By Peter Lindblad
It was a golden era for concert albums, and few were better than 1979’s Head East Live!
It was a golden era for concert albums, and few were better than 1979’s Head East Live!
Cheap
Trick at Budokan, Foghat
Live, Alive! by KISS, UFO’s Strangers in the Night, Frampton Comes Alive … so many scintillating
live recordings were released in the mid-to-late-‘70s, and they helped break some
of the biggest-selling artists of that age.
Bursting forth from America’s Heartland halfway
through the decade with a hard-rocking fervor fueled by urgent vocal harmonies,
driving guitars, barreling drums and a mix of beguiling keyboards, Head Eastwas already an AOR success story by the time they put out 1979’s Head East Live!
Coming on the heels of Flat as a Pancake and its high-flying single “Never Been Any Reason,”
the record harnesses the propulsive energy and barn-burning instrumental heat
of a band at the peak of its powers and the utter joy of an audience having a
rollicking good time. It’s still revered as a touchstone of classic rock. And yet,
its rise up the charts stalled at #96 on the U.S. Top 100 back then, thanks to
record company bungling.
Head East hopes history won’t repeat itself with Raise a Little Hell (http://www.cmerecordsandfilm.com/), the latest live LP from
the classic-rock radio stalwarts. Formed near the end of the turbulent ‘60s,
Head East – which began life as TimeAtions – was based in East Central
Illinois, with many of its core members attending the University of Illinois. There
was singer John Schlitt, drummer Steve Huston, guitarist Danny Piper, bassist
Larry Boyd and keyboardist Roger Boyd – although Piper and Larry Boyd would depart,
replaced by bassist Dan Birney and guitarist Mike Somerville.
They started out playing teen centers and graduated
to bars, slowing building into one of region’s hottest acts. Not happy with
their name, the band was open to suggestions, and in 1969, colorful roadie
Baxter Forrest Twilight supposedly came up with Head East after an all-night
acid trip.
By 1974, Head East wanted more, and with money they’d
accumulated on their own, they went into Golden Voice Recording Studio in South
Pekin, Ill., to record Flat as a Pancake,
a funny jab at the topography of the land they call home. Midwest rock radio
went gaga for Head East, with KSHE 95 in St. Louis and KY-102 in Kansas City
leading the charge, playing up the rousing anthem “Never Been Any Reason” to
great fanfare.
Then came the ‘80s, and things started to fall apart,
as internal problems bubbled over. Schlitt was sacked due to his substance abuse.
He would later find religion and surface with Christian-rock heroes Petra.
Somerville and Birney left the band, and Head East suffered creatively and
commercially.
It’s a new day for Head East, with original member
Roger Boyd still manning the wheel. He’s joined by bassist/lead guitarist/vocalist
Greg Manahan, lead guitarist/vocalist Glen Bridger, drummer/vocalist Eddy Jones,
and lead vocalist/bassist Darren Walker – who’s a dead ringer for Schlitt – in a
lineup that takes no prisoners onstage.
 |
| Head East - Raise a Little Hell 2013 |
The Rock Candy boutique label in the U.K. has
reissued Head East Live! Together with
Raise a Little Hell, which mixes
vintage Head East classics with new songs like “Prisoner” and is named after the old Trooper hit, these two releases represent
the old and the new Head East. Roger Boyd talked with us recently about Head
East’s history and its new direction.
Why
come out with another live album now?
Roger
Boyd: Well, people keep asking me that. There are a
couple of reasons: No. 1, this is the only live album we’ve ever done anything
with promotion-wise or pushed besides our 1979 double live, which was just
reissued by Rock Candy, which you probably know. Yeah, it finally came out on
CD and Rock Candy out of the U.K. got the rights to it, so we’re pretty
cranked, which I’m happy about because people will quit bugging me about it …
which they’ve been doing for about 10 or 15 years. The other thing is, so this
album really [shows] the guys have really matured in recording and our live
performances. We’ve really got something that’s worth time and money pushing
it, and live is really where Head East has always been. We’ve always been
considered one of the premier live rock groups in the country, playing and
singing live, and we just felt that we wanted to try and capture that magic
interaction between the audience and ourselves, and so we decided to do another
live thing.
It
does really make for a vibrant, good-time concert LP. Where was this show recorded?
RB:
Actually, it was a combination of two shows – up in northern Illinois, in
Rockford, and we had a good show there, and at the big Oneida Casino in Green
Bay.
That’s
up around my particular part of the country.
RB:
Yeah, we played up there a couple of times – great rock ‘n’ roll people, and
that’s always been a wonderful market for us, and WAPL, the big rock radio
station out there, has always supported us a lot, so it’s a good venue for us.
Not much retouching on it. Most of what you hear is what you get when you’re
out catching a band live.
I
really enjoy “Elijah” as a set closer, and I really like this version of “Love
Me Tonight.” What are some of the highlights for you on Raise a Little Hell?
RB:
Well, obviously, “Raise a Little Hell” (laughs). Trooper toured a little while
and opened up for us many years ago in Canada – really fun bunch of guys. And
it always sounded like a Head East song, a song we would have written and done.
And one of the things is, of course, radio is so brutal these days, especially
in classic rock. And the resistance to playing anything new is unbelievable. We
always loved the song, thought it sounded like us, so it’s like they go, “Well,
we don’t want to play new music,” and we go, “Why not?” And they go, “Because
we don’t know if anybody’s going to like it,” and we go, “Wait a minute, ‘Raise
a Little Hell’ got some decent airplay …” And actually, their record company
should have broken it bigger. And so it’s fun, it kind of reflects where we’re
at, and we also thought that may help us with airplay. And “Prisoner” – I’m
talking about the new songs now – is a song I really like because it’s a
wonderful story song, we did an incredible video with it which we shot down in
New Orleans – which is going to come out with it – and it’s a little something
different, hit a little different kind of market … you know, some of the
stations that are not straight-ahead rock. I guess overall I just like the
whole thing. I like the mix of the new stuff we did with some of the old stuff
that people would expect to be on a live album.
It
really does capture that fun vibe the band’s always had. Did you really want to
document that and give people something they could play in the car on a summer
day?
RB:
Well, I think our music has always been something you could play in cars. When
we were on A&M, they said, “You guys sell more 8-tracks than anybody else
on the whole label.” I said, “Well, I don’t know if that means we’re such a
great party band or it mixes well with engine noise or it’s better when the
hood’s down on your car or what.” And I always said that the Midwest, where
people rock – which really is the rock part of the United States … I mean
people up in the Northeast and out in California, that’s not rock. Rock is more
the heartland of the country, culturally. So in your cars … I mean, people
spend a lot of time in their cars, you’ve got to travel further and listen to
music, and it works really well. That’s what we’re shooting for, and also for
me, personally, it’s a really nice bridge between what everybody calls the
original act with [singer] John [Schlitt] and [drummer] Steve [Huston] and [guitarist]
Mike [Somerville] and [bassist] Dan [Birney], when he’s around, and then the
guys today, because [singer] Darren [Walker] and John could be twin brothers as
far as the vocal sound is concerned. And so for me, I’ve kind of come full
circle with another band that can totally sing, that’s got two real dominant
writers, except for Steve’s really low voice. I mean vocally we’re stronger and
really identical to what the band was in the ‘70s. So I kind of wanted to show
the bridge between that, because you always get some flak from people, “Well,
you know, who’s all original?” And I go, “Well, who from the 1970s has got all
the members left in the band?” I mean, it’s like Tom and three other guys. Unfortunately,
everybody’s lost some people in their band, so I have maintained the integrity
of the sound of the band, so the band sounds … unless you choose to go off in
another direction, and I’ve never wanted to do that. I’ve always loved our
sound and that’s what we do. That’s our signature sound, so it shows the branch
between the group of guys we have now and the guys we had back then.
How
much input or control over the sound did you have? Were you pretty involved in
how the live album came out sounding?
RB:
Yeah, pretty much. I’m starting to get to the age now where some of the years
of pounding sound and monitors have taken a little bit of a toll. So Greg
[Manahan], our bass player and the guy that wrote “Prisoner,” has got an
excellent ear. So he was pretty involved in it as well, and he did some of the
engineering to help me out there. But I’m still pretty involved in the sound,
and I’m happy to say I think after 40 years of rocking and the kind of pounding
I’ve taken, my ears are still pretty consistent.
You
formed in 1968 in the Midwest. Some of the guys were going to the University of
Illinois. That was a volatile time in American history and an amazing time
musically. What prompted you to start a band, and what were those early
rehearsals like?
RB:
Well, actually it was ’69, instead of ’68, but you’re right on the money with
what was going on in the country – all the upheaval and the social change. And
at the time I was just playing teen centers and stuff and trying to augment my
scholarships in college. I went to college because I wanted to be a college
professor. I love the college scene, but there was so much going on in America
and rock was there. I mean rock was in the center of it, and all of a sudden,
we got together in ’69. John was going to the University of Illinois. He and my
brother played. And we practiced all summer in our fraternity house, and Aug.
6, we went to play this college club, and we thought we were getting paid. We
changed our name to Head East over the weekend. We played a teen center on
Saturday. Well, we found out the guy was not up front with us, and they just
had bands come audition on Monday nights, and so all the locals and the college
people came and they’d throw ice cubes at the band and tell them they weren’t
very good. And man, we came out singing Crosby, Stills & Nash and Three Dog
Night, and we had rehearsed every night for a long time and we just blew
everybody away. They kept us six nights a week the rest of the fall and winter,
and we were just hotter than a pistol and really got our chops together.
And then Steve and John wanted to … it was they
couldn’t go to school and keep playing, and they wanted to finish their
degrees. And my brother and I wanted to keep playing, so I left school, and of
course, my family was absolutely thrilled about that. But then when Steve and
John got graduated in ‘73, I went through some changes and we had some really,
really good bands, with some female vocalists. We had dual vocalists for a
while, and a couple of those folks that went on to some good success. Got them
back in ’73, and the expressed purpose was doing an album. We’d always been a
big regional band for years, and you know, in 1974, we cut Flat as a Pancake on our own label, took the risk, which everybody
said you couldn’t do and that meant that if we could, boy we were really on the
right track. Back when people weren’t cutting their own albums, like they do
today … I mean, today everybody does it. I mean, there are kitchens with the
technology now. And then, in ’95 … you know, I always thought I’d be out of
school in six or eight years, and with all the success we had, I just never
went back. And in ’95, there were some shifts in the business, and it primarily
went to summertime, and it was time to go back and finish that dream. So I went
back and went straight through – finished my bachelor’s, master’s and
doctorate, and then taught at the university level for 11 years.
Oh,
you did?
RB:
Yeah, so I got my B.A., and I taught sociology and criminal justice and then
family counseling, substance abuse and stuff – from a lot of life experience in
the music business, having lost a lot of good friends, close friends, to that.
So I taught that and so my wife and I just stepped down two years ago from
university time – had done enough there. And the band was at a point in time
where I thought this stuff as a business we had something to take a chance, to
make a push and take a shot at.
You
mentioned that you put that first record out on your own, and you had your own
record label, Pyramid Records. That must have been somewhat unusual back then. You
were DIY before it was cool.
RB:
Well, yeah. We were one of the first bands to ever do that, and the problem I
saw with bands at that time was more bands would make demos and try to sell
them to a record label. So they would spend a thousand dollars, or so, on the
recordings, and the recordings sounded like they were rough demos. And I said,
“Well, shoot, we’re a big regional act, and the country people were selling
stuff offstage,” although rock never had the kind of success country did. It
was a different kind of crowd. But, I said, “Why don’t we really spend some
money and do something that’s really good, instead of just doing a little
demo?” So we risked $15,000, which people were going, “Oh, my God,” and we did
it. And we came out with something that could compete with the coasts. It
sounded like the record label had given us $40,000 or $50,000, which at that
time was a lot of money – today it’s nothing. And so KHSE 95 radio in St.
Louis, and then KY-102 in Kansas City picked it up, on our own label. And it
was already a hit in those two markets, and then it went to A&M, and of
course, they did a re-release. But in fact, this past Thursday night, they just
did a rockumentary called “Something in the Water,” and it looked back at the
emergence of KC and the AOR FM format, that transition and what was going on
culturally in America, and us and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, who obviously
had national success, and then a band called Mama’s Pride and Pavlov’s Dog for
St. Louis, and it talked about the combination of the rock bands coming out of
the market and KC radio breaking new acts and AOR and the ‘70s – it’s
wonderful. And it’s online, and it’s on the web and people can see it. And the
people who did it [Kathy Bratkowski, producer] did a sensational job, did a
wonderful job. And it had contemporary production, which came from one of the
bigger promotional companies, Steve Schankman – they were all part of it. The
Mississippi River Festival, with its event, and then Bob Heil, who did the PA
sound at the request of Pete Townshend that was in the round that brought about Quadrophenia. So, as a story, it was just
fascinating.
So, that’s what happened. We just happened to be, as
you know … sometimes the stars just have to line up. The stories about the
differences between people really making it and breaking it, and people not …
like Mama’s Pride was going to be big, and they ran into Ronnie [Van Zandt],
the guy from Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Ronnie loved the way [the brothers] Pat and
Danny [Liston] sang together, that sibling harmony, and he wanted them to tour
with them and travel with them and sing with them. And then, two weeks later,
their plane went down and that was it. One day they looked like they were there
and on their way, and as Pat said, “Well, we could have been on the plane, too,
and been dead.” So you can look at it that way, but that was it. Their run,
their shot at it, was over. So ours was coupled by … we took a risk, did our
own record, had worked on our songs for over a year before an audience, which
helped work them out. And then [general manager] Shelley Grafman at KSHE says,
“I love the sound as much as anything. Our station is coming on strong. We want
to see how strong FM is and AOR rock is, and I want to break the record,” and
he did.
I
wanted to ask you about Golden Voice Recording Studio in South Pekin, Ill.,
where you recorded Flat as a Pancake.
What was the place like and what do you recall about those sessions?
RB:
Well, Jerry Milem was one of the premier studio designers in the country, and
he was out of this little town just outside of Peoria, and he wanted somebody
to cut a hit record. And it was nice, and it had nice equipment, and he cut us
a really good deal, which also helped us out because our money went a lot
further. We never could have done that in L.A. or New York or Nashville. And of
course, back then, you just had like reverb and slapback and tape loop
(laughs). So, you pretty much had to get your sounds out of having good
instruments. We had really good equipment, and we just rehearsed the songs so
well that we cut the whole thing in less than 10 days. We basically went in and
set up like a live band and played it and sang it and there you go.
What
do you remember about recording “Never Been Any Reason.” Did that seem like a
hit to you right away?
RB:
No, actually, it was “Love Me Tonight.” (laughs) Well, because AM radio was
still the dominant format, and “Never Been Any Reason” was too long, and we
felt it was too heavy. We felt in order to go Top 40 that “Never Been Any
Reason” would open the market on FM, but then “Love me Tonight” … in fact,
David Kirschenbaum from A&M Records came through and they wanted us to let
the Bay City Rollers do “Love Me Tonight.”
Oh,
is that right?
RB:
But then we wouldn’t be able to do it, and so we declined, because we thought
they would immediately follow up with “Love Me Tonight.” “Never Been Any
Reason” just became so overwhelming that then people wanted us to … they didn’t
want us to go to some of the softer, more melodic stuff we did. They wanted
more heavier rock like that, but we knew when the album was played back – there
was just me and [Mike] Somerville and Tom [Byler], the engineer, in the studio
on playback, we knew some magic. In fact, Mike said something to me, “Well, you
never know how big it’s going to get, because the public decides that.” But I
knew we were making our money back, which was great, and we knew we captured
something. You can just feel it. I mean, it’s only happened maybe three or four
or five times, you know. I mean, bands … even the Stones, who have done 40 or
50 albums, they’ve captured magic maybe eight or 10 times. It doesn’t happen
that often. There’s so much difference between a magical cut and a really good
cut. And that’s why when everybody said, “Well, I think that’s a hit record” …
well, then everybody else did too. I mean, you just don’t think, you feel that
there is something about them, and they’re not always the smoothest recordings.
There’s just about them that grabs people. You know, we knew that, but we were
a bit surprised that “Never Been Any Reason” became that huge. I mean, there’s
no way you can project that.
What were those years like from ’74 to ’75? It
must have been a whirlwind for you guys.
RB:
You just really grab the back of your britches and try to hang on, because when
they break, as you know, the demands on your time are just unbelievable. And
back then you went to a radio station, or maybe two radio stations, and you did
an in-store, to sound check, maybe another big media break with magazine or
newspaper interviews, to doing a show, to signing autographs or doing stuff
afterwards and then jump on a bus … next. And also, when you’re the opening act
for a while, it’s your break and it’s really brutal because you’re fighting for
time, and trying not to be in the “take your seat with the beat” and the house
lights are on, and they give you 25 minutes and you’re not making any money.
And psychologically, you go from being a big regional act, where everybody
loves you, to being an opening act where a lot of times people don’t
necessarily know who you are. They’re there to see the headliner. For a lot of
bands, it’s not the talent that’s the problem; it’s the mental jump from being
a bigger regional local band to trying to be a national band and not
understanding that you have to go through the whole pecking order to make the
jump.
Going
back in the studio to record Get Yourself
Up and then Gettin’ Lucky, after
the success of Flat as a Pancake, how
much pressure was there to recreate the success of that first record?
RB:
Tremendous. Absolutely tremendous, and one of the other problems is we did Flat as a Pancake on our own and we just
did what felt really good, and we never, ever, ever were able to do that,
because as soon as you were signed, you’re signed. And then all of a sudden we
had all the management, you’ve got the record company, you’ve got the booking
agents and all of a sudden you have all this extra influence, and it really
gets hard to start out. Like Gettin’
Lucky, we wanted to call that album the Trifecta.
We already had the cover together and everything else. The only state in the
country that doesn’t bet a trifecta is California, and they go, “We’re not
going to release it as Trifecta.” I
go, “You’ve got to be kidding.” And they go, “Well, nobody knows what it is.” I
go, “Only in California, and this isn’t our biggest market.”
So we had to go back in and Steve and Mike wrote
“Gettin’ Lucky.” We had to go back in and record that, change the whole title
of the album, which pushed the release back and everything else to do that. And
I mean, it’s running into those kinds of things, and then the live album, the
double live, which was just re-released by Rock Candy – still considered one of
the best live albums ever done – and we were 52 with a bullet, and A&M
changed their distribution right in the middle of when the album was out. We
couldn’t get records out in the stores for five or six weeks. It killed the
album at the time. So all those other kinds of things come in, plus the
pressure to continue to top whatever you did before … I’ll always remember,
Elton John came out with one of his albums and he only sold three and a half
million and everybody was all over him and thought it was a flop because they
expected six or seven million. I go, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” You know,
and Stevie Wonder got sued for plagiarism from one of his good buddies. I mean,
if those kinds of folks that were that big and that well established are under
that kind of pressure, for the rest of us, it was every bit as bad or worse.
What
prompted you, on 1978’s Head East, to
do a cover of Argent’s “Since you’ve been Gone”?
RB:
Well, speaking of pressure, the guy that got the song for us was at CBS east
coast, Mark Spector, and he passed on the band. He came out to Chicago and saw
us in a little bar, and he said, “You guys are just a little bar band.” And
west coast CBS wanted us real bad, and I never heard that story until later,
but we were already on our way to getting signed by A&M … all of a sudden,
he shows up as the head of A&R at A&M, and I go, “Well, this is just
great.” But Mark Spector found a song for us, thought it would be a great song.
So I guess he kind of mea culpa’d for the past at CBS, which actually would
have been a better label for us, being a rock band, but being on A&M was
real special. I mean, that rep was real good anyway, and he found it for us.
The problem we ran into with “Since You’ve Been Gone” is then Ritchie Blackmore
and Rainbow, of course, recorded it and came out and kind of stomped on it, and
that created some problems. And we were going to do another Russ Ballard tune
called “I Surrender,” and Blackmore got word about that and he got it released
before we even got ours out. That goes to show you some of the politics and
some of the things that went on in the music business that went on back then
and that still go on now. That was totally the A&R department and they did
a great job. I mean, that’s what they are supposed to do.
Talk
about the double live album. I know you’ve touched on it, but to your ears,
what made it such a great live album?
RB:
Well, I think it’s the same reason that Raise
a Little Hell is so magical and one of my favorite albums. It’s that [this]
is our strength. That is what the band is about. That’s what the band enjoys
the most. I mean, we did some really good studio work, but really, we’ve always
been more comfortable in front of a live audience, and we’ve always been a
bunch of friendly, gregarious guys and down-home guys. We all came from small
towns, and we like interacting with the crowd, and that comes across. So, the
double live was trying to follow up – because all of a sudden a bunch of live
albums had hit right then – the success we had with “Since You’ve Been Gone.”
It was to follow up on that. It’s just really unfortunate about the
distribution thing, but like I said, sometimes the stars line up and sometimes
they don’t. In that case, ours didn’t. But we were able to capture some of that
excitement that is part of our essence, our musical essence, which in a studio
setting … you just record different. The goals are different and everything
else.
The
late ‘70s and early ‘80s was a tough time for the band. What do you think
happened back then that made it rough for you guys?
RB:
Well, boy there was a lot. There was a lot going on personally, obviously. I
mean, John, obviously, had to leave the band and he was having issues with
drugs and alcohol, which, of course, was the selling point when he went to
Petra and found religion, which a lot of rock guys did. And it was good,
because it would have been a shame if his talent had gone to waste. He was an
excellent vocalist, and he experienced some success there.
You know, we had been on the road a long time, we
had worked hard, and we’d had a couple of missed opportunities at A&M
Records, like the distribution thing. Our management, Contemporary Productions,
initially was really into managing and all of a sudden, they became one of the
biggest promoters in the country and were more interested in promoting other
people because they were now promoters, and they were making money off
promoting. Management was a little more long term, and it uses other talents,
so we left them. A&M was basically dropping all their rock acts at the same
time – us and .38 Special. In fact, Mark Spector went on to manage .38 Special
and had success with them after they left A&M. So, us and [Joe] Cocker and
.38 – the label was trying to turn into a new music label, with Split Enz and
stuff like that. And everything cycles, and so a lot of the ‘70s stuff … people
were looking and disco was coming on, and this, that and the other. A&M was
a boutique label, so that made a difference. I mean, they weren’t a CBS. In
fact, all of the rock groups in the Midwest that really had some success –
Cheap Trick, REO, Ted Nugent … all are CBS bands. And a couple of us were going
through divorces … I mean, there was just a lot. So it was just a combination
of internal and external factors. I mean, most bands … even The Beatles … five
or six years. Five or six years for a band is a long time, and generally things
happen and changes happen, and they regroup later, or sometimes they join up
with other people. The business takes its toll. The pressure, the emotional
pressure vs. the pressure to be creative and still be on the road, it’s hard.
During
your heyday, what was your favorite live show ever, and on the other end of the
spectrum, was there one that was really difficult for you?
RB:
Well, the difficult one is really easy (laughs). The first big show we sold out
in St. Louis at Kiel Auditorium… 10,000 people for us and about 25 people from
the record company are sitting there in the second row, and we’re having a
great show, and it’s going great and the crowd is going wild. And our
management at the time, decided they wanted to have this big Head East sign
with block lights and [when it came on] with everybody sitting there in the
second row, my synthesizer went, “Rrrthip, rrrthip” … I mean, it just went
bonkers. It’s amazing I didn’t just pick it up and throw it on the floor and
smash it. I’m going, “How could this possibly be happening to me?” That was
probably as brutal as … and having Casey Kasem interview me for being a feature
artist in a couple weeks, and we went from 42 with a bullet on “Since You’ve Been
Gone” to 41 to “see you yesterday.” You go from a big high to … whoops. Yeah,
it’s hard to recover from that. I mean, that takes a long time to recover from.
Probably some of the biggest shows … first time we headlined … it wasn’t even
our own management, it was in Kansas City, it was Soldiers & Sailors
[Memorial Auditorium] … that first headline, sold-out show a week in advance,
you never forget it. The Cotton Bowl in Dallas when we did that first Texas Jam
with Van Halen and us and Heart and all those bands … Eddie Money. I mean, we
were on Walter Cronkite. I mean, that was 104,000 people or something. Just to
pick a couple, but 5,000 shows, we’ve had some really incredible ones. And then
you’ve also had some ones where you were backing the semis up to keep the stage
from falling over backwards or something like that. By the way, the Texas Jam …
the show we did two days before out on the airfield I the middle of Kansas – I
can’t think of the name of the town – was where the plane practiced to drop the
atomic bomb on Japan. So here’s Van Halen and Eddie Money and Heart playing in
this airstrip surrounded by wheat fields in the middle of nowhere in Kansas,
and then two days later we’re doing the Texas Jam. Whenever we go out to Kansas
people still talk about that (laughs).
Is
that right?
RB:
Oh yeah. In the business today, those shows don’t happen. That was a special
place and time, and to be a part of that was amazing, and you know, other
things are emerging, but the TV video market has changed all of that. We won’t
see those kinds of things again.
I’ve
got to ask you about that St. Louis show again. Did you know he was bringing
that sign out?
RB:
No, we knew it was back there, but nobody knew when they plugged [it in] … see
the starters for the fluorescent bulbs, when those starters kicked in … because
most synthesizers … I had one of the first Moogs ever manufactured … it threw
all the oscillators out of whack. So we knew the sign was back there, but I
didn’t know it was plugged in with my keyboard. Killed everything in sight, but
that’s the way it goes. So all these guys from L.A. are sitting there and
going, “Well, this is pretty happening.” We slogged through it.
That
wasn’t the only time you had something go wrong with your synthesizer.
RB:
Oh yeah. Well, we had something one day, and it’s on YouTube – it’s probably
still on YouTube – where my strap broke – because I carry it around my neck
now, and back then I didn’t do that – and it went sailing across the stage. And
my lead singer fortunately had the cord and caught it right before it was going
to pave the security guy, and the synthesizer went over the side of the stage,
and the crowd goes, “Whooooaa.” And I pulled it up like it was a big fish, and
at the very end of the “Never Been Any Reason” solo, the last solo, I go, “woo
ooo,” the crowd just went absolutely bonkers. There are always things that
happen, you know, with this breaking and that falling, or this happened with
some guy. When you play as many shows as we did, there are a lot of show
stories.
In
the making of “Never Been Any Reason,” I think you had two Moogs playing, right
– to create that famous sound?
RB:
Well, yeah, actually that was the album … a lot of times some of the best
accidents happen in studios. You just have to be aware of them. I’d forgotten
to hit the “mute” button. I played two different solos, you know, to make sure
we had a good one, and I played two different solos and I forgot to hit the
“mute” button, and it went live, and I’m going, “Oh, crap” – because back then
it wasn’t computer stuff, where it was all in a computer. You did the mixes
live standing at the board, which by the way I think is the better feel to
music, too. I’m not a fan of computerized mixing. And it went by like that, and
we go, “Oh,” and then all of a sudden, we went, “That sounds pretty neat. Let’s
hear that back again.” And the engineer really liked the way it sounded, so we
went back in and took the second solo that was falling … we had to make some
changes, obviously, so it fit together really well. And that was the end of
that. That was not the initial thought, but …
It
was a happy accident, though.
RB:
We were talking about “Love Me Tonight.” That was a song we played live and it
never quite came together, and it never quite came together, and it never quite
came together, but it was a great song and we knew it, but it just never felt
quite right. And there was a funky little guitar that was strung kind of weird
sitting in the corner of the Golden Voice studio, and Mike picked it up and hit
it, and I go, “Wow! That might be it.” And when we put that guitar with the
other guitar we had, it kind of changed. It wasn’t a 12-string sound, but it
changed the rhythm sound and really made the song come alive. So that’s a song
that never really came alive until we were in the studio, and it was just
happenstance.
I
was going to ask you about the ‘80s, and I know that wasn’t a great commercial
time for you, but what album of that era do you think should people go back and
revisit?
RB:
Well, the last record we did … the next to last record we did on A&M
actually the European market was finally breaking, because in Europe, Flat as a Pancake was too early for
them. So we’re hoping that the double live re-release will rectify that
situation, but the Different Kind of Crazy album, there was a song on there
that I always thought had magic to it, which was “If You Knew Me Better.” And
that did really, really well in Europe, and a lot of the Austrian and German
bands play that song and we’re hoping to take, with these two albums, Raise A Little Hell and the re-release,
to take advantage of that, because now the European market is almost a better
place to release a record than the American market. But some of the things we
did on independent labels, we had some good cuts here and there, but for bands
of the ‘70s, we were dinosaurs at the time. Playing a Hammond organ was like,
“Oh, how archaic can you be?”
And now, if you play a Hammond, you’re like the
coolest thing on earth. So it really wasn’t until the mid-‘90s when things
started turning around, and we became “classic.” I said that just means you’ve
lasted a long time. And people started taking a renewed interest in this stuff.
I mean, there were a few bands that got through the ‘70s that had more success.
And that was okay by me. But all the ‘70s bands, by the latter part of the ‘80s
and early ‘90s, unless you were like the Bee Gees and totally changed what you
were doing and stuff like that, that was a pretty tough time.
With
this new album, I suppose you’re going to try to build on the momentum of it.
Is there going to be any new music from Head East?
RB:
Our intention … well, first of all, we’re going to do Raise a Little Hell on vinyl in the fall. I think the record is
worthy of that. That collector thing, that niche marketing, is just becoming
really critical, and of course, in my opinion, vinyl is still the best way to
listen to it. Most audiophiles … that’s what they prefer, but our intention is
to do a whole album of all brand new songs in the winter. We have some really
good songs. Unfortunately, we’re not going to get to field test them prior as much
as we have with “Prisoner” and “One Night,” the new songs on this record,
because we need to push what we have now. But we’re definitely planning on
doing an all complete set of brand new tunes. The down side of that, Peter, is
that there’s so much resistance to new music, you’re really caught in this,
“Boy, we need to get something new out there and try and stay fresh, and we
have some new ideas and we have really good songs” vs. “Are you going to put
all the sweat, blood and tears and money and potential heartache into something
that’s really going to not get any play on it.” But our intention now is to
definitely do one. You just have to keep plugging away. And like I said, once
again, you hope the stars line up for you one more time.
I
was going to ask you about, and I know you’ve been asked about it a million
times, how the band’s name came about. It was a suggestion from a roadie,
Baxter Forrest Twilight. He was a pretty colorful character. What do you
remember about him and his coming to the band to suggest a change of names to
Head East?
RB:
He is a colorful character. Well, we still see him. He lives outside of San
Jose. We still see him a couple of times … my wife and I ski. In fact, we have
a condo in Tahoe and we skip there about three weeks a year. But he’s still in
San Jose, and we still see him. He was an earth muffin guy. He was definitely
into the culture, shall we say, of the early ‘70s, and he just came in. We were
looking for a new name, because our old name [TimeAtions], when we were primarily
a teen center band, we decided we were going to change our name when we hit the
college circuit, because our drummer Steve … we couldn’t play the clubs. His
mom was great, a wonderful lady, but she was very religious and conservative,
and we never could play the bars. Even as a teen center band, we were showing
some success. So as soon as everybody went to college, we were going to get a
chance to play … we were looking for a new name, and he came in and when he
said, “Head East,” we said, “Okay. That sounds pretty good,” and major
religions look to the east and on and on and on. And it just sounded better
than anything else, and so Head East it was. We probably would have preferred
something like The Police or Trooper or something, because we’ve always had
problems with people remembering the name.
Oh,
is that right? I always thought it was a great name.
RB:
You’d think they’d remember. You go what? What’s so difficult about Head East?
But sometimes people get thrown. Well, it’s just like with “Never Been Any
Reason.” Everybody knows that song as “Save My Life,” and they tried to get
Mike [Somerville] to re-title it as “Save My Life,” but we refused. Back then,
writers had more independence than today. I would just go, “No, we’re going to
name it ‘Save My Life.’” Whenever it would get played, people would call up and
ask for that “Save My Life” song when we were a new band, and sometimes some of
the jocks and people would … because it was called “Never Been Any Reason,” it
caused us some problems. Obviously, in the long haul, we were able to overcome
it, but things like that, you don’t think about that when you just get started,
it becomes so critical.
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