Billy Zoom is in his shed. Chances are, though, his shed is a lot cooler than my shed or your shed. I’m picturing a room with lots of cool guitar gadgets, perhaps a TV and a comfy chair, away from the bustle of a household that includes teenaged twins. With coronavirus out there in the world, Zoom is probably a lot more normal nowadays, more like you and I, than the punk rock legend from X that is usually out on the road playing in sweaty clubs to happy fans. “I’m trying to get caught up,” Zoom told me about his pandemic activities. “You can’t go anywhere. I have this to-do list that I was up to the end of 2014 when the pandemic started so I’ve just been going down that list. I think I’m up to about 2017 at this point. Our governor shut us down again this week but I’m pretty socially distant to begin with so it’s not that hard on me. I go back and forth between the house and my studio, that’s about it.”
X, the perennial punk band that exploded out of Los Angeles in the late seventies, is not usually one to sit at home. They love and feed off of the excitement of the live music. They always have. With the exception of drummer DJ Bonebrake, the other members of X – John Doe, Exene Cervenka and Zoom – are all Midwesterners who made their way to the sun and scene of California, where they launched into their brand of punk after Zoom put out an ad looking for other musicians to play music with a different twist. “I give Billy Zoom most of the credit for including rockabilly in punk rock music,” Doe explained during a 2017 interview with Glide. “The Cramps did it to a degree but with the kind of guitar playing that Billy had or does, nobody else did that at that time. And I think he did it because that’s what he knew. Like for the intro to ‘Johnny Hit & Run Pauline,’ which is a takeoff on Chuck Berry’s ‘Promised Land’ intro, I think he just did it on a whim.”
“In LA, the live music scene was kind of dead. We thought, with a number of other misfits, that we’d kind of try to revive it,” Doe continued about the roots of X. “I think we wanted the simplicity and the speed and we didn’t want the seriousness; we wanted a little more melody and more fun and freedom.” Forty-plus years later, X is still an electrifying experience onstage. Earlier this year, X released an album of new material titled Alphabetland and last week it saw it’s debut on vinyl. Called a “jolt of energy” by Spin Magazine, the album indeed is thrilling. Like typical X, it at times feels like it could go spinning off its axis like a thrill ride but inevitably hangs on to the rails and the listener finishes up with the adrenaline pumping for all the right reasons. Kicking off with the title track and ending with a Jazz-time piano spoken word, Alphabetland is proof that X ain’t rusty.
For guitar player Zoom, his rollercoaster with the band coincided with the rollercoaster of his life away from the music. He’s had a few health scares but bounced back healthier, with some new knees to boot, and sense of dry humor intact. I spoke with Zoom recently about recording the new X album, the early LA punk scene, his guitars, Jerry Lee Lewis and playing live in the rain.
X released an album this spring and now the vinyl is coming out. You are a techy kind of guy. Do you like the digital age, in terms of recording, more than the old-fashioned analog ways?
Well, garbage in, garbage out. I don’t know. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with it. I like that it’s easy but when they’re recording me it’s easy and I like that but I think making music with a computer, I think that’s opposite brain sides for me, if that makes any sense. I think one is left brain and one is right brain and I have trouble merging the two.
Do you find some things less frustrating?
Well, you get to cheat a lot. You’ve got millions of options and you can fix things that you would normally have to play again. In the old days, we’d just play something forty times until everybody got it right at the same time. Now, we take a break and Rob [Schnapf, producer] fiddles with his computer. It saves time for me but we take a lot of breaks while Rob fiddles with the computer. Overall, it actually comes out faster but I have to work less. We still do things mostly live though. We go and track the songs live and then we’ll go back and redo little things and stuff. When we’re cutting the basic tracks we’re all there. But then John and Exene go in by themselves and do their vocals and I’ll go back by myself and do guitar solos and things.
You had worked on Alphabetland and then stopped and then went back and worked on it and finished it up earlier this year. Is that how it went?
The beginning of last year we went in the studio and did some recording. We weren’t planning an album yet, we just did some recording to see what would happen and it came out pretty well. Originally, we were thinking maybe a single or something or some kind of promo thing for our record company. But anyway, it came out really well so they sent us back in. That was January of 2019, the first couple of weeks, and we went in and cut four or five songs or something and then right after that I had both my knees replaced and I was down for a few months. Then we were out on tour the rest of the year, right up until the end of December. Then this year, January and February, we went in and made the rest, did enough to make an album. And we were going to go on tour after that and then that didn’t happen.
You have always had that 1950’s sound in your guitar playing and “Water & Wine” certainly highlights that. It’s like you’re just riding a wave all the way through that song. Was that some riffs you already had or did they come after you heard the song?
I don’t know, it was kind of spontaneous. For me, that was the easiest song. When we got to the guitar, I just did it. That’s more of the way I’m playing naturally. The other stuff I had to think about a little more cause some of the stuff, I don’t know, it’s melodic and takes some time to figure it out.
Like what song?
Now I have to remember the names of the songs. The one with the Dick Dale kind of lick. “Star Chambered” maybe. Anyway, I kind of blew through the lead on that pretty fast but then I went back and added that harmony guitar to it and that was hard. That took a lot of thought. I had to figure out a harmony for it that fit as there’re two guitars there playing together in harmony. The first one went fast but then the harmony part I had to figure out note for note.
In the video for “Water & Wine,” you’re not playing your silver Gretsch. Is it retired now?
Kind of. It’s in there a little bit but I play that one [in the video] all the time now. I love that guitar. That was the main one I used on the record but there’s still some of the silver Jet and one part I did with a Kay that was laying around the studio and some of it’s my Danelectro bass guitar and some of it is a Gibson acoustic. But those are just little parts here and there. 98% is that big Gretsch.
Is that instinct, knowing which guitar to pick up?
I usually have an idea what sound I want and if I’m not getting it with this I’ll try that, you know.
In terms of your guitars and your rig, what have you altered the most over the years?
I always built my own amplifiers and they’ve kind of evolved but I think I was always going for the same thing. I’d get closer as time goes by. I have to build them because nobody builds what I want. An amp should be able to do more than one thing, more than a dozen things. You should be able to dial it anyway you want it and nobody builds that so I have to do that.
How long does it take you to do that?
The actual physical building of it? A few weeks or a month. It depends on how much time I’m putting into it. I have my life and then I did that probably over a period of about a month. But designing it means sitting down with a piece of paper and a pencil and drawing it and imagining what different circuits are going to sound like and then going from there doing actual parts layout on paper and then putting it together. It’s a process. I don’t copy things. That’s like playing in a cover band. At this point I can visualize in my head what I need to get a particular sound.
When you first started playing guitar, what was the hardest thing for you to get the hang of?
I don’t know, bar chords were a little hard at first. My hands were small. I actually started off with a tenor guitar, which is four strings, cause I was only six years old and my dad’s tenor guitar was always in the corner and I started playing on that. Then shortly after that I got a six string and that was where I learned bar chords and stuff and that hurts in the beginning, especially if you’re little and have small hands. I don’t have that problem anymore. My hands are plenty big (laughs).
What was the biggest challenge learning banjo?
It wasn’t that different from guitar. I had a few violin and accordion lessons but I took piano lessons for a few years – I had a couple of years of piano before I started guitar. I just kind of picked that up around the house. Then I had clarinet and saxophone lessons and all kinds of theory and arranging lessons and stuff. Most of it I’ve forgotten. Guitar was just kind of a hobby thing and I was studying the other instruments seriously. Then somewhere around the onset of puberty I realized I could get a lot of attention playing guitar, much more than I could playing in the marching band or the Jazz band or something.
I read that your aunt played during showings of silent movies
My great-aunt, yeah, the theatre organ and piano. My grandmother was her sister and my grandmother played piano and accordion and stuff too. The whole family is pretty musical. There were always instruments around – piano, guitar, accordion, banjo, clarinets and saxophones. They were just there and if I asked my dad, “How do you play this?” he’d kind of give me a lesson and show me how to do it.
Do you know where your family came from, your heritage?
They were around the Midwest – Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio – but if you do the ancestry thing, I do have ancestors on both sides of my parents families that came over on the Mayflower; not on the first voyage. So we’ve been around for a while. I’m still trying to trace down my great-grandmother or my great-great grandmother. I know she came over here in 1835 from Edinburgh but I’m having trouble researching beyond that. I don’t know how to do the research in Scotland.
When did you first get your hands on a Gretsch guitar?
Probably in the music store when I was fifteen. But the first one I owned was a 1957 6120 that I got at a pawn shop in Hollywood for $250 and that was in 1975, I think. But I had wanted one for years. As close as I ever got, I had an old Guild Starfire with Dearmond pickups and Bigsby, which is as close as I could get until I found that one in the hock shop.
What attracted you to the Gretsch in the first place? The sound or the look?
I think both but mainly the sound. I was into Cliff Gallup, who played with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Duane Eddy. That was just a standard sound when I was growing up. I liked the Gretsch tone. Then I learned they are actually the most versatile guitar there is. You can make them mimic other guitars too.
You originally loved Jazz and I assume you still love Jazz. What made it so special to you and how have you tried to incorporate that into your music?
I don’t play Jazz that well so I don’t know how much I incorporate it but I like it. I suppose I use a lot stranger chords than other punk bands (laughs) but I’m not really that good at it.
But you got to see some of the greats growing up
Oh yeah, I saw a lot of Big Bands. When I was fifteen I went to the Stan Kenton Music Clinic in Bloomington, Indiana, for a couple of weeks. But growing up, I think the first Big Band I saw was Woody Herman and then I saw Count Basie a couple of times and Duke Ellington, the Dave Brubeck Quartet several times and Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton of course; a lot of those groups.
You are known for bringing that rockabilly/fifties sound into X but when you started X, you were looking to do something different yet keeping elements of the rockabilly.
I had sort of an epiphany the first time I saw the Ramones live. I just thought, you know, I could do that but mix in a little bit of this and come up with something different but it would all fit, you know. That’s sort of what started it, putting an ad in the paper for a bass player and drummer and I think the ad said something like, “Eddie Cochran meets the Ramones.” A lot of that is just me trying to sound like the Ramones and that’s as close as I could get. I wasn’t trying to copy the Ramones, cause they had already done that; I was trying to build on their foundation. I really liked them. They were really an important band. The Ramones music to me had a big retro content. It sounded like sixties rock and pop but simplified, stripped down and kind of on steroids, you know. And I liked that and thought, you know, it wouldn’t be that hard to fit the rockabilly stuff in with that.
Why did you like Johnny Ramone so much?
I thought Johnny was a great player. I liked Johnny and he was a good friend. I liked hanging out with him. There was an interview, an article I think, I can’t remember which guitar magazine it was, but the interviewer said something derogatory about Johnny Ramone during the interview and I kind of got on his case and said, “You know, I think he’s a great player, I’ve seen him a bunch of times and I’ve never seen him make a mistake. He’s got a great concept and he sticks to it. I don’t know if he can play solos or not and I don’t know if he can play Jazz or classical or not. I don’t care. That’s not part of what he’s doing. He’s doing what he does perfectly. And I don’t know anybody who could do it better.” And that ended up in the interview and then the next time we played New York, we got to our hotel and there was a note at the desk from Johnny Ramone inviting me to dinner and to hang out, which I did and we were friends from then on.
What kind of kids were showing up to X’s early shows?
I don’t know if it was that many kids in the beginning. The original punk crowd was probably my age so twenties, early thirties. You know punk in the seventies was a pretty urban centralized thing and each city had it’s own little punk scene and there wasn’t a lot of co-mingling. I was in Hollywood so it was mostly thirteen/fourteen/fifteen/sixteen year old runaways who were living on the street and stuff. That was it, them and the older punkers and then later on after it had been going for a couple of years, the kids from the suburbs started showing up and that kind of changed everything on the scene.
Do you think the ones who did show up got what you were trying to do with your music?
I don’t know if they knew who Eddie Cochran was but they knew we were misfits like they were. The original punk scene was basically a bunch of misfits and people who just couldn’t seem to fit into society, most of them. There were also a few well-off, normal people who were trying to be punk because they thought it was cool. But most of us legitimately couldn’t function any higher than that.
You’re not a big fan of how Ray Manzarek produced the X records. Where did he go wrong in your eyes?
I don’t know, I don’t want to trash Ray. He was a nice guy and I don’t want to say anything bad about him. I just wasn’t happy with his production and I wasn’t happy with his choice of engineers and I don’t think those recordings are very good. The thing about Ray most was he hated the sound of punk rock guitar and if I played something that sounded like other than punk rock he’d go okay. But he hated distorted chords and he would always try to change the sound at the board, you know; no matter how good it sounded in the room, he’d wreck it because he didn’t like that sound that I was going for. And that’s why I love working with Rob cause Rob gets it and I play it and it’s recorded that way.
How long have you known Rob?
Since the eighties. We used to be neighbors when I lived up in LA. I think it was shortly after he came out to the West Coast and he showed up with an amp for me to fix and then we started hanging out and that was around the time he was living a few blocks from me and he recorded that Beck song “Loser.” He recorded that in his spare bedroom on a little 8-track and a Maxie mixer and I was really impressed that he was able to do that.
The X song, “Unheard Music,” has different textures within it but the guitar intro is perfect for that song. How did you come up with that?
As I recall, it started like most X songs with John just having a fragment of a song and he’d play with it at rehearsal and we’d just kind of play together and it just happened. But it does have a few different sections that are different. It was kind of fun, you know. Then adding Ray on the record was kind of an afterthought. We didn’t plan that, it was just Ray was there and DJ’s organ and Leslie were there and we said, “Let’s try the organ and see what it sounds like.”
As a live band, when do you think X was most on fire?
We’re pretty good now. I don’t know how to answer that. Most of the time we’ve been pretty good live, we’re a good live band, better than our records. But the real fun time for me was in the seventies before we had records out, when we were playing the Hong Kong Café and Club 88 in Los Angeles. That was fun. The audiences were so good and the clubs were small and sweaty. They were just fun to play, like a big emotional release when we’d hit the stage, you know.
X is so great playing these small, sweaty, hot box clubs. When you started to move onto bigger stages did you feel the need to alter anything to translate better?
We felt a need to, and we tried to, and that didn’t last very long cause it didn’t work. First time we played the Greek Theater in LA, it’s this big outdoor amphitheater thing, we were about twenty feet apart from each other and they had my amp backstage and running through the monitors. It was just horrible. Then the next time we played there, we found out they have these curtains on the side that they can pull in to make the stage smaller and we got a little closer together. By the third time we played there, we were bunched up in a little wad in the middle of the stage like we would be in a club. That worked good cause we could actually hear each other again. So yeah, we had some experiments with trying to play bigger places but it works best if we just play like we play; not be intimidated by the size of the stage.
What about the people? Didn’t matter if there were 30,000 people out there?
Well, you know, you can only really see a couple hundred, if that, cause the lights are in your eyes and it’s dark in the back of the room. So you play to the people you can see.
How did Vietnam affect you?
January of 1968, I got called up for my induction physical and I was really sweating it cause 1968 was not a good time to be sent to Vietnam and I ended up flunking my physical. They gave me a 1Y. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t want them to think I was complaining or anything. I was afraid it was a mistake and they’d review it. They sent me a letter and said I was unfit for military service under current standards and I framed it and screwed it to the front of my amplifier. I had friends that I’d grown up with who had gotten killed in Vietnam and were over there fighting and stuff. I had some friends that went to Canada to avoid the draft. I wouldn’t have done that. I would have fought if I had to but I didn’t want to. I don’t think I’d make a good soldier anyway.
Where were you living at the time and how were the people there reacting to the war?
I was in Davenport, Iowa and mostly they drank beer and threatened hippies. There were no protests, except once the neighborhood café refused to serve us because our hair was too long and some of us marched around in front of the place for an afternoon.
What was the first song you obsessed over as a kid?
“Tubby The Tugboat” probably but the first real record was “Cocktails For Two” by Spike Jones.
What did you think of Elvis?
My mother really liked him and she bought all his singles. I thought he was interesting. I was pretty young when he broke nationally; it was like 1956 and I would have been about eight years old. I do remember playing guitar and wiggling my legs and doing an Elvis impersonation when I was eight. I don’t think I really got it but I heard the records a lot and it sort of stuck in my subconscious.
Was it Elvis or Scotty Moore, his guitar player?
I don’t think I was that impressed with Scotty until later. But Jerry Lee Lewis was the one that really flipped me out when I saw him on TV, cause my mother didn’t like him cause he was wild. They wouldn’t let Elvis get that wild on TV. He had to tone it down when he did Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen and Dorsey Brothers and stuff. But Jerry Lee went crazy when he was on Steve Allen and of course Steve Allen hated rock & roll. When Jerry Lee stood up and kicked his piano bench backwards and went sliding across the stage, Steve Allen grabbed it and slid it back so it came flying back out and you couldn’t see Steve Allen cause he was off-camera. I still like Jerry Lee a lot.
What about Little Richard?
I loved Little Richard. I always tried to play tenor sax like Little Richard sang. He kind of sang like a really cool saxophone. But I also play guitar and try to imagine that I’m playing Jerry Lee’s piano parts, you know.
Were you into the blues at all growing up?
Not when I was growing up. I didn’t really hear much of it. A little bit of Jimmy Reed but I wasn’t really exposed to it that much where I was. I got a lot of country & western and a lot of soul R&B, which I still love and I love playing that kind of stuff, the Stax stuff and Muscle Shoals and those guys are my idols.
And the Rockabilly?
Oh yeah, of course. I really liked it but when I was a kid it was really hard to get those records. In fact, by the time I knew who Johnny Burnette was, you couldn’t buy his records in the US. When I was doing session work for Rollin’ Rock Ron Weiser, I did a recording session with either Jackie Cochran or Mac Curtis or one of those guys, but my pay was a Johnny Burnette Rock N Roll Trio album that Ron had brought back from Europe, cause you couldn’t buy them over here. You couldn’t buy Gene Vincent records either. When I was playing with Gene Vincent, we tried and tried to get Gene Vincent records to listen to, cause I kind of remembered “Be-Bop-A-Lula” but then the other ones, I vaguely remembered them and I didn’t remember the guitar part.
Why were his records not in America?
They were out of production, they were gone. Once the record was off the charts, it was over in the US. Of course in England and Europe and Japan, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran were huge stars. Over here, they were just one-hit wonders. Once “Summertime Blues” and “Be-Bop-A-Lula” were over, you couldn’t get the records anymore. Or Little Richard. I remember at Tower Records I couldn’t buy a Chuck Berry record except for “My Ding A Ling.” I actually got thrown out of Tower Records. I got eighty-sixed from there for getting in an argument with the manager because he told me I had bad taste in music because I didn’t want the stuff that he was selling. I didn’t want Elton John. I wanted Chuck Berry and Little Richard. They had Elvis Presley from Blue Hawaii on but nothing before that. My mother’s records were all 78’s and they’d been broken by the time I was nine or ten, you know.
Have you been to Graceland?
We played Graceland. They have gigs there. There’s like a soundstage across the road from Graceland and they have shows there and when you’re onstage you’ve got that big Elvis spelled out in red lightbulbs that was his backdrop when he did his comeback special. We got our own little private tour of Graceland. They took us over and showed us things that people don’t usually get to see. They still wouldn’t let us go upstairs but they did let us see a lot of the stuff.
What happened when X first went to Europe?
Well, we were on Slash so there was no real budget and we didn’t have work visas or anything so we couldn’t tell them we were playing over there so we didn’t bring any instruments; except DJ, I think, brought a cardboard box with some cymbals in it or something. But I had to play a borrowed guitar, which was kind of funny. The guy who was representing Slash Records in England said, “Oh I got a friend with a guitar just like yours except it’s black.” And I said, “Just like my silver Gretsch?” “Yeah, except it’s black.” “So it’s a Duo Jet with a Bigsby. I can play with that.” So I get over there and it wasn’t a Duo Jet, it was like one of these sixties rock Jets or something. It was a completely different guitar with two pickups but one was missing and the other pickup was taken apart and parts of it were in the case and there was a Bigsby but there was no lever on the Bigsby. So I had to get kind of creative on that. But other than that, it was great. We played a couple of shows at Dingwalls and we played, I think the Nashville Room; I can’t remember, we’ve been over there a few times since then and I get confused but I know we played Dingwalls on the 4th of July, 1980.
How did you go off over there? Was this before or after the big punk scene?
This was after. They were over it by then. This was the summer of 1980 by the time we got over there and of course we had singles out but our first album didn’t come out until 1980 so I think probably most of those who’d been into punk thought we were latecomers and didn’t take us that seriously. But we did draw crowds and they were great. The audiences were really good but I don’t think we got a lot of attention from the press or anything because I think they thought we were kind of latecomers, trying to cash in on what the English had going, which was not true. I mean, we were X before we ever heard of those English guys. We didn’t know they had English punk rock bands when we started. The Sex Pistols album didn’t come out over here until 1978. But anyway, it was fun, had a good time, got to go up to the MG factory which had just closed but it was still there. I got to go to a record store and I bought Johnny Kidd & The Pirates Greatest Hits album cause that was another thing you’d never been able to get in the US. They were an English rock & roll band and he did “Shakin’ All Over;” he had a bunch of hits and then he got killed in a car wreck in 1966.
Is that what you like to do when you go overseas, seek out records?
In those days I did because you couldn’t get those records in the United States; they didn’t exist. So I’d ask my English friend what could I get while I’m over there. Like, we’d never heard the Shadows in the US; we’d never heard Johnny Kidd. All we knew were the British Invasion bands.
Do you still have a lot of those records?
Oh sure but it’s all on YouTube now and you can buy it on CD now. You can get it over here. Once the Stray Cats hit, you could get anything cause it was all reissued over here. But it was pretty rough in the late sixties, early seventies to get any of that stuff.
Were you on the lookout for guitars as well?
I wanted a Gretsch 6120 and I used to carry a picture of Eddie Cochran in my wallet and I’d go in the hock shop and say, “Ever seen one of these?” and I did that for years and then finally one showed up at Elliott’s Hock Shop on Santa Monica Boulevard and he wanted $250 for it and I had to put it on layaway and pay him like $25 a week.
What song in the X catalog do you recall as taking the longest to get right in the studio?
Let’s see, generally in the early days we were always in such a rush in the studio cause we didn’t have enough money to stay there. If something didn’t work we just didn’t do it. So nothing on the first two albums. On the Elektra albums, I don’t know, it’s hard to say. “Bad Thoughts” was hard for a while and Ray wanted to give up on it and I had to really talk him into it: “We’re going at it wrong, let me do something different.” It took a little convincing but it worked. It’s like one guitar but it changes tone during the song so what it had to be was one guitar for the first third of the song and then go back and add another one over the top of it that comes in towards the end then goes on past that and then another one starts over with another guitar. And I had to layer it like that. One would fade in while another one faded out.
Did you ever play that one live?
We do now, yeah, but we do it differently. DJ plays vibes on it. We’ve got another guy in the band, Craig Packham. Craig plays drums and rhythm guitar. So there are a number of songs that we’d never done live, like “Come Back To Me” or “Bad Thoughts,” and there are a couple of others that we never did cause there wasn’t enough of us to do it. We’re basically a power trio instrumentally and there just wasn’t enough to fill in. Anyway, so now we’ve got another guy that comes out to play some of the songs and he’ll play drums and DJ will play vibes and I’ll play saxophone.
What do you remember about playing at Farm Aid in 1985?
It was pouring rain, coming in at about a forty-five-degree angle and everything around us was covered in plastic. I didn’t want to get my guitar wet. Brian Setzer was on right before us and he played some kind of heavy metal solid body guitar, cause he had to stand up at the front of the stage and he got soaked and he didn’t want to get his Gretsch wet. So instead of his Gretsch, he played some kind of solid body heavy metal looking guitar. But it was 9:00 in the morning. There’s a really good live recording of “Burning House Of Love” on YouTube, though.
How do you play a 9:00 show?
If you’re still awake from the gig the night before you can. We played the night before in Houston then got on the bus and drove all night and went straight to the Farm Aid in Illinois. So it was basically driving all night to play for free in the pouring rain to benefit the same farmers that used to point shotguns at me and throw beer cans at me. That’s the way I saw it at the time.
Are you still sitting and playing during shows?
I’m still sitting. Who knows what I’ll do next time we play since it’s going to be a while. My knees are okay, it’s just at my age and weight I feel kind of silly standing like Billy Zoom. And it’s easier to play sitting down. I’m trying to age gracefully, you know. I feel silly standing up there trying to look cool cause I’m just this old white guy.
You are cool
That’s what I keep trying to tell my kids but they’re not buying it. My son and daughter just turned fourteen. My son saw me play once, my daughter has seen me play twice. The second time I asked my son if he wanted to go, he said, “I’ve seen you once, that’s good.”
You know, we’re all excited about the new album and I brought a CD home of it right after we mixed it and they all came in to listen to it and my daughter looked at me and said, “Is this old music?” And I said, “No, we just finished it.” “Sounds old.” “What you want? A drum machine and an auto-tune? This is what we do.” And they left. However, my son can fix the computer and he can fix my cell phone. While I’m reading the instructions, he just goes in and does it. I don’t know how he knows. I grew up always being good with tech stuff. Now, I can read the instructions and I can figure it out but I can’t do intuitively like they can. They just know which button to push.
Is there something you still want to do?
If I could do what I wanted I’d be in a twelve car garage with a car collection and be tinkering with those. But I do have a couple of Austin Healeys. I like English cars a lot, English sportscars.
Do you feel like you have accomplished what you originally wanted to do as a guitar player?
No, but I don’t know if anybody ever does.
Live photos by Leslie Michele Derrough
