SD: Who did you consider your peers in terms of far-out guitar playing back in 1966?
RH: At that time no one, except maybe Jeff Beck. He had a sense of showmanship back in those days.He [used to play at] awesome uncontrollable levels, and would lay the guitar on the stage floor, and do an Indian dance, whooping around the stage while the guitar amp howled feedback.
SD: I read that you would do a solo spot in The Other Half shows. What sort of stuff were you jamming and how was it received?
RH: Out of the blue one night I just decided to plug in to all of our five 100 watt Fender Dual Showman amps. It was a blast – a really interesting sound. I made it up as I went along and just kind of went where the sound led me. I set a basic rhythm, and jammed, and kind of just pulled out every stop I could find, doing the showmanship thing, leaping up and landing on my knees while hitting a screaming note, trying to time it right. The audience went totally berserk.
SD: Do any live tapes exist of those performances?
RH: I wouldn’t have any idea.
SD: How did you feel about the sentiment of The Other Half ’s ‘Mr Pharmacist’? Was it reflective of the lifestyle the band was living at the time?
RH: To be honest, I didn’t think about it much. I vaguely knew the lyrics had something to do with drugs, but so did The Beatles’ ‘Doctor Robert.’ I wasn’t into drugs. Everyone seemed to be into drugs,
but it mostly made no sense to me. Everyone else in the band was into the drug thing, but I was married, and wasn’t into the partying lifestyle. I did my partying on stage.
SD: Do you feel The Other Half ’s album adequately captured your live sound at the time?
RH: Not even close! As a live band, The Other Half (like The Sons Of Adam) was way better than any recording ever captured. The only decent recording studio experience I had up to that time was when The Sons Of Adam were engineered by Dave Hassinger at RCA. By sharp contrast, the recording The Other Half did was a sound disaster. I knew we were so much better than that live – it was a shame.
SD: What would the third Blue Cheer album [New! Improved!] have sounded like if you’d recorded both sides with the band?
RH: I don’t know if I can answer that question except to say the band’s interests were so far removed from making music,
The Sons Of Adam with Randy (second right)
and the whirlwind that surrounded them so distracting, that it really never went the way I originally envisioned it should have gone.
SD: Was it a goal to have the biggest amplification out of any other guitarist out there?
RH: Oh absolutely. I dreamed of that from the time I first got an amp. I wanted to line up amps on the LA Airport runway, and see which would be louder – the guitar or the jets.
SD: You played live with Blue Cheer for around a year. Was there other material
The Other Half with Randy (second left) 27
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