Mickey Thomas Is The Voice We All Know & Love (INTERVIEW)

We first heard that megawatt voice on Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around & Fell In Love,” jolting us from our mid-seventies slumber of ballads and disco; where John Travolta had a Hot 100 single with “Let Her In” while Queen was going all “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was a strange year in music, 1976, and with Mickey Thomas jumping into the mix with his southern fresh vocal cords turned up a notch, he could have easily sidled in beside Freddie Mercury in an octave blasting duo. But fate had another adventure in mind for Thomas and that band was called Jefferson Starship.

“We went through a lot of transitions there,” former Jefferson Starship guitar player Craig Chaquico told Glide in an interview earlier this year about the not-so-subtle change the band went through in the late seventies just prior to Thomas joining. “Marty Balin, our original male lead singer, Grace Slick and our drummer [John Barbata] were all taken out of commission in the same year.”

Deciding upon a more edgier rock sound that floated away from the psychedelic wanderings of the Jefferson Airplane, producer Ron Nevison came aboard along with drummer Aynsley Dunbar. “It was an interesting transition for the band because the opportunity there was to emphasize different elements in the band that had been there before but really never had a chance to be featured,” Chaquico continued. “But we got lucky with Mickey Thomas and Aynsley Dunbar and a new producer and we kept on going.”  Chaquico had felt that “it was possible the band could have broken up without all the main singers and drummer.”

The recording that came from the new chemistry was Freedom At Point Zero, a shake the rooftop rocker, featuring the top 20 hit “Jane,” which spilled over into the next album Modern Times, upon which Slick returned. Bringing guitars, gritty vocals and powerhouse drums to the forefront, a new era brought new success to the once trippy San Francisco icons.

By the time the mid-eighties rolled around, Thomas’ vocals were being geared into more ballad-y pop anthems like “Sara,” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” and “We Built This City.” But after a while, music lovers turned away from the pastels and pulled on the dirty leather for metal and alternative music, leaving behind such talented musicians like Thomas to try and find a new niche within a new music world.

It’s now 2013 and lo and behold, Starship is still around, although Thomas is the only member from the heyday currently in this incarnation. They tour steadily, pulling in sold out crowds of fans happy to see them, and on September 17th of this year, they released a new album called Loveless Fascination that had them returning to their more rock-based roots. “[It’s] been really fun working with Mickey Thomas,” producer Jeff Pilson said in an interview with me this past spring. “What a vocalist. I mean, he is just incredible.”

Last month I had a chance to talk with Thomas about his career and new album, which clicks in all the right ways on songs such as “Technicolor Black & White,” “You Never Know” and the kicking title track. He was recovering from some oral surgery but he was more than enthusiastic to share with us fun facts from his life in music and how a band like Starship has found its place in today’s musical jungle.

I have to tell you that my very first concert was Jefferson Starship in Baton Rouge.

Wow. What year was that?

1980 or 1981

You know what I remember about that show? We played Baton Rouge but we were staying in New Orleans. So we were driving back after the show, and I think it was myself and Grace and Paul Kantner and maybe our publicist in a car together, and our limo broke down out there in the middle of nowhere, where it’s just like swamp on I-10. So we were stuck there and this van pulls over with some people who had been to the concert. I guess they noticed our limo by the side of the road and thought maybe it might be us and pulled over to help us. And out of this van there were about a dozen little people. So we were rescued by little people. I’ll never forget that.

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It’s interesting in that the new Starship album has a lot of the same elements as the music you were producing at that time, like on Freedom At Point Zero and Modern Times. It rocks. So what was the motivation for you to do another Starship album like this?

Well, you know, it’s been a long time coming for a new Starship album and I’m glad that you got that from it. It does sound more like the older stuff, more like Freedom At Point Zero, which we put out in 1979, because my intention was to create an album that did have more of a seventies feel to it as opposed to an eighties feel. You know, I’ve started many times over the last few years to make a new Starship album. I think that one of the problems was I kept trying to create what was our last biggest success, like the mid-late eighties kind of an album. Then finally I came to the realization that, no, what I really wanted to do was get back to the base, back to the core, back to being a rock & roll singer and make an album that is more of an edgy rock album that has more of a seventies feel to it as opposed to the sort of eighties real commercial success that we had. So I went back to basics. And I think it worked out really well.

Who is in the band now?

I am the only member from previous incarnations but the core of the band has been with me for a long, long time, and we’ve been together longer than any previous line-up all the way back to the Jefferson Airplane. My drummer and keyboard player have been with me for twenty years each and my bass player has been with me for sixteen years. The only reason I had to change guitarists is because we had a tragedy in the band last year when we lost our guitarist [Mark Abrahamian died of a heart attack in 2012]. So it’s Darrell Verdusco on drums, Phil Bennett on keys, Jeff Adams on bass and Stephanie Calvert, our female vocalist, and then my new guitarist is John Roth. They’ve been with me a long time and are represented on the new album as well, except for John, our new guitarist, is not on the new album.

Are you touring?

You know, we’re sort of always on tour (laughs). These days we tour year round but it’s more like a whole series of mini-tours rather than one big tour. We’ll go out on the road for three or four days and then home for two or three days and back out on the road for three or four days and then home for a few days. That’s kind of the pattern and we’re constantly doing that.

Why did you call the album Loveless Fascination?

I named it after the song. I decided that “Loveless Fascination” would be the title track because I just liked the way it sounded, really. And “Loveless Fascination” kind of lends itself to various interpretations so I thought it was kind of fun to say Loveless Fascination (laughs). It has a nice alliteration to it. And then I had a dream one night. I guess I was thinking about “Loveless Fascination” right before I went to sleep and I dreamed about the album cover, with the Mandrill with the multi-colored face in the middle of the jungle staring at his reflection in a serene jungle pool. So I woke up with that image in my head and that kind of sealed it. I thought, that’s it, Loveless Fascination.

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The cover is beautiful. Who created that?

Well, thank you. The concept was mine. Like I said, I kind of dreamed that vision and then I kind of related the picture I had in my head of the album cover to an artist, Ioannis, who is a pretty famous artist. He does a lot of books and he just recently did a Led Zeppelin book. So I kind of related it to him and then he took the image and expanded upon it and made it more of a bigger, broader scene and added the birds and the waterfall and made it a bigger jungle scene. Made the ape smaller and the jungle bigger.

What would you say was the surprise song on this album? The one that almost didn’t make it on there or the last one to come in?

The last one to come in was “Technicolor Black & White.” You know the overall theme of the album, most of the songs were about relationships, whether they were good or bad; kind of personal, intimate themes. And we decided that it would be nice to have one song that had more of a topical theme, something to do more with what was going on in the world today with the news and the media. So “Technicolor Black & White” kind of came on right at the eleventh hour. It was the last thing that we recorded and the last vocal I did and it’s emerging as many people’s favorite.

How has your songwriting changed over the years?

You know, hopefully, you get better. I think what I try to do now, I try to step outside of myself more, almost like a third party concept where I think the ideas come better when you can kind of step outside yourself and maybe pretend that you’re someone else, someone who’s good (laughs). And that seems to help me a lot.

You worked with Jeff Pilson, who helped produce this record. What was it like working with him?

Working with Jeff was great. Jeff was the most important aspect out of all of it because he’s so talented and so multidimensional, not only as a producer but what he brings as a songwriter. And he’s also a tremendous musician. You know, he not only plays bass but Jeff played a lot of the guitar parts on this album too. So he’s also a great guitarist and has tons of energy. He’s so exuberant and very creative, never runs out of ideas. Plus our personal chemistry, as soon as we got together, the album just completely came into focus. It was like the album took on it’s own personality, and we were just on the same page instantly about what we wanted to do and what we wanted to create. And those kinds of relationships are great, where you didn’t even really have to discuss it sometimes. You just know that you’re both thinking the same thing before you even talk about it.

How did you hook up with Jeff?

I started out making this album with a different producer, who I had worked with on a blues project. I did a blues album a couple of years ago and the producer that worked with me on that kind of came on board initially to just help me out with the Starship album, maybe just produce a couple of tracks. He knew Jeff and worked with Jeff on several projects in the past. So he turned me on to some of Jeff’s songs, which I thought were great songs. And ultimately, the relationship with that producer didn’t work out but he connected me and hooked me up with Jeff. So something very positive and very good came out of that relationship anyway.

Do you think you will do another blues project?

Yeah and actually I’m going to be doing a couple of songs on Elvin Bishop’s new album. You know, I started out with Elvin many, many years ago and recently in the last couple of years Elvin and I have reconnected and we’ve done a couple of things together, a couple of Blues Cruises that we did together, and we’ve actually started an album with another artist from actually down in your neck of the woods, a guy named Tab Benoit. So we have a project in the works with Elvin and myself and Tab. We kind of worked it up to a certain point and then our schedules got all crazy and went sideways. So that one is still on the backburner but we’ll hopefully complete that at some point too. And Tab’s another guy who is multidimensional – great singer, great writer, tremendous guitar player. And he’s a great drummer too, which a lot of people don’t know.

When will Elvin’s album be out, do you know?

Probably early next year, I would think.

When “Fooled Around & Fell In Love” became a monster hit, you were still really young in the business at the time. What was it like having that happen so early in your career?

You know, it was great. At the time, I was twenty-five years old, I think, when I recorded “Fooled Around & Fell In Love” and at the time you don’t think of yourself as being that young and you think you’re worldly and already have this wealth of life experience. But that was until I had kids who are twenty-five years old (laughs) and now sometimes I have to stop and remind myself of what I was doing when I was twenty-five years old (laughs). But it was great and a great learning experience because the Elvin Bishop Band was a real talented band, great musicians, and we toured a lot. We were probably on the road 250 days a year. So it was a great learning experience, doing all those shows and kind of learning how to do it, how to be a better singer, how to take it from the studio to the stage.

Did that help when you went into Jefferson Starship?

Yes, it definitely helped me a lot because the Elvin Bishop Band, you know, we were pretty big, had a big single, but we were never a band that was big enough to fill up arenas, stadiums. But we toured with a lot of bands who did. Back in the seventies we did a lot of tours with Lynyrd Skynyrd and with the Allman Brothers and with ZZ Top and Bachman Turner Overdrive. So I was really kind of accustomed to playing real large arenas with twenty or thirty thousand people. So that helped me, I think, when I first joined up with the Jefferson Starship. I wasn’t intimidated by that whole process.

What was it like working with Aynsley Dunbar?

Aynsley is legendary, a legendary drummer, so it was not only great working with Aynsley as a drummer and as a musician but it also made life easier for me because we both joined the Jefferson Starship at about the same time. We were kind of the two new members coming in at once and that made it easier for me because it made the whole band feel more like it was a new band, like we were all kind of starting over and reinventing the Jefferson Starship at that point in time. He’s just a fantastic drummer, you know. He’s got great blues roots but also a great rock drummer. He played with David Bowie, with John Mayall; right before Starship he was in Journey and he also did an album with Whitesnake. So he’s an icon.

I heard that you actually attended a Beatles concert.

I did and that’s kind of what started it all for me, was going to see The Beatles in 1965. I was fifteen years old and saw The Beatles in Atlanta, Georgia, at the baseball stadium. My best friends and I all went up together and it, obviously, changed my life. We saw The Beatles and the next day, Monday, we get back to school and, ok, that’s it, we’re starting a band. And we did. One of my best friends was in the marching band, he played drums, so obviously he became the drummer. And another one of my best friends was left-handed so we said, “Well, McCartney is left-handed so you got to play bass” (laughs) That’s kind of how we decided what our roles were going to be. I mean, we were terrible but we were just learning how to do it and that’s what started it all for me.

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What was it like to experience them live in person?

You know, we had seen the old black & white news reels of Beatlemania and what was happening but once you are there and you experience that in person in the moment, there is no way you can describe it. It was just complete pandemonium. What was always special about The Beatles is we knew from the get-go that this was something that was about so much more than just music. The Beatles changed the world as we know it; not just musically but culturally, and we knew nothing would ever be the same again after The Beatles. And being there and seeing that firsthand, and I’m not exaggerating, there was a girl behind me through the whole show that did nothing but pull my hair and beat me over the head with a program screaming “Paul, Paul” the whole time. And I’m like, “I’m not Paul” (laughs) but she didn’t care. It was life-changing, you know, mind altering.

Who was the first real rock star that you ever met?

Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that. Let me think. Maybe it was Question Mark. Do you remember Question Mark & The Mysterians? [they had a hit in 1966 with “96 Tears”]. When I was about sixteen I met Question Mark. They were playing down in, I think, Miami and I was on vacation down there and I saw him sitting by the pool. I remember I just went up to him and he had his sunglasses on and sitting there all cool, and I said, “Are you Question Mark?” And he just lowered his sunglasses and goes, “Yeah, man, I’m Question Mark.” (laughs) So Question Mark. One hit wonders but a rock star nevertheless (laughs)

Mickey, what still excites you about playing music and singing?

Gosh, you know, a lot of things but I guess more than anything it’s just the romanticism of it, I think, more than anything. Being on stage and feeling the magic and remembering the magic that I felt when I saw The Beatles; or back in the early days, why you wanted to start doing it in the first place. And invariably at least once a night, it seems, on stage that feeling comes back to you, the timelessness and the romanticism of what we get to do. We’re lucky people.

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How have you kept your voice healthy all these years?

I’ve been fortunate. I guess it’s just good genes more than anything. I probably owe it to my parents, my voice, because my voice has been very good to me. It’s stayed with me and I have the same range that I had when I was in my twenties or thirties. But I think it has more of an edge and more depth to it now. It’s like, I kind of kiddingly tell people, I still have the same range that I’ve always had but at this point in life I finally learned how to scream (laughs). I’ve got a good rock & roll scream to go along with it now. I met an opera singer once and we were talking about taking care of your voice and this, that and the other, and she said, “You know, I used to do this and my vocal cords are so delicate now and it’s always this or that, and finally I realized that the best thing you can do is just beat the shit out of your vocal cords.” You know, really, just make them used to taking that kind of abuse because vocal cords are not made to do what we do on the stage every night with loud amplifiers and speakers and all that stuff. You just have to beat them into submission.

This summer you did Raiding The Rock Vault in Las Vegas. What was that like?

That was a lot of fun, really, really fun. The guys who are involved in that are all super nice people and great musicians. It’s always fun to kind of step outside of your element a little bit, out of your comfort zone, and take on a new challenge, work with new people and try different things. So the Rock Vault was really fun and a great experience and hopefully I will get to do it again sometime in the near future. I did “Jane” and we did “We Built This City” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” My female vocalist, Stephanie Calvert, came on and sang that song with me.

How did you originally find Stephanie?

We decided that we wanted to add a female vocalist to the band so we went looking and she was the first person who came our way. I was on the road and my wife called me and said, “You don’t have to look any further. You’ve got the girl.” It was the first. She sent her audition tape, a video, and so after we saw Stephanie, I said, “Yep, you’re right.” Then we had a show in Vegas right after that – she lived in Vegas then – and she came down and met us at soundcheck and sang a song and that was it. You know, that’s been my experience quite often in my life. It seems like when I need to replace someone or add someone to the band, more often than not, it’s the first person that shows up. Fate, destiny, kismet, whatever you want to call it, but that just happens to me a lot. It’s like, the person that needs to be in my life is just sent to me. I’ve been very fortunate in that regard.

Who inspires you musically today?

I like a lot of new bands. Muse is really, really good. Muse inspires me. I like MGMT’s first album and then they kind of went south on me after that (laughs). Have you heard of Lorde? The singer from New Zealand? I think she’s about seventeen years old. Great singer.

How does a band like Starship get heard in today’s music world? In the old days it was all rock & roll all the time and now it’s not.

Right, it’s tough because we don’t have radio to rely on like we did in the eighties, where you put out a single and at least you know it’s going to get a chance to get played and get heard. We don’t have that anymore. We have to find new ways and more creative ways of getting our music to the people. It’s a slower process but fortunately the label that we’re with, Loud & Proud Records, realizes that and realizes what a different world it is today as far as getting music to the people and working an album and they realize it’s going to be a real slow build. So social media comes into play a lot, like Facebook and Twitter and things like that, and talking to people like you, trying to get the word out there, get people to listen to the record because I’m really proud of it. I think it’s a great record and I think if people get the chance, the opportunity, to hear it, they’re going to like it.

Where can people find your record?

Starship is on Facebook and our website is www.starshipcontrol.com  and they can go there and find all the info about shows and links to where to buy the album. Probably right now the best place to get the album is at Amazon.

 

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