{"id":3324,"date":"2012-11-28T05:08:26","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T10:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=3324"},"modified":"2023-01-04T08:51:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T13:51:24","slug":"interview-durocs-scott-mathews-and-ron-nagle-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/11\/28\/interview-durocs-scott-mathews-and-ron-nagle-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: D\u016brocs’ Scott Mathews and Ron Nagle, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Kopp:<\/strong> So you guys were originally signed by A&M, but \u2013 as I understand it \u2013 that was around the time that A&M figured out it didn’t know what to do with rock bands, especially unusual, hard-to-pigeonhole ones. The Tubes got dropped after doing arguably their best albums for the label \u2013 Remote Control<\/em> and the double live \u2013 and then they ended up on Capitol. That’s where you landed for the recording and release of the album, too. I know your Tubes connection \u2013 Ron co-wrote \u201cDon’t Touch Me There,\u201d and the two of you penned \u201cPound of Flesh\u201d for them — was there any sort of connection between your being on Capitol and them eventually being here, or is it just a coincidence?<\/span><\/p>\n

Scott Mathews:<\/strong> Well, \u201csmall world\u201d style. The same guy was behind both signings. But our A&M signing was not exactly full-on; it was…what do they call it…a development deal. They gave us a certain amount of money… in our case, not to record; we had already proven ourselves in that respect…<\/p>\n

Ron Nagle:<\/strong> We had this front money to use to put together a live band. And I was gonna be the old guy who didn’t go on the road.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> The Keith Reid<\/strong>, the Brian Wilson<\/strong>…<\/span><\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> You get it; exactly.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> Kip Cohen<\/strong>‘s idea was to put us together as a band, and \u2013 I wouldn’t say reluctantly, but it really wasn’t our game plan \u2013 we thought, \u201cHey, somebody’s given us quite a lot of money to put together a band.\u201d So we spent every dime of it on doing that. And they gave us a lot of dough. We rehearsed for a long time, got ready, and then had the worst<\/em> showcase show for Jerry Moss<\/strong>. Strings breaking, basses going out of tune…<\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> The lead guitar player’s rock posturing, I think, was part of it too… [laughs]<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> That was a critical offense. We had six guys in the band: two keyboard players, two guitarists. I wasn’t doing the posturing thing; I don’t know how to do that. [laughs]<\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> No, not you! [laughs even louder]<\/p>\n

\"\"SM: <\/strong>We had great vocals, but we had a shitty-ass showcase for Jerry Moss. He was the one-and-only decider. We didn’t road-test any of the songs, play the Roxy all night, or any of the things you’re supposed to do. And in fact we should have done that, just to get our \u201clegs.\u201d But we laid an egg that night, and that was that.<\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> To their credit, A&M did give us the masters; we had done some recording for them. And a couple of those tracks wound up on the Capitol release. But A&M gave those to us; they didn’t say, \u201cHey, you owe us for these.\u201d They said, \u201cOkay, it didn’t work out, but you can have these.\u201d I don’t even remember which tracks they were, now.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong><\/span> It’s funny that you say that. The only other time \u2013 in all the interviews I’ve ever done \u2013 where I have heard a similar story, it also involved A&M Records. <\/span>Lee Michaels<\/strong><\/span> recorded <\/span>Joe South<\/strong><\/span>‘s \u201cRose Garden\u201d for A&M and wasn’t happy with it, and he \u2013 I assume with A&M’s consent \u2013 gave the master to <\/span>Brotherhood<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, a band featuring three ex-members of <\/span>Paul Revere and the Raiders<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> They’re very songwriter-oriented. A lot of people thought that Warner Brothers was the \u201cSongwriter’s label.\u201d and they were, but A&M had their share. The Carpenters<\/strong> and so on.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> I think it stemmed from those two guys [Herb Alpert<\/strong> and Jerry Moss].<\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> And Joel Sill<\/strong>…his father was a giant in the industry. So there’s actually a lot of connection to the Brill Building, in a funny kind of way. But A&M were talking to us about a possible publishing deal, too.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> By and large, I think people dug being on A&M more so than many other labels.<\/p>\n

RN:<\/strong> That was the sense that we felt. But it didn’t work out.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> I own the D\u016brocs <\/em>album on vinyl, but I have to admit that \u2013 one \u2013 I don’t recall ever seeing it in stores back in the day, and \u2013 two \u2013 my copy is a drilled-sleeve promo copy. <\/span><\/p>\n

RN: <\/strong>I think ours are, too! I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that wasn’t!<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> What sort of promotional push did Capitol do for the record? I’ve read the pig-at-Capitol story [described in the liner notes of the 2012 Real Gone Music<\/a> CD release], but how much of an impact do you think that really had?<\/span><\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> The big band at the time was The Knack. Capitol went all, \u201cHere’s the new Beatles<\/strong>\u201d with the Knack album. You’d drive down Sunset Boulevard, and every other billboard was for The Knack. I can recall one thing: we bought [advertising space on] the back cover of Billboard<\/em> Magazine.<\/p>\n

\"\"RN:<\/strong> And we did do a lot of promotion ourselves. We were being managed by a couple of guys, and we went to New York. We had connections with Rolling Stone<\/em>; I knew everybody there. David Fricke<\/strong> wrote a great review, which helped. The record actually did get on the charts, way way down. It got a little chart action, as they say. But we never saw a royalty statement or anything.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/strong> It did better in Europe…<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Kopp: So you guys were originally signed by A&M, but \u2013 as I understand it \u2013 that was around the time that A&M figured out it didn’t know what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,55,64],"tags":[730,1796,1883,1922],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-powerpop","category-reissue","tag-durocs","tag-real-gone-music","tag-ron-nagle","tag-scott-mathews","cat-41-id","cat-55-id","cat-64-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24670,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions\/24670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}