Chairman Ralph's Ministry Of Truth

As a guitar player, Danny Gatton's life and career was the sort that lent itself naturally to myth-making and legend, mystery and conjecture – the high-octane guitar shootouts over the phone, with arch rivals like Roy Buchanan; the will-they-or-won't-they-break-big fervor of the Redneck Jazz era, and resulting shows at the Cellar Door; the flurries of interest from personal heroes, like Les Paul; the groundswell of hope raised by his signing with Elektra Records, only to be brutally dampened by his suicide, aged 49, on October 4, 1994, in the garage of his Newburg, MD home.

If you follow the relevant section of this website (Danny Gatton Corner), or read my book, Unfinished Business: The Life & Times Of Danny Gatton (Backbeat Books: 2003), you know those stories already, and what makes him a relevant guitar player, then and now. My own personal favorite, unearthed amid countless man-hours of writing and research, came from learning that Redneck Jazz outsold the Rolling Stones's album, Some Girls – which may have been the nation's hottest album, in the summer of 1978 – except in Washington, D.C., that is, where Danny already reigned supreme.

It's fun to imagine the reaction at Rolling Stones HQ, had someone tipped them off (“Cor, Keef? How'd we miss that one?” “I dunno, Mick, seems like that Danny Gatton character is creeping up on us fast”). It's one of many reminders we get of his endless capacity to surprise in “The Humbler,” an 86-minute documentary from Virginia Quesada – now available, after years of dedicated work begun in 1989, when Danny was still alive, and a $36,000 crowdfunding campaign toward the completion costs.

The film takes its name from a live album released in 1996, which captured an '80s-era performance with the late rockabilly singer Robert Gordon – one of several artists, with whom Danny worked as a sideman. That release is sourced from a bootleg tape that made around the rounds of guitar players, who said, “If you think you're so hot, wait till you hear this guy.”

Fittingly, that's how the film opens: THERE WERE MANY GREAT GUITARISTS...BUT ONLY ONE WAS CALLED THE HUMBLER. “If you saw him live, you'd know why,” as singer-songwriter and producer Radney Foster wryly observes. There's no shortage of artists here to second that emotion – such as guitarist Tom Principato, who played with Danny during the Blazing Telecasters era. Hearing Danny for the first time, Principato recalls, made him feel, “I could never be as good as this guy, if I practiced my whole life.”

Yet, all through his life, Danny remained characteristically self-effacing about his abilities. "There's no other way to describe what we do. It's all American music,” he comments offhandledly, during a radio interview from the Redneck Jazz era. It's a sentiment you'll hear and hear again, throughout this film, serving as a reminder of the wellsprings behind his style – county, jazz, and rockabilly, without a flicker of interest in the trends of the time.

That stance clearly struck a chord with his fans, like the one we see, who mentions seeing Danny 17 times. Longtime bassist John Previti recalls watching that dynamic of rabid devotion unfold, from his place on the bandstand: “You could tune up, and nobody would be looking at you – they'd be looking at him, smoking a cigarette.” It's a remarkable insight into a man who once jokingly summarized himself “as a short, fat guy who don't even sing.”

One of “The Humbler”'s most appealing aspects is that it allows Danny to tell his own story – anchored around an interview that Quesada shot at his Newburg farm, on April 24, 1990.

For all the talk of his monstrous chops, it's refreshing to hear from the man himself – sounding so affable and relaxed, whether he's tooling around in one of his restored '50s roadsters, or cutting it up on the porch with his daughter, Holly. “Family comes first,” Danny declares. “That's number one – all the rest is just (having) fun.” As the viewer will see, he lived it, and he meant it.

Quesada keeps the pace moving, as the film retraces the arc of Danny's life – from the preteen prodigy who began playing in clubs at 14, to supernaturally talented player capable of making anyone regret that they hadn't practiced hard enough. The nuances of his relationship with Roy Buchanan are well detailed here, as well as the explorer's spirit that drove Danny through his first major bands, the Fat Boys, and Redneck Jazz Explosion – and the issues that hobbled both.

Why did both bands break up, at the peak of local interest in them, when the principals got along so well? The most common explanation advanced here is Danny's distaste for touring – or “getting road fried,” as his late mother, Norma, summarizes it – in favor of family life, and working for cars. For most of his life, Danny's exposure remained limited to the metro DC circuit, with a special focus on Maryland and Virginia, areas lacking in major studios, let alone any notable industry presence.

In that respect, “The Humbler” also serves as a reminder of the maddeningly elusive red line between genius, and breakout success. Talented though he was, for Danny, it wasn't enough, though his restless perfectionism had some bearing on that outcome, as longtime guitar tech Jay Monterose attests: “His mind never stopped working, and he was never satisfied.”

Danny's lifelong struggle to reconcile what he wanted for himself, with the demands of his trade, often led to periodic retreats that never stuck, as his wife, Jan, details: “It seemed as though he wanted to get away from the music – and he couldn't.” Yet one of the most telling observations of this personal divide comes from the man himself; who suggests, at one point: “If I could have been behind the curtain (and played), it would have been all right with me.”

For awhile, though, Danny bounced back. Whenever he did, a funny thing happened, as Dave Elliott – Danny's drummer through the '70s and '80s – observes: “Every time he'd quit, he'd get a little slicker, a little better.”

Soon, the groundswell over his talent becomes impossible to ignore – and on August 16, 1990, Elektra Records signs Danny for a seven-album deal. He quickly rewards his major label backers' faith with a Grammy-nominated album, 88 Elmira St., and begins touring nationally for the first time, on a regular basis.

Everything looks promising, even as “CBS Nightwatch” host Charlie Rose asks Danny – during an August 16, 1989 interview – if people think that he “didn't want it bad enough.” “There's some theories on that,” Danny responds, in typical low-key fashion. Pressed for why, though, Danny seems at a loss to explain. Finally, he shrugs, “I don't know,” leaving the matter to rest there – at least, for now.

To outsiders, the reasons will become clear enough, amid debate from various players in Danny's life, including his pickup guru, Joe Barden; former Commander Cody guitarist, Bill Kirchen; John Previti; friends and co-conspirators, like Arlen Roth; music store owner Phil Zavarella, who saw music leaving Danny in “a life of hunger”; and, of course, Jan and Holly, who remark on the somber, more depressive side that outsiders rarely witnessed. “Few people saw that dark side of my dad,” Holly observes.

For casual Gatton fans, this era will likely prove to be the most familiar and well-documented territory here, brought alive by clips from a May 10, 1990 show at the Flood Zone – also shot by Quesada – and others that have circulated in fan circles, including Danny's “American Music Shop” appearance, with Albert Lee, and Vince Gill (June 5, 1993), and Sheldon Hall (St. Louis, MO), shot September 23, 1993, while on tour behind his second Elektra album, Cruisin' Deuces. By then, however, the wheels are falling off the wagon, and with sales lagging, Danny ends up losing his major label deal.

The final 10 months of Danny's life unfold in a downward spiral, starting January 5, 1994, when fellow bandmate and manager, Billy Windsor, dies from a sudden heart attack. (It's the only time Jan recalls ever seeing him cry.) Danny also begins to fear for himself physically, amid a series of apparent strokes that whittle away his formidable talent. For the Gattons, it's an era of major turmoil, one that makes the home movies of their last Christmas together all the more poignant to watch, as they eagerly unwrap their gifts, and celebrate the occasion.

Amid all of this trauma, Danny struggles to soldier on – most improbably, doing an appearance on Conan O'Brien's show, literally on the heels of Windsor's death – and outwardly celebrates his return to free agent underdog, by signing with Big Mo Records, the indie label run by his friend and go-to engineer, Ed Eastridge. At the same time, a different message slips out to a handful of confidantes. Among them is John Previti, one of the last people to talk with him: “Danny said, 'I just can't tell you how hard the last few years have been.'”

It's hard to miss the emotional implications of this material, nor the emotions that Danny's loss arouses today, among those who still miss him. Quesada handles this material sensitively, and perceptively, as she keeps the focus where it really belongs. What emerges is an engaging portrait of an unlikely talent who never found a place in the commercial grand scheme of things, which she briefly explores, at the end – since it's a question well worth asking. If he's so great, why didn't he get somewhere?

Some reasons seem obvious. As several interviewees note, Danny's passing came right on the cusp of the Internet revolution, one that might have well broadened his reach, without requiring him to leave home, and one that likely keeps the flame burning for him today, via the magic of YouTube. It's also worth noting that Danny's chosen niche, instrumental music, has never been a commercial goldmine – novelties like “Classical Gas” aside – once its chief expression, surf music, faded from the airwaves in the early 1960s.

For all those difficulties, however, evidence continues to mount of Danny's impact, in the unlikeliest places. A good example comes from the image of an autographed photo from Beach Boys guiding light, Brian Wilson, who thanks Danny for doing such a strong version of their classic, “In My Room,” which often closed his Elektra era shows. It's one of many reasons, presumably, why Danny still matters now, and moves listeners today, as Michael Rhodes wryly comments: “For someone who didn't want to leave his hometown, he sure touched a lot of people.”

That he did, and so will this film, which is a first-class, engaging effort, from start to finish. Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool Gattonoid, or encountering his music for the first time, you'll find plenty of food for thought – starting with the basic issue of why our culture seems so hostile to the notion of art for art's sake. “The Humbler” is the type of film that makes a powerful argument for the opposite view – aided by the kind of artist who's amply equipped to do it. It's the reason he mattered then, and why he matters now, and why you should see this film.

FURTHER INFO: https://thehumblermovie.com/

You'd never know it now, amid the plethora of boxed sets, bootlegs, remasters and reissues hitting the racks these days, but once upon a time, copies of the Stooges' landmark albums – The Stooges (1969), Fun House (1970), and Raw Power (1973) – were on the level of Bigfoot encounters, UFO sightings, or exotic rock rumors (“Jim Morrison is alive 'n' well, reborn as a corporate warrior/7-Eleven counter lackey/off the grid adventurer”). In other words, experiences and glimpses of something bigger, to speak about reverently, but not taken seriously, since – what were the odds that anybody would ever actually get to hear any of those so-called legendary platters?

Few bands started with such a promising bang, yet fewer still made the transition from hero to zero with such rapidity. I came of collecting age in a world where the infamous, in-concert snapshot, Metallic KO (1976), was the only Stooges album that you might even spot in a record bin – coming two years after their final breakup, even as their body of work languished in out of print limbo, curiosities to be seen, and maybe furtively enjoyed, but never actually heard.

Eventually, the world caught up -- somewhat. By the time I began rounding up the usual suspects in 1994-95 for my eventual MC5/Stooges retrospectives in DISCoveries, and Goldmine, the albums had finally become common currency (though, even then, workarounds persisted – hence, I found myself making do with a French import of The Stooges, after I'd snagged the other two albums). The notion of “Detroit rock” had finally become embraced as some sort of legitimate sub-genre, and highbrow rags like MOJO had begun publishing in-depth pieces – but that was as far as any power broker sitting behind their desk seemed prepared to go.

It's hard to imagine what followed, in hindsight, when I spoke to the Stooges' perennial backbone of Ron and Scott Asheton, on their Ann Arbor turf. Although they were finally getting a bit more respect – and even royalties from their albums, God forbid – neither were enshrined in rock 'n' roll Heaven just yet. Scott was playing locally, with various bands – including Stand Fast, fronted by his sister, Kathy – while Ron was dividing his energies between his major post-Stooge band, Dark Carnival, and trying to get various movie projects off the ground.

The phenomena that led to their renewed prominence – the Stooges reunion (2003), and their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame (2010), along with the resurgence of the Detroit music scene, and Stooge music featuring prominently in commercial – lay a good half-decade or more off, light years away, in pop culture terms.

The notion of an academic exploration of the Stooges' music and legacy seemed equally far-fetched – what light, if any, could you shed on the lyrical mindset behind the likes of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” – yet that's exactly what Michael S. Begnal has done in his new book, The Music And Noise Of The Stooges, 1967-1971: Lost In The Future (Routledge), which offers a fresh look at the band, while trying to pierce through the fog of myth that surrounds so much of their history, as you'll see shortly. (Full disclosure: I provided full transcripts of my interviews with the Ashetons, because when you're involved – you're involved.) For availability, or other information, visit www.routledge.com.

Drawing on the critiques of scholars like Theodor Adorno, and interviews with many of the principals – notably, the MC5's guiding light, John Sinclair – The Music And Noise Of The Stooges raises the curtain on the collision between art and commerce, “with the band's 'noisy' music and singer Iggy Pop's 'bizarre' onstage performances confusing their label, Elektra Records,” its back cover blurb notes. “As Begnal argues, the Stooges embodied a tension between market forces and an innovative, avante-garde artistic vision, as they sought to liberate audiences from passivity and stimulate an imminent joy in the rock 'n' roll moment.”

All of these subjects definitely seemed worthy of deeper examination, once I read The Music And Noise Of The Stooges, which we then explored in our interview (3/09/22) – so crank up, drink up, rear up, and proceed accordingly. The highlights follow, as always, for your reading pleasure below.

PT. I: “THEY ALL HAD A VISION”

CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): So let's get down to it, I guess, without further ado. Let's start with the level of fandom. I've told you my story. When I started, Metallic KO – for a long time – was the only Stooges record you could get, let alone find.

The Stooges were a name that everybody seemed to know, but not a lot of people got to hear. So what was your journey through all this? How did you find them, and how did that affect you?

MICHAEL BEGNAL (MB): I was into the Ramones when the first album came out in '76, when I was 10, thanks to a family friend, who brought the record to our house. At first, it was the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. The Sex Pistols had covered “No Fun,” so, I knew that was a Stooges song, even though I hadn't heard the original yet. And that Sid Vicious album, Sid Sings, he does “Search & Destroy.”

CR: That's right.

MB: So I was like, “Those are really good songs,” and I got Raw Power. I got it in New York City – we would go to New York a couple of times a year, when I was a kid, when I grew up in Central Pennsylvania. It was '81, and I got an import version of Raw Power, which was the '77 reissue, with the British reissue.

So I was into that, Raw Power, even before the Elektra ones. Of course, as you can tell from the book, the Elektra ones were the ones that really became the big ones for me, probably even more than Raw Power, obviously. They're all great. So I was into Raw Power, and then – was it '82, before the Elektra albums were finally rereleased?

CR: I'm gonna say '83, because that's when I remember buying Fun House, in the summer of. I'd gotten Raw Power during my high school days, at the mall, of all places – in the bargain bin, at Boogie Records!

MB: Yeah. Well, I bought 'em in '84. I remember getting into the first album, in the summer of '84, and I kept seeing the guys in Black Flag, Henry Rollins and Chuck Dukowski, at least a couple of times, mention that Fun House was the shit.

So I got that rerelease of Fun House, which isn't the gatefold, and then I had all three of the studio albums. Then I started getting into them, and I picked up Metallic KO around that time, too.

CR: Wow, so your trajectory's completely opposite of mine, basically.

MB: Yeah. It was just what was out there, you know? I'd heard of them because of the Sex Pistols. I knew it was Iggy Pop – Iggy Pop was having solo albums out, that I'd heard. I had the Soldier album, probably got that around the same era, and the same time I got Raw Power.

Also, there was an Iggy Pop Autodiscography in Trouser Press, in '83. And that had him talking about all the Stooges albums, so I was aware of them from that, too.

CR: And, of course, he was continuing to play the Stooges material live.

MB: Yeah. I mean, I didn't see him live at that time. But you'd hear the name the Stooges mentioned, any time you heard something about Iggy Pop.

CR: So, what made you decide, to write about them, and especially, to take the route that you did? At the time – in purely commercial terms – they didn't achieve a lot, really. As you point out yourself, they only really got welcomed back to the party, once their influence spread enough, to the point where they had something to sell.

MB: Right, right, yeah. I mean, that's one of the main arguments of the book, is the way that capitalism drives all this stuff. It's not like they were welcomed back, or got into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, simply because of three influential albums, and then, nothing.

But yeah, why? I mean, it was one of those things, where it was, “Oh, they influenced the Sex Pistols, and all these punk bands. I guess I should check them out.” But then, it's the power of the band itself, and I don't know, it just got me at the right time, I guess.

When I started getting into Fun House, in '84, I guess I'd just turned 18. Fun House was one of those albums, that it grows on you over time. You keep listening to it, and hearing different things in it, and hearing it differently. In fact, when I first played Fun House, I was like, “Nah, I didn't like it quite as much as the first album, or Raw Power.”

But yeah, something's weird about the sound, it's got that big echoey metallic sound, as opposed to the, sort of fuzztone sound I'd been getting into on the first album. But then, I kept listening to it, and it started to grow on me, and it just becomes too powerful to deny, I guess.

CR: Oh, OK, that makes sense, I think.

MB: Actually, it is kind of funny, though, because a lot of the ideas that I've had about the Stooges' music over the decades, all came out in the book – but I wouldn't have had the wider critical context, or the theoretical context, to kind of somehow connect all these dots. That's something I've only been able to do later.

CR: So basically, the book is your attempt to put all these things into perspective, not only for yourself – but those that don't know a lot about the Stooges, or just maybe only know the name, and a song or two, and that might be it, them.

MB: Yeah, right. Well, I wanted to really bring out their importance beyond just, “Oh, it's cool music,” or, “I really dig them.” I wanted to do more than just describe them, but rather, to actually analyze, to the extent that I could. And honestly, I wanted to do more than just do, yet another Stooges fan type of book.

I wanted to take it somewhere else, and bring this critical context to it, and analyze it, in this wider context. Because I think, a lot of people actually tend to see the Stooges as separate from any context. “They were just out there, doing their own thing, and they were ahead of their time.”

I'm arguing back against that idea, throughout the book. And why that subtitle, Lost In The Future? Because a lot of people see them as ahead of their time, or influences on the stuff that happened later, and not that many people really stop to think about them in their own moment, in their own context.

CR: Even if they didn't sound like everybody else, to say the least. But what contributed to that impression? I mean, why did people take it like that?

MB: Yeah. I mean, I guess you could understand that with Fun House. That doesn't really sound like a lot of other stuff that was happening. The first album, it's almost – you listen to it, and it sounds very '60s now, with the wah pedal, and the fuzz tone, and all that.

When you really stop to think about the musical structures, the things that they're doing, they really are connected to the blues, and they really are connected to rhythm 'n' blues.

But that's one of the points I make in the book, is that that had gone out by the late '60s. That's when you had all of these players trying to be real slick, and do concept stuff. So that basic rock 'n' roll sound had come to be seen as passe.

CR: Yeah, and I'm reminded of when I interviewed Jimmy Silver for my Goldmine piece. You may remember the quote, when they opened for Ten Years After, the guys passed the time in the dressing room, making fun of them, and doing impressions of them, calling them Five Minutes Later?

MB: Yeah, Ten Years After, they're the villains for a part of the book. Even in your Stooges article, at that period in '69, the Stooges played with them a few times, and really hated them, and hated their audience, and their audience hated them, so Ten Years After gets to be the villain. But they do sum up what we were just saying, I mean, because Ten Years After was playing old rock 'n' roll covers, and they were doing some blues rock, but they were doing it in a slick way.

CR: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, and of course, to what extent does the influence – and the isolation, or the relative isolation of the Midwest – play into all this?

MB: Well, I mean, again, they weren't isolated from everything. The Detroit sound was its own thing, and they were part of that, for sure. It's not like they weren't original, in any way. Of course, even in the Detroit scene, they were seen as weirdos, or whatever, musically.

CR: Again, to go back to this way that the Stooges are seen – of course, you've got the Ed Ward review, which is awfully condescending, to put it mildly: “Yeah, this is pretty crappy, you might see something in this, God knows why.”

MB: Yeah, I think the line is, “But the fun is infectious.” He spends most of the article slagging them, but then condescends to be like, “But it's fun.”

CR: But I guess, one of the other things that I thought of, did that reputation get baked in, in some ways?

MB: Yeah, I think that's true. That's also easy, to critics like Ed Ward – and that is a condescending review – but a lot of critics really liked them, like Bangs, and Marsh, and all those guys. They got a lot of really good reviews.

Sometimes, the good reviews were still driven by that, “It's a clear degeneracy,” kind of thing. But they got a lot of good press. Yeah, I mean, maybe Elektra could have done more, maybe they just didn't resonate, to an extent.

But one of the points I'm making in the book, and that other people are making – that was a big thing that Sinclair was telling me. He said the Doors got big, because Elektra pumped a lot of money into promoting them. And they didn't do that for the Stooges.

CR: No, and one thing occurred to me when I read your book, that popped into my head was, you could even see that, in the way they were signed – because the MC5 got a $20,000 advance, and the Stooges only got five [$5,000]. Kind of underscoring their position as not just an underdog, but almost as an afterthought.

MB: Yeah, right, and that's why you got to thank Danny Fields for getting them signed at all. But yeah. I mean, Elektra thought the MC5 was going to be the next big thing.

CR: For sure. A bit more conventional, in that sense. So what do you think was the key factor, then, in the Stooge evolution, between the first album, and Fun House? Two albums, that are worlds apart – hard to believe it's the same group of people behind them, too, really.

MB: I know. I mean, I think they had a vision. This is the thing – the standard narrative is, “Iggy had the vision. The other guys were kind of just of his backup band.”

CR: They were there for the ride.

MB: Yeah, but I think they all had a vision. At the time, they were really locked in, as a unit, and it wasn't just Iggy. I don't meant to discount, Iggy, obviously, but I mean, I think Ron's vision is just as important as Iggy's. And all the guys were – I mean, they were playing all the time.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to put your finger – it's hard to analyze that sort of intangible thing that happens, when an artist takes their art seriously, and puts their vision into effect, what's the chemistry behind that?

It's tough to quantify, but I think they had a collective vision, that they wanted to take a giant leap forward, and made it happen together, by playing all the time.

CR: Or, as Ron said, “We learned our trade by playing live.” And that, I think, is pretty much on the money.

MB: Yeah. And I guess Ron practiced a lot. There was that CREEM piece on the Detroit bands, where it talks about Ron practicing with Bill Cheatham. Bill was his understudy, and it talked of Bill being on Fun House, but then, he wasn't. But I guess Ron was teaching Bill the rhythm parts, so that he could work on his solos. So there was a lot of thought and effort and practice behind it.

PT. II: “JUST GO WITH THAT SOUND...”

CR: Well, and of course, when I finally got to hear the complete Fun House sessions... I spent, what was it? The whole summer of 2018, driving around in my car – which, I guess, is a very Stooge-like thing to do, and listen to these things – and what struck me about it was, it seemed much more disciplined and thought out, than we all had been led to believe, all these years.

MB: Right, even by the band members themselves – whether they just forgot some stuff, or they were purposefully, or maybe subconsciously, trying to create this myth: “It was almost all first takes.” No, it wasn't! There was, thirtysomething takes of “Loose,” or whatever.

CR: Forty-four. I mean, I spent a whole day or two, listening to those. It was almost like highway hypnosis, at a certain point.

MB: Yeah, yeah, I know. I've listened to the whole thing through twice now, and some of the other selections, just a number of other times. The last time I listened it through was in the early stages of writing this book, and I actually was driving back from a trip. And it was a 10-hour trip, and I listened to four of those (CDs), straight through, on that drive.

CR: Wow.

MB: Yeah. I know, but right, they were really intent on playing them, over and over and over, till they got the one that just felt right.

CR: Which is, in an odd way, very similar to the way that the Rolling Stones did stuff.

MB: Yeah, right, right. I've read a bit about the Exile On Main Street sessions, anyway. But with Fun House, the whole idea that it was basically just a live album just turned out, not really true.

I mean, in a way, yeah, because Iggy was singing live through a PA, but there's overdubs on almost all the songs, and it wasn't like the Kingsmen doing “Louie, Louie,” where they're like, “All right, go in. We wanna do a practice one.” “OK, go ahead.” “Wait, that's it, it's done.” “What?”

CR: Exactly. And then, of course, you have Steve Mackay as the X factor, which dramatically changed the sound.

MB: Yeah, absolutely. Steve Mackay's great on that. You know, it's weird – a couple of the reviews that came out, like Dave Marsh's review, and I think, Jazz & Pop, said something like, “These guys have a few things to work out yet, but I'm sure they'll end up being really good.” And it's like, “What? What are you talking about?” His playing is great on that album.

CR: Yeah, for sure, so you even still see a little of that, “What is this?” kind of stuff dogging the proceedings, with comments like that.

MB: Yeah, right.

CR: So, with that being said, when Iggy's asked, “How do you think they're going to take it?” He says, “I think the kids are going to flip out of their minds.” And some of them did, obviously, but not nearly enough. Why not?

MB: I don't know. I mean, again, part of it could be marketing, or lack of marketing. Like Iggy always says, he wanted to make music that he could get off on, the way that he got off on music that he really dug. So I think that they did that, and why that didn't resonate at the time for others, I don't know. I mean, it definitely doesn't sound like a lot of stuff that was happening out there.

One of the things that I'm arguing in the book is, by 1970, and really, a little earlier – but definitely by 1970 – the big thing in rock was going back to your country roots, like the Byrds, and the Dead. I mean, I like the Byrds, and I can even listen to Grateful Dead stuff, once in a blue moon, and the Band.

CR: They were the apostles of that, of course.

MB: Yeah. That kind of thing was getting really big around '69-'70, and the Stooges just didn't fit into that kind of zeitgeist.

CR: You also mention, of course, the '50s revival was starting to gather steam, too. And obviously, they weren't anything like that.

MB: Not really. I mean, they had the Bo Diddley beat on the first album, but they weren't overtly doing that in a recognizable way. So that couldn't be their shtick, or whatever. They were using elements of all that kind of music, but not in a recognizable way.

CR: Of course, as you point out, in the book – your here and now isn't working, so you're going back to some imagined halcyon time. And you can recreate this on your terms, and it's not a very exciting choice, right?

MB: Yeah. I mean, it's the narrative of authenticity. You think of the Dead and the Byrds: “We did that psychedelic thing, we were into the drugs, and we were into all that weird stuff. But now, we're into this real thing,” which is going back to, like you said, this idealized version of Americana.

CR: So I guess the Stooges didn't fit into anything like that, did they?

MB: No, I mean, it's that nostalgia thing that you see happening at the end of the '60s, and they definitely weren't doing that. And Alice Cooper wasn't doing that, at the time, and Alice Cooper was able to get gigs in '71.

CR: Well, because he, of course, and his merry men shed their artsier, psychedelic leanings on their first two albums, which – at times – sounds quite club-footed, to put it mildly, but it's entertaining, in that sense.

You're hearing them try all these weird things. But then, suddenly, when Bob Ezrin comes into the picture, it gets much more focused in the pop-rock realm, with some heavier guitars, basically.

CR: Yeah, I know, just poppy enough to get on the radio, but also hard rock enough, in a more structured way than their first two albums, that they're able to still keep their hard rock cred, or maybe even their new sound, hard rock cred.

They adopted Detroit, and I guess, Detroit kind of adopted them, and they took on that Detroit hard rock sound, and then, Bob Ezrin gave them just enough of that pop edge to get on the radio, which the Stooges couldn't do. The Stooges couldn't get on the radio, really.

CR: Not really. Even though, again, you go back to the first album, the shorter songs are are all pretty much to the point, and catchy, on their own terms.

MB: Yeah. Well, that's true.“1969” is pretty catchy, right. Just listen to it, on its own terms – it's catchy enough, that if there was promotion push from the label, who knows? That's what Danny Fields was arguing in that letter that's reproduced in the Jeff Gold book, where he writes to Jac Holzman, trying to tell them to do just that.

CR: Yeah. He's arguing, “You're missing the boat here, if you don't do this.” Although, when we get to Fun House, and they try the single there, what's telling is – the full-out assault, it's all edited out, before your ears are allowed to get to that point.

MB: Yeah, I think they edited the solo on “Down On The Street,” right?

CR: Yes. Well, there's that. And then, of course, you have that brief experiment, where Don Gallucci is doing his best Ray Manzarek impression...

MB: Yeah. That never came out at the time, though.

CR: No, but it's almost as if somebody upstairs felt, “We need to hedge our bets a little bit, so we can sneak this strange cargo across the counter.”

MB: Right. Yeah, like, “Is there anything you can do with this, make it a little more radio-friendly, or something?”

CR: “A little more presentable?” I mean, I have no complaints with what he played. What he played is appropriate. But it just ends up sounding like the Doors with a heavier guitar, maybe.

MB: Yeah, it does, it does.

CR: And it loses their identity, and I thought, “I'm glad that this didn't come out, because that would have been the wrong direction to go in,” as far as I'm concerned.

MB: Yeah. That totally would have.

CR: As you say, part of your book is how capitalism drives this stuff, this push, and this pull. They were able to get signed, and yet, from the very beginning, there almost seems to be this hesitancy on the part of the Elektra regime, to fully embrace what they have taken on.

MB: Yeah, exactly.

CR: So, from your perspective, when do things start to go south? When does it all go “pear-shaped,” as they say in the UK?

MB: I mean, in terms of just working with the label, or...

CR: Or even, in terms of the promise of the group, especially, because there's a lot of talent in in the original band, right? Scott's a terrific drummer, always knows what to play.

MB: Yeah.

CR: And Ron, need we say more? Ron is the guy that launched a thousand ships on guitar. And Fun House, for my mind, is Dave Alexander's peak as a bass player, really.

MB: Yeah, well, I mean... They fired him, what was it, three months after that, or something?

CR: I know. But, I mean, “Dirt,” and “Fun House,” it's that big, booming sound of his, that really drives the song along.

MB: Yeah, I know. You can really hear the difference between the two albums, the two Elektra albums. Dave's playing on the first album is fine, and he does a couple interesting little things, here and there, but like all the other guys, something happened in that year, where you hear his playing on Fun House, and it's just like, “Whoa, that bottom!” And his playing is doing things, like bending the notes in and out, and it's a heavy bass sound. And yeah, that group, with Steve Mackay? Just incredible.

I mean, this isn't that original for me to say, but I think the promise went south, once they realized that Fun House wasn't really selling. And then, of course, that's when the heroin came in, big time. So Fun House came out in August 1970, and a couple, few months later, it didn't seem to be going very well. The habits started getting out of hand.

CR: Yes, exactly. Although, as we see in that final chapter – and you make that point quite well – they almost pull it out of the ashes, even on the edge of oblivion.

MB: Right, right.

CR: There's all those songs, poorly recorded as they are, on that boxed set – which is the only evidence that we have of them, right? Yet it suggests, had they been allowed to, they could have made a pretty compelling third album, that – again – would have sounded nothing like the other two.

MB: Right. No, I mean – yeah, I think it would have been a great album. It's weird to me the way, more recently, that Iggy and James both have been, I don't know, critical of that material.

Maybe it's just the recordings, where it's hard for anybody who's not really into it, to just tune into the murk of the recordings. Obviously, it puts a lot of people off, but when you really do tune in, through the murk, the material itself – it's amazing stuff. It really would have been a great third album.

Then again, it would have been, probably not that marketable, which – aside from the drugs – was Elektra's issue. But who knows? There's a couple of pieces in there, that maybe could have been catchy enough for a single, or whatever.

CR: Yeah. Well, “Big Time Bum,” when I first heard it on YouTube – I thought, “This sounds like, if you had taken Mick and Keith and company, and fed them Mexican super meth (laughs). It's the Rolling Stones on meth, really.” But it has that raunchy rhythm 'n' blues-style drive, that you don't hear in other bands of that time period.

MB: Yeah, right. I mean, it's kind of a piece with “I Got A Right,” in terms of the tempo, and so on. Just a year later, the Stones are doing “Rip This Joint,” which is about the same speed, but a little more rockabilly-fied, there.

CR: And a little more cleaned up, obviously, to say the least.

MB: Yeah, yeah.

CR: Yeah, I've seen some of the comments on YouTube: “But I can't make out the words!” I think, “Just let the music carry you along. The music tells you what the mood's going to be, really.” It's not an issue for me, and it's not an issue for you, obviously.

MB: Right, right. Yeah, it's not, and that's a good point. Obviously, you can analyze lyrics as lyrics, and write about their meaning.

But there's another level, where you're just hearing the whole thing, and the lyrics is part of it, but it's a sound that's not analyzable, in the same way as just getting at the meaning of lyrics. And like you said, you can just go with that sound.

CR: To go back to the subtitle of your book – 1971 is where you draw your line of demarcation. Because there was a third album, Raw Power, and a different guitarist, in James Williamson – and Ron, of course, infamously gets shifted over to bass, and there's that whole drama.

MB: Right.

CR: So why is it not included in your line of thought? Why is that not the Stooges, or is just, Iggy & The Stooges?

MB: Well, it is the Stooges. I'm not even making a value judgment, about which is the better version – I think they're both great. I felt like stopping, and the band broke up there (in 1971). It's a natural stopping point.

There's a trajectory to the Elektra years, from when they started, to '71, that I track in the book. I think it's convenient for me, to those arguments that I'm making, because it does allow you to focus on the Stooges, how they were treated by Elektra, and their attempts to make the third album, and then, the breakup, and the collapse. It makes sense to follow that arc. And they pick up again, and the arc kind of repeats itself.

CR: Except, this time, it's [MainMan overseer Tony] DeFries, and Columbia, and not Jac Holzman, and Elektra, right?

MB: Right, exactly, but it's kind of the same thing, although the arc peaks and dips much more quickly, in the Raw Power years. But yeah, it seems like, the '67-'71 period is like a unit in their history, and they break up – it's a clean break.

At the time, that was it. Well, actually, there is the thing in the White Panther paper. They announce the breakup of the Stooges, and it does quote Iggy saying, he might use the name for something in the future. So that actually ended up happening, of course, but at the time, even Iggy and James, none of them knew what was going to happen.

The band was broken up. Iggy was like, “Yeah, I'll go to New York, and hang out in Danny Fields's apartment, and see if I can meet some people, and try to get something going.” But he had no idea that he was gonna be reforming the Stooges.

CR: Right, there were no guarantees.

MB: Yeah, so it was a clear break. The band was done. So, I mean, it seemed like a good stopping point. I guess, I don't know if this'll work out – it might not, so I'm not making any promises – but I've started trying to write an intro for a book, on the '72-'74 years.

CR: Yeah, because you could almost make the case for treating that on its own, just like you treated the Elektra era, really.

MB: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, definitely.

CR: We'll see how it turns out. Was there anything that surprised you about the Stooges, in all your research? Or something you learned, that you didn't know before?

MB: I mean, there's a lot of myths about the band out there, that aren't really true, and a lot of information keeps getting repeated, as if it were true, but it's not.

CR: Such as?

MB: Well, I knew you were gonna ask me that. I mean, one, which we've kind of already covered, is that it's all Iggy.

But really, they wouldn't have been who they were, without all four of those guys contributing. And Ron, especially, I think, didn't initially get as much credit for the vision of the Stooges' sound, as he does now... I'm not saying, that's all thanks to me, obviously.

CR: Right, right.

MB: But, boy, I think one of the myths is – when did the heroin start? Some people think Fun House is a heroin album, and it's not. OK, Iggy may have sampled it one time, in San Francisco, but even that, Iggy denies that.

And it was late summer, or early fall, really, when that stuff started. So Fun House is definitely not a heroin album. And then, “Loose,” “I'll stick it deep inside,” is definitely not about shooting up.

CR: No. Well, I never thought that, even when I first heard it.

MB: Yeah, I know. I never thought that, either, but I've seen people saying that. “What? And then, that makes you like it? That's why you like it?” You're crazy.

CR: Maybe that says more about them, than it does about us. OK. What else? Well, people treating them separately from everything that's happened, we've kind of covered that.

MB: Separately, yeah, I mean, and that's one of the main arguments of the book, that we've kind of touched on, this idea that they were punk before there was punk. Well, punk was already being talked about in 1970. It's not exactly the same as punk as we know it now, but...

CR: Right.

MB: So they weren't proto-punk – that's a term that I hate.

CR: You dislike that, you make that pretty clear, I think.

MB: Yeah, yeah, it's just a retroactive term. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's like, “Hey, guys, I've got a great idea for what we should call it! Let's call it proto-punk, and then, in 1977, there'll be some British bands that...”

CR: “That'll pick up on it...”

MB: Yeah (laughs). “And they'll call it punk,” even though it was already being called punk in America, from 1970 onwards. This is something, that if I'm able to manage to write book II, that I want to get into more, is because the punk thing actually does start to take off, in around '72, '73, even before the CBGB's scene.

The term starts getting used a lot more often, and people are defining it a little bit more specifically, than just like, an odd mention here or there, than something like Lester Bangs does there, or something.

PT. III: “THEY DID CREATE SOMETHING ORIGINAL”
CR: What is the thing that you want people to take away most from your book, in general, and the Stooges, in particular? What do you hope they understand?

MB: I would like people to understand that the Stooges were great artists, and that they thought about their art, and that they had a vision for it, and that they were pretty uncompromising in their vision, and it wasn't just a bunch of, “Oh, I don't know, let's just play some crazy rock 'n' roll.”

Like Ron Asheton says in that interview – I think that's a filmed interview – “People would see us onstage, and doing all this stuff, smashing things, and they'd be like, 'Oh, it's the Stooges, just being these crazy guys.'” But they actually were also very serious about their art, and they knew what they were doing.

It wasn't just random chance events that led them to do what they did, and I think they really wanted to create their own genre of music, that would be original. But I think that they thought that they could also be commercially viable somehow.

CR: Yeah.

MB: In retrospect, I don't know, maybe that seems a little far-fetched. But then again, that's the other part of the book is, we like to think that all this stuff is just random, “Oh, you know, people's tastes, and it was just ahead of their time.”

But the way that the music industry has a stranglehold on this stuff, and shapes people's tastes, and basically tells them what to like, plays a big factor in it. And the industry chose not to allow the Stooges to be a viable band for very long.

CR: Yeah, I guess, Culture Industry: 1, Stooges: 0, and all roads lead back to Paul Butterfield, at some point, is the box score, right?

MB: Yeah (laughs). I mean, I guess I didn't really talk too much about Butterfield. I mean, of course, there's the famous connection to Sam Lay, and Iggy's time in Chicago. But yeah, I know, the Stooges were pretty into those early Butterfield albums, as I recall.

CR: Exactly. Of course, you had the band that Iggy was in before the Stooges, the Prime Movers, who were even more overtly influenced by that kind of material.

MB: Yeah, that's another one of the myths. Because Iggy tells that story about coming back from Chicago: “I'm not gonna do the blues anymore, and I'm create something totally original.” So they did create something original, but it is actually, also, connected to the blues. There's blues stuff and blues material throughout the Stooges, but it's just not in that recognizable eight-bar form...

CR: That we're all used to.

MB: That we call the blues. That's not a completely original idea, either, but it's something that I think needs to be reiterated. There's a really great book on punk that just came out, pretty recently, by Evan Rapport, on punk. And he makes that point, too, that these early punk bands were a lot more connected to blues roots than we realize. It's called Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk.

CR: Wow. That's quite a mouthful, but I think that sounds promising.

MB: He's approaching it from a musicological standpoint, and also, a sociological standpoint. He transcribes, in musical notation, some of these songs – and then shows you how the early Stooges, and the New York Dolls, and he writes a lot about the MC5, as well – he shows you the connection to the blues roots that these bands have. Even the Ramones, who pretty overtly claimed they didn't have any blues influences, in fact, do.

CR: Sure. Well, they're using the classic I-IV-V form, again and again and again...

MB: Right, right.

CR: That's the early template that sets their style, right?

MB: Well, “Blitzkrieg Bop,” that totally uses the I-IV-V.

CR: So that's what you want them to take away, that's what you want them to know. That there's more here than meets the eye, and what you've been told is not necessarily true.

MB: Yeah, I mean, pretty much. On the one hand, yeah, there's an intangible quality that serious artists have, where they're taking that stuff, and transmuting it into something new – but it's not as if they're completely sui generis, as if they're not connected to history, or their own time, and place. Because, of course, they are.

CR: Absolutely.

Anyone can write a book. But only one thing matters, whether you convince someone else to take the risk, or self-publish – getting it over the finish line, and getting it out. For those who do make it – as Mark Andersen and I have managed, with our new book, We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher And The Last Stand Of A Band That Mattered (Akashic Books) – the result feels like running a marathon. You're elated and exhausted, and a little bit anxious, too. What will reviewers think, and how will people react?

Last month, I got to find out some answers to those questions, as I went on a book tour to the East Coast, after Akashic released We Are The Clash on July 3. While nearly everyone I knew looked forward to some badly-needed rest on July Fourth, I'd have to leave home for ten days, so I could join Mark for book signings in Washington, D.C. (July 6), Philadelphia (July 10), and New York (July 12).

We kept busy during our downtime, too, including a local radio interview in Takoma Park, MD (July 8), and a 45-minute one with our Philadelphia host, before our signing at Brickbat Books.

We squeezed in some related tasks, too, like hand-delivering a copy to Foo Fighters singer-guitarist Dave Grohl – backstage, no less, at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, after we'd caught the last hour of his band rocking a screaming, sold-out, 13,000-seat house.

For those who haven't toured the country, I definitely recommend figuring out how you're passing the time, because – like so many bands say – one mile blurs into the next, and one town doesn't look much different than the last one.

Or, as I told my friend Don, after stopping in Lucas County, Ohio, searching vainly for somewhere decent to eat around 10:30 p.m: “We must be on tour, all right. We're having dinner at McDonald's!”

But he'd volunteered to drive me down, right? That's the game.

Similar thoughts ran through my head on the return trip to St. Joseph, which required taking three trains – from New York, to Washington, D.C., and then, Chicago, and back home – for about 23 hours (no kidding!).

Sure, I got my fair share of sleep between all of these stops, but suffice to say, I felt like I'd run several marathons by the time it all ended. Still, We Are The Clash marks my second book with a Washington, D.C. area connection. My first book, Unfinished Business: The Life & Times Of Danny Gatton (Backbeat Books, 2003), focused on another previously untold story, that of Washington, D.C.'s late “Telemaster” of the guitar. I ended up making a major research trip to the area in 2001, and doing a couple of book signings in 2003, which is the last time I've made it out there.

For any author, book signings offer the nitty gritty flipside of all the hours that you put in – when you meet and greet readers, whether they've already bought your book, or waiting for you to sign it that night.

Whenever I felt my energy flagging, I'd think back on those nights, and the conversations I'd had. There's no other experience like it, which is why you do it.

“Pop Will Die”
We Are The Clash deals with the final two years of the British punk band's existence. That era started in 1983, when lead singer Joe Strummer kicked co-founding guitarist Mick Jones out of the band, which he aimed to remake in a leaner, harder-rocking, and more out aggressively political image. Only two years, however, the Clash would fall apart – and split up for good – after releasing its final album, Cut The Crap, in November 1985.

With help from three replacements – drummer Pete Howard, and guitarists Nick Sheppard and Vince White, all in their mid-20s – Strummer hoped to blow away the era's dominant trends of synth-pop and heavy rock. “Pop will die,” he vowed, “and rebel rock will rule.”

With rare exceptions, though, this story has only been told in bits and pieces. However, it's also one with a strong sociopolitical streak running through it, as our publisher's press release notes: “While the world teetered on the edge of the nuclear abyss, British miners waged a life-or-death strike, and tens of thousands died from U.S. guns in Central America, Clash cofounders Joe Strummer, (bassist) Paul Simonon, and (manager) Bernard Rhodes waged a desperate last stand after ejecting guitarist Mick Jones and drummer Topper Headon. The band shattered just as its controversial final album, Cut the Crap, was emerging.”

Suffice to say, We Are The Clash isn't just another sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll story – although all of those qualities make their appearance. As Mark and I feel, the issues that fired up the Clash's music through the '70s and '80s – and such heated political debate – still dog us today, whether it's social inequality, the growing political divide in American society, or workers' rights, to name only three.


“More Than A Footnote”
On those grounds alone, Mark and I hope that We Are The Clash will strike a chord with readers, whether they experienced them during the '80s, or didn't. And, whether they agree with our conclusions, or not, we also hope that our readers appreciate the human interest side of the story – including the Clash's May 1985 “busking” tour of northern Britain and Scotland, in which the band played impromptu “unplugged” sets for whoever showed up, and passed the hat after the finished, just like any other street performer.

It's an audacious idea that no major band has tried since, and one of many stories from this era of the Clash that haven't been told fully – until now. For Mark and I, We Are The Clash also puts an exclamation points on five long years of work, that also required launching a successful Kickstarter campaign, to help Akashic with the production costs – for which we raised $16,131, from 211 supporters.

What happens now is up to the public, and the reviewers – whose verdicts, so far, have proven sufficiently supportive, and encouraging, of what we've tried to do, such as this notice from Publisher's Weekly: “This is an inspiring take on the rock-band bio format, as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years. More than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.”

Six weeks or so after We Are The Clash dropped on the public, the road show behind has continued to roll on – with book signings in Chicago (July 30), where I joined Mark – who headed on to Minneapolis alone (August 1), and off to the West Coast, as part of his family vacation.

As usual, we squeezed in a couple joint radio interviews, too – If I need anymore inspiration, I'll only to recall Mark's words from our press release announcing the book: "I was a Clash fan from 1977 on, and the band was a tremendous inspiration for me as a teenager. But this period of The Clash -- for all its failures -- actually may have had an even bigger impact on the work I've done with Positive Force and other community projects since 1984."

For more information about We Are The Clash, visit www.akashicbooks.com.

The hunger for something tangible seems all the rage these days -- as anyone witnessing the return of vinyl can attest. The same situation seems to apply to 'zines, those gloriously cut 'n' pasted, hand-designed, errantly-stapled samizdat dispatches from some alternate universe where nobody gives a rat's ass about celebrity A-list circle-jerking...the latest auto-tuned pop something-or-other phenom...let alone the latest installment in some mercifully forgotten movie franchise.

No, 'zines serve a purpose, and more people seem to have reached the same conclusion, judging by the turnout I witnessed at the Grand Rapids Zine Fest (7/25/15), which took place at the Kendall College of Art and Design's Fed Galleries. Having planned on doing a 'zine myself for some time now, I decided to go and see how the field looked. After all, pundits and scenesters alike had been sounding the death knell of 'zines since the 2000s, when blogs seemed to have taken over the space that they'd occupied. The '90s era of zinesters-make-good-now-here's-your-book-deal seemed as unthinkable as an ashtray on a motorbike.

However, the energy on display in the room said something else to me, as my wife and I made the rounds of tables -- from anarchist-oriented, to feminist, to personal and back again, all the passion on display made me want to pursue my objective that much more. Given the heavy hand of tech developments like "Mobilegeddon," all of a sudden, paper looks like a better and better bet: you can hold it in your hand, you can put it down again. Hey, what a concept! I suspect that's one reason for developments like the return of vinyl records, and the apparent rebound of indie bookstores.

The day's bigger draws included Matt Feazell, best known for his series of mini-comics: "The Amazing Cynicalman." Fittingly enough, he gave a workshop on the subject -- and, 90 minutes later, I found myself creating my first one! Now that's energy in action, I say. The afternoon concluded with a workshop, where several exhibitors read from their own 'zines -- and, though I didn't have a table, I was able to read excerpts from one of my own 'zine's forthcoming articles. Hear it for yourself on the "Featured Songs" portion of this site.

Somewhere, somehow, an inner ring of true believer is doing its best to keep the cause alive, which makes me want to sign up all the more. The nature of instant publication is hard to deny, especially when you're used to publications sitting on your ideas for weeks -- or even months -- at a time, only to say "NO" anyway...or, worse, seeing them watered down through sheer attrition in the editing process.

While I can't leave these developments behind just yet, I've dedicated that it's time for my own outlet, my 'own zine -- and its name is DESPERATE TIMES, which will combine my lifelong love of outsider music and art with personal commentary, essays and reflections on whatever topic or issue might strike my fancy (though it'll most likely come wrapped up in a social bent). I'm working on it this week as I speak -- creating a look that dips into the currents of Punk and Mod, without permanently dropping anchors into the choppy waters of the past.

DESPERATE TIMES will cut through the fog of those '77-era ills that seem stronger and more noxious than ever -- cultural apathy, glaring social inequity, mindless media content, and narrowing of opportunities for the majority -- with humor, without a concern for the passing of trends, or falling into the common traps of art/cynicism for its own sake, or making lengthy lists of rules that everybody else but the compilers feel obliged to follow. DESPERATE TIMES will offer a voice to music and the culture on the margins, and -- in the process -- reclaim a space outside mainstream cliches of "elevator speeches", "media platforms" and "staying on message." DESPERATE TIMES will stake out a presence away from the gatekeepers' mindless power games of "thumbs up, thumbs down, what else you got, kid?"...and, hopefully, leave its own lasting imprint.

What happens from this point? Stay tuned, as I begin assembling the final product, and figuring out the usual distribution/promotion issues...but all I know is, after seeing all that energy on display, I don't feel like standing still.

Some of the most fascinating stories -- from a journalistic perspective -- are the ones that don't get told right away. In some cases, though, "right away" is a matter of definition. Just ask the members of Unknown Blues, who tore up New Zealand from December 1966 to June 1970.

Taking their name from a track by the Pretty Things -- whose August 1965 tour, along with a previous outing by the Rolling Stones, provided the jump-off point -- the Unknown Blues and their biker fan following, the Antarctic Angels, burned a permanent footprint into local fans' memories as a loud, wild and rude outfit to reckon with...drinking heavily from the well that yielded Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters...plus the amped-up white blues of Chicken Shack, Cream, and Fleetwood Mac.

And that's where the story sat after the band broke up. Like many local acts, then and now, the Unknown Blues remained a live phenomenon: aside from a couple of sessions that didn't satisfy the parties involved, the Unknown Blues left no recorded footprint behind.

And that's where paths diverged for the classic lineup: lead singer Dave Hogan has continued playing with various bands (Blues Hangover, Southern Lightning, The Paramounts). So does guitarist Bari Fitzgerald, who plays locally -- in and around the band's Invercargill stomping grounds.

The remaining members (bassist John "Rocket" Hancock, drummer Keith "Wmobie" Mason and lead guitarist Vaughan MacKay), on the other hand, left music and got on with real life. If you didn't catch them in their prime, you wouldn't have seen or heard the story -- which filmmaker Simon Ogston has now documented in this snappy, roughly-hour-long documentary.

The resulting DVD ("Antarctic Angels And The Unknown Blues") emerged, as we'll see, while Ogston set about documenting the story of another long-unheralded local New Zealand legend (Chants R&B) for a totally different documentary project ("Rumble & Bang"). From there, nature simply took its course.

But that's perfectly fine, because the Unknown Blues story is more than that of an inspired local band -- although that's the obvious starting point. It's also a great human interest story of five guys who had the time of their lives, but didn't give a damn, and have no regrets now. As far as I'm concerned...that's the perfect exclamation point.

Having stumbled across the story myself, I threw out some fishing lines to Simon, and the band, as well...and this is what emerged. Enjoy...and long live the Unknown Blues!

SIMON OGSTON (7/12/14 INTERVIEW)
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): First, tell me a little about yourself: how did you end up in the film business, and what did you do before starting Bellbird Pictures?

SIMON OGSTON (SO): I'm largely self-taught, I started working in TV in 2006 as a reporter, then started Bellbird in 2009 with the intention of making family history films, then went off the rails and started making doco's about underground Kiwi music

CR: You stumbled on the Unknown Blues Band while researching the Chants (story). How did that connection come about?

SO: I was interviewing someone about the Chants R&B and he told me that "if you think these guys were wild, you should check out the Unknown Blues". Up until that point very little was known about the band, just a very brief mention about them and the Antarctic Angels in a few NZ (New Zealand) books. Of course this lack of info added to the band's legend. Everyone who ever saw the group in or around Invercargill in the 1960s has never forgotten them.

CR: In a sense, both bands' stories follow the familiar arc that you see in films like "That Thing You Do!": band forms, gets some local notoriety, makes the odd record, then splits up and gets on with real life. What made you decide that both stories were worth telling?

SO: Yes, this is the story for most bands. I guess I'm interested in groups that pursue their own approach and in the process develop something that is distinctive to NZ rather than just mimicking overseas groups. With the Unknown Blues in particular, the story had basically been lost to time and I thought it was worthy of recording just because it was so out of the ordinary at the time - like in most Western countries, the late '60s were a time of significant social change in NZ.

CR: Tell me a bit about the lone Unknown Blues recording that features in the film -- where did you source that clip, and can you tell me where/when it was recorded?

SO: Somebody recorded that live performance off their radio at home, I'm not sure who. The band did record a few songs in a studio in Christchurch but these were ruined by engineers in bowties who insisted on overdubbing a brass section. The recordings have been lost, probably forever.

CR: The talent was certainly there, so why didn't both bands achieve more, you think, recording-wise? Why didn't they write more original material?

SO: Not sure -- I guess the concept of writing your own music was largely yet to filter into NZ at that point, most bands played exclusively covers, although their versions did differ significantly from the originals.

CR: Although both bands had strong blues/R+B leanings, they arguably fall into the proto-punk category, too...to what extent do you think is this perception accurate, or is it more a case of how "polite" (quote-unquote) New Zealand society viewed such endeavors at the time?

SO: I think the rawness of the Unknown Blues in particular is a connection with punk, a general preference for playing loose and raw rather than technical proficiency.

CR: I'm (also) thinking of the swastika affectations and images like (guitarist) Vaughan McKay playing in the Luftwaffe military jacket -- I'm intrigued at how that sort of imagery surfaced well before Johnny Rotten or the New York Dolls were toying with it.

SO: I guess the desire to provoke a reaction among a generally more conservative society has been around a long time. For most people it was the most shocking thing they could think of. Having said that, I would wager that wearing a Luftwaffe jacket into an Invercargill RSA in 1967 was considerably more dangerous than the exploits of Ron Asheton or Sid Vicious.

CR: As a biographer and historian-type myself, I know -- and so do you -- at how difficult it can be to pin down stories that weren't particularly well documented (or only sketchily documented, at best). What were some of the challenges that you faced in making both these films, and how did you deal with them?

SO: The main challenge, as always, is a lack of any funding. I found most band members' memories were pretty intact and everyone was pretty open about talking about it. Having such a wealth of photos was a real plus. It's a shame there's no film footage in existence.

CR: How's "Antarctic Angels" been received since its release?

SO: The Unknown Blues film has been popular among the gang/band's old cohorts, it's been a great way of bringing some old friends together. I think they're very happy the story has been preserved for posterity

CR: And the million dollar question: what's up next? Your website mentions a documentary on the Skeptics -- how's that coming?

SO: The Skeptics film "Sheen of Gold" is out now on Flying Nun Records, and can be ordered from their website. The next film will be on Phil Dadson and his percussive ensemble From Scratch.

CR: Are you done with music for now, or is there another great cult story somewhere in the pipeline, just waiting to be told?

SO: There's a few things in the works, we'll see what happens...

"...WE WERE MORE THAN READY TO BE CORRUPTED":
DAVE HOGAN RECALLS HIS UNKNOWN BLUES EXPERIENCE (8/02/14)

CR: The Keith Richards comments cited near the beginning of the film ("How the fuck can you stand to live here?") are priceless. What was New Zealand's music scene like before the Stones and the Pretties arrived -- and how did it change, since bands like yourselves (and Chants R&B) clearly drew so much inspiration from both of them?

DAVE HOGAN (DH): In short, very conservative. It was the era of short back and sides haircuts and every member of the Unknown Blues was definitely a “post war” baby. I was the baby of the band, born in 1949. When we heard The Pretty Things and Rolling Stones it was like nothing we had ever head before. On top of that they looked like nothing we had seen before and we more than ready to be corrupted.

CR: What other bands and/or musicians proved influential in your development as a frontman, and a harp player?

DH: Before the British R&B bands I personally loved early rock and roll. Elvis, Jerry Lee, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, etc. So that was the initial musical grounding.

CR: One of the fascinating elements in Simon's film, to me, is how those harder-edged London blues/rock sounds traveled so far away. What accounts for the appeal of that music, in your mind, and what kind of effect did it exert on the local scene?

DH: Like everywhere else in the world at that time there seemed to be the thought that you were either a Stones or Beatles person. New Zealand was no exception. There were plenty of conservatives and plenty of rebellious extroverts – the Unknown Blues definitely fell into the later category.

CR: Other than those Stones/Pretty Things tour stops -- what, do you feel, was the catalyst in your own band's formation?

DH: At school I was asked by the vocational guidance officer what I wanted to be. To which I replied a singer in a rock and roll band. I was about 14 years old at the time, so I guess what I did was a given.

CR: Throughout the film, there's definitely an element of "...their reputation preceded them, everywhere they went." What were some of the best and/or most riotous gigs, in your opinion? The best venues?

DH: The Cellar Club in Dunedin was always fantastic and our first ever gig at a Christmas Bible Class Dance in Invercargill was probably the most riotous and set the precedent for things to come.

CR: In many respects, you and the Chants could be considered proto-punk forerunners -- albeit with strong R&B leanings -- to what extent is this accurate, you feel, or does it say more about how "polite" New Zealand society viewed such goings-on? 

DH: Back in the 60’s a “punk” was prison term for young men who provided sexual favours to other prisoners. We definitely didn’t fall into that category, however I did enjoy the attitude of the Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, etc, when they provided “punk” with a new definition a decade later.

CR: I'm thinking, in particular, of some the more compelling images in the film, particularly Vaughn wearing that Luftwaffe jacket. -- a good 10 years before Johnny Rotten & Co. flirted likewise with such imagery (and six years if you count Johnny Thunder's swastika T-shirt -- don't know if you've seen that photo).

Obviously, you guys weren't fascists, but how does that imagery fit into the equation of the Unknown Blues' look, and sound?

DH: We like to provoke not just with our music but also with how we looked. Alongside Vaughan’s German Gear there were yellow jeans, pink Denim Jackets and our bass player “Rocket” was known to borrow clothing from his eldest sister’s wardrobe – and that was way before Boy George.

CR: Your adoption by the Antarctic Angels is another interesting element -- right away, I thought of the Bromley Contingent's early loyalty to the Sex Pistols as another common element with punk. What do you think the Angels saw in your music?

DH: Those guys were our neighbours, school friends and relatives. They were also up against the system and it seemed only natural that we fell in together and got into some very hard partying.

CR: Between you and Chants, the talent definitely existed to record a full album or two -- you were known mainly as a live phenomenon, so why didn't you achieve more in the vinyl realm, you think?

DH: The Unknown Blues were taken into a recording studio by a representative/manager from Viking Records and laid down two tracks for a proposed single. The tracks scrubbed up pretty well, but the record company representatives decided that we were a bit too rough and ready to be launched onto the New Zealand scene as potential pop star material.

CR: What factors led to the band's breakup?  Towards the end, as the Audio Culture entry on Unknown Blues makes clear, you had a fair amount of lineup changes -- was it a case of breaking up the original chemistry, or a lack of a wider audience for original music?

DH: Rocket left the band to move to another city. Vaughan got engaged to be married and plain and simple the gigs had dropped off.

CR: Looking back, what kind of imprint did Unknown Blues leave behind on the Kiwi rock scene?

DH: Internationally known Punk Chris Knox of Flying Nun records has said that we were a direct influence. Thanks Chris. Also, we have been mentioned in a couple of books on the history of New Zealand Rock and Roll. And Hell! We have been inducted into the World’s Southernmost Hall of Fame.

CR: How did you feel when Simon first approached you about making a documentary about the Unknown Blues' life and times? I imagine that you had to be surprised, since the story had effectively been lost to time.

Were there any surprises, for you, in terms of what people remembered (or didn't remember -- this being the '60s, after all)? What does Antarctic Angels say about the era in which Unknown Blues existed?

DH: First off, I thought Simon was stark raving mad to even suggest such an idea. I mean, who gave a shit about us? Then when I met and spoke to Simon he proved to be the nicest guy in the world and somehow he convinced me that such a project made perfect sense. I am so grateful he did.

CR: Seeing the reunion footage makes plain that -- as the old cliche goes -- it's like you'd never been apart. 

Do you see a day when the band will play again, or has an exclamation point has effectively been put on Unknown Blues' existence for good?

DH: Playing with the Unknown Blues again after a break of 40 years was truly one of my life’s highlights. However, as much as I would like it happen again, I wouldn’t put any money on it.

CR: Obviously, playing with a guy like John Stax keeps a foothold with your roots. What are your current musical influences, and how do you see yourself fitting -- or not fitting in, as the case may be -- with what's happening now? What's your favorite record of all the ones that you've made since the Unknown Blues era?

DH: I still love the Blues, The Stones and The Pretty Things, so what I play really hasn’t changed at all since I started. I love them all, but here is the time to plug a live album that Southern Lightening have just recorded. It contains all the good old stuff and it should be out by the end of this year.

CR: Lastly, any regrets -- or did everything happen for a reason, in the end? 

DH: I have always refused to regret anything, mistakes and all. Rock on everyone.

LINKS TO GO
AUDIO CULTURE: CHANTS R&B PROFILE: http://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/chants-r-b

THE UNKNOWN BLUES PROFILE: http://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/the-unknown-blues

BELLBIRD PICTURES: http://www.bellbirdpictures.co.nz/

DAVE HOGAN'S MELTDOWN: http://www.davehogansmeltdown.com/

THE SOUTHLAND TIMES: "Unknown Blues Band A Blast From The Past": http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/culture/5687368/Unknown-Blues-band-a-blast-from-the-past