Yeah, Don Van Vliet, yeah he really was. It was just the times, and you know, there was nothing logical going on, so why should music be logical?
Yeah, really. You had Civil Rights, the Vietnam war. . . just everything was coming unglued.
I mean, you know, there's a lot to be said for Art in Music, rather than people just trying to sound like everybody else. People like you and Don were doing kinda like what Yoko Ono was doing in the art world, ya know? Things that nobody would ever expect. No, or want or need either. (Laughs.)
Exactly, but it was art. You got it done. We were like dogs in a pack, Stray Dogs should have been the name of the band.
Yeah, that’d been great. Stray Dogs instead of Stray Cats that'd be great. At one point after Columbia Records or CBS Records you hooked up with Zappa's record label, the Bazaar/Straight Label. What was that experience like for you, and also tell us a little bit about this man Frank Zappa be- cause everybody is always asking me if I ever met him. I was never lucky enough to meet him, but you did. Yeah, I was lucky I got to do the record, Lumpy Gravy was the name of it, and I got credit on that and what was the other one we did? We’re Only In It for the Money, I'm on that a couple of times, I didn't get any credit, but ya know that’s fine. He was always such a gentleman, such a nice guy, such a down to earth guy and had more en- ergy than anybody I'd ever seen in my life and he knew what he wanted. Especially the first six or seven albums were just basically wonderful clas- sics albums in rock n roll. Frank, he was always, you know, there was no weirdness or well, there was weirdness, but it was good weirdness, but he always treated everybody with incredible respect and was nice 99.9% of the time. He did 50 al- bums and employed 500 people in his career. and never gets the credit he deserves.
Really, and not only as a creative artist but also when you start talking about guitar players, I think every guitar player should hear the two instrumental albums, the Shut Up and Play Your Guitar albums, be- cause they are just amazing. I never heard those albums. But I've always dug his playing, just because it was so weird and so him. You know I mean? It’s hard to be yourself on guitar and he had it down to where he was him- self. That is what I listen for immediately is some- body playing themself. I mean, that’s hard, good players are a dime a dozen now, but give me the guy that's got that, they are playing their heart you know? It's hard to find man. I mean, I don't know anything, I'm certainly not on the pulse of the music world anymore, but you know what’s going on I guess. I don't.
A little bit... a little bit, but I tell ya, the state of the music has become so cookie- cutter that country and pop have merged. Some of it catches me here and there, but most of the time I live in the past with music.(Laughs) Country Music is Vegas Rock now.
Yeah. Man, I love Country Music, but I like it to be, you know, I don't know from what country they are playing now.(Laughs)
I don’t know what country it came from ei- ther. All I know is when I turned on the Country Awards the other night and it
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
