{"id":5398,"date":"2014-02-25T05:30:26","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T10:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=5398"},"modified":"2024-02-09T07:35:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T12:35:33","slug":"a-conversation-with-the-tubes-founder-bill-spooner-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/25\/a-conversation-with-the-tubes-founder-bill-spooner-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with The Tubes’ Founder Bill Spooner, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCan’t you control your bitches?\u201d<\/h2>\n

Bill Kopp:<\/strong> If you don’t mind, I’d like to run down the track lists of the Young and Rich<\/em> and Now<\/em> albums, and just get whatever comes to mind from you for each song. As much or as little as you would care to say. First track on the 1976 record: \u201cTubes World Tour.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Spooner:<\/strong> I liked it. It was obviously written about The Tubes<\/strong> going from place to place, but it was kinda written about my cousin, who was a poet in Paris. The lyric included some sort of French slang that means, \u201cyou’re cool\u201d or something. The rest of it was silly stuff about going from town to town. Blowing our own horn about how great we were.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> Roger Steen<\/strong>‘s \u201cBrighter Day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> That was a really, really old song. That song is from before The Tubes, really. First there was a band called The Red, White and Blues Band<\/strong>…<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> And then there was The Beans<\/strong>…<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> Yeah. And \u201cBrighter Day\u201d was a song from the early days of The Red, White and Blues Band. The Beans played it for a long time, and then it didn’t make it onto the first Tubes album, but [producer] Ken Scott<\/strong> liked it, and we did it.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> Then one of your own songs, \u201cPimp.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> There’s a book called A Walk on the Wild Side<\/em> by Nelson Algren<\/strong>. They made a really crappy movie out of it, but the book was awesome. It was kinda my manual for life for many years. And that what \u201cPimp\u201d is about.<\/p>\n

But the main line, \u201cPimp, can’t you control your bitches?\u201d That’s a good story. We used to haul all our shit around in a big box truck, a rented truck. It was parked in front of the house of one of our roadies, who lived out by the park in San Francisco. We were going to a gig, so we went in to pick him up. This was in the early, early days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There were these two black kids \u2013 they must have been ten or twelve \u2013 messing with the lock on the back of the truck. I yelled, \u201cDudes! What are you doing?!\u201d They said, \u201cWe’re just checkin’ to make sure your lock is okay,\u201d they said. And then, \u201cGive us a ride! Give us a ride!\u201d<\/p>\n

So \u2013 being the hippies that we were, and thinking that the kids were gonna rob us \u2013 we did. And on the way, one of them says to the other, trying to be real cool, \u201cCan’t you control your bitches?\u201d Little kids, y’know. And I thought, \u201cNow, that’s a good line.\u201d From our ten-year-old, would-be robbers.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> \u201cStand Up and Shout.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> That was written by a friend of ours, Ray Trainer<\/strong>. He lived in Arizona, and he was a very troubled musical genius. He could play about twenty instruments. Bass, violin, clarinet, saxophone…if you gave him a half an hour, he could play it. He was kind of a sociopath: quick-tempered, fights. He shot his girlfriend! He had problems. I think he’s dead now. He was a really good songwriter, and we always liked that song.<\/p>\n

We did part of another one of his songs. On the first album, \u201cUp From the Deep,\u201d there’s a part that used to be called \u201cWhere Are You, Rudy?\u201d It was an instrumental that he wrote.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> \u201cDon’t Touch Me There.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> That came from Jane<\/strong> [Dornacker<\/strong>] and Ron Nagle<\/a><\/strong>. I don’t know if Jane was still with us when you saw us.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> No, not by that point.<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> She had a comedy\/dance troupe called Leila and the Snakes<\/strong>. This was around ’75. They were good dancers, and very funny. And we thought, \u201cBoy, these people are perfect.\u201d So we just hired their whole act, and incorporated it into ours. Eventually she decided she wanted to do her own thing, so she left the group. But she wrote that song. She wrote a lot of great songs. She was a really fine songwriter.<\/p>\n

BK<\/strong>: One of my two favorite songs on the album, \u201cSlipped My Disco.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> That was about me and my bad back. And the big disco craze of the mid-to-late seventies. I just thought it was a funny way to riff on all of that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> One of the things I like about it is that while it’s sort of about disco, you\u2019re playing a jazz guitar riff. <\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> I like the harmonica part that Roger Steen<\/strong> plays on it. It’s a whiny, melancholy sound of pain.<\/p>\n

Another interesting thing about that song…Deniece Williams<\/strong>, do you remember her?<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> Sure. She had a big hit in the 80s, \u201cLet’s Hear it for the Boy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> She sang on \u201cSlipped My Disco.\u201d And at that stage of her life \u2013 in her early 20s \u2013 she was super religious. She’d read her bible between takes. I guess she thought that would keep the Devil away because of the stuff she had to sing.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> So that’s her in the background?<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> And on \u201cPimp,\u201d singing about pimps and bitches: \u201cI don’t feel comfortable singing this stuff.\u201d She had an awesome voice, though. \u201cJust sing it,\u201d we said. \u201cWe’re not serious, y’know.\u201d Actually, \u201cPimp\u201d was<\/em> pretty serious, but I didn’t want her to know that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>BK:<\/strong> And then my favorite song on Young and Rich<\/em>, \u201cProud to Be an American.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> There was a guy in town in San Francisco; his name was Satty, with an umlaut. That’s not his real name; his real name was some German name. But that was his \u201cart name.\u201d And he really liked The Tubes; he thought we reminded him of cabaret. And the concept of cabaret is \u201cas above, so below.\u201d So if you have something funny, something light, you have to have something dark. And to make one song as different as possible from the next. And that’s what we tried to do with that song.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> \u201cPoland Whole \/ Madam, I’m Adam.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n