{"id":5402,"date":"2014-02-27T05:30:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T10:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=5402"},"modified":"2014-02-27T05:30:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T10:30:39","slug":"a-conversation-with-the-tubes-founder-bill-spooner-part-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/27\/a-conversation-with-the-tubes-founder-bill-spooner-part-four\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with The Tubes’ Founder Bill Spooner, Part Four"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\u201cNo one would get my wheelchair.\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n

Bill Kopp:<\/strong><\/span> We’re talking about the songs on <\/span>The Tubes<\/strong><\/span>‘ 1977 album <\/span>Now<\/em><\/span>, and whatever comes to your mind about each of them. Side Two continues with \u201cI’m Just a Mess.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Spooner:<\/strong><\/span> That’s a <\/span>Roger<\/strong><\/span> [<\/span>Steen<\/strong><\/span>] song. He came over to my place when I lived in an apartment in Pacific Heights, and we made a little [demo] version of it on a four-track reel-to-reel. Everybody liked it; it was a really unique song. Unique chord progressions. But with Roger’s songs, you’re never really sure what they’re about. He talks in metaphors. A strange guy; he’s not weird-strange, but he has a strange way of saying things. But it doesn\u2019t matter what it’s about. Some songs are message songs, and some are more melodic experiments. <\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> The Re Styles<\/strong> lead vocal, \u201cCathy’s Clone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong><\/span> That was a <\/span>Jane Dornacker<\/strong><\/span> song. And I think <\/span>Captain Beefheart<\/strong><\/span> played saxophone on it, too. Some wacky sax. I just thought it was a funny song: \u201cI’m not Cathy \/ I’m Cathy’s clone.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> What possessed you guys to cover Lee Hazlewood<\/strong>‘s \u201cThis Town\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong><\/span> On the original double-album concept, \u201cThis Town\u201d was going to segue into \u201cTown Without Pity.\u201d We had an orchestra on that one. On both. But we never really finished the \u201cTown Without Pity\u201d part, so we just faded \u201cThis Town\u201d out at the end. And then we put a little [big band version of] \u201cWhite Punks on Dope\u201d at the end. It was supposed to be a cool departure…<\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> It has that whole Vegas thing about it…<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong><\/span> That’s how we did it on stage, too. But we didn’t do it very long onstage, because…a lot of stuff, we’d do trial runs to see if it was going to work. And that one <\/span>really<\/em><\/span> didn’t work. People just didn’t get it. You can get a pretty good read from the audience. We had street sweepers onstage, kind of <\/span>Frank Sinatra<\/strong><\/span> streetlights. And Fee<\/strong> [Waybill<\/strong>] had a kind of Sinatra outfit on. We had a conveyor belt on the back of the stage, with various New York archetypes going across it. And a film, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> No wonder you never made any money!<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll tell you a quick story. We had a song called \u201cDinosaur Blues.\u201d This was very early on. We were playing at a club called The North Beach Revival, I think; a place in San Francisco. Now, there was this costume…and I’m not a costume maker. But I made this costume for Fee. What it was, I took oil cans and flattened ’em out, and made ’em into a Stegosaurus tail. All the way down his back and out. And I gave him some little fake claws for hands. He was a kind of cross between a Stegosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And he said, \u201cWhat? Aren’t you going to paint this or something, make it green?\u201d And I said, \u201cNah, just leave ’em as oil cans. That’s where the oil comes from, right?\u201d \u201cYeeeeahh, but…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So, being a good sport, he tried it. And we did it, and that didn’t go over.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Another one we tried was \u201cBaby, Your Face is Mutated,\u201d which got released eventually.<\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> That’s on Dawn of the Tubes<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong><\/span> For that one, we had these horrible masks made out of urethane foam. Blobbing, melted faces. And by the time that song was done, there was only one person left in the audience. There was this one girl sitting there. So I went over to her, and I said, \u201cY’know, I realize that song’s a little raw, and the costumes are a little strange, but I want to thank you for staying. I’m glad that <\/span>someone<\/em><\/span> stayed all the way through.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And she said, \u201cNo one would get my wheelchair.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

I knew right then that song was never gonna cut it. <\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> There’s two tracks left on the Now<\/em> album. \u201cPound of Flesh.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> \u201cPound of Flesh\u201d was a Ron Nagle<\/strong> song. I don’t think that one really…it came out all right, I guess. But in the grand scheme of things, it was not a good choice. That’s about all I could say about it. Wasn’t one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> So what happened to the remainder of the material originally planed for the double-album that never was?<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> Some of them became part of Remote Control<\/em>, with different words. And some of them never got finished. It was just too much. When it came time to do another album, the last one had left a bad taste, so we didn’t really want to dwell on that material.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> the last track on Now<\/em> is \u201cYou’re No Fun,\u201d a very Vince Welnick<\/strong>-sounding kind of song with all those piano glissandos and everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

BS:<\/strong> It was also kind of early Tubes and Beans<\/strong>-esque. A lot of pounding rock, but piano<\/em> rock. Mike Cotten<\/strong> might have written the lyrics to that one; I’m not sure who he was referring to. It could have been me, for all I know.<\/p>\n