1: I know Deed at this point, but no kidding. It's
Speaker 1: like those records. There's an album, a live album called
Speaker 1: Command Performance. I just played that at infinitum. But now
Speaker 1: you're in the Bards. What's the status of the Bards
Speaker 1: or the Bards playing gigs? You know that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we ever really had a gig,
Speaker 2: and we must have played somewhere like at a cyo thing,
Speaker 2: or maybe we did a few shows that like the
Speaker 2: Insane Asylum, like lunchtime gigs stuff like that, which was
Speaker 2: kind of crazy in Phoenix, but I don't really recall.
Speaker 2: I think it kind of broke up. At least the
Speaker 2: one guy that got me in that was from my school.
Speaker 2: He moved on or got fired or some of the
Speaker 2: bass player that we got later was more into blues,
Speaker 2: and so Roger and I and this guy John John
Speaker 2: Larson was his name. We we moved on and we
Speaker 2: changed our name from the Bards to the Mouth, and
Speaker 2: we were in the Mouth, and I, you know, did
Speaker 2: the bass drum head, and I did it pretty much
Speaker 2: the way the Sticky Fingers record looked much later on,
Speaker 2: you know, four years later or whatever. It was a
Speaker 2: big mouth, you know, the tongue sticking out and the
Speaker 2: teeth and stuff.
Speaker 1: That was the bass drum head, and the.
Speaker 2: Mouth played it a few of the high school shows.
Speaker 2: I think We used to do some shows out in
Speaker 2: the desert as well in that version of the band,
Speaker 2: and it's hard to remember really, but and then we
Speaker 2: got a couple other members kind of eased eased in,
Speaker 2: and then uh, this guy named Pinky who ended up
Speaker 2: later going with Doctor Hook and Goose Creek Symphony. He
Speaker 2: ended up playing with those guys, but he kind of
Speaker 2: moved in and he was our second guitar player next
Speaker 2: to Roger, and we got a new bass player. The
Speaker 2: other bass player left, he went on to medical school,
Speaker 2: he gave up the local rock scene. We got this
Speaker 2: guy named David Killingsworth who was our new bass player.
Speaker 2: Then we changed our name to the Red, White and
Speaker 2: Blues Band because we were, you know, had already had
Speaker 2: been playing a lot of like Sunny Boy Williamson stuff
Speaker 2: and Muddy Water stuff, and we loved, you know, what
Speaker 2: was happening in the English Invasion stuff with Hendricks and
Speaker 2: Cream and Fleetwood Mac and all those guys that were
Speaker 2: playing that crazy English blues stuff. And we were just
Speaker 2: aspiring to be another band like those guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so how do you meet the the players
Speaker 1: went up in the tubes in Arizona. Well, so we
Speaker 1: had Roger. We had.
Speaker 2: This band of Red White and Blues Band, and then
Speaker 2: one of our rival bands and so this was like
Speaker 2: sixty seven sixty eight, right around that time. One of
Speaker 2: our are not rival bands really, but they were another
Speaker 2: up and coming band in San Francisco and Phoenix, and
Speaker 2: that included the members which eventually became part of the
Speaker 2: Tubes was the Beans, and that was Bill Spooner on guitar,
Speaker 2: Vince Welnick on keyboards, Rick Anderson on bass, and another
Speaker 2: drummer named Bob McIntosh on drums. And they were like
Speaker 2: the so with the Red White and Blues Band, and
Speaker 2: the Beans were sort of the top local bands in
Speaker 2: Phoenix in sixty seven sixty eight.
Speaker 1: So you want me to continue how that has continued?
Speaker 1: Tell us continue with the narrative very.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, try to get this thing straight timeframe wise.
Speaker 2: So the Red White and Blues Band were just a trio.
Speaker 2: We we actually guy Bob Bob Hankey left. We had
Speaker 2: a keyboard player named David Notter as well, and he
Speaker 2: left and we just became a trio because really all
Speaker 2: we wanted to do is be like Cream and Hendricks
Speaker 2: and uh so we kind of dominated the local scene.
Speaker 2: We opened up for. We opened up for a few
Speaker 2: big bands that were on tour, such as Manilla Fudge.
Speaker 1: And Uh Really Throw Tall Wow.
Speaker 2: We were like the opening band for those guys and
Speaker 2: h in the local team clubs and and then the
Speaker 2: Beans were kind of on their own their own thing
Speaker 2: by the time. By the time, well, so then that
Speaker 2: was the end of sixty eight. Graduated from high school,
Speaker 2: immediately moved out of my parents' house in two with
Speaker 2: my girlfriend Kathy MacDonald, and she and I lived in
Speaker 2: a little house with Roger and David, and we were,
Speaker 2: you know, just new new kids and living on their own,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how how to make that work.
Speaker 2: Immediately got busted from marijuana and had to go to
Speaker 2: jail and move back to our parents' house for another
Speaker 2: year and probase and under. So that just gave me
Speaker 2: another end, you know, I was getting ready that following
Speaker 2: fall to move to San Francisco and go to the
Speaker 2: Art Institute, which I had already had set up. I
Speaker 2: got a partial scholarship there, and we had to postpone
Speaker 2: that whole trip and that whole move to the following year.
Speaker 2: But so then there's the year of sixty nine, going
Speaker 2: into sixty eight. Going into sixty nine was taken up
Speaker 2: by just I went to junior college and I had
Speaker 2: a really great art teacher there at Phoenix Phoenix College,
Speaker 2: I had a great art teacher there. And our band,
Speaker 2: the Red Rye and Blues Band, continued to play and
Speaker 2: get a lot of gigs and all local, but sometimes
Speaker 2: we go down to Tucson and play or flag Staff,
Speaker 2: but mostly stayed in Arizona all the time, wishing we
Speaker 2: could get out of that state of the state of
Speaker 2: affairs that was so republican and so you know, just
Speaker 2: so conservative still and then being busted for pot for
Speaker 2: that there was no pot had like a t meany
Speaker 2: little bit. They took us a jail, and oh there
Speaker 2: was lots of things that happened. Anyway, that whole year
Speaker 2: went by, and finally got the chance to move to
Speaker 2: uh moved to San Francisco, But before we did that,
Speaker 2: we moved to Tucson for that next summer and took
Speaker 2: a lot of LSD, played a lot of shows down
Speaker 2: in Tucson, did a bunch of music festivals also with
Speaker 2: the Beans, who were still in Phoenix, but they would
Speaker 2: come down. We do these music festivals out in the
Speaker 2: desert and up in the mountains. It has a great time.
Speaker 2: One of those times when we opened for just to
Speaker 2: kind of backtrack a little bit, when we opened for
Speaker 2: Jethro Tall. The other supporting act was called Zephyr, and
Speaker 2: that was the band that Tommy Bolan was in. And
Speaker 2: he he and we we became, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: quickly close friends. And you know, he said, you know,
Speaker 2: what are you guys doing after the show to night?
Speaker 1: We're going to party.
Speaker 2: We were, well, we were planning on going out to
Speaker 2: the desert where we usually take a generator and take
Speaker 2: our instruments and play, and so we did, and he
Speaker 2: came with us and we played like all night long
Speaker 2: until the sun came up up on the top of
Speaker 2: a mountain in the desert outside of Phoenix. And then
Speaker 2: the rest of his story is he comes back in
Speaker 2: my life later on. Wait, wait, how does Tommy Bolan
Speaker 2: come back in your life later on?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: Well, uh, the so we did an album with Al Cooper,
Speaker 2: That's what this is five years later, right six years
Speaker 2: later something seven years later, and his engineer was a
Speaker 2: guy named Lee Kiefer.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: He had been associated with Tommy Bolan and Tommy Bolan
Speaker 2: had just gotten out of like Deep Purple. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, he had left his other bands and and
Speaker 2: let's try to start a solo career. Tommy bowlan solo career,
Speaker 2: and he he got an album deal. I can't remember
Speaker 2: what it was on, but the album is called Teaser.
Speaker 2: So they called me up, he insisted, he goes, because
Speaker 2: Lee had just been working with me with with Al
Speaker 2: Cooper previously, like six months before. He goes, you should
Speaker 2: call Prairie up and you come down into La and
Speaker 2: play play on your record. And he goes, oh, that
Speaker 2: would be great. So I did, and then went down
Speaker 2: there and we went to the record I think it
Speaker 2: was a record plant in LA, and started playing music
Speaker 2: and jam and stuff. And I ended up on two
Speaker 2: of the tracks on that his first solo record. One
Speaker 2: track was called Wild Dogs and the other one was
Speaker 2: called Savannah Woman. And he was just amazing. It was
Speaker 2: an amazing It was an amazing experience to play that
Speaker 2: stuff and then and then to watch him do his
Speaker 2: crazy overdoves until dawn. We were just beside ourselves. And
Speaker 2: the bass player on that was a guy named Paul Stalworth.
Speaker 2: He was in a band called attitudes, La band.
Speaker 1: Okay, you spend this one year post high school, then
Speaker 1: you're going to Sean Francisco. You're going to the Art Institute.
Speaker 1: What are you thinking about your musical career? Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, the musical career. So I'm going to the Art Institute.
Speaker 2: Sixty nine just started it as a painting major, still
Speaker 2: had and I was living with or so before that,
Speaker 2: I'm starting to get whose I'm talking so much. Before
Speaker 2: we moved to San Francisco, we hooked up with fee
Speaker 2: Waybill and I left that part of the story out.
Speaker 2: So he was our roadie and our vegetarian chef and
Speaker 2: supplier of peyote. And he because he lived in northern Arizona,
Speaker 2: lived on a ranch and he was like fucking cows
Speaker 2: and branding cows and bucking horses and rope and stuff.
Speaker 2: And he lived in this on this ranch called the
Speaker 2: Perkins Ranch up there, and he was a legitimate cowboy,
Speaker 2: kind of hippie cowboy. And so we hooked up with
Speaker 2: him and he said, I'm moved to San Francisco with
Speaker 2: you guys, and to carry your equipment whatever. We're going
Speaker 2: to be vegetarians. Okay. So we turned out we are
Speaker 2: so we all moved to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Where just one thing, there are two bands. When does
Speaker 1: it become one band?
Speaker 2: Okay, comes one band? Yea a year later really like
Speaker 2: seventy the Beans moved because they heard how much fun
Speaker 2: we were having in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So who went to San Francisco?
Speaker 2: Me Fi Roger and this guy David killing Zworth. And
Speaker 2: our manager was the original drummer from the Spiders, which
Speaker 2: turned into be the Nas, which turned into Alice Cooper.
Speaker 2: His name is John Spear, so he was he wrangled
Speaker 2: us together. He's trying to manage us, and we all
Speaker 2: live together in a big old house there in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: which I don't live far from right now. I still
Speaker 2: live out there, and it's called the Sunset District.
Speaker 1: Okay, when everybody moves to San Francisco Urine School, the
Speaker 1: rest of them are not in school, right No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they followed me there? Really? Okay, So were you guys
Speaker 1: playing music? Did the band continue? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we never stopped, you know, we never stopped playing music.
Speaker 2: We auditioned a few times at like the Fillmore and
Speaker 2: a couple of places and just didn't really as as
Speaker 2: that trio. We Actually part of the story is that
Speaker 2: we changed our name from the Red, White and Blues
Speaker 2: Band to Arizona and then we moved to San Francisco,
Speaker 2: where we thought, oh, this is great. It's like Chicago.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll be representing We'll be representing the good
Speaker 2: parts of Arizona that we loved, which was the desert
Speaker 2: in the sunset, some of the beautiful women. But then
Speaker 2: we got a job. I mean, I'm jumping forward, but
Speaker 2: this is part of the history. We got a job
Speaker 2: offer to play at the World's Fair in Osaka nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy in the summer, and.
Speaker 1: We wade ahold lot of a second hold of Yeah,
Speaker 1: they smartly. Crew moves to San Francisco. Yeah, you're in school.
Speaker 1: What are the others doing to survive? They don't know.
Speaker 2: We had food stamps, you know, and I had I
Speaker 2: had Actually, my uncle was giving us a little money.
Speaker 2: He supported me, sent me a check us. It turned
Speaker 2: out to be us. It was any it to me,
Speaker 2: but I shared it, and you know, helped paid the rent.
Speaker 2: And people were doing little things. I really don't remember
Speaker 2: what people were doing. I know I was going to
Speaker 2: school and I was getting supported by my uncle a
Speaker 2: little bit. So, yeah, they were. They were not going
Speaker 2: to school. They were writing songs. Okay, learning how to
Speaker 2: play their instruments. Okay, you're there. You're living the life
Speaker 2: of hippie Sores speak definitely. And is there a dream
Speaker 2: that over going to be some big recording artists or
Speaker 2: are you just fumbling along? Well, I mean you always
Speaker 2: have to say that there's a dream. Of course, there's
Speaker 2: always a dream.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then at times I thought we were fumbling along
Speaker 2: for sure. But you know, we love our dogs, we
Speaker 2: loved each other, we had we were getting more friends
Speaker 2: in San Francisco area, and we were meeting other musicians
Speaker 2: and yeah, and getting to play some parties and some
Speaker 2: things that were pretty local. But and then so anyway,
Speaker 2: so we went to Japan, came back, that bass layer left,
Speaker 2: the Beans moved to San Francisco. We're looking, you know,
Speaker 2: me and Roger and Fee basically and our manager, and
Speaker 2: we're looking to like, what are we going to do now?
Speaker 2: So the Beans said, why don't we because they came
Speaker 2: up and they were trying to play some shows around and.
Speaker 1: They weren't getting getting this.
Speaker 2: They left a big they were a big fish, you
Speaker 2: know in Phoenix and then they moved to San Francisco
Speaker 2: and everybody was just like, Okay, there's a four hundred
Speaker 2: other bands that are better than you guys, are more
Speaker 2: well known. So we had to make a name for ourselves.
Speaker 2: So we decided, well, maybe we should join forces. Two drummers, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, two guitar players. The same was going to
Speaker 2: be maybe uh still working as a in a tech position.
Speaker 2: We call it tech now roady and that all developed
Speaker 2: over the next year or so. We became the well
Speaker 2: I think you know, I just listened to an interview
Speaker 2: you did with Fee and he held kind of exposed
Speaker 2: that whole story about the Beans. Anyway, there was a
Speaker 2: band called The Beans came out with the record. So
Speaker 2: we changed our name to the Tubes and it was
Speaker 2: the Seven of Us. Fee was now delegated as the
Speaker 2: lead singer, you know, Danny Kay character. We could dress
Speaker 2: him up at like anything. He would do whatever we
Speaker 2: told him to do, you know, throw wonderbread and stuff
Speaker 2: stuff and dress up and bonded to do anything.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Bill Spooner was still, you know, the singer mostly he
Speaker 2: was kind of the lead singer for a lot of
Speaker 2: the stuff on the first first album, for sure, and
Speaker 2: then Fee took over and you know, became a really
Speaker 2: great singer. So that's how it kind of developed from
Speaker 2: the two bands into one band. Okay, yeah, so it
Speaker 2: becomes one band. Yeah, tell us how it becomes the
Speaker 2: name the Tubes. Oh, well, that I think that story
Speaker 2: has also been exposed. But anyway, I think it was
Speaker 2: mostly like well, I mean, it definitely developed from the
Speaker 2: idea that we were a lot of watching a lot
Speaker 2: of television in Arizona when we were growing up, and
Speaker 2: we called it the tube group tube kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and we thought, well, tubes, and we were kind of
Speaker 2: we were into kind of gnarly stuff and birthmarks and
Speaker 2: freak shows and that kind of stuff. We thought, well, tubes,
Speaker 2: you know, that could be like your fallopium. Tubes can
Speaker 2: mean a lot of things, surfing the tube, surfing tube.
Speaker 2: So we thought it was kind of a well rounded name.
Speaker 2: And you know, there was probably some other reasons why
Speaker 2: why it ended up, but I think eventually it was
Speaker 2: more like the we had a bunch of names and
Speaker 2: people were throwing names around and that one popped out
Speaker 2: to be the favorite. So we stuck with that.
Speaker 1: And when we depot the.
Speaker 2: Whole idea of the show around the video monitors and
Speaker 2: a lot of televisions.
Speaker 1: That's where I'm going. You're in a blues band, the
Speaker 1: beams move. Where does because the tubes were all about sensibility,
Speaker 1: Where did the sensibility come from?
Speaker 2: A sensibility came from you know, trying to find our
Speaker 2: way through the masses and the you know, the things
Speaker 2: that we were exposed to in advertisement and politics and
Speaker 2: drama and television and movies and everything that we were
Speaker 2: exposed to. We were like, well we could write a
Speaker 2: song about that, or we could do a production around that,
Speaker 2: or even just a character around that concet and you know,
Speaker 2: just exposed uf to whatever is going on in our
Speaker 2: lives that way. Before that, you're the blues band, and
Speaker 2: I know it's a psychedelic rock band. We play blues light.
Speaker 1: Okay, there are a lot of those bands. We know
Speaker 1: what that paradigm is. Yeah. Now you're in a band
Speaker 1: with vision with props with this. Does this evolve or
Speaker 1: when you merge with the Beans, do you say this
Speaker 1: is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: Well, no, it really happened after we emerged with the Beans.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you emerged, did someone in the band say
Speaker 1: this is going to be the vision or did you
Speaker 1: play a few gigs ago, this isn't going to work.
Speaker 1: We have to do something different.
Speaker 2: Well, I got to say that probably Bill Spooner, who
Speaker 2: was sort of the founder of the Beans and then
Speaker 2: sort of became the founder of self proclaimed founder of
Speaker 2: the Tubes. We always you know, the Beans back as
Speaker 2: the four of them did a few productions. They did
Speaker 2: one called Terrors from Tantros and it was a sci
Speaker 2: fi you know, a sci fi opera, uh and with
Speaker 2: costumes and with extras with females and stuff, and the
Speaker 2: story was you'd have to ask Bill exactly what the
Speaker 2: story was, but it was about all woman run planet
Speaker 2: and their lord was.
Speaker 1: A hot dog.
Speaker 2: That was like comedy, but it was amazing and there
Speaker 2: was some great music written around it. One of them
Speaker 2: was called When Stars Collide, the Ascension of the Mother Load,
Speaker 2: all these great things. And so that was really the
Speaker 2: sort of a first production things that happened, and that
Speaker 2: was in Phoenix originally, and then we redid it again
Speaker 2: at the Art Institute in the in the gallery at
Speaker 2: the at the Art Institute, which I you know, I
Speaker 2: hooked it up. I said, we said, you know, we
Speaker 2: should do a gig here the art students. These people
Speaker 2: will love a show. So we did. We did the
Speaker 2: next version of that. We airbrusht our bodies. Just learned
Speaker 2: how to use an airbrush and a spray gun, and
Speaker 2: we use body painted our bodies and had these crazy
Speaker 2: space outfits and did that whole ascension of the Motherload
Speaker 2: thing again, the ascension the terrorism tantras at the Art Institute,
Speaker 2: and it was like seventy one maybe, and so that's
Speaker 2: how the production things sort of started and evolved into
Speaker 2: whatever else happened. Okay, if that's seventy one. The first
Speaker 2: album doesn't come out until seventy five. What happened between
Speaker 2: seventy one and seventy five. We did a lot of
Speaker 2: local shows. We did a lot of local shows, played
Speaker 2: every like little nightclub feed dressed up like Carma Miranda,
Speaker 2: who put like a bowl of fruit on his head.
Speaker 2: He would do they put on the turbine and add
Speaker 2: the fruit and stuff, and we would do like Brazil
Speaker 2: ill and do some Karme Miranda stuff and then he
Speaker 2: ripped that out costume off and come out with like
Speaker 2: a cowboy outfit. We would do raw hide and tumble
Speaker 2: and Tumbleweeds and and uh Mail Passo. So he started
Speaker 2: building up this show mentality of doing these shows with
Speaker 2: him at base as the character the character. So that
Speaker 2: was just two or three years to just develop all
Speaker 2: these different characters. And the English character came out in
Speaker 2: about seventy three. His name was Rod Planet. It was
Speaker 2: before kawal Ude, right, we had started taking kual Dude,
Speaker 2: so we knew what they were about. But in any way,
Speaker 2: the character was based on Robert Plant and uh, you
Speaker 2: know Rod Stewart and just the shag Rock and the
Speaker 2: platforms and really more more based on Johnny Thunder and
Speaker 2: the New York Dolls than anything else. Michael Cotton and
Speaker 2: I were in New York in like seventy one early
Speaker 2: seventy two, and we saw the dolls at the Mercery
Speaker 2: Arts Center and we went that that would be a
Speaker 2: great you know, his take on it. Those guys, but
Speaker 2: they're the real thing. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 2: they were the real thing, but they were a thing.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, that that's kind of where that character
Speaker 2: of Kailud could of develop. But one of the stories
Speaker 2: for the first time we feed did that character was
Speaker 2: opening for led Zeppelin here in San Francisco, and that
Speaker 2: was summer of seventy three, and we opened at ten
Speaker 2: in the morning, and there must have been I don't
Speaker 2: know how many people there are fifty thousand people that
Speaker 2: had been waiting in line for Zeppelin as an outdoor concert,
Speaker 2: waiting in line for a week, you know. So all
Speaker 2: the people that were right up in front probably needed
Speaker 2: to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And get to eat.
Speaker 2: So we come out and the first thing he does
Speaker 2: is throw a bunch of powder on the audio out
Speaker 2: of a big bag, and some pills and saying.
Speaker 1: Come on, everybody, let's say some drugs and have a
Speaker 1: good time.
Speaker 2: Well, when they realized it was just baking soda and mints.
Speaker 1: We got them.
Speaker 2: We ah, just people are throwing stuff at us for
Speaker 2: the next forty minutes. But we but we played it
Speaker 2: and it was classic and you know some i've heard,
Speaker 2: you know, and the much later I heard that people
Speaker 2: saw that who saw it were just blown away with
Speaker 2: how great we were.
Speaker 1: Okay, it takes four years before the first record comes out,
Speaker 1: how does it being stay together? Usually in that time
Speaker 1: people say I'm going to graduate school, I'm going home,
Speaker 1: I'm getting married, I'm leaving this, I'm done. But these
Speaker 1: were the same guys. How did it all stay together?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, some of them got married, and some of
Speaker 2: them got married on stage even and had kids, and well,
Speaker 2: I don't know. We were just a we were a
Speaker 2: pretty tight knit organization. And we actually got a choreographer
Speaker 2: named Kenny or Kaga, probably like seventy six, you know,
Speaker 2: seventy five, No, definitely seventy four. We met him in
Speaker 2: seventy four, so he was already charging us with all
Speaker 2: of these ideas that we partially developed over the few
Speaker 2: years before that, and that really taking it to a
Speaker 2: whole other level. And you probably saw that when you
Speaker 2: saw the Roxy, right, I mean those are the first
Speaker 2: those are the first shows that we what.
Speaker 1: Is everybody living on?
Speaker 2: I mean we must have been making a little bit
Speaker 2: of money, but we had managers that had some kind
Speaker 2: of idea, but how to pay us a weekly salary?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we were getting not much. I
Speaker 2: don't remember really how we were living. I mean, we
Speaker 2: were living very frugally, I'm sure, but there was enough
Speaker 2: money coming in from playing music that you could survive.
Speaker 2: I apparently there was well for an unsigned local beer. Yes,
Speaker 2: we certainly didn't you know, have any hits. You know,
Speaker 2: they were bringing in a lot of money, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: So how did you get a record deal? The record
Speaker 2: deal came through. It was funny the h We met
Speaker 2: this guy named Kip Cohen and he came up and
Speaker 2: he was like an an R guy from A and
Speaker 2: M Records, and he came up and saw a couple
Speaker 2: of our early performances in probably seventy three maybe seventy four,
Speaker 2: and reached out to us and said, you know, I
Speaker 2: really liked I worked for A and M Records, really
Speaker 2: like to go back and talk to my friends and
Speaker 2: my associates there and Herb Albert and Jerry Moss and
Speaker 2: see if they would indeed like to sign you guys,
Speaker 2: because you think you're very unique.
Speaker 1: And we liked the mule.
Speaker 2: I like the music that I've heard so far, So.
Speaker 1: You did that.
Speaker 2: And but before that happened, Michael and Cotton and I
Speaker 2: had a sort of an art business going on, and
Speaker 2: we did murals around San Francisco and we were hired
Speaker 2: by A through Kip Cohen to come and paint a
Speaker 2: big mural on the outside of the the records.
Speaker 1: Wait, believe me, I know the mural, Yeah, the Flying record, right,
Speaker 1: you had the deal to do the mural before the
Speaker 1: Tubes had a record deal.
Speaker 2: At least that's the way it seemed. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I think so, Yeah, I think so. And a lot
Speaker 2: of the people that were at A and M while
Speaker 2: we were doing the Mura who were shocked when they
Speaker 2: saw that the Tubes were actually a musical group that
Speaker 2: was being signed. They thought it was just an art
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of guys doing artwork. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and one of the labels, I don't know if he
Speaker 2: ever came up, came up. Of course they painted it
Speaker 2: out unfortunately, but it was up for about twenty years
Speaker 2: I think. But one of the labels said blame it
Speaker 2: on the Tubes on there instead it said A and M.
Speaker 2: And blame it on the Tubes with the title of
Speaker 2: one of the just one of the records on them.
Speaker 1: In the mirror. Who came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: the shirts with the faces on them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean Michael Cotton and I both, you know,
Speaker 2: we're doing stuff together. We're doing posters for the band,
Speaker 2: we're doing costumes, we're doing I didn't really have much
Speaker 2: of a set really other than.
Speaker 1: Well, we did.
Speaker 2: We had some set set design stuff, but mostly like
Speaker 2: just the TV monitors and a backdrop or something like that.
Speaker 2: But then we came up with the idea of doing
Speaker 2: you know, personal portraits of everybody in the band. We thought, well,
Speaker 2: that's cool, you know, let's do these stylized brush paintings
Speaker 2: of caricature versions of everyone in the band. And that
Speaker 2: ended up on our second album, which was the photo
Speaker 2: session of this photographed by Norman Seef and he it
Speaker 2: was just trains working with him. We had these face
Speaker 2: shirts on and he would say, you know, we were
Speaker 2: all friends, take our shirt faces that, you know, so
Speaker 2: you can see them. And he goes, no, like, we
Speaker 2: don't really want to see the whole thing. We just
Speaker 2: want to see glimpses of your eye or your your
Speaker 2: lips or and re it's kind of profile like this,
Speaker 2: so we thought it's kind of weird, you know. It
Speaker 2: turned out to be a pretty classic picture.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Face face shirts and then that, you know, that evolved
Speaker 2: into an actual business. We sent that a few of
Speaker 2: the designs, not the band shots, but we did some
Speaker 2: other just sort of generic faces that became a line
Speaker 2: called body Language and we produced a line of shirts.
Speaker 2: I don't know where there and he came from. Don't
Speaker 2: even know where where it ended up, but I still
Speaker 2: have a lot of They were these kind of transfers
Speaker 2: that were called the ultra ultra sublistatic sublistatic transfers. So
Speaker 2: I still have a bunch of the extra ones over
Speaker 2: and I have some of the original shirts, and I
Speaker 2: have most of some of the original hand painted the
Speaker 2: Tube shirts as well. So that's just that's how it
Speaker 2: came about. Now I have to interject here and tell
Speaker 2: a story real quick about the face shirt. So we
Speaker 2: had a talent hunt and our good friend of ours
Speaker 2: was Robin Williams. Well he wasn't a good friend, but
Speaker 2: he was a friend of ours because he was in
Speaker 2: the Tube's talent hunt and he won because he was
Speaker 2: so funny, and he became a friend of ours. And
Speaker 2: we had these produced shirts and he had was wearing
Speaker 2: one with a picture of Rie on it. A model
Speaker 2: I think her name was Pat Cleveland, but we always
Speaker 2: thought it was Ree. It was just these big eyes
Speaker 2: and big lips and stuff. We gave it to him,
Speaker 2: but then he ended up being photographed in that shirt
Speaker 2: a whole lot over the years, and this young kid
Speaker 2: just saw that picture and reached out to his management.
Speaker 2: His name is Fred Slissinger, and I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 2: what films he's done, but he reached out to me
Speaker 2: through his management, and I painted a shirt of Robin
Speaker 2: Williams's face for him, and I just just sent it
Speaker 2: to him last week. I haven't seen it on him.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if it fits. But that's just
Speaker 2: a little side story. The face shirts still live on. Okay.
Speaker 1: Is it a long drawn out process getting signed to
Speaker 1: A and M or does it move pretty quickly and smoothly?
Speaker 1: I think I think it's just not something that I
Speaker 1: even had anything to do with. I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: remember our management were. They were called Bag of Bucks, Morton.
Speaker 2: And Gary, and you know he had some issues with
Speaker 2: him later, but they got us the ball rolling for us.
Speaker 1: Did al Cooper end up being the producer?
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly who contacted him, but it must
Speaker 2: have been Kip Cohen or somebody from the label that
Speaker 2: that thought might be a good fit. He had just
Speaker 2: come from doing Lenyard Skinnyard and had you know, had Sweedome,
Speaker 2: Alabama and all the big hits and stuff. And maybe
Speaker 2: somebody approached him with maybe a demo tape of ours
Speaker 2: and he listened to it or something. He was looking
Speaker 2: for other things to produce, and he said, I'll take
Speaker 2: that on. So when we met him, he was just hilarious.
Speaker 2: He was so funny, and he was just just taken
Speaker 2: with our whole thing. And you know, we played him
Speaker 2: some of the songs that we had been playing for,
Speaker 2: you know, the last four or five years that we
Speaker 2: had written, and such as White Punks on Dope and
Speaker 2: Halo's and Mando Bondage and the Crazy songs, and he
Speaker 2: had kind of a whole concept but somehow, you know,
Speaker 2: interweaving these songs and making up more of a more
Speaker 2: of a I don't know what you call that, just
Speaker 2: a suite or something like that, you know, not an
Speaker 2: individual song. And we tried it for him, you know,
Speaker 2: we rehearsed with him for a few days before we
Speaker 2: ended up going into making record, and of course it
Speaker 2: didn't really work, so we ended up going back to
Speaker 2: the let's do these songs. But it was quite an
Speaker 2: experience of our first real serious recording, professional recording experience
Speaker 2: in la I think we did it at the record plant.
Speaker 1: I think in La and.
Speaker 2: Played a lot of pong that's when Pong first came out,
Speaker 2: and spent a lot of time playing pong in the
Speaker 2: room outside. Didn't get a lot of and a lot
Speaker 2: of stories from Al. I mean the guy who was
Speaker 2: just endless stories.
Speaker 1: So we get some work done here.
Speaker 2: No, no, when first we talked about this and then
Speaker 2: do that tell me a story about it was all
Speaker 2: recording thing or whatever.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I mean I know, well pretty well, Al
Speaker 1: can be difficult. So how is the experience making the
Speaker 1: record other than getting him to stop telling stories?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was. It was really good. I
Speaker 2: mean most of the time. And we had that engineer,
Speaker 2: like I told you, Lee Kiefer, who was excellent.
Speaker 1: He is really good.
Speaker 2: And you know, we enjoyed the experimenting with the different
Speaker 2: sounds and the drum sounds. And then Al would, you know,
Speaker 2: come up with a great idea being a keyboard player
Speaker 2: and a guitar player would probably offer a lot of
Speaker 2: information to our guitar players and our keyboard players. We
Speaker 2: had Vince wellningk on keyboards, and we also have Michael
Speaker 2: Cotton on synthesizers. And I just remember one of the
Speaker 2: things that that Al said was like all I hear
Speaker 2: out of Cotton is like boiling cats. You know he
Speaker 2: was doing this stuff. But that's not true, because Michael
Speaker 2: Cotton added so much of an amazing, an original sound
Speaker 2: to that first record. Well, it's all of our records,
Speaker 2: but initially for that first record, and you know, and
Speaker 2: he was he was an experimental guy and experimented with
Speaker 2: all kinds of sounds and kind of developed a lot
Speaker 2: of some of the things that later took off and
Speaker 2: became more popular in the synthesizer world.
Speaker 1: Okay, the album is done. Is the band happy with
Speaker 1: the album?
Speaker 2: Well, it's done, but we never really heard all the
Speaker 2: production that was laid on after we sort of were
Speaker 2: told to leave. I don't know if you've heard that
Speaker 2: story before, but it was kind of Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: like Al just said, you guys are hanging over here,
Speaker 2: us too much here, and we want you guys to leave.
Speaker 2: We're gonna we're gonna get up with the Dominic Frontiery,
Speaker 2: who is a great arranger and you know he's done
Speaker 2: all these great things for like Twilight Zone and Western
Speaker 2: Film and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But we didn't I didn't really know who it was.
Speaker 2: Maybe Spooner or somebody else, but I wasn't familiar with him,
Speaker 2: but the TV shows I was anyway, and so we
Speaker 2: were kind of out of that hole, or at least
Speaker 2: I was. I don't know where those guys were. But
Speaker 2: I didn't hear the record until they finally had a
Speaker 2: listening party, and all of a sudden, these songs that
Speaker 2: were pretty you know, they were built up around rock
Speaker 2: and roll instruments, but then now they had strings and
Speaker 2: whole orchestrations and giant background vocals and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It was like, WHOA.
Speaker 2: I think we thought it was wonderful, but it was
Speaker 2: also very shocking to hear to hear it after it
Speaker 2: was done and mixed and all that stuff. But we
Speaker 2: weren't We weren't involved in that. We weren't invited to
Speaker 2: be involved in that, which I thought was weird to
Speaker 2: this day. We were too young.
Speaker 1: How come you never worked with al again?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's another one of those things. I don't think
Speaker 2: there was anything really about it that it was actually
Speaker 2: a kind of a breakup, intentional breakup for any reason.
Speaker 2: The next album was produced by Ken Scott. It was
Speaker 2: I think a lot of a lot of everything had
Speaker 2: seemed to have to do with the people at the label,
Speaker 2: what their thoughts were on how things were working, and
Speaker 2: maybe they thought they could get a better, you know,
Speaker 2: handle on some sort of a formula that would get
Speaker 2: us some money a hit because the hit was not
Speaker 2: on the underground. Loved the first album with white Punks
Speaker 2: on Dove and Bondage and what do You Want from Life?
Speaker 1: And that was a.
Speaker 2: Uh, that was you know, this is an amazing first
Speaker 2: album because, like I said, it was it was everything
Speaker 2: that we had developed up to that point, which was
Speaker 2: at least four or five years of just playing those
Speaker 2: songs and uh and writing those songs, and then the
Speaker 2: next series of albums that came out it just had
Speaker 2: to be kind of pumped out within six months. It
Speaker 2: sounded like we made an album every six or eight months,
Speaker 2: you know, at least for for A and M until
Speaker 2: they got thrown.
Speaker 1: Off of A and M. Well, were you happy with
Speaker 1: any of those albums?
Speaker 2: I was happy with at least the first two and
Speaker 2: then and then we had a little bit of a
Speaker 2: different kind of a feel for the third album, which
Speaker 2: was called Now. And the producer was a guy named
Speaker 2: John Anthony, and he was an Englishman and we uh,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: We got on.
Speaker 2: We got on with him at first, but things happened
Speaker 2: and there was just all you know, I mean, I
Speaker 2: have to bust myself and say there was a lot
Speaker 2: of drug use going on, and people were confused about
Speaker 2: the songs that we were actually had chosen to record
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. This was after the Young and
Speaker 2: Rich One. Young and Rich was well a lot of
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff too. But as we were still
Speaker 2: pretty novice in the recording business so far, and we
Speaker 2: were really listening to Ken Scott and what his advice
Speaker 2: was for making a good record. And he was a
Speaker 2: great engineer I remember him really not I was spending
Speaker 2: more time on the sound quality and the sounds and
Speaker 2: the instrumentation and stuff like that as opposed.
Speaker 1: To actually producing the idea of the song or something.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 2: Pretty lenient with us for our kind of crazy ideas
Speaker 2: for each one of those songs. So we were very
Speaker 2: happy with that. And then we had some great touring
Speaker 2: done behind both of those albums seventy five, seventy six,
Speaker 2: seventy seven started with that next record, the Now album.
Speaker 1: Ultimately you work with Todd Rundred, What is your experience there.
Speaker 2: My experience was the a few times I met him
Speaker 2: before we actually started being our engineer and recording with us.
Speaker 2: I had met him a few times through his dresser designer,
Speaker 2: clothing designer named Nicky Nichols, who was a friend of Breeze,
Speaker 2: my girlfriend at the time, and he introduced me to
Speaker 2: Todd and I painted some outfits for him, air brush
Speaker 2: some outfits for him, and you know, I just got
Speaker 2: to know him a little bit, not too much. But
Speaker 2: then in about seventy I guess it's seventy eight or something,
Speaker 2: he came to England when we opened for Or We
Speaker 2: had a It was a Networth festival in England and
Speaker 2: it was Frank Sappa, the Tubes, Broomtown Rats, Nick Lowe
Speaker 2: and the Rock Pile with Dave Edmonds and Peter Gabriel's
Speaker 2: solo band, and we were all on this stage together
Speaker 2: and we Todd had come over just to kind of
Speaker 2: hang out with us and party a little bit. And
Speaker 2: it was a day Keith Moon died that we were
Speaker 2: supposed to perform, or the day before maybe, so we rehearsed,
Speaker 2: we rehearsed the song Bob O'Reilly and then we did
Speaker 2: a Medley into the Kids Are all Right, and he
Speaker 2: came out on stage and played and sang that with us.
Speaker 2: From that point we became closer friends. And then the
Speaker 2: next album came around and it was Remote Control, and
Speaker 2: that was the last record we did for Capital for
Speaker 2: a and m before we moved to Capitol, So we
Speaker 2: got the working experience with Todd then was amazing. We
Speaker 2: were all big fans of his music, most of us,
Speaker 2: and he was a bit of a dictator, I got
Speaker 2: to say, but just you know, because he was hired
Speaker 2: to produce us, and he was going to take that
Speaker 2: job on with a lot of authority, and a lot
Speaker 2: of us were not quite used to that. We used
Speaker 2: to do a lot of it with our with our
Speaker 2: own intentions and standing up for our rights to party,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, and he was he was more
Speaker 2: focused on getting the thing done, and but we did
Speaker 2: and they came out with a pretty cool record. I mean,
Speaker 2: a lot of that stuff was after that third album,
Speaker 2: the Now album. It was kind of a lull, managerial
Speaker 2: lull and a different different kind of lull that was
Speaker 2: happening creatively, and we decided that well, maybe we needed to,
Speaker 2: you know, get a better producer. So we reached out
Speaker 2: to Todd. He decided to do it with us. And
Speaker 2: now I can't remember really what my original question was,
Speaker 2: other than you just say, what was it like to
Speaker 2: work with Todd? I'm still working with Todd and it's
Speaker 2: still amazing, and he's still authoritarian. He tells us what
Speaker 2: to do, what he wants us to do. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: open ear every now and then chose some ideas, suggestions,
Speaker 2: but it's mostly his latest. His latest tour is called
Speaker 2: Me We, and it's mostly like me with capital letters
Speaker 2: and we kind of down here somewhere.
Speaker 1: Okay, you switched to Capitol, you work with David Foster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have hits, but Steve Luca Thur's working with you.
Speaker 1: So on one level you have the success. But it's
Speaker 1: not the Tube show of certainly the early seventies. So
Speaker 1: what's your what are your emotions.
Speaker 2: About that different show? I mean, we had definitely had
Speaker 2: a big show still going. It was still that Kenny
Speaker 2: or Kaga doing choreography and all that stuff. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: had a new producer, new producer because we had a
Speaker 2: new album label, you know, we had to get and
Speaker 2: there was that we kind of limbo period between a
Speaker 2: and M and getting onto Capital, which was interviewing different producers,
Speaker 2: interviewing a guy named Bruce Garfield was and Bobby Columbia
Speaker 2: were from I saw you interviewed Bobby Columbie right from Capital.
Speaker 2: They were the they were the guys that were running
Speaker 2: Capital at the time, and so they came. We had
Speaker 2: a bunch of meetings with those guys and they said, well, who, who,
Speaker 2: who who would you want to produce you and all
Speaker 2: this stuff? And we were like, I don't know. So
Speaker 2: they had some suggestions. They had Roy Thomas Baker came,
Speaker 2: they had who was the guy that Bob Bob Ezrin?
Speaker 2: A couple of different guys came and listened to our
Speaker 2: stuff just in our warehouse somewhere kind of CD.
Speaker 1: And neither one of them really fit the bill.
Speaker 2: And then somebody mentioned David Froster, and I'm not sure
Speaker 2: exactly how that we pulled it off, but I remember
Speaker 2: him saying, you're the weird this group I've ever worked with,
Speaker 2: and I'm really not sure what I can do with
Speaker 2: you guys, but if you listen to me, you'll probably
Speaker 2: have a hit. And so some of us listened to him,
Speaker 2: and some of us didn't just didn't want to listen
Speaker 2: to him. And those are the guys I had to
Speaker 2: wait in the parking lot, so I had to get
Speaker 2: Steep look at her, and get David Page and you know,
Speaker 2: some of the people to kind of fit in. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just one of those stories you don't really I
Speaker 2: don't like telling it, but it's what happened, is the truth.
Speaker 2: Luckily I got to stay in the drum chair. He
Speaker 2: didn't bring in Jeff Pacaro, which would have been good too.
Speaker 2: Jeff Caven saw us when we were in the studio
Speaker 2: and recording that song Tip of my Arm, and I
Speaker 2: just remember feeling really proud that he heard my drum
Speaker 2: track and.
Speaker 1: He just gave me like that. It's so funky, so funky,
Speaker 1: and Jeff was a great drummer, such a great drummer. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So their hits with Foster, you work with Todd again.
Speaker 1: That album is not commercially successful. How does the group end? Well,
Speaker 1: the group sort of never really ended. It still hasn't
Speaker 1: never really ended. How does a group go on a hiatus? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it never really went on. If you ask Fee, it did,
Speaker 1: but no, he just he he kind of took off
Speaker 1: where you know, he met Richard Marx and he met
Speaker 1: some of the guys in l A. And he'd moved.
Speaker 2: He had moved to Los Angeles to kind of start
Speaker 2: over again a little bit with some of his new
Speaker 2: acquaintances in the music business in Los Angeles. The rest
Speaker 2: of us stayed in San Francisco in the Bay Area
Speaker 2: and continued on. We got we got another singer actually involved.
Speaker 2: It was the guy David who was our first original
Speaker 2: bass player in the Red, White and Bluespan. He stepped
Speaker 2: up to the plate and uh and tried to fill
Speaker 2: Fee's shoes and he did it. He did had an
Speaker 2: admirable job, but he didn't didn't really have what it
Speaker 2: was going to take to replace thee So he kind
Speaker 2: of went He kind of went on a high edus
Speaker 2: from the tubes, but we kept we kept kind of
Speaker 2: plug along during probably like so the love Bomb Tour
Speaker 2: was the last tour we did, and it was with Utopia,
Speaker 2: Todd's band Cod Building with us in like eighty five,
Speaker 2: and so that's that's what happened there and Todd and
Speaker 2: his band Utopia, they opened the show and Todd goes, well,
Speaker 2: we're not really opening for you. It's a cop Bill,
Speaker 2: we just don't want to follow you because you got
Speaker 2: so much crap on stage, he said, he goes, you know,
Speaker 2: we're just a totally streamline. I think they had their
Speaker 2: first in ear monitors and you know, the hidden mics
Speaker 2: and no amps on.
Speaker 1: Stage, and he was just like streamline. You know, it's
Speaker 1: really cool.
Speaker 2: His drummer, Willie had the motorcycle kit that spun around.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see that?
Speaker 2: So and you know, they were just really cool and
Speaker 2: they could move in and off the stage and we
Speaker 2: could build our crazy you know, over the top set
Speaker 2: with the stage props and kayludes, you know, giant outfits
Speaker 2: and everything. So that's what happened in eighty five, and
Speaker 2: then in eighty six we got the other singer if
Speaker 2: he went down to La started working on his solo
Speaker 2: records with Foster and with Richard Marx and do him
Speaker 2: or songwriting with Richard Mars and we just kept kind
Speaker 2: of continuing on until I guess this might have been
Speaker 2: the early nineties. Oh well, then we lost Vince because
Speaker 2: he joined well he joined Todd's band first and kind
Speaker 2: of left the Tubes, and then he got the job
Speaker 2: being a keyboard player for the Grateful dead and that
Speaker 2: was like nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, he ultimately dies at a young age.
Speaker 1: They say that he was mentally ill. Does that something
Speaker 1: you picked up on Vince? Yeah, mentally ill? No, but
Speaker 1: he did smoke a lot of pot and ate a
Speaker 1: lot of hash and uh, you know, to me, that's
Speaker 1: that don't make anybody mental.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it would be a disastrous kind
Speaker 2: of mental state, but according to some of the people
Speaker 2: that were around him at that time, I kind of
Speaker 2: had a little bit of falling out with him. Right
Speaker 2: before that, we had a band called a Missing Man Formation,
Speaker 2: which occurred after Jerry Garcia died in like ninety five.
Speaker 2: But before that he was now he was just Vince.
Speaker 2: He was a wonderful, wonderful character. But yeah, over the
Speaker 2: years I always noticed he had he had kind of
Speaker 2: a dark side. Yeah, I think he had, you know,
Speaker 2: I had a bit of a dark side. Maybe took
Speaker 2: somebody depressant drugs or something. I never really wanted to
Speaker 2: ask him too much about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how do you end up working for Todd? So?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's see, Well, you know, he knew of
Speaker 2: my drumming obviously from working with the tubes. And then
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety I think it was ninety or ninety one,
Speaker 2: he had hired Vince and Vince was working with him
Speaker 2: in his band. They did an album called Nearly Human,
Speaker 2: and that band lasted for a tour or two and
Speaker 2: then Vince left and they got he got another record
Speaker 2: deal coming up, Todd did. It was called Second Win,
Speaker 2: and we called me up and said, do you want
Speaker 2: to play drums for me? And we're going to record
Speaker 2: this whole album that I have worked up called Second Wind,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of my second Win. He was he
Speaker 2: had a lull before that that, and I'm not sure exactly,
Speaker 2: but we recorded the thing live in front of an
Speaker 2: audience in San Francis, was like five nights sold out
Speaker 2: in the Palacifying Arts, and the project was he was
Speaker 2: going to conduct us. It was a large band, two drummers,
Speaker 2: you know, two guitar players, two keyboard players, all these
Speaker 2: different people, background singers, and to record this new album.
Speaker 2: And we had to grade ourselves each night on our performances.
Speaker 2: Like he taped it all every night, and then he
Speaker 2: went back later and pieced the record together judging from
Speaker 2: the exes on people's like nope, missed that one. All
Speaker 2: good on this one, you know, for all for fifteen
Speaker 2: people that were in the band. I thought that was alone,
Speaker 2: pretty pretty amazing that he could do that. But he
Speaker 2: came out with a pretty neat record, and then we
Speaker 2: went on tour. So that was ninety one. At the
Speaker 2: same time, I still play with the Tubes. He just
Speaker 2: kind of off and on. But then Fee came back
Speaker 2: I think ninety two. He called and said, well, we
Speaker 2: got an offer from you know, it's like, we don't know,
Speaker 2: we're big in Japan. No, it wasn't that, but it
Speaker 2: was an offer from an offer from some German promoter
Speaker 2: that offered us some great, great tour and so he goes, well,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about it might be a good idea to
Speaker 2: come back now. So he did, and we had we
Speaker 2: had a new keyboard player because Vince wasn't with us.
Speaker 2: We had two new new keyboard players and actually another
Speaker 2: guitar player, Gary Canberra and Dave med They joined us
Speaker 2: in the early nineties and we became that that version
Speaker 2: of the Tubes.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you part ways with Bill Spooter?
Speaker 2: How did we That was just you know, one of
Speaker 2: those things I really don't want to talk about it
Speaker 2: too much, but he was a difficult person and you know,
Speaker 2: high strung and genius. I thought he came up with
Speaker 2: so many of the original Tubes ideas and the Beans
Speaker 2: ideas musically and visually, and he had just came to
Speaker 2: a point where, you know, none of us could really
Speaker 2: deal with each other anymore. And that was just one
Speaker 2: of those things where you sort of say, we have
Speaker 2: to move on, or you know, we have to take
Speaker 2: a break from each other and may get back together
Speaker 2: again someday, who knows, But that's what happened there.
Speaker 1: And he was he resentful.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think he was. I think he was well,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure you'd have to interview him. He wrote
Speaker 2: a song called they Kicked Me out of the band,
Speaker 2: so I guess that says it all. But he's still
Speaker 2: writing some great, great music. And of late I've gotten
Speaker 2: together with him. You know, we had re Stylesho was
Speaker 2: original member of the Tubes, and Rick Anderson, our bass player,
Speaker 2: both passed away in twenty twenty twenty two, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and Bill and I got together and well, I first
Speaker 2: wrote some poetry for each one of them, sort as
Speaker 2: like a little obituary for them, an homage to each
Speaker 2: one of them. And Bill said, well, it'd be nice
Speaker 2: if we wrote some songs about them, and we had
Speaker 2: done one for Vince earlier when he passed away. We
Speaker 2: did one then. But we just recently recorded for a
Speaker 2: song about Ree and a song for Rick. So we're
Speaker 2: back in the studio again. I'm hoping that maybe we
Speaker 2: can come up with a new Tubes like album. I
Speaker 2: don't know about production value. I don't know if we're
Speaker 2: going to have dancing girls or not.
Speaker 1: Could happen. Okay, So since you started working with Todd,
Speaker 1: does he always call you first to go on the
Speaker 1: road or does he work with other people?
Speaker 2: No, No, it's I'm his drummer. Pretty much after that
Speaker 2: Nearly Human, he had a drummer named Michael Orbono was
Speaker 2: a fabulous drummer. He was in a band with Lyle Workman,
Speaker 2: Larry Tag, Brent Bourgeois and they had a band called
Speaker 2: Bourgeois Tag and they were from Sacramento, and they taught
Speaker 2: had produced one of their albums. So when he was
Speaker 2: ready to come to record that album Nearly Human, he
Speaker 2: just grabbed all those guys and brought him in and
Speaker 2: they were the sort of his backing band for that record,
Speaker 2: and then after that some of them fell in, fell
Speaker 2: out I he was the new drummer. Lyle got replaced
Speaker 2: by Jesse Gress, who was a friend of Lyle's. The
Speaker 2: bass player was on the record was Ross Vallery from Journey.
Speaker 2: He got replaced by Larry tag from that Nearly Human Thing.
Speaker 2: This was for the second Win record. Mingo Lewis. Mingo
Speaker 2: Lewis filled the percussion spot for Scott Matthews, who was
Speaker 2: in the previous one. And I have to say right
Speaker 2: now I miss Mingo Luis. He just passed away last
Speaker 2: week for lung cancer. And he was one of my
Speaker 2: really biggest inspiration, especially in Latin music, in Latin percussion,
Speaker 2: and just a hilarious character, and we spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time together. We met him in the you know,
Speaker 2: in seventy six something like that, and then recorded that
Speaker 2: Now album. He played on that and and Remote Control
Speaker 2: those two albums, and then we tour toward the World
Speaker 2: with him too.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know you end up working seemingly with every
Speaker 1: San Francisco group, not everyone, but a lot of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how does that happen? How does that happen.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see. I mean which one in particular I got.
Speaker 2: I got up with what became a Jefferson stars which
Speaker 2: was originally the Jefferson Airplane. And they had had a
Speaker 2: big career as the airplane and that big career as
Speaker 2: the Jefferson Starship in the seventies and eighties, and then
Speaker 2: in the early nineties their new producer manager slash booking
Speaker 2: agent Michael Gamon came to me through a keyboard player
Speaker 2: I've been playing with Tim Gorman, who's also just passed,
Speaker 2: and said, we're putting together a new version of the
Speaker 2: Jefferson Starship. It's called Jefferson Starship the Next Generation. And
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I'm in, So we started playing.
Speaker 2: It was Jack Cassidy and Paul Cantner and Marty Ballen
Speaker 2: and Papa John Creech and this guy named Slick Aguilar
Speaker 2: guitar and Tim Gorman on keyboards who played with The
Speaker 2: Who and with John Entwiss Old Bunch. So that was
Speaker 2: that band. I mean, he carries on, he just carries
Speaker 2: on that. I played with him for twenty years.
Speaker 1: What other bands? Oh, Dick Dale.
Speaker 2: I never really got to talk to you about Dick
Speaker 2: Dale because he was my inspiration in the early surf stuff,
Speaker 2: learning how to play surf drums. So long to Dick Dale,
Speaker 2: you know, doing miser Loo and all those songs, Peppermint
Speaker 2: Twist and all those songs. And Scott Matthews and Joel Salbyn,
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know who. Joel Salbyn is the
Speaker 2: music critic and as an author, lives here in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: And he got contacted by Dick Dale or whoever whatever
Speaker 2: the record company was, to organize some musicians to come
Speaker 2: in and record the next generation of Dick Dale. He
Speaker 2: had been sort of out of the picture for you know,
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen years, and he now wanted to come
Speaker 2: out and talk to the he says, he says, the
Speaker 2: body peers to people. He wanted he wanted to get
Speaker 2: that that audience going, you know. So we went in
Speaker 2: the studio with Scott Matthews, who was sort of the
Speaker 2: producer and also the second drummer. I was the first
Speaker 2: drump Well, we shared the drum chair and then Dick
Speaker 2: had a bass player Ron, and we went in and
Speaker 2: recorded some crazy record. It was called it called uh
Speaker 2: I can't remember, the Tribal Thunder, the Tribal Thunder yet
Speaker 2: unknown territory. We did two albums with that lineup. San
Speaker 2: francisc was that I was early nineties as well, and
Speaker 2: that was crazy and amazing. And you know, I had
Speaker 2: to tell Dick and I learned to play drums listening
Speaker 2: to you, and he goes, I've broken I've broken hundreds
Speaker 2: of drummers. You're one of my favorites. And I was like,
Speaker 2: after a hundreds of drummers, he broke them like a
Speaker 2: Mustang or what. He goes, Yep, they can't play that.
Speaker 2: They can't play it along with me as fast as
Speaker 2: I did. I said, well, I can't. I did anyway.
Speaker 2: That was That was another one of he wasn't even
Speaker 2: a San Francisco guy, but he was. He was one
Speaker 2: of the people that I played with Chris Isaac. He
Speaker 2: was a whole other one that was all through the eighties.
Speaker 2: I never really got to play with him live, but
Speaker 2: I've recorded on his albums. This for four albums and recorded, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the song Wicked Game was a pretty big
Speaker 2: deal for him, and I got a platinum album out
Speaker 2: of that deal.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: But you know, he's always he always had his own drummer,
Speaker 2: you know, on the road, and then eventually Kat Kenny
Speaker 2: Kenny Dale Johnson, great guy, great singer, great drummer. But
Speaker 2: they wanted me on the recordings, on those early early records,
Speaker 2: so I didn't say no, I needed a paycheck.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, you living the dream in the seventies
Speaker 1: into the early eighties. You're in action. You may not
Speaker 1: be making any money, but you're known that there's a
Speaker 1: day new mold there. You know. It's like you say,
Speaker 1: the Tubes never really go on hiatus, but they're no
Speaker 1: longer the focus right of the community. Are you freaking
Speaker 1: out or you think it? Man, I'll always work. They
Speaker 1: always need a drummer.
Speaker 2: I've always thought that they always need a drummer, and
Speaker 2: they always needed me as a drummer as they But
Speaker 2: I have a lot of drummer friends. If I couldn't
Speaker 2: do it because I was conflicted with the Starship the
Speaker 2: Tubes or Todd Runggren's touring plans, I'd always I had
Speaker 2: a little stable of guys that would happily fill in
Speaker 2: for me and fill in for me in each of
Speaker 2: one of those bands. They knew all the music, and
Speaker 2: trace Abatelli is one of them was a wonderful drummer,
Speaker 2: Dean Johnson. Jonathan Moover. Jonathan Moover is a great, great
Speaker 2: drummer and he's played in the two for me a
Speaker 2: bunch of times.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was. It was one of those things. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: the gigs you get are people calling you, go man,
Speaker 1: you're a great drummer, I need you to work with me?
Speaker 1: Or are you work at it? Are you putting out
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: I don't have a manager, I don't have an agent,
Speaker 2: I don't have any of that stuff. Now, I actually
Speaker 2: have a pretty good little manager. And she's my niece,
Speaker 2: and she lives in Manhattan, and she's a go getter.
Speaker 2: She's actually really instrumental in helping me organize this whole album,
Speaker 2: along with her mother, which is the sister I was
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Leslie.
Speaker 2: Francesca is an amazing works in the you know, the
Speaker 2: public image, and she works for musicians and authors mostly
Speaker 2: are her clients. And I'm just the guy that you know,
Speaker 2: she loves. So she does it pretty much just because
Speaker 2: he loves me. And throw a bone. Throw a bone
Speaker 2: every now and then. Thanks franchastic, how's you worked out
Speaker 2: economically for you.
Speaker 1: How has it not so good? Really?
Speaker 2: I mean I get a little bit of royalty here
Speaker 2: there for this and that too mostly but you know,
Speaker 2: I get some royalties and stuff from and publishing from
Speaker 2: ISAAC Records and XTC. I get some stuff from xdc's records.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, not not great. But you know, I'm managing
Speaker 2: to get by. I'm going to be seventy six in May,
Speaker 2: so I don't know how how long I need to
Speaker 2: really carry on with worrying about money.
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about money.
Speaker 2: But I still like to play, and I still make
Speaker 2: money doing my paintings and my artwork, and and you know,
Speaker 2: just enough to get by. I live in a rental house.
Speaker 2: I don't own any house, but I do have some
Speaker 2: property in western New York that I sh with one
Speaker 2: of my exes, and we planned to move there someday.
Speaker 2: Not really, it's too cold. It's too cold there. And
Speaker 2: do you have any children?
Speaker 1: No children? No, No, it was that conscious about wanting
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 2: No, No, it wasn't conscious necessarily. It's just the ladies
Speaker 2: that I had hooked up with that maybe would have
Speaker 2: been good mothers or wanted to have kids. We are
Speaker 2: very few and or couldn't have them and so never did.
Speaker 2: Plus just being on the road all the time. I
Speaker 2: don't even have a pet, you know, I can't even
Speaker 2: own a pet. But yeah, I'm a happy, happy bachelor.
Speaker 2: And I have a wonderful family. All my nieces and
Speaker 2: nephews live here in San Francisco except for the one
Speaker 2: in New York, and we have a wonderful lifestyle. They're
Speaker 2: all artists and musicians as well. I live with my
Speaker 2: great nephews, a drummer and a local band, and he's
Speaker 2: he's getting better than I am, so he might be
Speaker 2: one of my substitutes in one of these bands.
Speaker 1: Monday, So if you stop working today, do you have
Speaker 1: enough money to get to the end? Wow? You really
Speaker 1: get personal, aren't too? Yeah? Yeah? Enough money? Yes, I
Speaker 1: would say yes. Yes.
Speaker 2: I saved a few things. I got a few ires
Speaker 2: and that kind of stuff. I've saved someoney and I
Speaker 2: didn't have to spend it on a house. Did I really?
Speaker 1: Well? Our kid? How did you meet? We? Styles? And
Speaker 1: where is she today? Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, she passed away in twenty twenty two, but we
Speaker 2: were good friends.
Speaker 1: I met her.
Speaker 2: Through a photographer friend of mine, Michael Cotton, and I
Speaker 2: were painting me. I don't know if you ever heard
Speaker 2: of the Cliff House. It's a yeah, yeah, fabulous restaurant
Speaker 2: right on the ocean there on the cliff, and we
Speaker 2: got we got commissioned to paint some giant waves on
Speaker 2: the outside of that building and it was all scaffolded,
Speaker 2: and areographer friend used that as a as a site
Speaker 2: for his photo session, and so he brought Ree over
Speaker 2: with a brand new pair of Levi's that he was
Speaker 2: doing an ad for Macy's at the time. And that
Speaker 2: was seventy three, and she was also in the Tubes
Speaker 2: when we played the led Zeppelin. She had just gotten
Speaker 2: into the Tubes in seventy three. I remember that was
Speaker 2: I think her first concert with the Tubes. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I met her and we were just you know, I
Speaker 2: met her and she said, oh, can I get up
Speaker 2: on the scaffolding with you guys? And photographer was taking
Speaker 2: pictures and I was completely covered with the same Levi outfit,
Speaker 2: but completely covered with paint at gas mask onco we
Speaker 2: were spraying these giant waves on the side of it.
Speaker 2: So that's the photo session. It's all documented. That was
Speaker 2: the first time I met her and she goes, well,
Speaker 2: you know, tomorrow I'm supposed to was I was going
Speaker 2: to leave for Alaska with my girlfriend and become a tripper.
Speaker 2: I said, well, maybe you could write me a letter
Speaker 2: or something. So I did just as left, and I
Speaker 2: thought I'd never see her again. And then maybe a
Speaker 2: week later, another friend of the photographer helped me up
Speaker 2: and she goes, hey, I want you to meet this girl.
Speaker 2: Ree said, I think I met her already. So she
Speaker 2: came out and we rekindled, rekindled and never left each
Speaker 2: other after that, moved into each other, moved in with
Speaker 2: each other in seventy three, and she, you know, we
Speaker 2: had a falling out in the late nineties, mid nineties,
Speaker 2: so I really didn't see her much for the next
Speaker 2: twenty years or something. But she held out of the
Speaker 2: apartment that we both lived in in the seventies and
Speaker 2: the eighties, and she stayed stayed there until she died.
Speaker 1: When you have falling out with these people, are they
Speaker 1: because you were continuing to have a career and they
Speaker 1: it did end.
Speaker 2: It actually was kind of that's the sort of the case,
Speaker 2: not with Reed, because we kept on for years after
Speaker 2: she left the tubes. She left the tubes in like
Speaker 2: seventy nine. Right after that, remote control to her and
Speaker 2: I stayed with her until mid mid nineties, so we
Speaker 2: were still living together. But yeah, it didn't ever get
Speaker 2: very very good after that because I was always on
Speaker 2: the road. She was doing she had changed businesses. She
Speaker 2: went into a horticulture she was doing flower arrangements and
Speaker 2: different kinds of jobs that she had.
Speaker 1: After that. Yeah, we just you know, drifted apart. So
Speaker 1: all the people you graduated from the San Francisco it's
Speaker 1: too correct, Yeah, bachelors and painting, what happened to all this?
Speaker 2: The students you went to school with, Wow, I haven't
Speaker 2: really kept in touch with many of them. One of
Speaker 2: them was in the film department, a guy named Meno Maas,
Speaker 2: and he became a screenplay writer and did a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff with Spielberg, and I still stay in touch
Speaker 2: with him. He lives in England. Really not so much,
Speaker 2: not so many people. There's a few other few other
Speaker 2: people that I just over the years said, oh you
Speaker 2: remember me from the Art Institute or something. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember you. You were the guy that worked on
Speaker 2: that horrible clay sculpture or something. But no, but you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the people that will always remember those
Speaker 2: shows that we did. The Tubes did at the Art Institute,
Speaker 2: and we did a couple. We did another one called
Speaker 2: Women's Lip and it was our art school girl girlfriends
Speaker 2: dressed up with those plastic boobs and aprons and like
Speaker 2: swept the floor and mopped the floor around the stage.
Speaker 2: For us, it was their idea, not art. I thought, wow,
Speaker 2: that was a strange, strange thing. And one of those
Speaker 2: girls was Catherine Bigelow. Really we became you know, like
Speaker 2: the great uh director and one of those and act.
Speaker 2: That's that same show she was wearing those presidential masks
Speaker 2: that she ended up in that film called Point Break.
Speaker 1: Remember that you remember? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That that was the movie where the guy guys robbed
Speaker 2: the bank with the president's masks.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't the Was that the one she directed?
Speaker 1: I don't know. She did Zero Dark thirty. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was as later. You know point Break?
Speaker 2: Uh it was it was a blue Crush, you no,
Speaker 2: it was Point Break. I think it was with Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it was. It was Patrick Swaycey and.
Speaker 1: Director Catherine Bigelow.
Speaker 2: You're right, I think you know who else was in
Speaker 2: it was Anthony Keatas and he played layed like one
Speaker 2: of the surf punks in it.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that in a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so funny way that was. I just thought it
Speaker 2: was funny because I saw that movie years after we
Speaker 2: had done that thing. Hey, those are the same mass
Speaker 2: and our lew Women's lips show that we did.
Speaker 1: And anyway, so the two success in the seventies. There
Speaker 1: was a sixties sensibility and then the commerciality of the
Speaker 1: seventies where artists stood a scance risk, you know, and
Speaker 1: they looked at things in their comment and on them.
Speaker 1: That is not the world we live in today. What
Speaker 1: do you think about the world we live in today?
Speaker 1: What do I think about it?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that we're in dire straits in lots
Speaker 2: of areas, especially our country's politics and the weird weirdness
Speaker 2: and the segregation and Horacio ConfL and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and you know, brought I brought some of that out
Speaker 2: in my record. I tried not to do too much
Speaker 2: political commentary. But the one song called Trash White is
Speaker 2: about you know, white supremacy and and Todd Ruggren was
Speaker 2: the co author of that, And we were at a
Speaker 2: restaurant one day and he goes, I had asked him to,
Speaker 2: you know, collaborate with me on this record, and it's
Speaker 2: called Colors and Passions. And he goes, well, I said, well,
Speaker 2: what color would you maybe want to invest in and
Speaker 2: with your talents? And he goes, I don't know a
Speaker 2: lot chartruse. I like that, Okay, I already got green.
Speaker 2: But he goes, well, how about.
Speaker 1: How about uh.
Speaker 2: Try to think of a few other colors. I can't
Speaker 2: remember what the other colors were, but and then he
Speaker 2: started thinking, and he goes, what do you mean? You know,
Speaker 2: trash white is a color. It's the color that doesn't
Speaker 2: want to be a around any of the other colors
Speaker 2: in the pay box. It doesn't want to be you know,
Speaker 2: it's embarrassed to be seeing with these other people or
Speaker 2: these other colors.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And I thought, wow, that's pretty cool, amazing. So that
Speaker 2: kind of we left it. We kind of left it
Speaker 2: there and said, well, we're going to work on that concept,
Speaker 2: and sure enough we did, and we had we had
Speaker 2: a couple other meetings and talked about it. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what do you want from me? He todd, and he goes, well,
Speaker 2: just send me something. So I sent him a drum
Speaker 2: track and some little sniveling lyrical stuff about you know,
Speaker 2: bat to the bone and uh, white trash people and
Speaker 2: trash white people and this kind of stuff, and he
Speaker 2: came back with the what ended up being the verses
Speaker 2: of this stuff, which is just genius, brilliant stuff. So
Speaker 2: I have to give him so much credit for that.
Speaker 2: And he's actually in the video too, doing his best
Speaker 2: impersonation of well, just like what you're doing right now,
Speaker 2: inner radio station with a bunch of smoke smoking he
Speaker 2: was smoking to join anything, but mostly cigarette, talking to
Speaker 2: a big microphone like this, wrapping his part down and uh.
Speaker 2: And so that's in the video called trash white anger.
Speaker 2: That that's the passion, whether it's anger. So I check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 1: To what degree are you still painting? Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, I just did the Robin Williams
Speaker 2: T shirt.
Speaker 1: Last week.
Speaker 2: I worked for a client who is, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: multi millionaire client who has a big, beautiful house in
Speaker 2: San Francisco up in Pacific Heights, and he has he's
Speaker 2: sort of my medici, you know, he he's my patron,
Speaker 2: and uh, I do a lot of work for him,
Speaker 2: their mural work and faux work and stencil work and
Speaker 2: doing things like that. So I've got a big project
Speaker 2: that I'm uh. I should have been there today, but
Speaker 2: I'm here with you. I do a lot of portraits.
Speaker 2: I've got to do portraits I do. I've just got
Speaker 2: it's not solidified yet, but they're going to do the
Speaker 2: reopening them the Boo Hi Gardens in San Francisco on Broadway,
Speaker 2: which was the punk palace back in the seventies, and
Speaker 2: they got some new owners, they got some new people involved,
Speaker 2: and they want some murals from me inside. I'm looking
Speaker 2: forward to doing that, some Screamers and some off Black Flag,
Speaker 2: you know, some shing like that, and then some with
Speaker 2: the new a new generation of punk rockers, which is
Speaker 2: my great nephew False Flag.
Speaker 1: Okay, so looking back at the nearly seventy six years,
Speaker 1: you're happy the way it played out. I still playing, baby,
Speaker 1: I'm still playing. But yeah, you're only looking back seventy
Speaker 1: six after that, you're looking forward. I try not to
Speaker 1: look back more than about a week. No, I'm very
Speaker 1: happy with it. And yeah, I remember turning sixty and
Speaker 1: thinking if I died tomorrow, i'd be happy. That's sixty.
Speaker 1: That's fifteen, sixteen years ago. I still feel better now
Speaker 1: that I've lived those sixteen years and learned so much
Speaker 1: and spread the joy, spread music to people and love.
Speaker 1: You know, That's what I'm all about. Well, Prairie, fascinating
Speaker 1: talk to you. I've seen the tube so many times
Speaker 1: in different locations. Good to finally meet you. You were
Speaker 1: an image I didn't know the guy I said to meet.
Speaker 1: You're a cool guy. Thanks for taking this time with
Speaker 1: my audience.
Speaker 2: I was very very happy to be part of this
Speaker 2: after seeing the roster you had a.
Speaker 1: Interviews, but honored to be here till next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob Lefsides