Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\nThe Sonics<\/b>‘ song titles were pretty provocative, too. \u201cThose totally came from the fevered mind of Gerry Roslie<\/b>,\u201d chuckles Rob Lind<\/b>. \u201cHe wrote all those things. A lot of time when we were in the recording studio, we weren’t even aware of what the words were! We’d figure the song out, and then go in and lay down the music track.\u201d Afterward, Roslie would go into the vocal booth \u201cwith a sheet of typewritten lyrics,\u201d Lind says, \u201cand sing the song. The producer would say, ‘Okay, that’s good!’\u201d and that would be it. Lind says that guitarist Larry Parypa<\/b> claimed he \u201cdidn’t know the words for 30 or 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
I find a diplomatic way to get at a question that has long gnawed at me: did The Sonics create those proto-punky boiled-down arrangements as an aesthetic choice, or was that just the only way they knew how to play? \u201cIn the beginning,\u201d Lind says, \u201cwe had to tailor the songs to three-minute records. Because we were aiming at rock ‘n’ roll radio stations. In those days you couldn’t do [18-minute songs like] ‘In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida’ and get on rock stations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lind admits that the group was guided in that direction by the record producers with whom they worked. \u201cThey worked a lot with the big radio stations like KJR,\u201d he says, so they knew what radio deejays wanted.<\/p>\n
A recurring theme: \u201cNow,\u201d Lind says, \u201cwe pretty much still do the same thing. We get more songs in the set that way. This is our second tour with Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters<\/b>. People are paying $450 sometimes to come and see us, and we want to give them everything we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sonics did<\/i> experiment with longer forms, but interested parties shouldn’t set off on a quest for some long-lost epic Sonics tune. \u201cThere was a time when we did long solos,\u201d Lind says. \u201cI’d do two long sax solos, and Larry wold do three guitar solos. But we started listening to it when it was recorded, and we realized, ‘there’s really no need for us to do that!’ We were just arbitrarily making the songs longer.\u201d So they quit doing that.<\/p>\n
The Sonics knew what their fans wanted. \u201cWhen bands who had big records came through town in Seattle or Tacoma, we would open the shows for them,\u201d Lind says, mentioning The Beach Boys<\/b>, Jan and Dean<\/b>, The Mamas and the Papas<\/b> and other well-known names. The Sonics’ in-your-face style provided quite a contrast to the headliners.<\/p>\n
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The Sonics are often mentioned in the same breath as Oregon-by-way-of-Boise group Paul Revere and the Raiders, but Lind doesn’t hear much similarity between early Raiders tunes \u2013 with Mark Lindsay<\/b> playing sax \u2013 and the music The Sonics made. \u201cWe knew Paul and Mark and those guys pretty well,\u201d Lind says. \u201cbut they were a ‘hat’ band. They wore costumes.\u201d Still, he makes a point of noting that the Raiders were indeed \u201cvery good.\u201d<\/p>\n
But The Sonics looked more to fellow Tacoma group The Wailers for inspiration. \u201cWe were looking at them when we were 16, 17, just as we started playing,\u201d Lind says. \u201cGosh, they had two male rock ‘n’ roll singers. One of them was Kent Morrill<\/b>, the keyboard player; he was probably the best rock singer on the west coast. And they had another guy, named ‘Rockin’ Robin’ Roberts<\/b>, who was just killer<\/i>. And they also had a girl singer, Gail Harris. An amazing<\/i> little girl; she had three backup singers.\u201d Lind says that while The Wailers played \u201creally good rock ‘n’ roll music,\u201d what they truly excelled at was playing the music of Ike and Tina Turner<\/b>. \u201cThey did the Ike and Tina songbook; it was an amazing show.\u201d<\/p>\n
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