Cheetah Chrome has played an integral part in the development of rock’n’roll over the past forty years. As a guitarist in Clevelands’ legendary Rocket From The Tombs, he helped to create songs which combined both the raw power of The Stooges or MC5 with an avant garde attitude. They were post-punk even before punk had started ! Although barely recognised during their existence, RFTT eventually split into two further bands, Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys, the latter of which was propelled by Cheetah and his cohort, Stiv Bators.
Determined to make their presence felt, they gate-crashed and became an important fixture of the early CBGBs scene in New York, before signing to Sire Records and producing two albums.
Perhaps they didn’t achieve the commercial success of some other bands from that era, but if you want to know how influential they remain, just consider how many bands still cover the classic ‘Sonic Reducer’ to this day…
Over the years since the Dead Boys broke-up, Cheetah has worked with various bands and also, more recently, established his own record label, Plowboy. It was through this outlet that he has released a CD of new material, appropriately entitled ‘Solo’. Having just secured a distribution deal for Europe, I was offered a telephone interview with the man-himself and, of course, I jumped at the opportunity. There’s a few problems setting things up, but soon enough, I find myself on the phone to Nashville.
Firstly, I wanted to talk about the new record. It’s only recently come out on Plowboy, but some of the recordings go back as far as 1996…
‘Yeah, well, that was basically when I had first got out of rehab. While I was in there, Hilly (Kristal) and Genya (Raven) had talked to me about doing some new recordings. That was one of the things I really wanted to do, you know, get back into my music. So we did that stuff, but then they just ended-up sitting there because Hilly and I had a kinda falling-out over whether they were going to come out on the CBGB label or not… He wanted to put it out on CBGB but I didn’t want to. As he’d paid for the recordings, he had the tapes and I stubbornly said, let them sit there, I’m not putting them out on that label. So they were basically lost for years, but then after he passed away, his daughter called me to say that she’d found the tapes in amongst his stuff. The funny thing was, I’d just sorta passed over that stuff and moved on. A lot of the songs on those tapes, I’d evolved past, so I ended up thinking they weren’t an accurate portrayal of where I was at. But when I got the tapes and heard them again, I realised that a few of the songs were pretty damn good and I wouldn’t have changed much if I was doing them now, so I decided to include a few of them on the new record. There’s others on the tapes that I may re-do and others that I’ll probably just forget, because they’re not where I’m at anymore.’
And most of the other tracks are recordings from 2010, when you were working with Sylvain Sylvain as The Batusis…
‘Yeah, well, we actually recorded a full length Batusis album. We were getting ready to put it out, but then the label, Smog Veil, put it on hold. The guy who ran the label was just getting over-whelmed. He ran the label on an almost non-profit basis, but after all the work he’d been putting onto it, he was getting really tired. So he decided that he needed to go on a two-year hiatus, and he let us walk away free with the masters. He just told us, he still liked it but he wouldn’t be able to put it out for another two years, so he was happy for us to shop it around in the meantime. We got a couple of offers, but nothing that we really wanted, so eventually Sylvain called me up and suggested, why don’t we just use our own tracks towards two different solo albums ? I’d use up my stuff and he’d use his stuff, and I thought, that sounds okay. So that was basically what happened, and I decided to flesh-out my songs with a few more things from those earlier tapes.’
Determined to make their presence felt, they gate-crashed and became an important fixture of the early CBGBs scene in New York, before signing to Sire Records and producing two albums.
Perhaps they didn’t achieve the commercial success of some other bands from that era, but if you want to know how influential they remain, just consider how many bands still cover the classic ‘Sonic Reducer’ to this day…
Over the years since the Dead Boys broke-up, Cheetah has worked with various bands and also, more recently, established his own record label, Plowboy. It was through this outlet that he has released a CD of new material, appropriately entitled ‘Solo’. Having just secured a distribution deal for Europe, I was offered a telephone interview with the man-himself and, of course, I jumped at the opportunity. There’s a few problems setting things up, but soon enough, I find myself on the phone to Nashville.
Firstly, I wanted to talk about the new record. It’s only recently come out on Plowboy, but some of the recordings go back as far as 1996…
‘Yeah, well, that was basically when I had first got out of rehab. While I was in there, Hilly (Kristal) and Genya (Raven) had talked to me about doing some new recordings. That was one of the things I really wanted to do, you know, get back into my music. So we did that stuff, but then they just ended-up sitting there because Hilly and I had a kinda falling-out over whether they were going to come out on the CBGB label or not… He wanted to put it out on CBGB but I didn’t want to. As he’d paid for the recordings, he had the tapes and I stubbornly said, let them sit there, I’m not putting them out on that label. So they were basically lost for years, but then after he passed away, his daughter called me to say that she’d found the tapes in amongst his stuff. The funny thing was, I’d just sorta passed over that stuff and moved on. A lot of the songs on those tapes, I’d evolved past, so I ended up thinking they weren’t an accurate portrayal of where I was at. But when I got the tapes and heard them again, I realised that a few of the songs were pretty damn good and I wouldn’t have changed much if I was doing them now, so I decided to include a few of them on the new record. There’s others on the tapes that I may re-do and others that I’ll probably just forget, because they’re not where I’m at anymore.’
And most of the other tracks are recordings from 2010, when you were working with Sylvain Sylvain as The Batusis…
‘Yeah, well, we actually recorded a full length Batusis album. We were getting ready to put it out, but then the label, Smog Veil, put it on hold. The guy who ran the label was just getting over-whelmed. He ran the label on an almost non-profit basis, but after all the work he’d been putting onto it, he was getting really tired. So he decided that he needed to go on a two-year hiatus, and he let us walk away free with the masters. He just told us, he still liked it but he wouldn’t be able to put it out for another two years, so he was happy for us to shop it around in the meantime. We got a couple of offers, but nothing that we really wanted, so eventually Sylvain called me up and suggested, why don’t we just use our own tracks towards two different solo albums ? I’d use up my stuff and he’d use his stuff, and I thought, that sounds okay. So that was basically what happened, and I decided to flesh-out my songs with a few more things from those earlier tapes.’
What happened with The Batusis ? I remember a few years ago, a gig was announced in London, but then the tour got cancelled…
‘Well, that was all to do with that volcano in Iceland ! We had set-up the tour, but we started to hear stories about people not being able to fly over, and then the clincher was when I heard from James Williamson, who told me about how The Stooges had been forced to stop over in one place for three days because they couldn’t get a flight. We were at a point where, if we pulled out of the tour right then, we would only have lost a little bit of money, but if we carried on and it ended up being cancelled, we would have lost all our deposits and a real lot of money. So we decided to play on the safe side…’
Is there a fairly even selection of songs from the two sessions ?
‘I think it’s pretty even. Three songs were taken from each, and then the opening track, ‘Sharky’, is something I recorded when I was putting it all together. I wanted to mix it so that it has a sense of continuity. ‘Sharky’ was just something new that I’d been working on at that time, so we knocked it out and it was perfect as an opener.’
The record certainly sounds very cohesive. When you hear it, you wouldn’t guess that the songs were recorded so far apart…
‘That’s what we tried to get when we were doing the mixes. I mean, the Genya tapes were pretty raw, they hadn’t been finished at all, so we worked on them from the bottom-up, and that probably helped to make it more cohesive. There was a couple of things we added, like the acoustic guitar on ‘Nothing’, and I had to re-do the vocal in a couple of places, but that all helped to put it together. And this was all done in the same studio where The Batusis had recorded, so by the time we had finished, there was definitely a lot more in common between the sessions.’
The opening track, ‘Sharky’, is an instrumental, but I could really imagine Stiv Bators’ vocals (from the later Lords of the New Church era) sounding perfect on it…
‘Yeah, I guess so. I certainly think of that sorta thing on some things I write, although ‘Sharky’ was really just written as an instrumental. I was always a fan of instrumentals, I loved The Ventures and stuff that that ! We had another one on The Batusis record, because I always hated coming out on stage and not knowing if the levels were in place. With an instrumental, you can come out and make sure things are right before you have to start singing.’
You’ve been playing and recording music for nearly 40 years. When you started out, did you ever think that you’d be able to spend so much time as a musician ?
‘I don’t know if I ever envisioned playing music at the age I am now. I mean, I never thought I’d live past 30, so maybe I thought I do it until then. But I never really thought about doing anything else. It wasn’t something that I thought would just be temporary… I started playing guitar when I was nine and it was never something that I thought I’d quit doing to move on to something else. I knew I’d always play, no matter what. If I had become a librarian, I would have still been playing my guitar at night and writing songs…’
That’s what so strange when you see College courses devoted to careers in the music business and stuff like that… surely music is something you should do because you’re compelled to do it, and not just a career-option…
‘You know, the whole concept right now is very strange. Rock’n’roll isn’t dead but it’s certainly in the minority at this point, and a lot of it has to do with kids loving that kinda instant-gratification stuff. I don’t know how it is over there, but over here things like the Disney Channel are huge and some of the crap that comes out of that is so appalling, and yet it’ll go straight to number one. Having said that, on the up side, when I’ve been playing gigs recently, I’ve been getting more and more kids there. It’s as if they’re going out and doing their research, you know, looking for other stuff. I mean, when we toured with Rocket From The Tombs in 2003, it was mostly an older audience, but now, maybe three quarters of the people will be kids. So that’s definitely changed in the last ten years.’
What made you want to pick up a guitar, in the first place ?
‘Seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do that ? I saw it live on TV when it happened, and I just thought, oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen ! So I started bugging my Mom for a guitar and she finally got me one. When I learned a little bit, I started getting into bands like the Stones, but it was when I heard Steppenwolf that I decided that I really wanted to play lead guitar.’
At what point did you acquire your ‘stage’ name…
‘Well, Cheetah was a nickname that I got at High School. It was a joke because I’d been on the Track Team for about two weeks and it just stuck ! Later on, there was the Stooges’ lyric about ‘street walkin’ cheetah’, so that clenched it for me. It was only a coincidence, but it worked. The funny thing was, I always just wanted to be ‘Cheetah’, you know, just one name, like ‘Slash’ or something. But Stiv kept saying, you have to have a last name and he came up with ‘Chrome’. I thought it kinda sucked, but Stiv insisted that it would be good and he finally wore me down. But I guess he was right… it has definitely lasted.’
Your name was also borrowed by an Italian hardcore band called CCM (Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers) back in the Eighties. Did you ever come across them ?
‘Oh yeah. I never knew them, but they caused my a lot of grief when they played in the States, because whenever they were advertised, my phone would start ringing with people wanting to be on my guestlist ! I could always tell where they were because I’d get calls from my friends around the country saying, Hey man, you’re coming to town ! But I’d have to tell them it wasn’t me. While I was living in Boston, I was riding past a club one day and I saw a poster saying ‘Tonight – Cheetah Chrome !’ Obviously, I knew I wasn’t due to be playing any place that night, so I called the club, and they told me, ‘No, it’s this band from Italy, but the Police won’t let us put ‘Motherfuckers’ on the posters ! I just wish they’d put something else on the posters because, sure enough, I started getting all these calls from friends who went to the club and found out it wasn’t me. It completely wrecked my night as I’d planned to stay in and watch a movie. Actually, a while later, I called one of my bands ‘Cheetah Chrome and the Motherfuckers’, just to get my own back on them.’
Was Rocket From The Tombs your first band, or had you played with anyone else before then ?
‘I’d played in a couple of bands with Johnny Blitz before then, but they were only little two-or-three gig outfits, we didn’t do much. So Rocket was the first real band…’
The recordings you made back then still sound unique and remarkable even today… What kind of reaction did you get from audiences back then ?
‘They didn’t really know how to react. They just kinda stood there staring at us ! The first time we played a song, I think there was just silence for about ten seconds after we finished, before a few people clapped… In Cleveland, it was always that way. I mean, if you read that book ‘From The Velvets To The Voidoids’, it mythologises that scene so much, trying to make it so much more than it was. Really, it was just three or four bands sitting around in a small club, playing for each other, twice a year… It wasn’t a big scene, there were only maybe thirty people and that included all the band members. The only time I saw these other guys was when we played those gigs, otherwise, we all just went back to our separate basements to rehearse.’
Why do you think it is that Ohio has managed to produce so much idiosyncratic music over the years ? From RFTT through Devo and right up to more recent bands like Guided By Voices, there always seems to be this really interesting mix of raw rock’n’roll and avant garde sensibilities…
‘I don’t really know, but my theory has always been that, especially in the early Seventies, Cleveland really had some great radio stations. We had CKLW from Detroit, we had a couple of Canadian stations, we had W1XY-1260, which was one of the biggest radio stations in the Sixties, and then we had WNCR and WMMS, which were two of the first progressive FM stations. So we really got to hear a lot of everything, plus it seemed that every touring band came through Cleveland. I was going to concerts all the time while I was growing up. But where the avant garde ideas came from, I don’t know. That confuses me to this day, because there’s nothing avant garde about Cleveland at all, at least, not where I lived. But I think that the people who were more interested in that side of things seemed to come from the East Side, where the Colleges were, so maybe that’s where the mixture came in… I don’t really know, as I dropped out of High School !’
Do you think it was those two elements that, while they played together to make the music unique, also pulled the band apart ?
‘Yeah, to some extent, although I think a little bit of success would’ve kept the band together. I think we broke up more out of frustration, because we were just continually playing to an audience who didn’t understand or appreciate us. I think that was more the problem rather than any conflicts of vision or Art that we had. I think we were all pretty much on the same page, that way. I mean, I was a rock’n’roller but Rocket, for me, was a rock’n’roll band. I was happy there and it wasn’t as if I felt frustrated with what we were doing and couldn’t wait to get out. I could’ve happily continued to play with Rocket From The Tombs for the next twenty years ! But the lack of any form of success really got to us and put us against each other. Self-doubt came in and that’s when we lost our way. David switched to keyboards and saxophone and Stiv took over on vocals for a couple of weeks. Then he left and Peter took over on vocals… we kept trying different things that didn’t really work, but we were trying to fix something that wasn’t really broken. I’ve often thought if Rocket had got in the van and drove to New York to play some shows, what would’ve happened ? Perhaps we would never have broken-up. But the location we were in was basically people who didn’t understand us.’
‘Well, Cheetah was a nickname that I got at High School. It was a joke because I’d been on the Track Team for about two weeks and it just stuck ! Later on, there was the Stooges’ lyric about ‘street walkin’ cheetah’, so that clenched it for me. It was only a coincidence, but it worked. The funny thing was, I always just wanted to be ‘Cheetah’, you know, just one name, like ‘Slash’ or something. But Stiv kept saying, you have to have a last name and he came up with ‘Chrome’. I thought it kinda sucked, but Stiv insisted that it would be good and he finally wore me down. But I guess he was right… it has definitely lasted.’
Your name was also borrowed by an Italian hardcore band called CCM (Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers) back in the Eighties. Did you ever come across them ?
‘Oh yeah. I never knew them, but they caused my a lot of grief when they played in the States, because whenever they were advertised, my phone would start ringing with people wanting to be on my guestlist ! I could always tell where they were because I’d get calls from my friends around the country saying, Hey man, you’re coming to town ! But I’d have to tell them it wasn’t me. While I was living in Boston, I was riding past a club one day and I saw a poster saying ‘Tonight – Cheetah Chrome !’ Obviously, I knew I wasn’t due to be playing any place that night, so I called the club, and they told me, ‘No, it’s this band from Italy, but the Police won’t let us put ‘Motherfuckers’ on the posters ! I just wish they’d put something else on the posters because, sure enough, I started getting all these calls from friends who went to the club and found out it wasn’t me. It completely wrecked my night as I’d planned to stay in and watch a movie. Actually, a while later, I called one of my bands ‘Cheetah Chrome and the Motherfuckers’, just to get my own back on them.’
Was Rocket From The Tombs your first band, or had you played with anyone else before then ?
‘I’d played in a couple of bands with Johnny Blitz before then, but they were only little two-or-three gig outfits, we didn’t do much. So Rocket was the first real band…’
The recordings you made back then still sound unique and remarkable even today… What kind of reaction did you get from audiences back then ?
‘They didn’t really know how to react. They just kinda stood there staring at us ! The first time we played a song, I think there was just silence for about ten seconds after we finished, before a few people clapped… In Cleveland, it was always that way. I mean, if you read that book ‘From The Velvets To The Voidoids’, it mythologises that scene so much, trying to make it so much more than it was. Really, it was just three or four bands sitting around in a small club, playing for each other, twice a year… It wasn’t a big scene, there were only maybe thirty people and that included all the band members. The only time I saw these other guys was when we played those gigs, otherwise, we all just went back to our separate basements to rehearse.’
Why do you think it is that Ohio has managed to produce so much idiosyncratic music over the years ? From RFTT through Devo and right up to more recent bands like Guided By Voices, there always seems to be this really interesting mix of raw rock’n’roll and avant garde sensibilities…
‘I don’t really know, but my theory has always been that, especially in the early Seventies, Cleveland really had some great radio stations. We had CKLW from Detroit, we had a couple of Canadian stations, we had W1XY-1260, which was one of the biggest radio stations in the Sixties, and then we had WNCR and WMMS, which were two of the first progressive FM stations. So we really got to hear a lot of everything, plus it seemed that every touring band came through Cleveland. I was going to concerts all the time while I was growing up. But where the avant garde ideas came from, I don’t know. That confuses me to this day, because there’s nothing avant garde about Cleveland at all, at least, not where I lived. But I think that the people who were more interested in that side of things seemed to come from the East Side, where the Colleges were, so maybe that’s where the mixture came in… I don’t really know, as I dropped out of High School !’
Do you think it was those two elements that, while they played together to make the music unique, also pulled the band apart ?
‘Yeah, to some extent, although I think a little bit of success would’ve kept the band together. I think we broke up more out of frustration, because we were just continually playing to an audience who didn’t understand or appreciate us. I think that was more the problem rather than any conflicts of vision or Art that we had. I think we were all pretty much on the same page, that way. I mean, I was a rock’n’roller but Rocket, for me, was a rock’n’roll band. I was happy there and it wasn’t as if I felt frustrated with what we were doing and couldn’t wait to get out. I could’ve happily continued to play with Rocket From The Tombs for the next twenty years ! But the lack of any form of success really got to us and put us against each other. Self-doubt came in and that’s when we lost our way. David switched to keyboards and saxophone and Stiv took over on vocals for a couple of weeks. Then he left and Peter took over on vocals… we kept trying different things that didn’t really work, but we were trying to fix something that wasn’t really broken. I’ve often thought if Rocket had got in the van and drove to New York to play some shows, what would’ve happened ? Perhaps we would never have broken-up. But the location we were in was basically people who didn’t understand us.’
How had you actually got to meet Stiv Bators ?
‘Actually, I think Peter Laughner had met him out at a couple of clubs, so I’d heard about him a long time before I actually met him. Peter kept talking about him and telling us that as soon as I meet him, that’ll probably be the end of it for Rocket ! And sure enough, when we did meet, we hit it off immediately. We were hanging out, literally, the next day, as if we’d known each other for years. And as Peter had predicted, he was definitely trying to get me to quit Rocket, but I wouldn’t because I wanted to see it through to the end. Having said that, by then the doubts had already begun to set-in and the writing was on the wall, so we were kinda ready to go with plan B when Rocket did break-up. I think we only took about three days-off before we started rehearsing our new thing.’
Initially, the new group started out under the name ‘Frankenstein’…
‘Yeah, that was exactly the same band that became the Dead Boys, just a different name. We went right into that, but we only played one gig, I think, then stopped playing for a while, although I can’t really remember why that happened. We just kinda drifted-off in different directions for a while until we got back together again, about a year later. It wasn’t a long break, it was just something that happened.’
The Dead Boys re-located to New York quite early on in their career. Was that prompted by the lack of response RFTT had achieved in Cleveland ?
‘Well, we went up to play at CBGBs and we went down really well. We were very well accepted there and about a week later, they called us and wanted us back. From there on, the gigs just started to get more and more frequent,. CBGBs were calling us and wanting us to come back, so we’d add shows in places like Boston and we started to get pretty popular on the East Coast. It just started to make sense to relocate. I mean, the first time we played in New York, we drove home over-night, we didn’t even stay in a hotel. We just played and then we left. Next time, we stayed in a hotel for a couple of days, so we could have a look around, and then the third time, we stayed for a week. Eventually, we’d go to play in New York and stay for two or three weeks at a time, because it just made sense to spend more time there. Technically, Jeff and I were the only two who actually moved to New York, as the other two would always end up returning to Ohio. They’d just stay in hotels or with friends when they came to New York, but we were all spending most of our time there.’
In some ways, the Dead Boys were halfway between the New York and the UK punk scenes… kinda like a bridge between the more Art-y bands in New York, like Television, and the more aggressive style of the early English punk bands…
‘Well, I’m not sure about that because we never really considered ourselves a ‘punk’ band. We just kinda got lumped-in with that, although we were happy to take a little bit of an advantage of it while it was happening. But we were the way we were already, it wasn’t as if we changed our style or image or anything like that. We’d grown-up on the Stooges and the MC5 but we didn’t think of it as a ‘punk’ thing, necessarily. But what was happening was definitely our time and our scene. As far as the UK bands go, we were already doing what we were doing long before we heard any of that, but we were more of a straight-up, high energy rock’n’roll band, like the Heartbreakers or something like that. Of all the UK bands, I actually think we looked at The Damned as our brother-band in terms of what we were doing.’
The Dead Boys broke up after the release of your second album, and it’s been stated that none of you were particularly happy with the way it came out… What actually happened with it ?
‘We were kinda forced into recording it in Miami with Felix Pappalardi. Well, none of us liked Miami and none of us were particularly crazy about Felix, but we were just told that was how it was going to be. I’d actually been speaking to Lou Reed about producing us, and I think that would’ve made total sense, but Seymour Stein , with all his wisdom and knowledge of music, came back and said, ‘He doesn’t produce his own albums, so how is he going to be able to produce yours ?’ I said, the reason he doesn’t produce his own records is because he plays on them ! I mean, I wouldn’t produce my own records even now, because it’s difficult to play and listen at the same time. Anyway, I don’t know what kinda side-deals may have been going on, but Seymour insisted we do things that way, and then Felix proved to be a bit of a disaster for us. We got down there and, back then, Miami was all just Disco or Southern Rock, so we stood out like freaks. We actually caused a car-crash one day… we were going to a photo-shoot for the album-cover and as we got out of our car, some guy was staring at us so bad, he hit the car in front of him ! Of course, we thought that was hilarious, but we seemed to get people shouting at us every time we walked down the street, which was ridiculous. And then, in the studio, we were next door to people like Firefall and Marshall-Tucker ! In between our takes, I was going out and hanging out with the Bee Gees, which was actually the coolest thing about it, because they were great guys ! But I remember Felix coming in on the first day and I had a 50 watt Marshall, a half-stack, which is what I used for recording, and he started telling me, we can’t use that, it’ll be too distorted and too loud ! So I knew straight away what we were up against… if he couldn’t get a decent sound out of a half-stack of Marshalls, that was complete bullshit. Next thing I knew, he was sending out for these little Music Man amps that sounded like nothing, you know ? It all just deteriorated from there. Me and him butted heads on just about everything, from rehearsals right the way through to the recording process. And when the album eventually came out, it had totally diluted the band. It was almost as if we weren’t there and it’s a shame because there’s some great songs on that record. I’ve always wanted to get hold of the masters and re-mix it, because nowadays, you could take those tapes and change the whole thing, give it some balls, you know ? I mean, the performances are there, it’s just the sound is so bad.’
‘Actually, I think Peter Laughner had met him out at a couple of clubs, so I’d heard about him a long time before I actually met him. Peter kept talking about him and telling us that as soon as I meet him, that’ll probably be the end of it for Rocket ! And sure enough, when we did meet, we hit it off immediately. We were hanging out, literally, the next day, as if we’d known each other for years. And as Peter had predicted, he was definitely trying to get me to quit Rocket, but I wouldn’t because I wanted to see it through to the end. Having said that, by then the doubts had already begun to set-in and the writing was on the wall, so we were kinda ready to go with plan B when Rocket did break-up. I think we only took about three days-off before we started rehearsing our new thing.’
Initially, the new group started out under the name ‘Frankenstein’…
‘Yeah, that was exactly the same band that became the Dead Boys, just a different name. We went right into that, but we only played one gig, I think, then stopped playing for a while, although I can’t really remember why that happened. We just kinda drifted-off in different directions for a while until we got back together again, about a year later. It wasn’t a long break, it was just something that happened.’
The Dead Boys re-located to New York quite early on in their career. Was that prompted by the lack of response RFTT had achieved in Cleveland ?
‘Well, we went up to play at CBGBs and we went down really well. We were very well accepted there and about a week later, they called us and wanted us back. From there on, the gigs just started to get more and more frequent,. CBGBs were calling us and wanting us to come back, so we’d add shows in places like Boston and we started to get pretty popular on the East Coast. It just started to make sense to relocate. I mean, the first time we played in New York, we drove home over-night, we didn’t even stay in a hotel. We just played and then we left. Next time, we stayed in a hotel for a couple of days, so we could have a look around, and then the third time, we stayed for a week. Eventually, we’d go to play in New York and stay for two or three weeks at a time, because it just made sense to spend more time there. Technically, Jeff and I were the only two who actually moved to New York, as the other two would always end up returning to Ohio. They’d just stay in hotels or with friends when they came to New York, but we were all spending most of our time there.’
In some ways, the Dead Boys were halfway between the New York and the UK punk scenes… kinda like a bridge between the more Art-y bands in New York, like Television, and the more aggressive style of the early English punk bands…
‘Well, I’m not sure about that because we never really considered ourselves a ‘punk’ band. We just kinda got lumped-in with that, although we were happy to take a little bit of an advantage of it while it was happening. But we were the way we were already, it wasn’t as if we changed our style or image or anything like that. We’d grown-up on the Stooges and the MC5 but we didn’t think of it as a ‘punk’ thing, necessarily. But what was happening was definitely our time and our scene. As far as the UK bands go, we were already doing what we were doing long before we heard any of that, but we were more of a straight-up, high energy rock’n’roll band, like the Heartbreakers or something like that. Of all the UK bands, I actually think we looked at The Damned as our brother-band in terms of what we were doing.’
The Dead Boys broke up after the release of your second album, and it’s been stated that none of you were particularly happy with the way it came out… What actually happened with it ?
‘We were kinda forced into recording it in Miami with Felix Pappalardi. Well, none of us liked Miami and none of us were particularly crazy about Felix, but we were just told that was how it was going to be. I’d actually been speaking to Lou Reed about producing us, and I think that would’ve made total sense, but Seymour Stein , with all his wisdom and knowledge of music, came back and said, ‘He doesn’t produce his own albums, so how is he going to be able to produce yours ?’ I said, the reason he doesn’t produce his own records is because he plays on them ! I mean, I wouldn’t produce my own records even now, because it’s difficult to play and listen at the same time. Anyway, I don’t know what kinda side-deals may have been going on, but Seymour insisted we do things that way, and then Felix proved to be a bit of a disaster for us. We got down there and, back then, Miami was all just Disco or Southern Rock, so we stood out like freaks. We actually caused a car-crash one day… we were going to a photo-shoot for the album-cover and as we got out of our car, some guy was staring at us so bad, he hit the car in front of him ! Of course, we thought that was hilarious, but we seemed to get people shouting at us every time we walked down the street, which was ridiculous. And then, in the studio, we were next door to people like Firefall and Marshall-Tucker ! In between our takes, I was going out and hanging out with the Bee Gees, which was actually the coolest thing about it, because they were great guys ! But I remember Felix coming in on the first day and I had a 50 watt Marshall, a half-stack, which is what I used for recording, and he started telling me, we can’t use that, it’ll be too distorted and too loud ! So I knew straight away what we were up against… if he couldn’t get a decent sound out of a half-stack of Marshalls, that was complete bullshit. Next thing I knew, he was sending out for these little Music Man amps that sounded like nothing, you know ? It all just deteriorated from there. Me and him butted heads on just about everything, from rehearsals right the way through to the recording process. And when the album eventually came out, it had totally diluted the band. It was almost as if we weren’t there and it’s a shame because there’s some great songs on that record. I’ve always wanted to get hold of the masters and re-mix it, because nowadays, you could take those tapes and change the whole thing, give it some balls, you know ? I mean, the performances are there, it’s just the sound is so bad.’
Since the demise of the Dead Boys, you’ve played with a lot of different people, one of the most interesting being Ronnie Spector on her 1980 album, ‘Siren’. How did that come about ?
‘That came through Genya, who had produced the Dead Boys first album. Actually, she had been my first choice to do our second album, as she’d done such a good job on the first one, and I still think she did an excellent job there. But the other guys had all wanted to try something new, so I went along with them. But anyway, I kept in touch with her, so when she was starting the Ronnie Spector sessions, she asked if I’d like to come up and play on a couple of songs. She got me involved, and Billy Rath and Thommy Price, you know, a bunch of good players, and it was all great fun. Ronnie was good to hang out with and we all really enjoyed it. I think Ronnie was very much into the New York punk scene, she was friends with Joey Ramone and went out to see bands a lot. She may not have liked all of it, but she got it, you know ? I really liked that album… I haven’t seen her for a while, but I did see her a few years ago when they opened the John Varvatos store, at the site of CGBGs. They had a big night there and invited people along like me, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Ian Hunter and Joan Jett, and Ronnie played a set, so I saw her at that and it was the first time I’d seen her for a long time. But we don’t really keep in touch, now that I live in Nashville, and I think she’s quite reclusive these days when she’s not out playing…’
In 2003, Rocket From The Tombs reunited for some live dates, with Richard Lloyd of Television replacing the missing original member, Peter Laughner. This followed the release of a compilation album the previous year, which gathered together original recordings of the band officially for the first time. Was it the interest in the album that prompted the reunion ?
‘Actually, I’d played a gig in Cleveland back in 2001, and it was a coincidence that David (Thomas) was in town. We probably hadn’t talked to each other in about twenty years, but he came down to the show, we had our own little reunion and got along very nicely,. That was when he told me that the Rocket recordings were probably going to be released and, while we didn’t actually agree to do a reunion, we kinda left it that we didn’t rule it out, either. A year or so later, the record came out, and then about six months after that, I got the email from him, and I’d sorta guessed it was coming. First of all, we did a one-off show, but it was a horrendous experience all the way round. We fought like cats and dogs, it was just intense rehearsals and intense arguments. We only had, like, three rehearsals, but they were eight hours long and they seemed to be split equally between arguing and playing ! There was a ridiculous degree of drama going on, but after we played the one show, people enjoyed it and we got offered a chance to do a tour together. Surprisingly, perhaps, we decided to do it. The thing was, we actually did enjoy playing together, so we bit the bullet. I mean, there were the five of us all travelling around in one van, but the gigs were always brilliant and that kinda made up for any of the personal disagreements. The funny thing was, it ended up that all of our differences were settled after that and I think we’ve all just enjoyed playing together since then. The only thing, for me, is that I’ve just got tired of touring, now. Between 2009 and 2012, I seemed to be out on the road with different bands pretty much all the time. You know, I’ve got my son at home, whose five years old, so I wanted to hang out with him some more, and that meant I didn’t want to tour so much. So I kinda retired for a while…’
But you have continued working in the studio with RFTT, first of all recording the ‘Redux’ album (new studio versions of the original material) plus, more recently, the brand new album, ‘Barfly’…
‘The ‘Barfly’ album came out of several different sessions.
David came down here to visit me and we worked on several different things, just for a day or two. Then we all got together in Cleveland… a friend of ours had a house that he was fixing-up to sell, so we all sat around in the empty house with a little set of drums and little amps, and everybody brought along their ideas for songs. Working like that, we were able to write, like, ten songs in two days. We used up all our ideas until we just ended up with Richard noodling away on something, and we wrote one final song from that ! It actually became one of our favourite songs on the record, so it was a good experience. We started off with some great ideas, worked through them, and by the end, we were able to grab a great song out of almost nothing ! Thhe whole album was really written from the ground-up by the whole band, together.’
‘That came through Genya, who had produced the Dead Boys first album. Actually, she had been my first choice to do our second album, as she’d done such a good job on the first one, and I still think she did an excellent job there. But the other guys had all wanted to try something new, so I went along with them. But anyway, I kept in touch with her, so when she was starting the Ronnie Spector sessions, she asked if I’d like to come up and play on a couple of songs. She got me involved, and Billy Rath and Thommy Price, you know, a bunch of good players, and it was all great fun. Ronnie was good to hang out with and we all really enjoyed it. I think Ronnie was very much into the New York punk scene, she was friends with Joey Ramone and went out to see bands a lot. She may not have liked all of it, but she got it, you know ? I really liked that album… I haven’t seen her for a while, but I did see her a few years ago when they opened the John Varvatos store, at the site of CGBGs. They had a big night there and invited people along like me, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Ian Hunter and Joan Jett, and Ronnie played a set, so I saw her at that and it was the first time I’d seen her for a long time. But we don’t really keep in touch, now that I live in Nashville, and I think she’s quite reclusive these days when she’s not out playing…’
In 2003, Rocket From The Tombs reunited for some live dates, with Richard Lloyd of Television replacing the missing original member, Peter Laughner. This followed the release of a compilation album the previous year, which gathered together original recordings of the band officially for the first time. Was it the interest in the album that prompted the reunion ?
‘Actually, I’d played a gig in Cleveland back in 2001, and it was a coincidence that David (Thomas) was in town. We probably hadn’t talked to each other in about twenty years, but he came down to the show, we had our own little reunion and got along very nicely,. That was when he told me that the Rocket recordings were probably going to be released and, while we didn’t actually agree to do a reunion, we kinda left it that we didn’t rule it out, either. A year or so later, the record came out, and then about six months after that, I got the email from him, and I’d sorta guessed it was coming. First of all, we did a one-off show, but it was a horrendous experience all the way round. We fought like cats and dogs, it was just intense rehearsals and intense arguments. We only had, like, three rehearsals, but they were eight hours long and they seemed to be split equally between arguing and playing ! There was a ridiculous degree of drama going on, but after we played the one show, people enjoyed it and we got offered a chance to do a tour together. Surprisingly, perhaps, we decided to do it. The thing was, we actually did enjoy playing together, so we bit the bullet. I mean, there were the five of us all travelling around in one van, but the gigs were always brilliant and that kinda made up for any of the personal disagreements. The funny thing was, it ended up that all of our differences were settled after that and I think we’ve all just enjoyed playing together since then. The only thing, for me, is that I’ve just got tired of touring, now. Between 2009 and 2012, I seemed to be out on the road with different bands pretty much all the time. You know, I’ve got my son at home, whose five years old, so I wanted to hang out with him some more, and that meant I didn’t want to tour so much. So I kinda retired for a while…’
But you have continued working in the studio with RFTT, first of all recording the ‘Redux’ album (new studio versions of the original material) plus, more recently, the brand new album, ‘Barfly’…
‘The ‘Barfly’ album came out of several different sessions.
David came down here to visit me and we worked on several different things, just for a day or two. Then we all got together in Cleveland… a friend of ours had a house that he was fixing-up to sell, so we all sat around in the empty house with a little set of drums and little amps, and everybody brought along their ideas for songs. Working like that, we were able to write, like, ten songs in two days. We used up all our ideas until we just ended up with Richard noodling away on something, and we wrote one final song from that ! It actually became one of our favourite songs on the record, so it was a good experience. We started off with some great ideas, worked through them, and by the end, we were able to grab a great song out of almost nothing ! Thhe whole album was really written from the ground-up by the whole band, together.’
On a purely selfish level, I want to know
why RFTT still haven’t played in the UK ?
‘Ahhh ! Well, it’s not that we don’t want to play there, but so far there seems to have been a serious lack of interest from clubs and promoters to pay for us to come over. It’s actually come up several times, do we want to play some gigs over there, and the band have all been up for it, but then we’d work it out and the costs involved would far outweigh any money that we’d get paid. It just seems to be a losing-proposition, so far. Even if we were only going to break-even, I’m sure we’d do it, but… if I’m going to have to pay to go to England out of my own pocket, I’m just going to go and see castles and stuff ! But if we do ever get an offer that let’s us do it, then sure, we’ll be there.’
You now live in Nashville… when and why did you decide to move there ?
‘That was around 1996. I came down here just to do some demo-tapes, but I ended up really liking the place and decided to stay. It’s a good town for me, you know ? The whole town is full of musicians, so I fit right in. One more guitar player down here isn’t a big deal, so I don’t get all the crap that I’d get some place else. It’s much more laid-back, but at the same time, there’s also a better level of professionalism if you’re a musician. You’ve got everything you need right at your fingertips, the whole time. I’m real happy with it.’
You published your biography, ‘ A Dead Boy’s Tale’, in 2010. How long did that take to put together ?
‘I was working on it through 2007 to 2008, I think, possibly finishing it up in 2009… It was a long time out of my life, because I’d literally be down in my basement, typing away for 8 hours a night, sometimes. I was surprised how much work was involved, but I was pretty happy with it when it was finished. It came out the way I wanted it to. I never wanted it to be pompous or full of myself, I just wanted to tell the story as it happened, you know, my take on things. I didn’t have an axe to grind or anything, and I think there’s only two people in the book that I go off on and that was because I really thought they deserved it. But for the most part, I didn’t want to dish on anyone, I just wanted to tell my end of things. I even said in the intro, I may be wrong about some of these things, this is just the way that I remember it. I’m happy if anyone comes along to refresh my memory, but so far, nobody has !’
When you look back at the things you have done in your life, are you pretty happy with what you’ve achieved ?
‘I’m mostly surprised ! I mean, it seems that I have got quite a lot of things accomplished, and I’ve also done even more since I wrote the book, so that’s kinda good to realise. But at the time I was writing it, I didn’t know what was going to happen next… I hadn’t even done The Batusis at that point. And I’ve started the record label (Plow Boy) since then, so the story is continuing. But the book was pretty accurate up to that point, and I can read it without feeling like such a bum !’
Also on a biographical theme, your character included in the recent ‘CBGB’ movie, which tells the story of Hilly Kristal and his club. How did you feel about the way they dramatised the story and had you played by an actor ?
‘I think the people who made it tried their best and their hearts were in the right place. They were trying to make a fun-movie about a fun-time and I think they got a lot of stick unfairly, over the fact that it wasn’t just a documentary. I mean, they made a good documentary about five years ago, called ‘Burning Down The House’, and no-one went to see it, so why would they just want to repeat that ? I think they used good actors and they did what they could. They had fun making it… I went down to the set while they were making it and everyone was having a great time ! Movies are really just meant to be entertainment, so maybe people should just to enjoy it and not take it so seriously. The Dead Boys seemed to get a lot of crap because we feature in it a lot, you know, people saying that we weren’t even from New York, so there should’ve been more of other bands in it, but, you know, here’s the deal ; the movie is about Hilly and CBGBs ! It’s not about the whole scene, it’s Hilly’s story, and he managed the Dead Boys, so that’s why we’re in it. We were part of his life and our fortunes were interlocked. If the Ramones wanted to be featured in the movie some more, maybe they should’ve let Hilly manage them. What can I say ? That’s how it was. If the man went down, the club was going to go down. If the club went down, he was going to go down. The same money was supporting both of them. In the end, I’m sure he would’ve loved it. He would’ve thought it was funny, because he always liked telling stories.’
‘Ahhh ! Well, it’s not that we don’t want to play there, but so far there seems to have been a serious lack of interest from clubs and promoters to pay for us to come over. It’s actually come up several times, do we want to play some gigs over there, and the band have all been up for it, but then we’d work it out and the costs involved would far outweigh any money that we’d get paid. It just seems to be a losing-proposition, so far. Even if we were only going to break-even, I’m sure we’d do it, but… if I’m going to have to pay to go to England out of my own pocket, I’m just going to go and see castles and stuff ! But if we do ever get an offer that let’s us do it, then sure, we’ll be there.’
You now live in Nashville… when and why did you decide to move there ?
‘That was around 1996. I came down here just to do some demo-tapes, but I ended up really liking the place and decided to stay. It’s a good town for me, you know ? The whole town is full of musicians, so I fit right in. One more guitar player down here isn’t a big deal, so I don’t get all the crap that I’d get some place else. It’s much more laid-back, but at the same time, there’s also a better level of professionalism if you’re a musician. You’ve got everything you need right at your fingertips, the whole time. I’m real happy with it.’
You published your biography, ‘ A Dead Boy’s Tale’, in 2010. How long did that take to put together ?
‘I was working on it through 2007 to 2008, I think, possibly finishing it up in 2009… It was a long time out of my life, because I’d literally be down in my basement, typing away for 8 hours a night, sometimes. I was surprised how much work was involved, but I was pretty happy with it when it was finished. It came out the way I wanted it to. I never wanted it to be pompous or full of myself, I just wanted to tell the story as it happened, you know, my take on things. I didn’t have an axe to grind or anything, and I think there’s only two people in the book that I go off on and that was because I really thought they deserved it. But for the most part, I didn’t want to dish on anyone, I just wanted to tell my end of things. I even said in the intro, I may be wrong about some of these things, this is just the way that I remember it. I’m happy if anyone comes along to refresh my memory, but so far, nobody has !’
When you look back at the things you have done in your life, are you pretty happy with what you’ve achieved ?
‘I’m mostly surprised ! I mean, it seems that I have got quite a lot of things accomplished, and I’ve also done even more since I wrote the book, so that’s kinda good to realise. But at the time I was writing it, I didn’t know what was going to happen next… I hadn’t even done The Batusis at that point. And I’ve started the record label (Plow Boy) since then, so the story is continuing. But the book was pretty accurate up to that point, and I can read it without feeling like such a bum !’
Also on a biographical theme, your character included in the recent ‘CBGB’ movie, which tells the story of Hilly Kristal and his club. How did you feel about the way they dramatised the story and had you played by an actor ?
‘I think the people who made it tried their best and their hearts were in the right place. They were trying to make a fun-movie about a fun-time and I think they got a lot of stick unfairly, over the fact that it wasn’t just a documentary. I mean, they made a good documentary about five years ago, called ‘Burning Down The House’, and no-one went to see it, so why would they just want to repeat that ? I think they used good actors and they did what they could. They had fun making it… I went down to the set while they were making it and everyone was having a great time ! Movies are really just meant to be entertainment, so maybe people should just to enjoy it and not take it so seriously. The Dead Boys seemed to get a lot of crap because we feature in it a lot, you know, people saying that we weren’t even from New York, so there should’ve been more of other bands in it, but, you know, here’s the deal ; the movie is about Hilly and CBGBs ! It’s not about the whole scene, it’s Hilly’s story, and he managed the Dead Boys, so that’s why we’re in it. We were part of his life and our fortunes were interlocked. If the Ramones wanted to be featured in the movie some more, maybe they should’ve let Hilly manage them. What can I say ? That’s how it was. If the man went down, the club was going to go down. If the club went down, he was going to go down. The same money was supporting both of them. In the end, I’m sure he would’ve loved it. He would’ve thought it was funny, because he always liked telling stories.’
Jumping all the way forward, what are your
plans now that you’ve released your new record ?
‘I’ve just done a series of dates over here… I did a bunch at South By South West, then I went out to California for a short tour, and since then, I’ve played some shows in Canada and did a weekend in New York. Right at the moment, I’m taking some time out to spend with my son, and I’m also running the label, so I need some time to do that… I’m intending to work on the label over the Summer, as we’ve got a few new releases coming up soon, and then I’ll think about what I want to do next. But I’ve got to worry about our other artists right now. I’m always writing songs and working on demo’s down in my basement, so I’m sure they’ll see the light of day at some point. And I’m always up for a gig, so I’ll just see what gets offered next. The label has only recently signed a distribution deal for Europe, so it’s getting to a lot of new places, even though it originally came out in the States a while ago. It’s almost like it’s getting a new release, so we definitely want to do some promotion for it in Europe, even though I’m not sure what that will be, just yet… As long as it’s not in the Winter, cos I know how cold it can get over there !’
So, fingers-crossed everybody, perhaps we’ll get to see Cheetah Chrome in a town near you soon ! As long as it’s nice and warm… In the meantime, check out his excellent new album, ‘Solo’ and for any further info, you can find out what he’s doing at www.plowboyrecords.com
‘I’ve just done a series of dates over here… I did a bunch at South By South West, then I went out to California for a short tour, and since then, I’ve played some shows in Canada and did a weekend in New York. Right at the moment, I’m taking some time out to spend with my son, and I’m also running the label, so I need some time to do that… I’m intending to work on the label over the Summer, as we’ve got a few new releases coming up soon, and then I’ll think about what I want to do next. But I’ve got to worry about our other artists right now. I’m always writing songs and working on demo’s down in my basement, so I’m sure they’ll see the light of day at some point. And I’m always up for a gig, so I’ll just see what gets offered next. The label has only recently signed a distribution deal for Europe, so it’s getting to a lot of new places, even though it originally came out in the States a while ago. It’s almost like it’s getting a new release, so we definitely want to do some promotion for it in Europe, even though I’m not sure what that will be, just yet… As long as it’s not in the Winter, cos I know how cold it can get over there !’
So, fingers-crossed everybody, perhaps we’ll get to see Cheetah Chrome in a town near you soon ! As long as it’s nice and warm… In the meantime, check out his excellent new album, ‘Solo’ and for any further info, you can find out what he’s doing at www.plowboyrecords.com
