rest of the band. And at that point now we’ve rolled forward to October of ’83, I’d moved out to L.A. to go to Musician’s Institute and I answered an ad in the Recycler that said, “working rock and roll band needs guitar player” and I answered the ad and it turned out to be the rest of the Z Deluxe guys minus John Wood. They were lookin’ to replace John and I got the job. And of course at the time, there was a European tour coming up and there’s this and there’s that. Truth is, none of that stuff ever materialized. Warren was going through a period where he spent more time with cocaine than with anything else. And he lost his record deal and he’d gone through another divorce and he was liv- ing with some radio deejay back in Philadel- phia, some woman, some deejay that he met that he was fond of. So for the next three years, I was in the band. But we never did anything, you know. Every six months or so something would come up, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna do this or we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna do the other thing” and none of it ever materialized. And at a certain point, I just kind of fell out of it after about three years. In truth, I was lucky. I was one of the incredibly lucky musicians to have moved to L.A. and actually found a working band to work with. I mean Z Deluxe as it’s own thing played around the L.A. area all the time. I was able to work and make a living playing. I mean, I had a little day job too, to keep things together but, in fact, worked with the bass player, Larry Larson, at a place that sold and refin- ished antique furniture. I worked with Larry during the day and then played in his band at night. Larry was the bandleader Those were real good days and I had a lot of fun and I lived in Los Angeles and I played in a band, you know and it was all cool but the Warren thing, that was before my time and then again, I don’t think he ever played with those guys again. He may have, but then again, it was after my tenure there. You know, I got
hired in, a fellow named George Gruhl, you may remember George…
I’ve heard the name.What have been the highlights of your career so far? What are some of the things that stand out in your mind, sort of “ah ha” mo- ments. Well, there’s been a bunch. One of ‘em I’d
have to say was Gabbafest in 2012. We got to be the headliner on Saturday night which I thought was real cool. That was me and my band. And Berry Duane Oakley was in town because he had played with his band. He was gonna play and then there was some kind of confusion with the guys in his band and he ended up like just being a guest there, hang- ing out, Anyway, he’s there on Saturday night and I’d never met him and about five minutes before we went on, him and Willie Perkins walked back there and we met and I said “howdy” and all that stuff. Halfway through the show, Willie Perkins brings me out Duane’s Gold Top out of the museum. cI knew they were bringing it out for me to play at a certain point in the night.
Yeah. And what we decided to do was see if Berry wanted to jam too. So he did and EJ had also brought out his dad’s bass - and so it was me playing the Gold Top, Berry Oakley’s son, Bearry Duane playing Berry’s bass and Dave Fair, my drummer, gonna jam some and I looked over at BDO and I said, “Man, do you know ‘Dreams?’” And he goes, “Yeah.” And that was the sum total of our conversation. We played “Dreams” and “One Way Out” and a whole bunch of stuff. There’s some good video of that that some folks from Gabba took that’s on YouTube. You just look up Berry Duane Oakley or Sonny Moorman or the other way around or whatever. Whatever you plug in there, it’ll come up. And a little later on, I ended up writing an article for Guitar
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