HardLore - Parris Mayhew (Cro-Mags)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The only thing about the Cromags isn't just their life set is the fact that two of them follow Harry Krishna. They wanted to chant that on record. So you were never down with that. Of course not. I'm intelligence. In that interview, it kind of ends with you saying that you and John were on speaking terms. Is that still the case? No, of course it's not the case.

Starting point is 00:00:22 You can't get in the pit with the snakes and not get bit. Hello, welcome. It's Hardlord time. How are you, Bo? I'm doing so well. as am I and I'm sure you can see and hear why we're both doing so well.

Starting point is 00:00:58 We have an incredible guest today. Hard lore at the end of the day means hardcore lore. That's right. That's right. And few bands in history in any genre have as interesting or riveting of a story as the Cromax, especially in hardcore.

Starting point is 00:01:17 Many twists and turns, which all seem to twist and turn differently depending on who you ask. So we are asking the man that was there from the beginning, co-founder and co-writer of Age of Quarrel and Best Wishes. Paris Mayhew. Paris, welcome to the show. Thank you. What an intro? How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm a little tired. I was recording for the past two days, two 12-hour days. Recording. What are we recording? And doing music? I'm always recording. Yeah, I'm recording music.

Starting point is 00:01:53 I don't record it in a traditional way where I write 12 songs and then go into a studio and record it all in one shot. I just record as I go. So what I worked on for the past two days may be a great song where I may go by the wayside. I just go in and record everything on whim and look for the best. And so far, I've used everything I've been recorded, but, you know, you never know. Are you doing it all yourself or do you have like a band? I'm doing it basically the same way I did the first album, Rise of the Igros, where I make click maps.

Starting point is 00:02:29 Like I map out the entire song, all the tempo changes and everything as I envision it. And then I perform all the bass and guitars. Awesome. And then I bring drummers in. Like I had five different drummers on Rise of the Agros. You know, whoever's available. A lot of them were just friends who were, there at the right moment, you know, when I was doing these, you know, because I work in the

Starting point is 00:02:54 film business and you work on a TV show, you work 13, 14 hours a day, right, days a week for years. And so I would just record on weekends whenever I could, anywhere I could, calling in favors and stuff like that. And one time I was, you know, I just threw out to L.A. and posted on Facebook, JFK to L.A.X or something like that. And I got, when I landed, there was a text from my friend Roy Mayorga, and he was like, oh, you're in Illinois. Come over and jam. And I went over the next day, and by the time the day was over, he handed me a thumb drive with one of my songs recorded in his studio. And then I just took that hard drive home and threw it in my desk and sat there for five years.

Starting point is 00:03:39 While I was recording other stuff and trying to form a, or trying to form a traditional band, which I didn't have any success with, but I'm not a big fan of waiting. for other people to catch up. So I never stopped doing those things in increments. And suddenly I found myself sitting on a bunch of songs. I didn't even realize how many I had. And then I decided to finish one and put it out. And that was the first single off this one, Chaos Magic.

Starting point is 00:04:05 And once I put that out, I figured, you know, maybe I put together an EP. So I started bringing all these songs into the studio and finishing them up, starting to finish them up one of the time, because that's just the way I like to do it slowly. And the next thing you know, pulling hard drives off the shelf and that one that Roy and I recorded, next thing you know,

Starting point is 00:04:28 I had a whole album done without really planning to do it, which is I really found really good because it was no pressure. I was able to do everything exactly the way I wanted to. So yesterday, you know, I have a friend who has a studio and he just said,

Starting point is 00:04:44 hey, you know, you got anything to record and I went over and we spent two days recording. Basically, basically just making clip maps. Sure. Because my clicks are never like one tempo at the beginning is the same tempo at the end. It's like ramps and peaks and valleys. It drives engineers crazy.

Starting point is 00:05:01 But my engineer, Georgia, is very confident with that. So we could have very extensive click map over the weekend. How badly do you wish you had click maps for age of quarrel and best wishes? You know, those those records are pretty strange. straight lines. Is that by design or is that just kind of what felt right at the time? At the time, you know, I wrote most of those songs when I was like 15, 16 years old and I was just kind of like learning my instrument.

Starting point is 00:05:29 I mean, I kind of knew it, but I was, when you start playing or writing for me, what completely changes is I start, I had to adapt my playing to what I'm writing and have to practice what I write and that I play, and I got really good at playing my own music. At that time, the stuff that I was being influenced by, like, motorhead and sex pistols and stuff like that, probably my two primary influences when I wrote Ajorie Phael and Rush. Wow. I'm very much.

Starting point is 00:06:00 But, you know, I, you know, there were, there's tempo changes and stuff, but there's no ramping. It's just kind of like suddenly stopping and suddenly starting. I just, I don't think I was sophisticated enough to understand that you could do that kind of thing. Or if you did it, you know, you did it in the studio live and you just slow down. I didn't know that, you could actually control the map. It's one of the most tedious aspects of putting a record together. But once you get it all mapped out and everything's all set to the grid, it feels so good.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Just comes down to knowing it. And if you're the guy writing it, then you know it. And also the way I, you know, because I do it all myself, basically when it comes time to go on tour, I just kind of like, besides Chuck Winnihan, who's one of my, the other guitar player in the group, I have to, you know, scramble around and find people to play. And I like to have it all mapped out live. So all the

Starting point is 00:06:49 click maps that I make in the recordings end up being used live. Oh, you do the tracks live. No matter where you're playing. Well, I do the click live. The click, yeah, yeah. And depending who, and I'll have the, I'll have the click map in my ear. I used to do it with like in the chromags,

Starting point is 00:07:05 I'd always just have the drummer play and have to listen to the click. And, but now, Now, on this last tour, I had to click myself and I was like, I'll never live without it again. Wow. I love it. Paris, 10 years ago this May, you did a legendary interview with Noisy and Rod Glacial. It's the only interview with a musician I've ever read twice.

Starting point is 00:07:32 I think I can honestly say it is my favorite piece of music journalism of all time. Interesting. A big part of this episode is going to be me just kind of getting your thoughts on segments and pieces of that interview 10 years later. You're going to have to remind, I mean, brother, I got you. Whatever I recounted in that article is just memory. So that won't be a problem. That's interesting. I didn't think, I thought that article was written by somebody in Spain.

Starting point is 00:08:05 France. France. In France, that's what it was. It was a guy in France interviewed. me and he was supposed to appear in a French magazine in French. And then it was translated to English. It was translated. I guess Rod translated to English.

Starting point is 00:08:20 But of course, when the, when the noisy article came out, it came out with a title that wasn't written by the author. Because it was written by noisy. It said something like amazing shit talker or something like that. And I called up the guy in France and I was like, did you do that?

Starting point is 00:08:36 And he said, no. And I said, he goes like, he was that must have been noisy i was like can you tell me who did that and he was like he just got silent on the phone i think he thought i was going to show up to noise and then punish a guy or something but uh initially they took it off and but i i saw that you uh put a connection a link to that for for this um and that title is still on them yeah they did not

Starting point is 00:09:00 they didn't fix that time somebody would only think it was shit talking if they didn't know it was true uh i mean or if they just didn't read it Because something Bo and I talked about is how, how, like the facts are hostile because they're just, they're read that way. But you're completely calm. You even, you read completely calm, which, like, that Kat Williams interview that just went up in some point, at some point he says, like, the truth doesn't need inspiration. Which, like, I got that, even rereading that today just to go over this again. And the truth has a ring to it. That's, you know, not just a saying.

Starting point is 00:09:39 Have you gotten a lot of praise or opposite of praise for that interview in the last decade? I never get much negativity. I wasn't really involved in music at that time when I did that interview. So it was kind of a left field's interview. And I had, you know, I've been working in the film business for quite a long time. I didn't even think of myself as a musician anymore. I remember back then I used to actually say, I got used to saying the words, I used to be a musician. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:10:08 And so when that interview came up, it was kind of like one of these things where, you know, in the music business and in the press and all that's related to the music business, everything that's involved in the music business is basically this. You're either on the inside or you're on the outside. And at that time, I was on the outside, very much so. And it's strange how that happens. I guess I wasn't so immersed in social media back then. and I wasn't connected the way I am to like so many fans around the world. It amazes me once my wife forced me to go on Facebook and I had 5,000 friends in like two weeks. And I suddenly felt reconnected, which was a very strange thing because I think the significance of that interview was I was on the outside.

Starting point is 00:10:57 And the other guys were still on the inside and had a voice in the press. and they were basically, you know, doing what they needed to do to be able to move forward with what they were doing. And there was really no way for them to move forward in an honest way with the Chromeags without me. Like, how do you go forward without the primary songwriter in the band? So what they ended up doing was spinning these stories about how, like John's like, I started the band, and Holly's like, I started the band.

Starting point is 00:11:29 And, you know, and that would be the only way, especially for Harley to move forward because he always, like, is the self-appointed, you know, credit-grabbing type guy about everything, which is, you know, it was all completely false. So at that point when I did that interview, it might have seemed pointed to a lot of people because they, you know, people like to think they understand things. You know, people will get defensive about things that they think they understand,

Starting point is 00:12:01 especially insider information about a band they like. Yeah. So when they hear something else, their brain fights it. Their ego fights it. And so there was a lot of division with the fans and stuff like that. But I think after people read it, I was really, really surprised because, again, I thought it was only going to appear in a French magazine. Right. And then suddenly I was at concerts and people were coming up to me, you know, basically saying what you just said.

Starting point is 00:12:26 Yeah. They were like, you know, that interview you did, it really opened my eyes. He goes, no matter how many of the other stories that I've heard, they all just sounded like blunt claims. And there was no substance to any of the claims. It was just kind of like, you're a jerk. I'm the guy type stuff. And you just answered questions.

Starting point is 00:12:50 And you didn't think about the answers to the questions. And I said, well, of course, you know, why do you, you don't have to think about memory? One of my favorite things, I remember when that interview came out. And I just remember my whole life, the story was so binary from being young and getting into hardcore and Kromags and everything. And it was like there was Camp A and Camp B. And suddenly when that came out and like the rumors and blah, blah, blah, there was like a secret camp C that was Paris's camp. And it's like very exciting to like not not to discredit anybody else's contributions or whatever. But for me, when it comes to like what I like in a band, it's like the guy who wrote the riffs.

Starting point is 00:13:29 That's what, as a guitar player myself, that's what I'm, what I'm drawn to. So, of course, I was excited to, like, see an interview like this and to get this third perspective that, as Colin said, seems, or as both of you said, it's pointed, but it's very, it's very matter of fact. Well, and to your point about what you say you like about a band, you know, the source of the music, that's the whole point of having a name, like Coca-Cola. You go into the deli and you buy Coca-Cola, and there's a, lemonade in the can.

Starting point is 00:14:01 And you're like, this is pretty good lemonade that wanted to Coke. You kind of get mad because, you know, you wanted to Coke. And that's why you have a band name. And, you know, these guys, both of them went off in both directions, sell them lemonade. Quote of the day. Good God, Paris. This is good. The modern music audiences have been taught.

Starting point is 00:14:29 The performer is really the only thing that matters. When like Bo and I love, we love the writer. Yeah. We love a liner note. We love reading who did what. Me too. To us, to our generation, so much of what hardcore is and means is defined by those songs on age of choral. So for you as a young lad in the Bronx, raise in hell, getting into music, getting into guitar,

Starting point is 00:15:00 Sex Pistols and Motorhead, you said, were the big two bands in terms of writing for early Chromag stuff? Yeah, they were kind of the turning point bands. You know, I was raised and still listened to Yes and Rush and Van Halen and Arrowsmith and all the great bands of that era. That's what initially made me want to be a musician. But in that era, you know, you had guys like Eddie Ben Halen and Steve Howe and these, and, you know, bass players like Chris Friar and Gatty Lee and drummers like Neil Pert and John Bonham, and it just seemed like the men and women that were making rock and roll back then,

Starting point is 00:15:39 they were just cut from the different cloth. You know, they were not like regular people. It wasn't something that was attainable. Right. And, you know, I would go and I, you know, I think by that time I'd already seen bandhaling a bunch of times and I'd seen yes and I'd seen the police and all these bands, you know, these great bands. And it just seemed what they were doing was unattainable and mystery, especially the yes

Starting point is 00:16:04 in Rush album's like what they were doing. Like I just couldn't even find them what they were doing. Drum wise, I mean, that's, that is unattainable. And then I heard of Susspricis. That is unattainable skill. And then I heard the sex pistols. And the sex pistols kind of like were kind of astonishing to me because at that, in that era, in the late 70s, it seemed like rock and roll was like, you know, many people.

Starting point is 00:16:27 and valleys was disappearing. The last holdout was really Van Halen, and everything was turning cars and blondie and a flock of seagulls and all that kind of stuff. So when I heard the sex pistols, it was almost like further in the heavier side than I ever expected ever here again, and I just loved it right away. And I remember because I was, you know, it was like, you know, as a kid in New York, you have a lot more freedom than I think a lot of other people had, you know, because when I was a teenager, the drinking age, didn't matter because there was no, there were no beat

Starting point is 00:17:04 cops in New York City. Like, it was too dangerous for cops to walk the street. They were only in cars. Wow. So you didn't have cops like walking in the bars, checking IDs, anything like that. It was non-existent. Every bar, you know, that I started to go to when I was like 14 years old, and that's another thing. You'd go into a bar. Nobody would ask you for ID because there was no, there was no repercussions. There was no consequences. So there was a whole, you know, entire youth culture in bars. And that's why so many bands came out in New York in that era. Because it was like, you know, I started going into this bar on Avenue A in Manhattan.

Starting point is 00:17:41 And when I was like 14, you know, I just tested in the waters. I was skateboarding around. I was totally, you know, burnt out buildings, rent strike posters on all the buildings. And, you know, just, it was just junkie lines of junkies a block long waiting to buy heroin. you know, it comes down in a bucket and, you know, rope. And there was this one bar on Avenue Way called the Parkland Tavern. I just walked in with my skateboard and looked around. There was nobody in there.

Starting point is 00:18:10 It wasn't even a bartender. So I, like, sat down at the bar. And a few minutes later, I see this head stick out in the back, you know, like his head just pops out and looks around and who looks at me. He was a guy with red hair. His name was red, actually, Red Morrison. And he comes up. And he turned out to be a good friend of my years later. And he comes out and he walks up behind the bar.

Starting point is 00:18:33 And he puts his hand down on the bar. And he takes a look to the left. He takes a look at the right. And he looks at me and he goes, can I help you? There I'm sitting there 14 years old with my skateboard. And it was like 1230 in the afternoon. And I said, God damn right, you can. Can I have a picture of beer?

Starting point is 00:18:51 He goes, you want a picture of beer? And I said, yeah. He goes, are you alone? I said, yeah. And he just slammed his hand down on the bar. He goes, that's what I'm talking about. Oh, my God. Red.

Starting point is 00:19:04 And he poured me a beer. And just this bar, the parking turned out to be, you know, like, I don't know what drew me in there. He was right across the street from a little pump rock club, when the transition has happened called A7. And so I started going into this bar, the parking because I could drink there. And I was trying to bring my friends from school there, but none of them would come with me because they were afraid to go to that. neighborhood. I remember one time getting off the subway with this one kid and I was walking down, like, from Astro Place to 3rd Avenue. He's like, where are we going? And we go from 3rd Avenue, the 2nd Avenue, going further east. When we got to 2nd Avenue, he just stopped, and he refused to go

Starting point is 00:19:42 any further east in 2nd Avenue. And if you don't, I guess you don't know New York, but like, we actually do know that area. We got lost there with Mike Dejean about. I couldn't get them to go any further than 2nd Avenue. But I, you know, they left me, so I just went on and went over to this bar. But every time I'd go into this bar, which I became a regular. And then I started noticing like these little clusters of punk rock kids, other teenagers, you know, across the street. And then that's when I heard the sex pistols. The sex pistols came on through the speakers and just blasting through the speakers and like, just thinking about it, I'm getting chills on my arm. Wow. That was the effect it had on me. You know, I just got these chills. I was like, I just heard Johnny

Starting point is 00:20:20 Rodden's voice. Right. Right now. And even right now, I feel the power of that. And I'm just standing to it and I'm looking around and I see this like group of punk rock guys like long trench coats and shaved heads and spiked hair and stuff like that and they were older though they must have been like in 19 or something like that and I was 14. It was a big difference when you're 14. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I talked to myself, I got to find out who this is. They must know. So I walked up to these kids and I was like, oh, excuse me. They all look down at me. And then when I'm goes, yeah, what? But I said, this song, who's this song? And one of them looks down and he goes, sex pistols, dick. I was like, thank you very much. Thank you. And the next day I went to school, and we had these like three punk rockers. And we had only three punk rockers in our school.

Starting point is 00:21:17 And they dressed like their moms. They all have to have the jackets and that haircut. And they always stood together, like the three of them. And I walked up to them. And I was like, well, I'm excited. excuse me? And they were like, and they look down to me again. And I'm like, what do you want? And I was like, do you have a sex pistols album I can borrow? And one guy looks at me and he looks at the other guy and goes, yes. Wow. Wow. The next day he brought it and he loaned it to me and

Starting point is 00:21:46 I had it for a couple of days. And immediately it was like, I have to own this. And the significance of listening to that album and hearing it and loving it was I was like oh you don't have to be Eddie Ben-Haron or Steve Howe to make music that really moved me and when I brought the record back to these guys I handed it to the guy and he said to me if you like this kid you'll like the stimulators wow he said who's that and he said well they're a local band and they play all the time just look in the village voice there's a newspaper and in the back of the newspaper It was like 10 pages where all the clubs are. You know, because back then we had such a vibrant live venue scene in New York

Starting point is 00:22:30 that there were 10 pages of live venues that had shows. And every, you know, it became my routine. Every Wednesday I'd go and look at the village force to see if the stimulators were prone. When I saw the stimulators, I also saw the bad ones. And then again, this phenomenon is thinking to myself, wow, you don't have to be those guys. and I decided I needed to start a band. That was a major, major turning point.

Starting point is 00:22:56 And Motorhead, and I heard Motorhead. I heard Aces Spades. So Aces Spades, I kind of went forth in the world with Aces Spades and never mind the bollops and we'd come home every day after school and sit with my bass because I was primarily a bass player. And I just started writing this new batch of songs. And one of the first songs that I wrote, I went home instead of trying to be Getty Lee, I tried to be Lenny.

Starting point is 00:23:17 And I wrote World Peace. You know, just saying, sat in a blast and wrote, you know, all those parts back to back and, uh, and said, this is going to be my new band. And, uh, and I just, and I continued writing in that vein and then, uh, looking for people to play with. And I did what kids did back then as I made a fly. Took a Sharpie and I made a fly. He said musicians, bass player seeks musicians to start band. And I went down to the Lori Side and I went to CBGs and I went to Bleaker Bops. And I went down to Avenue A and I put up this flyer

Starting point is 00:23:50 and that was the beginning of how the Cromack started because that's how I met the guys that ended up doing the Cromance. So who responded to the letter? Was it the letter that did it? Well, almost. Before I started writing the songs, I had this other band. It was called Reported Missing. And the singer

Starting point is 00:24:10 had quit at some point because he was like hanging out on Lowery's side and, you know, getting into Pond Rock and all that kind of stuff and he wasn't getting what I was doing. But the last song that I tried to play with him and the other guys in the band was World Peace. And he was actually the one who made the song. Like I came in with this new song and they were on all the other two guys, the guitar playing and the drummer are looking to me like, what the fuck was this?

Starting point is 00:24:33 But Paul, the singer was like, this is great. This song should be called. World Peace can't be done. Wow. And then he never wrote lyrics to it because we broke. He quit and then we broke up. But before he left, he gave it that moniker. So I just ended up always calling it,

Starting point is 00:24:50 Well, Peace Can't Be Done. And then, so he, you know, basically disappeared. I didn't see him for a while. And I'm out putting up these flyers. And I'm in front of 171A, which is where Rat Cage Records was downstairs and upstairs was 171A recording studio with the Bad Brains to do, the original war cassette.

Starting point is 00:25:12 That would be a good place to put up a flyer. Yeah. You know? And so I'm there with a scotch tape, putting this flyer on the wall above the rat cage. And I hear this voice go, Paris. And I turn around and it's Paul, the similar to my former band, walking down the street with Harley Flan. Wow. And so that's basically how it all started.

Starting point is 00:25:35 And then the original band was me, Paul, and Arden. It didn't last very long because what, you know, what it basically was was like, you know, Harley, like looks at the flyer and says to Paul. was like, why don't you play with him? And he's like, oh, I can't play with Paris. Paris plays bass like, you know, like Rush. He's like too good for me. And Paul was just trying to become a guitar player.

Starting point is 00:25:55 He wrote great songs on that guitar. He wrote two songs that are on the first Murphy's Law album. Oh, wow. Because when we were playing together, these were songs that he had written. And later on, he became good friends with Jimmy. A small world. New York was. Harley and Paul were playing.

Starting point is 00:26:14 together which was only a couple of times in one time and just a couple of times in a few apartments and uh and then paul just bowed out but it was basically on paul's recommendation that uh harley was interested in hearing how i played because paul was really selling it hard and apparently harley was trying to start a band at the time and he had like five bands and he was you know testing the waters i guess so hedging his bets he was playing with everybody in town it seemed but not Nothing was working out. And when we started playing together, he was saying, oh, I have this other band, and we're about to play this gig, and I'm playing drums and Murphy's song. It was just like all kinds of stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:26:56 And so initially when we started to promote it, it was all my music, because I had this batch of songs and I guess he was just testing the waters. You know, the same way, he was testing the waters with all these other bands. He wasn't like committing to anything, seeing how things worked out. And then I guess after we had four or five of my songs hashed out, it was like, I think it became a little bit more apparent, which one was going to take off. I wonder if that kid, one of the Ramones' kids at your school, if he has any idea, the domino that he knocked over

Starting point is 00:27:31 and the like literal thousands of people he inadvertently influenced. That's a good question. I don't know. You know, I never saw those guys again. That was their last day Which is weird Because you know With all the punk rock shows

Starting point is 00:27:46 That I ended up going to because of them You know going to see this It wasn't like I went to a stimulator show And I ran into those guys Yeah posers do Well you know the thing is They were like Ramones guys Yeah

Starting point is 00:27:58 And the Ramones You know in my book Like if I didn't know That the Ramones were so big and popular They just don't mean anything to me Like you know When I listen to the of the sex pistols, it wasn't just natural

Starting point is 00:28:12 for me to go out and buy all the Ramones' albums, too. I just, they didn't make any sense to me. I didn't see the connection between the Ramones and the sex pistols at all. If anything, the Ramones seemed more like music had made this split at that time with cars and Blondie and everything going this way and, you know, Van Halen and Sex Pistols or anything that was heavy going in this direction. Yeah. And if anything, it seemed like the Ramones would have gone that way.

Starting point is 00:28:37 So melodic. You know, the stuff that I was like, the dead boys and sex pistols and heavy stuff. These guys were clearly fans of their own. And probably to them, that scene was dead. And what we went off and did probably didn't interest them. Yeah, redefining the genre. That was the whole point of us, you know, transitioning into using the name of arc war.

Starting point is 00:29:01 It was mainly to separate ourselves from the punk arts scene. I mean, I know how I felt about it. I felt like we were distinguishing. ourselves for what we were doing. Not, not, I didn't feel like we were continuing what the Marmones and the sex buses were doing. I thought like, if anything, I thought I was writing songs that were like Motorhead, but didn't turn out that way. You know, like I was, you know, as a, you know, Bo mentioned, you know, why he likes

Starting point is 00:29:30 musicians with the writers and stuff. You know, I definitely think of myself as a scholar of songwriting. You hear people in the past talk about how songs. came about and I remember reading something about the sex pistols saying they were trying to be like the bass of the roller or something like that they were trying to write songs like that or bowie they were like they wanted to be like boi and but what came out was never mind the bollocks and you know when i thought i was writing this like motorhead and it came out to be like age of quarrel so a lot of times when you when you have a vision in mind you get in the way yeah i mean

Starting point is 00:30:07 your identity is going to your identity as a writer is going to just define itself. There's only so much you can do to like define what it is. Yeah. And you can't turn off anything else. Like I wasn't able to turn off my, you know, my, the thousands of times I listened to hemispheres and Farrell the Kings and all those Rush albums. And I found myself constructing, uh, chord progressions because of the song anthem by Rush, you know, the songs, signs of the time, it wouldn't exist if it wasn't for anthem. Oh, wow. And basically it took the intro riff to anthop. Dang it to get the bandit,

Starting point is 00:30:43 da bonged, dig it da bambon, and I played it backwards. Instead of going, ding, do it. I went, come, you dig a d'andig, but I played it more like Lemmy,

Starting point is 00:30:54 as opposed to Alex Leibson. And their songs of the times was born. And that's it, guys. That's all it is. Just play the fucking riff you like backwards. You have literally said that. Well,

Starting point is 00:31:08 you know, the thing was, I was kind of like, I kept saying to myself, I don't understand how this riff is so good. It's basically one note, high note, low note, high note. I was like, how does this sound so good? You know, it's a kid, you know, a 14, 15-year-old kid, trying to fumble his way, Ruth Forts his way,

Starting point is 00:31:26 into understanding why something so simple was so heavy. And so I just started playing it. And I was like, what if you played it backwards? And oddly enough, the funny thing is the chorus is to make, The chorus different than the verse and signs of the times, we flipped it. So that's just it. It went back to being. That's awesome.

Starting point is 00:31:50 Then again, these other signs. And that's it. What have I been saying, guys, just do that. You know, I mean, if you know the revenge album, there's a song called Without Her, which is very much spirit of radio. In that interview, you called Revenge your, your greatest source of recorded musical pride. Is that still true? No.

Starting point is 00:32:21 Okay. Rise of the Aggraise is the answer now. This album is 10 times that album. Wow. In my opinion. When we made Revenge, it was a, when I wrote 90% of the songs, I produced the album. Sounds incredible. I had a boatload of money from Universal Music to make it.

Starting point is 00:32:39 the luxury of being able to cater to the horse shit that the other people had to, I had to have that buffer to get the other guys to be able to perform. I mean, I went in, we were in the studio for, he must have been in the studio for six months. Holy shit. You know, I recorded all my guitar tracks in three days. Right. Wow.

Starting point is 00:33:03 So the other six months was doing the other stuff. Uh-huh. Before we move on from like childhood stuff, something that I, a quote that I read was, you mentioned how people will often say that like, oh, the Kromag's brought punks and skins and metalheads and all kinds of people together. And then you finish the quote by saying, I never really saw myself as any of those things, but it's like a nice thought. I definitely was certainly not looking for a tribe.

Starting point is 00:33:31 I'm not a, I'm not a joiner. But that, but that, you know, to a large extent, back then there was the tribe wasn't so defined as it is now it's like what a hardcore person is now and it's like oh just like this

Starting point is 00:33:48 they have you know they like these bands the hardcore scene that that started to transition out of the punk scene was very much very eclectic you know you had the dead kennedy's and mind of threat

Starting point is 00:34:02 and you had the bad brains and the mastic front and you had the front suckers and the phone knives and the misfits. And like, what are these bands really have in common? Something.

Starting point is 00:34:13 Being from the tri-state area. Yeah. You know, it's very convoluted and it's kind of unclear. And, you know, I remember when I used to go and hang out with all these guys. And, you know, the other guys in the promenics were very much into being a tribe,

Starting point is 00:34:28 being joining something, you know, like there was this whole skinhead thing. And when we first started the band, you know, Hollywood was like, we have to have this, we have to have a concept. You know, we'll be called the bald eagles and we'll be a skinhead band. We'll accept Harris. And everybody in the band will have, once you turn 17, you can't be in the band anymore.

Starting point is 00:34:49 Well, I mean, except Paris, because he's 17. You know, it was like, there was always this like laundry list of things that you had to do, except Paris. Yeah. Because I was allowed to do anything I wanted because I was writing songs. Ah, yeah. Although I am a part of that seminal group that spawned hardcore music, and I feel very akin to it, I don't know if I was, I don't know if you could have picked me out of a lineup. And I remember one time the whole band got arrested in Texas.

Starting point is 00:35:23 And the cop asked me if I was a hitchhiker. Yep. Yes, sir. And I was the only one who didn't get handcuffed. Wow. And I wrote to the police station in the squad car in the front seat. Well, it's funny too because I'm thinking of even we'll get there. But in that clip from the beat, like everybody very much looks apart and you're just rocking.

Starting point is 00:35:49 And you're just, I think you're wearing even just like a collared shirt. Just like just not ever like Doug's wearing a Chromex shirt, you know. When anybody new joined the band, hardly would descend upon them and dress them. And, you know, he, you know, he very much wanted to have some kind of, you know, he wanted me to all be basically like him. And I just never was interested in that. I couldn't really understand it. And then it just finally gave up. You said earlier, we started calling it hardcore.

Starting point is 00:36:22 Yeah. I mean, I remember staying on a street corner with Paul Doradap, the guy, the kid that I told you was in my previous band and introduced me to Harvard. And, you know, when we were talking about starting this band of all evenings. She was like, Paul, you know, because, you know, I always say this, you know, we would stand on street corners and talk about this stuff very seriously. Like, what are we going to be? Are we going to be punk rock? Are we going to be this? And I was like, and I just remember him asking me that. I was like, are we going to be punk rock? And I remember saying, I just don't know. I'm, you know, I love the sex businesses. They're awesome. I just, you know, I grew up in New York City. Being called a punk is probably the worst thing you could be called. And I would never, I will never go away. When I was little kid, little kid, little kid. up until I was a teenager.

Starting point is 00:37:06 The worst thing that anybody could call you on the street was a pump. And then all of a sudden there was this punk rock thing. And I'm supposed to suddenly go, oh, I like punk rock. You can call me a punk now. I don't think so. So when Paul was saying that, and I told him, I was like, you know, I'm not really interested in that. And that is the first time I heard the word hardcore when Paul said to me, he goes,

Starting point is 00:37:25 so do you prefer calling it hardcore? I was like, I don't know, what's that. And I don't remember what his explanation was, but it was the first time I ever heard it. And I was like, well, I'd rather be called that. Yeah, that's a cool-ass word or a derogatory remark. It was also a weird word at the time, too. I kind of like crunched my head to that too because at that time, hardcore just referred to porn. Right. Of course.

Starting point is 00:37:48 Like, if you heard the word hardcore, you just thought, you know, I read an article the other day, they had interviews with Lane and Kent and Chris Cornell and all those guys asking them about, you know, grunge. None of them had a hand in that word. that was suddenly thrust upon them. So to a certain extent, you know, over the years people have asked me, you know, what kind of music is chromags? I always like to say that it's, it was chromags because we certainly weren't upon band.

Starting point is 00:38:16 And, you know, at the time, I think in the 80s, we were probably as hardcore as you could be. Yeah. But, like, music has changed and, you know, hardcore didn't just mark that time. You know, people have embraced it and people live it now that weren't even alive then. And they live it 100%. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's no different than R&B or anything.

Starting point is 00:38:43 It's just, you know, I guess at the time, I just thought, you know, Bunk should mark that time in the late 70s and hardcore would have been our time. And then whenever people come along afterwards, would want to distinguish themselves the way we did and come up with some other name. But I guess if you're not corporate press and there's not people hired to point at you and say, this is what you are. I guess those those monocers aren't changing as often as they used to. Oh, there's no big trend.

Starting point is 00:39:08 Not since sponge. I've heard of anything like that. No, I mean, there are some, like, corny ones out there that we won't repeat. But, you know, you rebelled so that we didn't have to in that sense. So thanks. But, you know, when I made revenge and when I made age of parole, I didn't go in with any plan except for that I sit in my room.

Starting point is 00:39:28 I play my guitar. Yeah. And I play it until I hear something. that I loved. Did you write steal my crown? I wrote parts of it. Why do you ask? That's a banger. You did good on that one. And I did the same thing with this.

Starting point is 00:39:42 You know, I just, this is just the result of me playing my guitar in my room for a number of years. Usually a band's first album is the result of the lifetime of what they aspire to be. And they finally get the chance to make that first album, it basically represents. them musically for their whole life up to that point. And then they make the second album and it represents a year, which is a tough thing. So even though I've made three albums before previously with Cromag's, you know, this album feels like a, like my first album. And you get to start fresh on a thing where there's no rules or preset notions of what

Starting point is 00:40:23 it is. Or what, yeah. Formags were, it was very adversarial and territorial and, you know, people breaking up in clicks and it was all suddenly them against me and that kind of thing. Decisions weren't made for the benefit of the bank. Oftentimes decisions were just made to shut me down or try to shut me down. And why was that? Why was that? It's, you know, it's the negotiation to agree thing that happens.

Starting point is 00:40:55 in a turmoil-filled relationship, we argued about lunch. We argued about songs. You know, it just became everything. And then it becomes at some point, some kind of, like, method of diplomacy where you begin to agree to things that you don't really care about. Right. So you give them a win. So you can have a win on a song.

Starting point is 00:41:18 Okay, give them lunch. They can have lunch. You guys win lunch, but I don't know the song. So you won lunch one day. and they won Harry, Hari, Krishna,

Starting point is 00:41:27 Krista, Kri, Khrushner, Khrusha, Kri, Khrusha, Kroch, they wanted to chant that shit on record. Yeah, I read that. So you were never down with that. Of course not.

Starting point is 00:41:34 I'm intelligence. Outstanding. When I, this is a real, full circle moment for me because a friend in high school gave me a burn CD with Age of Quarle

Starting point is 00:41:50 and Master Killer on it, and obviously we'll get to that later too, but that burn CD was like a very important thing for me. And immediately, my favorite song was, It's the Limit, which I know, was one of the first songs you wrote and had a different title for a minute.

Starting point is 00:42:06 To the I attenol. Okay. So I remember, but I would love to know where da-na-na-na came from. And then the, like, just the, just the inspiration to play that through on the verse riff and then go up a half step so it's a little higher and then into what would be the bridge, the breakdown. We've said before, that's both of our favorite Cromag song. And it's also like, just kind of the perfect.

Starting point is 00:42:30 blueprint on how to write a hardcore song. Yeah. Yeah. Could you break it down to us? Yeah, I can. I remember writing it in my mom's kitchen. It was probably the first song that I wrote on the bitch. Oh, actually, wow. I never even thought about this. I didn't write it on this bitch. By that, you mean you're red BC rich behind you, right? The 1981 BC rich. For the audio listeners. I went to the guitar store to Bodies. Okay. And I didn't buy this one first. I bought a wood grain them.

Starting point is 00:43:01 I was, you know, I was a kid, I was, you know, I was very young and I went into the guitar store and it was like an astronomical investment. And so I went into the store and I must have been playing. They had, I think they had like 10 of these different colors and stuff. Wow. And a number of other guitars. And I just lined them up and I played them over and over all day long. I was driving the salesman crazy.

Starting point is 00:43:24 And I got down to the end and it was this one and it would grain them. And I just couldn't see myself playing a red guitar. You know, at that time. It just seemed too flashy to me. Yeah. So I got the wood-grained one, and I took it home, and I wrote, it's the lemon on that guitar. And I totally would never have remembered that if you hadn't asked. And I remember writing that song.

Starting point is 00:43:49 There were other parts to it, but I was just trying, you know, I was trying to do that lemmy thing with the right hand, and I was just letting my left hand fly around. It was almost like irrelevant. but I mean the skank part is basically just the initial fast part slowed down right it's just it's the same riff which is something I do I do often myself but why going up yeah it was just like we need a verse B you know back I didn't know anything about music really so I really brute force myself and I would just play and play and play and play and play and

Starting point is 00:44:30 I heard something that appealed me and I had like this little cassette recorder that my dad gave me. And if I heard something, I liked it, I'd play it. And then I would record it really quick. And so, yeah, that's how I wrote it's the limit. But anyway, I played that guitar all week and it wouldn't stay in tune. I walked into the store with my grandma. And we walked in thinking, you know, I would just, you know, would be routine kind of thing. And I walked on the guitar and I put it down on the camera.

Starting point is 00:44:53 And the guy's like, what can I do for you? And I said, I bought this guitar last week and it won't stay in tune. And the guy's like, what are you? mean? I said, no matter what I do, it won't stay in tune. And I said, I have an acoustic guitar. I've been playing for years and I play bass and I have no problem to tune in my guitar. This guitar would not stay in tune. There's a problem

Starting point is 00:45:10 with that I'm sure to them. He goes, you said he bought it last week. I said, yeah. He goes, well, we had a seven-day return policy. What day did you buy it? Exactly. And it was a weekend day. And I'm sitting standing there and the guitar case is open. I'm looking at this guitar and I'm not kidding, 15 years

Starting point is 00:45:26 old. Being told no. Yeah. Yeah. And for like the most expensive thing I had ever bought in my life. Right. You know. And so I just like, I looked around this wall of less falls. And I just reached into the guitar case and I grabbed the guitar by the neck, like a baseball bat.

Starting point is 00:45:48 And I turned around. I walked up to that wall of marshals. And I looked back at the guy. I was like, how many of these guitars do you think I can smash before you can stop me? And I flipped. it up like this. And my grandma was like, yeah, you creep. And the guy's like behind the counter, like, and I just started going like this. He's like, no, no, no, no, stop. Which one do you want? And the wood grain one, I mean, the red one was right there on the wall. Yeah. So I said,

Starting point is 00:46:14 that one. And he goes, okay, take it. Take it. So I put the, I put the red one, the wood grain one down and I grabbed the red one. And he stale behind the counter. And I just walk up to the case. And I put it down in the, in the same case. right in front of them and I closed the case. And me and my grandmother just walk out. The perils of owning a guitar shop in the Bronx, huh? No, that was Sam Ash

Starting point is 00:46:39 on 48th Street. Oh, Sam Ash had it coming. Those bastards. When Sam Ash was a single store. Bo, you mentioned before, Paris's quote about when Cromax came to town, skaters, punks, metalheads, and regular kids came and that you never see that. And that's

Starting point is 00:46:55 kind of where we are today with hardcore, Paris. And And Beau and I saw you walking around the Brooklyn Monarch show a couple months ago that I played. And we were definitely both like, oh shit, Paris is here. That's bad. Yeah. Yeah, I literally went like, oh, shit. I've never seen him before.

Starting point is 00:47:12 What are your thoughts on where hardcore is today? Well, I'll start by saying that I think it's great. You know, for me, as an artist reemerging, that there is an existing, you know, infrastructure. Yeah. But I guess to a larger extent because of that, I've been going a lot, a lot more shows lately and seeing how vibrant it is and how many bands are playing. And I did get to see some of the biggest hardcore shows I ever saw in the past couple of years

Starting point is 00:47:50 when Turnstile put out that album, that big breaking album for them. and going to a show where there's like 2,000 people. And, you know, I know a lot of people, I don't know why, I poopoo on them. But I come from a different era where, like what we discussed earlier, that there was this eclectic nature to all the bands. And if you took five of the current hardcore bands today, and Turnstile was one of them,

Starting point is 00:48:23 and you went back to 1983, really the only one that would fit in would be trying to stop. Whoa. Wow. Hell of a quote. To me, they have a little bit of the Beastie Boys and a little bit of the bad brains and a little bit of the, and they're very musical,

Starting point is 00:48:43 but they're still doing their thing. So when I got to see, I've seen them twice in the past couple years and they were playing huge vendors and the crowd was just like you said, you know, if you stood in the crowd and looked around, he wouldn't really be too sure what kind of music you'd listen to. But I didn't find it that much different the other day when I went to the moment.

Starting point is 00:49:03 I'm always happy to see that people are out enjoying live music. So that's how I feel the state of it is. It feels very, very different than when I was in the 80s when I was a teenager, mostly because I knew everybody. You know, the scene was so small.

Starting point is 00:49:22 You know, you'd go to a show, and you'd see, you know, whatever, 200 people there. And then when you left the show, 50 of them would go with you someplace else, you know, and hang out in the park. And it wasn't, so in the large, to the large extent, it wasn't like we went to the show to see each other. We were always together.

Starting point is 00:49:41 Right. At the time there was a show, we all went. So it was very much a, like, you know, a very high school culture type thing. We saw the same people every single day. Nothing like that will ever exist again. So to lament over that is a waste of your time. It's probably a good thing overall that the 14-year-olds aren't at the bars, you know?

Starting point is 00:50:02 That's for the best. I went at that show. It was funny. The closest person to me who I knew who would care was Vogel. And I went up to Volga. It was like, I think Paris just walked by. And Scott looked over and went, he looks good. That was the whole interaction.

Starting point is 00:50:19 But that's good. That makes me that. Paris looks. books good quote let's get to a little bit of an hour in let's just get right into it you know I I'm sorry I realized that about

Starting point is 00:50:35 15 seconds ago I said to myself they haven't done this is what we want this is what we want this we want this to guide itself you know we're just here we're auxiliary you're the you're the focus when it came to writing Chromeags demos and age of quarrel you've made it very clear that most of the time it was just or not all the time it was just you and harley in a room you wrote the songs you brought them to macky to learn the drums you brought them to

Starting point is 00:51:04 eric and john to write vocals and lyrics when it came time to find a singer who who was first was it john or was it eric Eric was just our friend you know that's that's also how it was about then. There wasn't this big stable of musicians to choose from. You know, the ranks of the band of all the veins, you know, except for maybe the crumb suckers because they like to live down on

Starting point is 00:51:30 Long Island. They were basically regular kids. You know, me and Harley, you know, because I've been writing a bunch of songs before I met him and then when I met him, it was like, okay, we're going to start a band, but he had like five other bands. And so I would just write the songs and

Starting point is 00:51:46 we would, you know, come up to where I went to the high school of art and design on 57th Street, and we could just meet me after school at 3 o'clock because he didn't go to school, and he would just meet me after school, and we'd either go to my apartment in Jam, or we would walk down to a bar and talk about the music endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly,

Starting point is 00:52:07 and again, like I said, initially. Two beers, Garso. Initially, it was, you know, us based, you know, to a certain extent, just like harvesting my music initially, Just to see how, like I said, how it would turn out. And so we spent a lot, a lot of time in a room just me, you know, because I was like on fire at that time, you know, that new inspiration of overhead.

Starting point is 00:52:30 And we'd go and it would sit and I would play the songs, which were world peace first. And it's the limit and life of my own, hard times. Those were like, Seekers of the Truth, which was called, which had a different title. Yeah. And, yeah, we just, I would imagine. And, you know, and at some point along, you know, there's this whole myth about how Harley wanted to, he had this mission to start the Kromags and how he made this recording that was the demos for the Kromags. It's all revisionist, for shit history.

Starting point is 00:53:04 When I met him, there was no like, the band is called the Kromag's, and you're joining. It wasn't called the Kromag. It was no name. It was like, hey, we're starting a band. Let's go, let's go play in a room. Oh, let's call it the Bald Eagles this week. Let's call it that. No, let's call it this.

Starting point is 00:53:18 But during that time, he did have a band that he wanted to call the Phranans. And they were one of the bands that went by the wayside. And it's not like, and they actually played one gig. It was called, but they didn't even play as promenance. They played as disco smoothie for some reason. And it was John Barry from the Beastie Boys singing, Dave Stein, I think from Artless, Dave Hahn maybe I don't know

Starting point is 00:53:46 and Harley played bass and I went to the gig with Harley because we were we had already started you know we were already a band we were this other band

Starting point is 00:53:54 we weren't right you know we were bald egos or whatever we were going to be when I saw the show and I liked the songs I thought they were good not a single song

Starting point is 00:54:04 from that band ended up being a chromatic song okay so it's not like you know like this whole mythical story he tells about like I had this band

Starting point is 00:54:12 and I demoed the songs before I ever met Paris. Not true. He had that band. It went by the wayside. And I think at some point John Joseph was involved with that band. That's why John always says he was

Starting point is 00:54:25 an original member. Right, because that band was not the Kromags, but they had that meat. So he started this other band with my songs. So what's more fromags? The songs that are on Eiddequaro or that band that played at, you know, Disco smoothie or the guy who wrote this one.

Starting point is 00:54:41 He sang for it for a minute. So, you know, I mean, it's funny to think about it in these increments, but, you know, we were writing these songs. That band went, by the way, saw he was playing, probably was playing drums with Murphy's Law. And then he, then him and John Joseph and Doug Holland started another band. Motivikins. While we were writing songs called the Motive Ignor's, right? Right. And so that was a whole other band.

Starting point is 00:55:04 And, you know, that was, that was Arley again trying to create his dream of a skinhead band. Right. But as my songs were developing and developing, and it became clear that that skinhead dream of his wasn't going to take off, he came back to this. But during that period of time, when all these songs were being written, his former manager from the stimulators got the idea that he wanted to manage harder. He thought Harley should be a star and he should make a solo record. So he paid for a recording studio and Harley went into the studio and recorded five songs that I never heard because he wasn't contributing on the songs to the Chrome eggs at that time. Right. So they were, that was all you. Those first few songs, you know, hard times, life of my own.

Starting point is 00:55:58 And he took his songs and he recorded the solo line, which was going to be called 10 inches of Harley. supposed to be on a 10 inch, while 10 inches of the part of him. That was the joke. And so he recorded, I remember when he was recording, and I remember feeling kind of like, why don't we just record ourselves?

Starting point is 00:56:17 Because this is a solo record. This is a totally different thing. Yeah. You know, as a kid, you know, whatever, I was just like, okay, fine, whatever. And I guess I was a little insulted that I didn't get to play on or anything. And then I heard it.

Starting point is 00:56:31 He had a cassette and he played before me. And there was like, you know, two half-baked songs and two okay songs or one really good song and uh and then and then the you know then this guy the manager guy yeah you know basically held the tapes for hostage to get partly to sign a management contract and he wouldn't do it and so that record never came out and so it just basically got shelved and i remember at that point you know i'd heard the tape a bunch of comments. And I said to him, I was like, why don't we play this one song? This one song is good. It was called Don't Tread on Me. Oh. And I said, I said, this song is great. Why don't we play? He's

Starting point is 00:57:14 like, no, that's for my solo record. That's a whole separate thing. And I'm like, okay, fine. But as time went on, we got closer and closer to the point where we were going to play gigs and stuff. So I was like, we need more songs. We need more songs. Okay. So he finally agreed to add, don't tread on me. And there was another song on there. I forget what it was called. I think it was called Dead End kicks or something. And John, I think by that point, John changed the lyrics and he became Do Unto Others. So from that solo record that he did, just now he's trying to plan off his demo for Kromag's that he made before me. We only use two songs from that.

Starting point is 00:57:53 Don't tread on me and Do Unto Others. And Do Unto Others, I never really don't put some. But those were the only two, and they came way after the fact, way after we were then. And they were only incorporated into the chromag set once he abandoned all these other, you know, like when he was having his best. Inspirations for us. Very interesting. It sounds very convoluted, but it's like that's typical of the way those guys operate. They'll just take a thread of truth and they'll just backdate something.

Starting point is 00:58:23 Like, you know, I think it's hardly put out some kind of history of the ban on the web that I, on Wikipedia or whatever, that I can't even bother that I chase these things down where he says he met me in 1983. Now he can put them, you know, like he talks about Eric Casanova and starting the band and having this vision and stuff like that. But we started the band in like 1981 or 1980. All right. You know, so what he does is he just erases me from the, from the whole beginning. Which, what is the, what good does that do? Like I said, how, because he can't go forward in an honest way by excluding me, by excluding me unless he excludes me from the history. Right.

Starting point is 00:59:03 So what he's trying to do is rewrite the history so he can paint himself as like this guy who had this vision from the very beginning, which is completely untrue. Because his vision certainly didn't take into account my dominant songs on the album. And the fact that I had a vision to start a band at the exact same time. He's the one who answered my ad in effect. Why didn't things work out with Eric? Considering, I mean, the lyrics that he contributed to the record are timeless. Was his vocal delivery not as good or was he just not into it? Yeah, he said he bowed out.

Starting point is 00:59:37 It wasn't any of those things. Eric was 15 years old. And he was just our crazy wild friend on the street. You know, we just grabbed him and said, you're going to be the singer. And he said, yeah, fuck yeah. And he didn't know what he was doing. He didn't know what. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:59:52 Which, you know, like I said, you know, everybody was just flying by the seat of the pants. But, you know, he took his little school notebook and he scrolled out. You know, some titles of songs on the top of page. And again, you know, he didn't, he never wrote a song before. So what he did was he looked around, you know, and he said to himself, oh, run DMC, run the C is cool. They had a song called Hard Times. So he wrote the words, Hard Times on top of the page.

Starting point is 01:00:20 And then he was like, oh, a big hip-hop song at the time, Street Justice. Whoa. So he wrote Street Justice to the top of page. And then he just started writing his own lyrics. Because he needed a place to start. You know what I mean? So he didn't steal those songs. He just took the titles and then wrote his own songs.

Starting point is 01:00:37 Survival of the streets. Bob Marley, survival. Wow. He put the word survival at the top of the page and then he just wrote his own lyrics. You know, and so we, you know, he didn't have a phone. His parents didn't have a phone. He lived way out of Queens. I never been to his house.

Starting point is 01:00:53 And we had been rehearsing and rehearsing and we had been rehearsing and we finally got Mackie in the band. So it was like me, Mackey, Harley and. And John finally, after like so many changes, I played bass at first and how we played drums first. And we went through a parade of knuckleheads coming and going. And then we finally had this lineup and we had been rehearsing. And I guess I felt like we were ready to play a gig. So I went and booked a gig at CBGB's. And then Eric just disappeared.

Starting point is 01:01:22 Oh, wow. Which I guess wouldn't have been that unusual. People, you know, back then would just not show up or whatever. But we always all met at CBGB. or we all met at the parking, and we all met in the park or something, but Eric just wasn't on and we booked this gig. And it was just that kind of thing where he was just... Just a guy.

Starting point is 01:01:42 Just not being accountable. And then John Joseph's presence on the scene had become this, like, you know, him pushing Harry Krishna on everybody. And oddly enough, one of the first people that he listed was Eric. And I remember when it was happening, like I remember walking down the street. It was like this thing that you would suddenly see beads appear on some of these neck. Yeah. And they had this like, they have this whole like method of like slowly indoctrinating people by telling them a little bit about it.

Starting point is 01:02:18 Like no pressure type thing. Like a gift, how have these beads? And then when you put the beads on, they say, now that you have these beads, you know, and you've been told all these things. now you're aware of Christian. So you went through life before now, never being aware of it, but now you are Christian conscious. And they're like, yeah, but I'm not a Christian. You're not one of us, but you are Krishna conscious now.

Starting point is 01:02:43 So what they do was get these kids to start referring to themselves as Christian conscious. So these kids would come down to a show and they'd have the bees and someone to be like, we weren't Christian beads and they go, oh, I'm not a Christian. I'm just aware. And now you are too. they're Krishna something. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:03:02 Like they're referring to themselves that way. And this is like a real brainwashing technique that they use. You know, they study this kind of thing and all kinds of cults to, you know, to slowly convert people. But anyway, I saw Eric Sandhouse Street and he was wearing these bees and he did that whole routine on I'm precious conscience now. And that's where I started picking up on this thing and I just remember saying to him, you know, Eric, you're like a prime candidate for these kind of people. and they miss people that don't have a good family life and don't have any education. Yeah. You know, hungry and, and they just, they tell you all the things that you want to hear. And I think that was probably a big wedge between me and him because I guess he just really needed it.

Starting point is 01:03:45 We needed something. Then one day he just showed up and he was like, I'm moving into the Harry Christian Temple. Yeah. And he also had this, he was like 15 years old and he had a 25-year-old girlfriend who got pregnant. And we were talking about doing shows, and we were going to do some touring. And he was like, yeah, I'm going to bring my girlfriend and the baby on tour. I was like, and it was just this whole thing of like him living in the temple, wanting to bring his 25-year-old girlfriend and his baby on the road in these, you know,

Starting point is 01:04:15 these van tours, which we anticipated doing because I was ready before we got sound here. Yeah. And it just became untenable for us. And it wasn't like an ugly thing. It was just kind of like we're going to do something else. And he was already immersed in doing the Harry Christian thing. So he felt like he had found something that was more important. So of all the guys to replace him with, you get the guy that recruited him.

Starting point is 01:04:42 Yeah. But the thing is, like, I wasn't even, I wasn't even, you know, there's no way to understand what was going on. Because it wasn't like he was really, John was really open about it. I've said to many people that it was like a big bait and switch because when I met him, he just appeared to me to be like a tattooed. you know, hardcore, tough guy, want to be type guy. And perfect for a hardcore frontman.

Starting point is 01:05:06 I mean, then time has shown that that was absolutely the case. I mean, his presence as a vocalist is like, okay, you can see why this is the guy. I wanted him more than hardly good. Harley was 100% against it

Starting point is 01:05:20 because he was a Harry Pushing. But I didn't really see it because he never pushed it on me. You know, I guess, you know, those guys are trained, to know who to target and who not to target who not to waste their time. So when we brought him into the band,

Starting point is 01:05:35 I couldn't imagine everyone my wildest dreams that this would have become an influence on the bank. Like how could? Like how could something so stupid affect my band? Like I just couldn't even imagine it.

Starting point is 01:05:48 But what I didn't see was behind the scenes he was slowly recruiting Harley. And then at some point, once he had Harley completely committed, that's when he began to voice, you know, to try to inflex his power in the band. And what he did was he told Harley, was me and you were basically missionaries, we're going to change the world.

Starting point is 01:06:11 And Paris is getting away. So whenever I had a conflict with John, he would put Harley in between us. And that's how it slowly happened. So it really felt like a big switch. Well, I definitely, I certainly never, ever decided to have. have a Harry Krishna sing. To me, he just seemed like a heart person. So that's a pretty good segue

Starting point is 01:06:32 to get into Best Wishes, which have, I mean, the only one is about Krishna. Is it not? Yeah, you know, when that song was coming together, John had already been pushed out. Which you said,

Starting point is 01:06:49 and I quote, by the time it came to record Best Wishes, his singing hadn't improved, so we ditched him. That is, 100% true, but there was so many other things that made it more urgent. You know, if we had all been friends, I certainly would have worked harder with him. If we had been friends, he would have been open for me to work harder with him, like I did on the first record.

Starting point is 01:07:15 But there had become this, by that time, there had become this serious divide in the band, where it was basically John, Doug, and Harley against me. It was like 50-50 vote. I had 50. They had 50 between three, whenever we had a fight. But so, yeah, by the time we got to the best wishes thing, the song, the only one was the result of, you know, diplomacy. You know, Harley at that point, he had just become so immersed in this,

Starting point is 01:07:52 Harry Prish and stuff, that he wanted to sing about. And I, being somewhere in between, wanted to dissuade that, but also cater to his needs. And I said, as an artist, you don't have to come out and say the words. You know, a real artist tells a story and lets people take from it what the story is. You don't have to force feed people. That's the art. but anyway, ultimately, the song, the only one became him taking my advice and taking the artful approach to telling his religious story.

Starting point is 01:08:33 Wow. And what ended up happening was it became masked as a love song, but it's actually a devotion to some. Yeah, I've always interpreted it as a love song. Well, what's funny is I saw Harley and the Cromag's play not too long ago, and they play that song and he says this used to mean a bunch of different things now i think i think it's just going to be about my wife and like that's how he kind of introses it i do have a question about crush the demoniac it's not a question john's version of of the band had has been playing that and and he would say

Starting point is 01:09:09 something i i saw it a couple times that like that song was written when he was still in the band or some something like that okay that's true was that written for age of quarrel or after and just while he was still involved it was written after it was it was a question i wonder why that's on that maybe we just hadn't finished it yet because when Doug holland joined the band which was really really soon before we recorded age of quarrel if he joined like you know it's zero out the 11th hour so did he did he write anything on age of Yeah, he wrote that main riff. Oh, really?

Starting point is 01:09:56 And that was like kind of intro to the band. And then I wrote and then and do-d-k-d-k-d-g-d-d-d-talk. Talk about another song. It's like another, like there was this ACDC song on Back and Black. God, I haven't listened to Back and Black in so many years, but I think it's on the second side. It goes, da-na-na-in-wow.

Starting point is 01:10:17 Dan-na-na-na-p-pap! Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just played it really fast. Tana-N-N-N-T-K-K-K-D-G-D-N-It. It's basically the same riff just played super fast. Do you know if, did Doug get the verse riff from Aces High, the Iron Maiden song? See, I never heard Aces High. Okay.

Starting point is 01:10:35 I never heard Iron Maiden. I had no idea who they were. And the funny thing was, best wishes came out. Nobody said anything about it. Years and years went by. I don't think I heard anything about it until, like, the mid-90s. Maybe even later than that. And when I heard it, when I heard somebody tell me that, I was so surprised that I'd never heard it before.

Starting point is 01:10:53 Because I never listened. I'm in my life, and my life is suffering like in bars and you're running for the hills come on. That's a banger. But I never, I don't like Iron Maiden. To me, they're kind of like all the things about metal that I don't like in one band. So when I heard that we recorded a riff That was a direct rip off of them I was kind of humiliated And I was mad at Doug for a long time

Starting point is 01:11:22 And it wasn't until recently that I spoke with Doug Doug's a very peculiar character And he said to me He goes He goes, you know, what a riff thief hardly is And I go, yeah He goes, that was the first song I wrote with you guys And relax pretty much

Starting point is 01:11:43 And I'm like, yeah, pretty much. And he goes, I was just testing the waters. I just figured if I was going to throw a riff out there who's going to be like a red herring. Wow. And I was like, are you kidding me? He goes, no. He goes, and he goes, and I was right. Wow.

Starting point is 01:12:02 And I was like, he poisoned the well. And I just looked at him and I said, you're kind of a genius. Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, that's diabolical. I wish I had done that. Oh, my God. I can't tell you. I mean, when he said that to me,

Starting point is 01:12:15 you know, what a riff thief is. It's like, I mean, you know, the entire time I was in the band, I would like, you know,

Starting point is 01:12:21 he would just suddenly, you know, what he would do is I would go and show him a song. And then go around the neighborhood, which was the whole scene. And he would play them tapes. He'd play people tapes. Like everybody,

Starting point is 01:12:32 you know, guys are in a concert. You know, anybody at note. And he'd be like, oh, listen to my new song. My new song.

Starting point is 01:12:38 My new song. He wouldn't even say, he would even say, my new song over and over and over and over again. until it became common knowledge that he'd written all these songs that I wrote. And I guess Doug was savvy to that already. And I, again, I forgot why he came up. I think because I mentioned it in an article.

Starting point is 01:12:56 And Doug contacted me. And he didn't even contact me like angry. He contacted me very matter of fact. And he explained the whole thing to me. I was like, wow. Wow. Really. Are you guys still in contact at all?

Starting point is 01:13:10 No, I mean, not really. It's not like we're not. contact. It's just, you know, we don't have the kind of day-to-day kind of thing, but he'll reach out to me from time to time. But it kind of bothers me because, you know, the riffs that I really like that I wrote in that song, I feel like I've wasted now. Well, nope, nobody's actively like, I'm not going to listen to that because it's got 15 seconds of an Iron Maiden song. Yeah, right. I don't think that. You know, there's a motorhead song that has the same riff in it, too. There you go. See? Here's the thing. Everything comes from somewhere. That's right. I mean, it's like when we put, you know,

Starting point is 01:13:42 It's like when, you know, the song showing a mercy, it was out on the demo, and then a suicidal tendency is out and came out. You know, war, with a song called War Inside My Head. I remember everybody's saying, like, doesn't that piss you off? And I go, you know, it's, we're influenced by the same things, you know, I, you know, sometimes that happens. We cross, we cross paths, it's synchinesses to a certain extent. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:13 I never, and I love suicidal. So, I mean, I didn't like them at that time. Two, two great songs. It takes two to tango. Yeah. Well, and you clearly love fret seven on A and then just play, dancing around that. And yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:30 And probably the best example of it of like, here's every version of this monochromatic riff in death camps and just from like start to finish. was that that song to start a record is like really for lack of a better term because I hate the word it's very epic as a way to like start a record

Starting point is 01:14:51 you know would just love to know where it because there are so many like there's there's the longer ending with like an extra guitar solo and like lots of stuff where it just kind of keeps going

Starting point is 01:15:02 was that your your brain child was that your riff or was that? No that song is dominant by Harlan. I had rips in there,

Starting point is 01:15:14 but that was definitely dominant by him. I remember at the time saying he wanted to imitate Anthrax, which I didn't even know who Ansbach was at the time. But the way the album starts

Starting point is 01:15:28 was, you know, the only time a drummer got writing credit on the phone at his album, which was P.D. Hines because he came up with that opening.

Starting point is 01:15:38 And then, you know, he started playing that open. And then I started playing that open. Dan-na-na-dan-dan-dan-dan-a-nan-so that's mine and then you know throughout the song it's mostly hardly but uh we got my love to sing you fantastic age of quarrel the song on that is a is a top five that might be the single hardest chromag song pre no i don't talk about i don't want to talk about alpha omega because i don't know if that's uh well we can we can i mean we can talk about anything there's

Starting point is 01:16:09 nothing I won't talk about. It's just, you know. Like your riffs are used on that record. A lot of them, yeah. A lot. I mean, not even, you can't even say a lot of riffs. Songs, entire songs. The majority of the album was written by myself

Starting point is 01:16:27 and this guy named Rob Buckley who came into a place to Epawn. And Rob was like, you know, 18 years old on fire. And, uh, and Harley was, like out in Harry Krishna, pot smoking land, and dealing pot in Central Park. And he was just, he, he just become such a, he'd become very, nobody was welcome.

Starting point is 01:16:54 So even though Rob was in the band, he just didn't want to have anything to do with him then. So me and Rob just spent, like I'd say, an entire winter and summer writing, all those songs, like in their entireties. and we would always invite Harley to come down but he would say no and I remember at some point him saying and I don't know why you're bothering with all that music I've got an entire album written

Starting point is 01:17:19 and it's going to change it's going to revolutionize music but there was no songs written so when it came so when it came time to make demos which we did we went into the sort of studio called Westbet's studio from the west side of Manhattan and we demoed all the songs that me and Rob had written

Starting point is 01:17:36 all of them like You know, all those songs. So Apocalypse Now was a Paris? Apocalypse Now was actually written before Rob was in the band. That was a song that we wrote. It was written during the Best Wishes era. Interesting. But every other song was written that year, me and Rob,

Starting point is 01:17:57 except for other side of madness, which was a song I wrote during the Best Wishes era, which never got recorded and just went by the wayside. And so anyway, we demoed all this stuff for Alpha Omega, and we decided to do a little tour to test out the material. And it was just such a shit show, like, I already refused to play the new songs. I was like, the whole point of us doing this tour is to play the new songs. The only one to play songs in Age of Coral is like, all insecure, like, you know, just having to cater to his ego at the time. It's like, I always liking it.

Starting point is 01:18:31 So like, no, dear, you don't look fat in that dress. Okay, we'll play the age of choral songs. you know the whole point was about play these songs and just he was just such a dick on that tour that by the time we finished the two week tour, we knew Rob decided to quit and start our own band. We've just written an entire

Starting point is 01:18:49 album together. Like why are we putting up with this fucking dickhead when we've just written a cold great album with the music? So we quit. Pardon this interruption. We've got to take a break from the insanity of this unbelievable episode to talk to you about

Starting point is 01:19:04 the people bringing you this episode. The people that made these insane stories possible. The story's so insane. There's one coming up about Jorge going for a run that made me just go for a run, which is why I'm sitting here, drenched and sweat. Covered in sweat. But have you drank your AG1 today? How do you think I got through that thing?

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Starting point is 01:21:12 They're going to be talking about it for years. For years, they'll be like, can you believe that they offer 20% off and free shipping on Manscape for that long? Because they're the longest running hardlore partner. I'm sweating profusely if you can see it. It's unbelievable. Well, this is a good time for you to go and enjoy all the products that Manscape has... I can't wait to do that. And before I do that, the only thing that's going to stay.

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Starting point is 01:21:54 Did you plan to quit and take those songs with you? Of course. There are songs. So what happened there? We didn't, you know, there was no internet. There was no connection. There was like, you know, you don't know what's going. on behind the scenes and Harley went off and like found Doug, found John Joseph, made a deal

Starting point is 01:22:12 for a major record deal with Century Media. And, you know, I didn't know it was a race. I couldn't imagine in my wildest dreams that somebody would record our songs. Yeah. Especially since the whole time he was telling us how terrible they were and how he had a whole album written. So he went into the studio and he basically took every demo and everything that, every riff that ever heard that I wrote and recorded them.

Starting point is 01:22:37 And that's why there was all those extra rifts to make that other near-death experience album. But I remember going to, like while they were recording, I remember seeing Gabby Boularaj, the guy played guitar on that album because he was a friend with my friend Marco. I mean, he had a riff. I know him. I knew he was his brother, Marco. And I saw him and I went up to him and I was like, man, you know, because I assume he didn't

Starting point is 01:23:01 know. I just, you know, to me, I just assumed that everybody carries the same moral compass that I do. Right. Especially if you're an artist. So I thought if he knew, he wouldn't be a part of it. So I went up to him and I basically told him the whole story. It's like, me and this guy Rob Buck, we wrote this out. We wrote all these songs.

Starting point is 01:23:20 And so even then standing there face to face with him, I could see he was struggling with this idea of, well, now it's just hardly word against theirs. And which is something I can really understand. And I said, but are there any other songs that you guys are recording that are not from that one demo? Because he was explaining to me how, like, he learned all these songs of this demo that mean about me. And I said, I'm just curious. Like, there's a bunch of riffs that I have that weren't on that demo. And I hummed him the riffs to the other side of madness.

Starting point is 01:23:54 is na na na na na na da da da da da da da da da bada fada fada fada fada so is there one that goes dang and yeah and he goes he goes he goes how do you know that riff i go what do you mean i said i wrote it i'm telling you i wrote it he goes he just stood there and he goes now i know you're telling the truth oh why he goes because we had we we we had all the songs that were going to be for the album but about a week ago Harley came to me and said I just wrote a new song and he showed me that

Starting point is 01:24:29 and I said well if he just wrote it how to do you right because I hadn't been involved with them for like a year wow and he goes

Starting point is 01:24:38 and that's when he looked in me and he goes oh shit no I know you're telling the truth he was before when we were just talking about this demo you could say he wrote it

Starting point is 01:24:45 he could say he wrote it yeah I mean even though you know all you have to do is do the math I mean you as a guitar player know that Harley They didn't write those, like, da-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-all those harmonic minor. I mean, those riffs are insane to the point where I, like, I, I, if, if I was in Harley's situation,

Starting point is 01:25:06 I would think in that moment, these aren't even stealable. These are insane. What he did was he found a competent guitar player like Gabby and handed them demo. He handed him the demo and said, learn these songs. Even Gabby told me that day when we talked, I said, what about the song? He goes, even the solos. Gabby plays all of Rob's solos off that, off of the demo. And I said, why did you do that?

Starting point is 01:25:29 He goes, well, Harley said that he hummed the solos to Rob. I just started laughing. And, yeah. So at that moment, I thought that I had convinced Gabby again, because I, you know, I think to myself, you know, my moral, you know, that's a mistake a lot of young people make is you assume that everything that you think and believe in other people do. that's why people get robbed and cheated it. Sucker born every minute.

Starting point is 01:25:55 But I really thought I had that, without even intending it that way, you know, by humming him the riff to the other side of madness that you could see the, oh, shit, come over his face. Because Harley is a liar, right? So it wasn't enough that he just said, he didn't just bring the song and say, I wrote this, let's play the song. He had to throw a lie on top. I just wrote it last week.

Starting point is 01:26:23 Yeah. You know, because that's what liars do. They give too much detail. They give more detail than is necessary. But all he had to do is walk in and tell Gabby that he wrote the song. And it would have been a song. Why did he have to say he just wrote it last week? Did he just went back and listened to old demos of us when we were making best wishes.

Starting point is 01:26:43 Like I even have the demo that I'm sure he played him. It's like it was a cassette. We used to like make cassettes of rehearsals and doop them and give him to them. So those are gone? What's that? Are those long gone, or do you still have them? Oh, I actually have those master tapes of those demos. Wow.

Starting point is 01:27:00 I have no reason to upgrade. We'll put them out. Cardlore Records coming soon. Every song on that record was written by me and Rob, except Apocalypse Now, which was written prior to Rob being in the band, and the other side of madness, which all the riffs up until, like, there's like a right in the middle, it just kind of like stops. and then restarts with like a riff that's kind of like the other riffs. It was something that Harley would always do to try to get writing credits on my songs.

Starting point is 01:27:26 He would like stick in one little part. So what he basically did was like took my riffs. Dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, and that, and down, and that whole thing. That was, he took, and he cycles through it a couple of times. I haven't heard the song since it came out. And then all of a sudden he writes a riff that sounds kind of like my riff, and then it goes into that whole piano part.

Starting point is 01:27:50 Yeah. From that point on is whatever they came up with in the studio. Just to get some points. Everything before that I wrote, yeah. So Issa Tomorrow, was that written to be kind of like? I don't recognize those titles. That's the one. It's, go ahead.

Starting point is 01:28:04 Get it a good dude. Get down to get down. God damn. I love the ringing in my head. It's kind of a hip-up. I wouldn't recognize the words. Yeah, very syncopated with a fast part. Oh, wait a.

Starting point is 01:28:17 Oh, wait a little. Very hip hop sounding. There we go like this. Here we go. This is all I've ever wanted. Zoom's got it enough. That's the, that's the, that's do. That's like the first song.

Starting point is 01:28:34 Yeah, let's see the signs. So legally, were there, were there ramifications from that? Well, this is, this is a terrible lesson to learn. And it's also a terrible thing to say on a public broadcast because I, you know, I always feel like when you watch, crime shows you're basically just teaching criminals how to steal. But

Starting point is 01:28:55 when Alpha Omega came out and then I heard it and I heard all this music and it was devastating. When you write an album, it's like you empty yourself. I always say that it's like you empty your pockets

Starting point is 01:29:15 on the table that you give everything you have for like a year and like you just basically milk, blood from a stone, you know, creating all this music. And then what ends up happening is you take that music and you record it, which takes like whatever. And a year later, the album comes out and then you tour on it for like a year. So that music represents like years of your life.

Starting point is 01:29:38 Yeah. You know, and obviously they've been touring on that music for decades. But the problem was when that music was stolen, it just leaves you empty. And it doesn't give you like that recording process and touring process to build up all those juices again to fire them off. And so you just, it's devastating. It's a, it's like a death blow. It really was. It was a terrible, terrible, horrible thing.

Starting point is 01:30:11 Yeah. And there was nobody to tell. And nobody who would listen, you know, like it's like with the music business, like I explained earlier, you're either on the inside. or you're on the outside. And when they put out Alpha Mega, that those people, whoever they were, who were on the inside with my music. And I was on the outside.

Starting point is 01:30:31 Without a voice, without a voice of the press, there was no internet back then. There was nobody to tell. So they basically, so basically my only recourse was to, was legal. And of course, I copy wrote and published all those songs. Right.

Starting point is 01:30:47 You know, because that's just normal what you do. and I went to a lawyer and entertained a lawyer and sat down with him and he basically listened to everything I explained and I said all the songs were copy written and published it's all protected and what do we do and he said

Starting point is 01:31:02 so he goes is the album successful I go what do you mean he goes has they sold a million copies I said no he goes so you want to sue on moral grants I said what do you mean?

Starting point is 01:31:19 He goes, well, there's no money to be mean. If your friend, he kept referring to Harley as my friend, he goes, if your friend doesn't sell a million records, there's no money to get. So how are you going to pay me? Because usually I would take a job, I would take a job on contingency, so you wouldn't have to be out of the pocket. But there's no, there's nothing, there's no contingency here. There's no, there's no end of the line.

Starting point is 01:31:42 So if you want to sue and fight them on moral grounds, you'll have to pay me to do that. And it's going to cost a lot, a lot of money. And so basically, I learned this lesson. You know, anybody can steal anybody's song and get away it. Because the only

Starting point is 01:32:03 way to not get away with it is to have somebody come out to you legally and nobody can feel it that. So it's only like when, you know, these big artists like Taylor Swift, lift a song that lawsuits happen. But, you know, be careful with your music. Oh, you people have,

Starting point is 01:32:19 there. If you're rehearsing in a rehearsal studio and somebody records you out in the hallway and just takes your song, even if you copyright it, it doesn't matter if there's no money to be made. It's a real terrible thing. So that's what happened with Alpha Mega. And then I started hearing other side of madness on the radio. You know, he started playing on the radio and I was like, you know, you know, we talk about writing songs and picking. of your guitar and just playing and playing and playing until you find something you find something nobody else found me for yeah you know i mean that's what makes an artist that's part of the discern is being able to discern the difference between a million other combinations of those

Starting point is 01:33:05 seven notes and the ones that you stumbled upon that move people and even when you have the ability to do that you don't only get so many in life you know in my life i've only made four hours you That may seem a lot to somebody else, but to me it doesn't seem like a lot of a lot. So you think you'd have millions of riffs. Like you think, you know, John Lennon had millions of riffs, but he didn't. You only have a certain amount over a certain amount of years. And you're deeply attached to every single one of them, like Phantom Lens.

Starting point is 01:33:37 Those songs on Alpha Mega, I've had to like turn my brain off it. And it was a trauma that I don't know if I've ever gotten over. I mean, to a large extent, it, it, changed my, it rewired my brain. It rewired my self-confidence. It rewired my faith in myself. It was just a terrible, terrible experience. And to a large extent, it brought me down, you know, in a way that even allowed me to go back and make the next ProMag album. because I guess I so desperately wanted to take something back. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:34:23 I wanted somehow to get back what was taken from me. Because, you know, like I spent all those useful years deciding I was going to make a band. Making the music, the main chunk of the music that made this music that moved people and that created a legacy that somebody should be able to. ride on for the rest of their life as a musician. Of course, continuing to make music, but it creates a foundation for a musical life. That was just taken from me.

Starting point is 01:34:55 So a lot of people say, I can't believe you went back and did revenge. But I think it was because I was so psychologically beaten down and I just felt like I needed to get a handle on that legacy again. But I tell you, it wasn't until we were in the studio making revenge, recording the songs.

Starting point is 01:35:15 90% of the songs that I wrote and a bunch of the songs hardly didn't even know how to play because it was another one of those things were like, I don't even like your songs. So I would go, you know, but we had to record. So me and the drummer go in and we record basic tracks on songs like tore up, you know, just the two of us, a song that I completely wrote and mapped out. Note for note, every single note beginning to end, the entire arrangement. and when we finished the take, the take of that astronomically hard song, like a great drummer like Dave, had a very, you know, I won't say it struggled, but physically struggled. You know, he's like an athlete, you know, playing that song.

Starting point is 01:35:57 When we finally had that take in the can and I listened back to it, and it was no base on it. It was just me and Dave. I didn't have to come here to do this. Right. Like this could have been. anything. I see. This could have been my, you know, my record coming back by myself, but I got sucked into this whole thing. And at that point, I was just like, okay, let's just ride it out.

Starting point is 01:36:23 And of course, it turned bad quickly. And then the band broke up again. And, uh, and I just went, went off in a different creative direction to start working in the film business. But my brain got rewired again a little bit. Like trauma and experience. has that effect on you. It rewires the way your neural pathways and confidence or self-doubt, joy, depression, all those things. You can rewire, you bring it's rewired by circumstance. And so over those years of having a very successful career in music business, I think, you know, I had two egos that have been compartmentalized, you know, that, that, that, that, that beaten down

Starting point is 01:37:14 musical ego and then my filmmaking ego and I just become very successful and I found myself in the situation where I was just very gratified and had a great creative space in my life and found myself playing music again and that's when, you know,

Starting point is 01:37:32 this always happened. Yeah, of course. You know, and I not only found myself back in that studio with Dave DeSenzo recording tour up, intellectually, I found myself saying, well, you know, I need me, Dave, I'll just map out all these songs, clicks, and fill in all the blanks and make the songs the way I always did. You know, because when you're younger, I don't even know if it has anything to do with you. I think it just has to do with just historically bands are bands. You know, we always, you know, you pick up a

Starting point is 01:38:07 magazine and there's four guys standing there and you think that's where the music comes from. Right. Of course. As Beau said, it's really, you know, to a large extent, it's the, it's the songwriter, the one who is guiding the musical force. And if that person goes and those other guys go, well, I'm playing the signs forever. It just doesn't make any sense to anybody who understands where the music actually comes from. But I just felt like I needed to do this record for my self. I love the idea of being in a band. I just never been in me that I liked.

Starting point is 01:38:41 I want to get back to age of quarrel. Some stuff I didn't get to ask about. What was it like when you guys were first playing shows? Like before recording age recall, obviously John's stage presence as a frontman, established himself as the right guy. Were you concerned going into recording for what that would be like?

Starting point is 01:39:03 You said, quote, he had almost no musical understanding. He was just a guy in the scene who decided, I'll be a singer. Well, I mean, the first part of your question was, what was it like in those earlier gigs? The very first few gigs was with Eric. We gigged with Eric. And Blood Clot had already existed, right?

Starting point is 01:39:21 Blood Clot certainly played the four Cromags that we played on him. He was kind of wasn't really on my radar. I'd seen him sing for that band, but we had already started with Eric. Okay. And we played a couple of gigs with Eric. And they were like, kind of sketchy. like, you know, we weren't the finally home machine, we were down the line.

Starting point is 01:39:43 So, yeah, I kind of forced us up on stage at CBGB's, and it was Mackey, me, and Harley, and Eric, and we played, I think we played three gigs together, and then when we decided that Eric, we can continue, we got John, and again, like I said, it wasn't, there was no conflict at first. You know, we had already been in the recording studio and made the demo,

Starting point is 01:40:09 gauge of quarrel before the choral demo. And I guess at that stage, John was much more amenable to direction. You know, I was actually in the photo, in the vocal booth with him, helping him rhythmically, getting Eric's cadences,

Starting point is 01:40:27 like, oh, yeah, be better talk to face reality. For some reason, John couldn't get that. So I was like, literally they're going, oh, he's better stock to face reality. Just do it like this.

Starting point is 01:40:36 I'll hit me his best dog to face reality. You know, his at his movement. I mean, I often say, you know, I don't want to disparage him because I think he was, you know, everything we recorded with him was great, you know. I mean, it's a timeless performance at the end of the day from both him and Mackey. And I love that people love it. And I'm not arguing. I'm just talking about the humor of like something behind the scenes things that people don't see. Sure.

Starting point is 01:41:02 But he was amenable. And we got through that. recording, and I think that recording is great. But by the time we got into the studio, which must have been a year later, to do the album, that's when that whole transition shamed where Harley had been listening to being Harry Christian, John started using him as a shield, and it just, and everything, at that point, it just become a conflict. So by the time we went into the studio, he was less agreeable, and he didn't take any direction. And I think the performance on that album was marginal compared to the demo.

Starting point is 01:41:36 Wow. Annie had a cold, you said? Yeah, right. He had a cold. He was sick. And, you know, it's hard to me to get into somebody's head who I don't know. But it just seemed to me that he was already struggling. And then he had the cold as an excuse.

Starting point is 01:41:53 And I kept pushing and pushing for him to come back and sing it again after he wasn't sick, but he refused. He was like, that's great the way it is. And it wasn't, you know. and you know but here we are all these years later and people love that album so you know doesn't matter now but once he finished his tracks he was gone you know there wasn't a lot of time spending the studio making every quarry we were so well rehearsed by the time we went in even steve remote said you guys are like erasing each other you're playing so tight and so perfect and there was no editing back then there was no pro tools that album is us basically

Starting point is 01:42:29 playing the song live and our producer chris williamson didn't want to do it over overdubs. There's like almost no overdubs on the album. That's amazing. It's only after I like screamed and stopped my feet that I had to do like double tracking on malfunction so I could do the string band instead and that kind of thing. And the guitar solos, of course. But it's essentially a live album. That's amazing. I mean, that's insane considering what's going on there.

Starting point is 01:42:59 You've been, you've been pretty critical of Mackie as a drummer and his performance on that record in the past. Do you still feel that way? Because I, like, that's a, as a drummer, that's a, that was a big one for me. Do you still feel the same today? Yeah, but it doesn't matter what I think. You know, it matters what the listener thinks. How we arrive there is a different story. And it shouldn't affect how people feel about the record or even about Mackey. You know, Mackey's skill and talent is, is intact, no matter how we arrive. at what happened. But, you know, it's like, it's all the psychological mumbo-jumbo that happens when you're young and fighting for your place in a band.

Starting point is 01:43:46 And he wasn't immune to that either. He was very stubborn and uncooperative. And he would, you know, like that whole thing, I said, like, decisions weren't made for the better of the music. Well, drumming decisions weren't made for the better of the music. Some of his decisions were made just to say no. Interesting. As that sounds, that definitely played a part by the time we got into the studio to make Agent Quorum because we were all kind of at odds, you know, it was the John, Harley, and Doug

Starting point is 01:44:14 camp, and then Mackey aren't fighting for his own ground and me fighting for my own ground. And Mackey still viewed me as in Harley's camp, you know, like because in the beginning it was me and Harley were like the pair, and then all of a sudden became John and Harley and me. But whenever I try to talk to him, it's still beautiful. me as like as is in that camp so whenever he said no to me he was saying no to harley it's like that kind of silly stuff and in the end after all these years it doesn't matter you know mackie was absolutely the best choice at the time i always say at the end of the day black

Starting point is 01:44:52 sabbath is not ozzy on instagram sitting on a couch with the pop belly it's black side of albums you know right it's not the osborns it's it's not TV show, it's Sabbath, Bloody Saturday, you know, buying one, all that stuff. That's what, you know, the records, what we leave behind is what it is, and that he, his part of that is written in stone.

Starting point is 01:45:16 And it's great. People love it. And that's all that matters. Us included. On, you know, all the kind of stuff. And the way we got there and the fact that we had to do a thousand takes and the reason we had to do a thousand it didn't have, didn't have to do with his skill level. It had to do so many other things.

Starting point is 01:45:31 It had to do with a terrible unjoyous atmosphere. I don't have time. I don't have time. I don't have space. I like the whole grudges against somebody for something that, especially

Starting point is 01:45:45 to a person who's not that person anymore. Whoever Mackey is a day, he's not that same guy that he was back then. He's just a, he's a great drummer. And I'm not the same person I was back then. Right, of course. And I'm sure I very much doubt that he

Starting point is 01:46:00 watches, but I'm sure he's gratified to hear you guys love that record and you know we love that we love the record we love his performance we love him as a drummer um well the thing is like me and matthew were friends before the interesting about he answered an ad or something i knew him from the streets you know skateboarding he you know i i rode the east side ramps and he rode the west side rooms and nobody ever went from one to the other but i would go to the west side rooms which wasn't really allowed but for some reason they let me skate those ramps and uh i became friends with matthie there I didn't even know he was a drummer.

Starting point is 01:46:35 And then one day I walked CBGV's and he was on stage with Frontline. And I was like, I know that guy. He was, this is great. I love this. I mean, I loved Frontline. But, you know, me at that time, I had this like mission that, you know, I was going to poach. You know, I figured there was a million bands in the scene. If you can get all a couple of people together, poach and put together, you know, the puzzle pieces and make.

Starting point is 01:47:02 a great band. That was, that was, and Harley was my first puzzle piece, which was, uh, it was beneficial because he was kind of known and famous on the scene, so it made it easier to poach those other people. So we poached Mackie in front line and then eventually we poached Doug Holland from crowd and, you know, that was, that was the, that was the plan, you know, what, you know, you know, you know, again, going back to Harley's saying that he had this mass, plan. That was my master plan and my best actually the one we used. Yeah. That sounds like

Starting point is 01:47:38 the Chrome Mags to me. So it was at the end of the Motorhead tour was when the beat was filmed? Is that right? In the middle of the tour. In the middle of the tour. So that's not Mackie playing drums. Oh, in the film.

Starting point is 01:47:54 Yeah, that's feeding. Wow. It's interesting. You know, your mind opens for different reasons once I heard that Mackey was no longer out making a living off my legacy, I guess about two years ago. I don't know when he quit. But I remember somebody was trying to, somebody was reaching out to me because they wanted to put out a vinyl version of Agent Coral and they were trying to get us all together.

Starting point is 01:48:16 And they wanted to know if I could get Mackey's contact information. I said, ask John. And they said, we did. John doesn't have any of his contact information. I said, really, what do you mean? Apparently, he stopped playing with John and changed his phone number. Wow. It's funny, my brain needed that separation or that lack of resentment to start to see his side and story.

Starting point is 01:48:41 There was so much tension between all of us back then. It had to come from somewhere. I never understood it. I just never understood why Mackie disliked me so much, considering he was in a band playing my music. But I think it had to do with so many other things that I wasn't ready to understand. In that interview, it kind of ends with you saying that you and John Ron speaking terms and that you guys had a sit down meeting. Is that still the case and has that happened again? No, of course it's not the case.

Starting point is 01:49:13 You can't get in the pit with the snakes and not get bit. So I'm at home one day and my phone rings. And it's my friend Doug Crosby, who I've known for a very, very long time. He's a UFC judge. He's a stuntman stunt coordinator. film business, so I run into him on set quite a bit. But I met him in 1989 when I found out that he wrote all the lyrics to best wishes. That, you know, when John was out of the band, who was primary lyricist, and we found ourselves making best wishes, and we had all this music

Starting point is 01:49:54 and no lyrics at all. Oh, wow. apparently because Doug was a writer, he sat down with Harley and basically wrote all the lyrics to all those songs. And when he first told me that, I was really mad at him. I was like, you know, it wasn't until later on that I did all the math and I started thinking to myself about how he tells everybody. He wrote my music and, you know, he just, he's just one of those people who just takes things from other people.

Starting point is 01:50:24 So you have the exact same interaction on the other end with Alpha Omega years later. Yeah. But so Doug Crosby calls me up and he's like, he's like, hey, man, I got a weird phone call yesterday. I go, really what's that? He goes, John Joseph called me and he wants to have a meeting with you. And you got to understand leading up to this, John and I had a pretty adversarial relationship because he loved to tell everybody how he was going to kick my ass. and all this stuff like you know people come out of this gym called the gladiator gym on

Starting point is 01:51:00 on spit street and avenue a it's like this like a handmade gym like this puerto rican guy like welded all the machines together well yeah you go and you pay like five bucks to work out that's awesome yeah was great and and john also worked out there and derrick from uh sepitor oh hell yeah and i was always think it was funny because I would be walking out of the street, and people would be like, yo, man, be careful. I just saw John Joseph. You know, man.

Starting point is 01:51:30 You know, I don't know. I'm just looking out for you. Just be careful. I was like, oh, he's probably on the way to the gym. What, Jim? I go, I hated Jim. We both work out there every day. And I would go out of my way, like, if I ever saw John,

Starting point is 01:51:45 you know, because I felt like no reason to have, you know, I understand why he was mad at me because he kicked him out of the band. But I had no reason to be, you know, you know, What do I? You know, he hadn't already started to do the whole, you know, doing his own version of the Chrome X thing. So whenever I'd see him, I would go up to him and, you know, in front of all of his people, I'd go up to him and, like, put out my hand and shake his hand. Just to kind of like underline the fact that he told everybody was going to kick my hands. You got to understand there was a bunch of these years where I was doing that all the time, going up to him in clubs and like, often shake his hand. He'd be like, it's okay, I get a good motherfucker.

Starting point is 01:52:19 Doug says to me, yeah, John wants to have a sit down with you. And I said, why? He goes, he says he wants to apologize to you. I said, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, I'll be there if you want. And I was like, okay. I told him a coffee shop that I go to Brooklyn.

Starting point is 01:52:38 He's gone now. Because you're a Brooklyn guy now, right? Yeah. Yeah, look at him bedside. So I go and I sit down with the coffee shop. It's me and Doug. And John comes walking in. And, you know, there's this thing about John.

Starting point is 01:52:52 He never looks at you in the eye when he's talking, which is a very peculiar thing. But he came in and he walked in and he sat down at the table and he looked me right in the eye. And he was like, I really want to tell you I'm sorry about how things are between us. And, you know, I behaved badly towards you in public. You know, because there was this whole thing where he told people that like, that I ratted him out to the military because he was AWOL from the Navy SEALs and all this bullshit, which is all fiction. He was never a Navy SEAL.

Starting point is 01:53:26 He was never ratted out to the military. He turned himself in. So I'm sitting there looking at him and I go, I go, okay. Okay. That's interesting. And I said, well, he goes, so how do you feel?

Starting point is 01:53:40 You know, how do you feel about me saying this? I said, I feel pretty good about it. I said, as a first stage. And he goes, what are you mean? I said, well, now you're going to have to go in public and explain how you lied about being ratted out to the military. He was like, what?

Starting point is 01:53:59 I said, you're going to have to go in the press and do interviews. And for whatever reason, you're going to say, you know, the political reasons you fabricated this story, but we're not square until you've made it square with people who you disparaged my character to in public. Well, you know, I was hoping we could just start from scratch.

Starting point is 01:54:24 I was like, yes, but we're not on ready to know. And Doug was like, you know, and then I said, anyway, what, he basically kind of agreed to do that. I was like, okay. And so Doug was like, okay, it seems like you guys are getting along good. I'm going to leave. So he left. As Doug left, he's like, so, I was thinking, you know,

Starting point is 01:54:44 you know, torn is one thing, but like, if you have a new record out, Then you can see big shows, big festivals and stuff. I'm like, uh-huh. And he was like, you know, I was wondering if you could like be interested in writing a Chrome Mags album with me and Mackey. You know, me, you and Mackey, we could just get in a room like we did in the old days and hatch out some songs. And I looked at him and I was like, I don't know what kind of illusion you've been living

Starting point is 01:55:15 in or maybe you just have said it so many times over and over and over. But we never did that. That was your fiction. I wrote all those songs and showed them to you, and if I was interested in doing this now, I would do it that way. I would, first of all, you know, I wasn't saying I was doing this. I just gave him for instance. First of all, all these chumps that you play with are gone.

Starting point is 01:55:44 And I would have some of the band that would be capable of playing the music that I would write. And if I'm going to write an album, an entire album's worth of music, that's an astronomical task. I'm going to need the right people, and I'm going to have to know that you're capable of taking the direction that you were not capable of taking on me, you know, like that kind of thing. And I said, and thirdly, we're going to have to work out some kind of agreement with the other members of pronouns that they get a piece. we're going to have to become a corporation. Yeah, that was the biggest takeaway for me from reading that. We have to all be treated equally, except for songwriting. You know, songwriting is a separate thing.

Starting point is 01:56:30 But like, you know, if there's merch being sold or something that's, we have to figure out some kind of amicable way. And we have to have an independent manager that will handle the business. You know, and this was just all off the top of my head. And you just see, John was just sitting in a mouth open. and he was like, well, I was just hoping. I was like, no. I said, I'm certainly not saying I would do that,

Starting point is 01:56:52 but all this stuff would have to be done, and you would have to be very vocal about all the things that you said about me in public. And he was, well, you know, maybe we should give it a try. And I was like, well, I said, the only thing I could think of is that maybe I have, like, a track or two from the revenge album that were never finished, go into the studio review, and we could record those songs.

Starting point is 01:57:16 And based on the experience that I have with you in the studio, I could use that to make a judgment. And he was like, oh, well, okay, you know, we'll think about that. And I said, well, I said, but one thing I'm glad of it is like, I'm going to tell you, you know, you and I have a mutual past. They were both very, very proud of it. And we should be proud of it. And we should also be happy when we see each other. So I'm glad if only this needs to us not being hostile to each other in public or him not being hostile towards me. And we can have a truce.

Starting point is 01:57:54 And he was like, okay, cool. And we shook hands and he left. Oh, and then I said to him, I was like, and I also got to tell you, you know, what you're doing playing with Mackey and going out and making a living off my soloms. I don't like it. I don't condone it. I don't give you my permission. I want you to know that you're doing it against my bill. I never said that to you out loud, but I have to say it now.

Starting point is 01:58:15 I said, I understand why you do it, but I don't like it. Wow. Staying my piece. And so he left, and the first thing he did was he did some big interview in some magazine where he said, I spoke to Paris yesterday, and I just want you to know the reason why there will never be reunion is because of him. And he says he completely understands why me and Mackey are continuing on, and he has. has and we have his blessing just the opposite of what you said yeah so yes exactly and so

Starting point is 01:58:46 our relationship went right back to sneers and and and uh you know that kind of thing and that's where it is to this day yeah i mean i yeah it's not like i had much opportunity to see him i live in a very busy life and i run into him once in a blue moon i couldn't tell you the last time and it's not like we were our friends you know even when he was when i was I'm actually going to try to mind. Before we talk about some music video stuff, because some of the music videos that you worked on directed, whatever, people are going to go, holy shit, when they find out, because I bet they don't know. I'd love to talk about Master Killer. Tell us about producing Master Killer, Paris.

Starting point is 01:59:26 It was an enlightening experience for me. You know, when you're, I'm very attracted by opportunity. you know, I've often changed direction completely in my life based on opportunity. If an opportunity presented itself like being the film business or something, the musician, or whatever. And one of those opportunities that presented itself was being a producer, which I think I'm very well suited for, you know, even in agros, I do myself as the producer primarily.

Starting point is 02:00:03 And I was given the opportunity by Drew. Stone who was managing Marauder who was a friend of mine at the time. He was the producer on all the music videos, the film producer on all the music videos that I directed. Such as? Onix slam,

Starting point is 02:00:20 Biohazard, Shades of Grey, tales from the hard side, after forever, punishment, psycho-negative plaque number one. Those come to mind so easily because a lot of them were made for people that were or became friends in mine, like the guys in biohazard.

Starting point is 02:00:35 typo-negative. But Drew was, you know, he was such an integral part of my life at that time. You know, we spent, I spent more time with him than anyone because we were making music videos all the time. And then I transitioned back into, you know, because of my proximity to the music business by making music videos, I got offered a record deal by Universal Music. I was up in Lear Cohen's office, who was the CEO owner of Depp Jam at the time. and he was, you know, big six foot four Israeli guy with blue eyes. And like, outside of his office, he's like, Benemix! All these bands I signed, all of them, Green Day.

Starting point is 02:01:16 He saw 10 bands that he just signed. He goes, I make millions of these bands. I talk to them. And you know what they say to me? Chromags. How important comags are to them. And I'm like, that's good. He goes, you know, if you got back together, you get signed in a second.

Starting point is 02:01:31 Wow. Like, well, you see the irony of this conversation, don't you? Leorne? He goes, what is this irony? I said, well, you know, you're the CEO of huge record company. And you're telling me that if we got back together, we'd get a record deal. He goes, so what are you saying? I said, put your money where your mouth is.

Starting point is 02:01:52 Yeah. And he basically gave us, gave me a, like what they call a demo deal. Wow. He said, what do you want? I said, give me some money to make a demo. And then you can decide if you want to report me. He goes, I like this idea. And Harley, in reaching out to me, you know, for a long time, he was, like, living on the streets in San Francisco.

Starting point is 02:02:14 He was like a whole homeless guy out there. Is this mid-90s? Yeah, it was like 93, 94. Okay. You know, I had a beeper or something. He would beat me and we would talk on the phone and he would go on and on and on about how he wanted to call, create a carnival band. where there would be 10 bands and he'd be in all of them and go on tour and we do festivals, but it would all be our music and, you know, and if I would just, you know, agree to play

Starting point is 02:02:42 with him again, we can make it happen and all this stuff. There was always something grand, ridiculous. And, oh, and he also wanted to start a religious cult. Which is profitable. It's a profitable field. It's a lucrative endeavor. So Lear offered me this deal and I spent it so I called a parloric who had been really pounding impression me for almost a year, which I just kind of blew off.

Starting point is 02:03:04 It was mostly sympathy because he was like a junkie living in the street and like finally reached his lowest low. And again, there's me, you know, just being sympathetic, even after all the terrible things he had done to me being sympathetic, feeling that like maybe perhaps because he had reached so low that he had come to some kind of realization of all the terrible things he did and that he was actually sincere. And what I didn't realize was he was just doing his best invitation between, you know, doing and fooled me again and uh so we got together and we made the demos that got assigned

Starting point is 02:03:37 to polygram which those tapes were eventually used to make uh white devil revenge and white devil yeah yeah but because of that whole experience you know drew saw me produce the white devil ep he was in the studio with us because he was managing us which was you know at the tail end of the music video era. And me and Drew had a conflict at that time and we separated. But before that happened, he, you know, because

Starting point is 02:04:07 of the experience we had making the White Devil CD, he offered me the job producing the Mara R album. And it was just, I was very simple, you know, my demands were very simple that I, you know, the money we have is very tight. I think they had, what I recall, maybe $28,000.

Starting point is 02:04:24 I can't remember, maybe $28,000. Which is not a lot. of money at all. None of these guys can be in the control room. Maybe I'll let them vote one guy to sit in the control room. But like once the tracks are done, they've got to leave. And I don't want to hear anything from anybody. And everybody's got to listen to what I say. Did you, were you involved in any songwriting aspects? We only had two weeks of pre-production. And the only songwriting that I would do that I wouldn't take any credit for would be making endings to all the songs.

Starting point is 02:05:00 And the opening track, the first riff, there's like this harmony guitar part. Oh, yeah. Because I was just sat in the studio with my guitar in my lap. Every time I heard this intro, it just sounded okay, but it just didn't sound as musical as I thought it could. So I just started playing this harmony over it. And then at some point I said to Anthony,

Starting point is 02:05:20 I was like, I was like, play this harmony. And he heard it and was like, oh, that sounds so great. Now, you just record it. And I was like, no. it's not for me to play it, it's for you to play it. And he goes, no, no, no, no. So I played that little harmon. Really?

Starting point is 02:05:36 And it was the same thing when we came to doing solos. Anthony, he didn't want to be there. And he was trying to leave. And it was time to do the guitar solos. And he made up some elaborate story about how his girlfriend was pregnant. He had to take her to get an abortion or some, some cockamamian horses shit. It was just like so obviously made up.

Starting point is 02:05:56 And I told him, and he says, you play the solos. And I said, listen. He goes, you could do it. And I said, yeah, I know I can do it. But I'm not going to have you fucking hating my guts for the rest of your life. Because I played the solos on the album that you should have played the guitar solos. And so I made him stay. And we just focused on the guitar solos.

Starting point is 02:06:18 And he listened. There were like weird things we did where he was playing certain licks that I heard him play by himself. But I couldn't hear our tick. on the record. And, you know, and I kept, you know, you just got a problem solving. I was like, I can't hear it. I don't understand why. I turned down to the distortion, let's do something.

Starting point is 02:06:35 And the only thing we could do was to get him to play completely clean. And then he said to me, he goes, but this is it like death metal. I was like, we're not making death metal out. We're making them roll. And that started from the very beginning. Like, when I went to, when I went to their first rehearsals, they were so scattered. I mean, those guys were like such knucklehead. sob screaming, and everybody yelling at each other.

Starting point is 02:06:59 They would start to play a song, and they'd all start at different times. And, like, Vinny was playing basically a drum solo from beginning to end. He was an excellent drummer, and he would just play all over the place. And so always exactly the same when we got to the end of the song, they would just all start kind of like floundering. And then, like, one of them would stop them, and then Vinny would stop and then like, Saab would keep playing. Then he would look at Vinny, what do you do?

Starting point is 02:07:22 They would start arguing about what the ending was. I was like, shut out. He said, who wrote the song? And Anthony would be like, I did. I said, show me how the ending goes. Plays it for me. I go, okay, that's the ending. Vinny, Anthony, and then Saab would start screaming.

Starting point is 02:07:41 I'd start screaming. Anthony and Vinny, play the ending. They play it perfectly. I was like, okay, that's the ending. Anthony, show Sob the ending. I know the ending. I was like, clearly you do not know the ending. And it was this kind of ridiculous conversation.

Starting point is 02:07:59 And then some of the songs didn't even have endings, so we just came up with endings. And that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was just so, they were just so crazy and out of control. And then the next thing I started to notice was, no matter how many times they tuned their guitars, they weren't in tune. And I said, I was like, what do you guys tune to? They were like C-sharp, like carnivore. And I was like, well, that's a good choice. And I said, can I see your guitar? I just put it on and I went up to the tuner and I like plucked the string and the string was like rubber.

Starting point is 02:08:31 And I went, wait a second, what gauge are these strings? And they go nines. Oh. I said, you turn the C sharp and you're using nines? Yeah, I was like, oh my God. And I went to ant and I was like, listen, Carnarore, those guys use 11s. It's like when you loosen the string, you have to do something to compensate with the tension. Everybody knows this now, but like back down, not people were turning down.

Starting point is 02:08:58 But I knew this. Was intonation a thing at that time? Yeah, yeah, well, not when you're wearing, using nines and tune down. But I knew all this, Pete, you know, Pete's medium Pete and steel. And Mark talked about it a bit, even though back then all the Chromex records were in standard tuning. So it wasn't thinking. And I played nines. So I took, I said to Anthony, I was like, listen, you're responsible for this.

Starting point is 02:09:19 We need to take all the guitars. You're going to take them to my guitar tech. And we're going to have all the guitars set up with 11s and the bass set up of heavy gauge strings. And they're all going to be set up. And then we got all the guitars set up and they had all the guitars to play with the rehearsal. And the first rehearsal with those guitars set up, it sounded like a completely different band. And Saab's girlfriend was in the rehearsal studio and she was so mad that they were in tune. She goes, you don't understand this kind of music.

Starting point is 02:09:47 It's supposed to be out of tune or something. I remember hearing, and I was like, but listen to them. They sound like a band now. This is what the band sounds like. So we got that out of the way. And then the next thing in pre-production that we did was the drums. I said to Vinny, we would play a song. And some of the times that we rehearsed, George wasn't there.

Starting point is 02:10:09 And so Vinny was just playing all through the verses, like all these like drum fills everywhere. And I was like, I was like, I was like, is George singing during this part? He said, yeah. I said, then why are you doing a drum solo? He goes, well, I said, let's go through these parts and wherever George is seen, no times. Wow. No times at all. I want to hear hi-hat and snare.

Starting point is 02:10:37 I want to hear drum beats. You're there to support the singer, not to crowd him. If you're going to do a fill, save your best fill for when he stops talking and then do your best fill. And he was, you're talking about it? this is the way I play. I was like, and this is another thing I would say, like Anthony,

Starting point is 02:10:55 when I first started, when I first started working, I'm like, Anthony had this really super muddy sound. And I was like messing with the knobs on his amps. He was like, that's not my sound. I was like,

Starting point is 02:11:05 shut up. You don't have a sound. And he was like, oh. And what was recording, I brought in all my amps. And I, one amp with a super clean martial sound

Starting point is 02:11:15 and I had like a much more distorted sound. And Anthony, the whole time was like pulling his hair He was like, this is, this is not a marauder sounds like, this is not my guitar sound. I was like, exactly. I'm building you a sound. You don't have a sound. You guys just sounded out of tune when I met you.

Starting point is 02:11:33 And the entire time we were recording, they were all like, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. And I was like, shut up, get out of the control. Wow. Until they heard the first song mixed. Yeah. Yeah. And Anthony was like, he was less like looking at the ground. He's like, I'm so embarrassed.

Starting point is 02:11:54 He goes, I don't even know how to thank you. I can't believe we sound like this. I never thought we were ever getting. And the record label said the same thing. And guys from other record labels, A&R guy from Roebrener Records said to me, he goes, if I would have known how this album would have sounded, I would have signed me.

Starting point is 02:12:11 Yeah. It's perfect. Yeah, it's a perfect record. They kept telling all, the company people kept telling you, we want this record to sound like Machine Head, because I guess the Machine Head album was really popular at the time. And the singer of Machine Head was also up to produce the album. There was a choice between the two of us. And because the label wanted the Machine Head sound, but I remember when I sent him the first mix, you know, I played the mix for the band first.

Starting point is 02:12:43 and the first thing they all said was, this sucks, the vocals are too loud. The vocals are too loud. And I knew that, I knew this was going to happen. And I had like a multi-stack CD rack in front of me. And I had Metallica, Green Day, brew fighters,

Starting point is 02:13:01 Led Zeppelin, Allison Chains, you know, just like anything, just, I said, anything that's ever made money. Money. I went like this. And I pressed the Metallica one.

Starting point is 02:13:10 And I said, listen to how loud the vocals are. And we went back to our mix. I said, now listen to how the loud George's vocals are. Yeah. And they're like, and they all went, oh, we never noticed how loud the vocals are. I said, because you're only concerned with hiding George's vocals. But we worked so hard on George's vocals, phrase by phrase, getting him instead of singing this to singing this.

Starting point is 02:13:34 Right. You know, like, seeing notes and giving meaning to words and like stopping on a word and saying like, because he was just browning his head off. And they were like, this is our style of music. I was like, no, it's not. If you can't understand the words, it's not a song. So that was the ethic I took. I said, I don't care what style you think you play.

Starting point is 02:13:56 I don't care what sound you think you have. You hired me, and this is what you get. And my goal is to create a record that if you listen to it 30 years from now, it'll sound like it was recorded that day. No facts. Let me tell you. sound like drums, bass, guitar, and a singer in a room. The best they can be, the most in tune, the most understandable, the most articulated they could

Starting point is 02:14:23 possibly be. And so I sent that, so after these guys got over how loud the vocals were, especially when I played them Allison Chains. They also kept saying, the hi-hat is really loud. And I was like, Allison Chains, boom. When you listen to an Allison Chains mix, the two loudest things in the mix are the vocals in the hi-hat. It's really odd to think, oh, it must be guitar, right?

Starting point is 02:14:44 But it's high hat and vocals. And that hat is your whole left ear. Yeah. And I made notes on all these records. And I always had those notes in front of me when we were mixing, we would stop and we would listen to in a whole mix and only listen to one thing. Only listen to the high hat. Only listen to the ridesum. Only listen to the time.

Starting point is 02:15:02 Only listen to the guitar. Only listen to Anthony's guitar. You know, and I just made the record the way I would have made it for myself. And to me, music is just music. There's no genre. There's no this, you know, you know, it's got to be, the drums have to be perfect first. So I really worked, like, we walked into the studio and Anthony and Vinny is like slowly unpacking his drums. And then he's like got a plate of spaghetti and he was like eating a plate of spaghetti.

Starting point is 02:15:31 And I was, and I grabbed the plate of spaghetti out of his hand. I was like, shut up your fucking drums and shut up. Every second you're wasting today is a day at the end. It's a guitar solo that we can't do. It's a vocal take that we can't do one more time because you won't shut the fuck up. Set up your fucking drums and shut the fuck up. Sets up his drums. And so we had to get those basic tracks out of the way.

Starting point is 02:15:55 It's my understanding and tell me if this is wrong that he wrote a ton of those songs. Is that true? Absolutely. He played a major role in that band. Him and Anthony was back home to that band. And so I focused on those two guys. Sure. And, you know, and I focused on George when he came his time.

Starting point is 02:16:15 But, you know, as a singer, you know, like I had to create the bed first. Yeah. That as perfect as it could possibly be. And, you know, the thing about George was, like, George is, like, I only know him from that period of time. I have no relationship with him now. But at that time, he was just like this really funny, energetic guy. At that time, I was a runner. I was running eight miles a day.

Starting point is 02:16:37 Like, we would finish recording at midnight. And I would put on my running shoes. and I would run to Newport Beach, which was an hour away. I would run an hour there and an hour back. And I remember one night, George says to me, oh, I'm going to run with you. And I was like, sure you are. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, do you run?

Starting point is 02:16:56 He goes, no. I said, I'm going to be running for two hours. I run like this every night for years. There's no way you're going to be able to keep up. And also, he had been singing in his throat was sore, and I told him that he wasn't allowed to talk. But it's not possible for George not to talk. He's just one of those people.

Starting point is 02:17:15 He just like on automatic pilot all the time, which is part of his charm because he's all, I mean, if he was talking all the time and he was, and he was, you know, didn't have charm. It would be annoying, but he was so fucking funny and very likable. Yeah, he's hilarious. But we go out running and he's running alongside me talking and the whole time, I'm on, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, stop talking. But I couldn't get him to stop talking. And then the next thing you know, like we're running like this, and he's talking and he runs out in front of me and he flips backwards and he's running in front of me backwards so he could talk to me. And I'm thinking, oh, he's going to get tired real quick. And he did the entire two hours with me.

Starting point is 02:17:54 Oh, shit. Never broke, like, never like puff or puffed. Like he'd been running his whole life. And I was like, what the hell? This is like superior Puerto Rican genetic, the genetics or something. That sounds like something the master killer would do, you know? Yeah. But that was, you know, those are my kind of like personal experience.

Starting point is 02:18:11 But like, but then during the day I would have to chase, sob around and take pot from them and throw, and flush it down the toilet. And, you know, any kind of drugs I found. I was like, you guys cannot be doing drugs. For 30 days, you're not doing drugs. For 30 days, you're being, going to be lucid. You know, once your tracks are done, you could do whatever you want. But while we're doing these tracks, I need lucidity. I need focus.

Starting point is 02:18:36 I need you guys. You know, I don't have time to do this 50,000. times. We just got to get it done. Right. And we barely, we barely, we barely did. And God, did you? Suddenly have them in on time. We did not go, I turned it, I turned it in the day, on day 29, we turned out of it.

Starting point is 02:18:53 We're obviously eating up a lot of time. I have one more question that I've been dying to ask for a long time. Back to the beat real quick. I wrote this at the very bottom of my notes, so I almost missed it. You mentioned Peter Steele. There's a rumor that Peter Steele. was in the crowd at that show. Was it at the Ritz?

Starting point is 02:19:12 Yeah, it was at the Ritz. And Pete's was a friend of mine at that time. So I might have noticed, but you got to understand that place held, I guess, I'm not sure, 2,000 people, and it was packed, and it was a film set. So we were on stage with lights in our eyes and just a ton of people.

Starting point is 02:19:30 I don't recall seeing him that day. It was a lousy day. We, like, flew in. You know, we were there at 7 o'clock in the morning. And from the second we hit the stage, Harley was in rare Harley be an asshole form and wasn't cooperating with the director. And the director left the set. And he was just being a pest. Like he likes to control the room.

Starting point is 02:19:55 And some people like Lion Rishi control the room with charm. And some people control the room by being the biggest asshole in the world. And that's what he would do. And that's what he did that day. So there was a lot of like frustration. as always that day with the with between us and the film crew you know the idea was that we were supposed to play yeah and film and play and film that kind of thing over the course of the day but we ended up uh stopping shooting for quite a long time and then there was a terrible

Starting point is 02:20:26 terrible incident that happened where a kid jumped off the speakers and broke his back oh no my god so he was up on the pa speakers and he just did like you know he was going for being in the movie, I guess, and he fell and broke his back, and productions wept in and hook him out for the club, like, so fast. We didn't even know what happened until afterwards. And when, you know, afterwards we found out all about it and how there was lawsuits against the club and against the film company, which was Vestron at the time, which no longer exists. Apparently, the kid was a big fan of the band, and he insisted that we'd, as ban not be sued.

Starting point is 02:21:11 Oh, wow. And to this day, I've never encountered him. I don't even know what happened. I wonder if that shot made the final cut. I don't think so. And most people don't know this, but like when you go to a concert and it was a barricade, that's because of us. No fucking way.

Starting point is 02:21:29 That's because of that day. The barricade law was brought in because of that day. Thanks a lot, Paris. One of the stars in the movie was Paul Dylan. He was Matt Dylan's brother. I mean, really dreadful. It's like impossible to watch the movie. Yeah, I've watched it.

Starting point is 02:21:47 I've watched it. It's not good. But Matt Dylan was a big hardcore fan. He used to come to all the shows at the Rock Hotel shows. Wasn't he cast for the outsiders just by being like a local, like little fucker in school? Like a bad boy. You're mixing it up a little bit. He was in my bodyguard.

Starting point is 02:22:04 Oh, okay. He was in a playground apparently. He was scouted like somebody walked by and saw him, you know, like being that Dylan. So my dad's favorite. And so I think by the time by 86 it was, he was already a star. Okay. Yeah, I got a really important question for you, Paris. This is huge.

Starting point is 02:22:24 This is something that people have been dying to know for the past decade. You end this interview by talking about a new band you're working on. And the name of this band steals the show from everything you just said before it. You're talking about starting a band called Blood for Papa. Blood for Papa. When can we hear Blood for Papa? Well, this essentially is Blood for Papa. Ah, perfect.

Starting point is 02:22:52 See, wow. You know, I was, at that time, I guess, I got this idea that I was going to start a band. like a traditional band, and I began looking for people. And Rob Buckley, who I co-wrote Alpha Mega, was one of the guys. And there was a bunch of different bass players, a bunch of different drummers. And it was just this weird kind of thing where I had all these songs written, but the other guys that I kept trying to enlist wanted to play different kind of music. Like Rob one day came and he was like, I really like the Black Crows.

Starting point is 02:23:32 Can we be more like the Black Crows? I was like, something like that doesn't compute to me because I don't understand, let's be like a band. I write songs, and whatever songs I write are the band. So, like, that's why I always say, like, you know, what Harley always tells everybody his big plan to start the Chrome Mags and all that kind of stuff. You can't have a plan that didn't take into consideration like a song.

Starting point is 02:23:56 What a song, what a band is is the sum of the songs. So when Rob said that to me, I was like, well, you know, I don't really do what I love the Black Rose. I don't really do what they do, but I do this. So let's do this. But then I'll find myself go, you know, the next day, sit down with my guitar and write a song that sounded like the Black Rose. And then the other guys came in and I show it to everybody and we play it. And when we're done playing it, I'm like, that really sounds like the Black Crows.

Starting point is 02:24:24 And I'm like, it's filing to myself like, because I had accomplished something. And the drummer's looking at me like this. And I'm like, what? He goes, you're not really planning on playing that bullshit, are you? And I was like, what? And this happened incrementally over a long time where I had all these people that were pulling me in different directions. Instead of me just doing what I do and being the spearhead of the band, which is what I should

Starting point is 02:24:50 have been, I tried to cater to all these people. Because again, I had that beaten down ego, music ego. Like I wasn't just the guy who walked to the front and started steering. the ship. I wanted everybody to be happy, so I started catering to everybody. And the next thing you know, we had like this catalog of songs that just didn't make any sense. And the working title of that band was Blood for Papa. The first person to quit was rock. And luckily, he just called me up one day. He was like, after I completely molded the band towards what he wanted to do, he quit. And then the next day, we went into rehearse and I just like showed the bass player like one of my super heavy

Starting point is 02:25:34 songs. Like in one day we went from like the Black Crow as being heavy again. And then over the course of like a couple of months, I started assembling songs like chaos magic and and skateboard fight and it songs off this album. And then the bass player, you know, of course, you know, I never learned. I always say that I'm never going to have another junkie in the band, but he had been a former junkie and been begging me to play with him for like two years. And I'd always run into him and be like, Paris, please, please, let's play together, you know. And but his eyes would be pinned. I was like, there's no way I'm going to be in a band with an addict. And he got into some kind of legal problems and he had to go to rehab.

Starting point is 02:26:16 And when he got out of rehab, he was like, looked like a totally different person. And he came to me and he gave me this whole sob story. And I agreed to let him in. And he was in the band for a little while and they showed up high, of course. And then he lies. He's like, oh, I just took some cold medicine. I was like, oh, my God, how many times have I heard this? I don't know, how many times have I heard the cold medicine stories? Do I look high?

Starting point is 02:26:38 I'm like, yeah, you look high because you're high. And he went off into rehab. And when he got back from rehab, he told me he can't be in the band anymore because he can't be around people that he knew when he was a drug addict. I said, I'm the only person you know who doesn't do drugs. So he went by the wayside. the least enabling guy possible. The guy actively trying to stop.

Starting point is 02:27:02 And then I found, then I actually found cops. The drummer who plays most of the tracks on sound. He plays on chaos magic and the video songs. And it was just me and him. And it was just, we'd like never went anywhere. And I think it was the end.

Starting point is 02:27:16 I said to him, I'm not getting what I need out of this band. And he goes, what do you need? I was like, I've been playing for three years. We don't have anything recorded. So this is This is still Blood for Papa at this time Yeah, we still called Blood for Papa

Starting point is 02:27:31 We had T-shirts and everything You got any large? I know I have picks made I have like 5,000 Blood for Papa picks that I never used But I said to cops I was like, hey man Can I

Starting point is 02:27:46 Can we just record one of my songs? And so I made a click map to Chaos Magic Which is like a seven minute long song With a million tempo changes we mapped the whole thing out. It took like a week. I think by the time we finished doing the click map, he was fed up. And then I said, now I need you to play it like I want you to play it. This is not a death metal song. I don't want to hear double bass. No double bass. He's like a double bass maniac. He's like a virtuoso drummer in his, you know, but he wants to play a certain

Starting point is 02:28:15 way. I was like, this is a hardcore song. It's not only a hardcore song. It's to me my hardcore epic. I need you to play it the way it's written. And I said, And it's all written in the rhythm. And we sat and we basically punched it bar by bar or section by section. And it took us probably a week to do that entire song. And once we were done with that song, I think he was done with me. He was just like, I don't want to do it this way. I was like, yeah, but I made this clip map like a year before.

Starting point is 02:28:46 And he had a year to play on, but he didn't play him. So anyway, we finished that one. And I talked him into doing two more songs. We did those two songs. Those two songs were on this record, too. But once that once we finished that he basically said get out of my studio and then I put it out and when I put it out I got a I got a call from him immediately He's like amen it's cops and I had heard from since he threw me out of the studio out of a studio which is humorous that he's calling me I'm like hmm cow is calling me hello He saw the video

Starting point is 02:29:20 It's fucking awesome he goes what the fuck is wrong with me I go what do you you mean he was how did I not realize how great this was when we were making I was like I don't know I when we were done I couldn't believe you weren't just proud of it but you were just mad at me instead of being proud of it he goes well I'm proud of it now I was like great from here and we ended up talking on the phone and uh and I ended up bringing him out on the tour this summer and we played beautiful but uh yeah but for papa that was uh that was during a period of time where there was this kind of like weird chrome ex stalker who followed you know there's people that find their way into a band they kind of like weasel their way into a band some way oftentimes by

Starting point is 02:30:07 being an enabler and he he was one of those people that got into the band and he lived up in yonkers he was he was in the neighborhood where the son of sam was from david berkowitz or not son of sam subsequently has been found out it wasn't actually david berkowitz but the guy who was arrested and he was currently in jail for those killings, David Berkowitz, lived up there. And this guy was kind of obsessed with him. And he would take us to, he would take me to like his apartment on Pine Street. And he explained to me how, like when he was 12, when the police were up in the apartment, like back then, they already thought they had the killer.

Starting point is 02:30:44 So there was no crime scene tape. And he goes, I just took the back stairs up and I walked right into the apartment with all the detectives and looked around when I was like 12 years old in David Berkowitz's apartment the day he was arrested. And he was like, read the letters, you know, and there were all these letters that the son of Sam sent to Jimmy Preslin from the post. And in one of the letters, you know, we talked about like looking out the window and Papa Sam and, you know, and it's obviously written by one of these two guys. It's not written by David Berkowitz. That's bad. But while we were perusing these letters and listening, and I was listening to this insane guy wax poetic about this insane mystery, while we were perusing the letters. Which are all, they're interesting, fascinating letters because there's directions to David Berkowitz's apartment in code.

Starting point is 02:31:30 So we ended up combing these letters. Yeah. But there was this one passage where he's saying, you know, I must go out and hunt. I must get blood. Blood for Papa. Papa Sam. And I was like, oh, blood for Papa. And then Ghost came to prominence.

Starting point is 02:31:47 Yeah, Papa Emeritus. It just didn't make any sense anymore to use because that word Papa. Yeah, it's theirs now. You heard it here. That's some hard-ass lore, man. Justice for Papa, dude. Paris, this was unbelievable. I think our audience is going to learn a lot.

Starting point is 02:32:02 Yep. I'm curious as a filmmaker before we wrap. Do you have four favorite movies of all time? I'd say the longest running one that's stayed in the top two all these years is Blade Runner. Wow. How did you feel about the Blade Runner 2049? Yeah, I'm glad they never made that. I've never learned into production.

Starting point is 02:32:23 but at the first Yeah, very not memorable I mean, not that I'm not a fan of Ryan Gosling But, you know, he couldn't He didn't carry that movie To me, I found it extremely boring It looks great though I can't remember anything about it

Starting point is 02:32:41 You don't remember Deacons going hard as shit And making it look incredible Nothing like The original Blade Runner looked like The thing about movies is like It doesn't matter how it looks If, you know, the thing was like, you came out of the movie theater after you watch Star Wars, and you were like, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, you knew all their names.

Starting point is 02:33:04 The characters had something to you in those two hours. By the time the movie was over, you were invested. You knew who these people were. You missed them when the movie was over. When this new Blade Runner movie was over, I couldn't even remember who was in it. I was like, oh, yeah, Harrison Ford was in for a second. But when you watch, when you watch the original Blaybrunner, you were like, Gaff. Zora, you know, like,

Starting point is 02:33:25 Deckard, you know, all of them. And quoting the lines, there are a million great lines in Glader. Name, quickly give me a quote from the new Glaber. I want more life, fucker. The lines are poetic.

Starting point is 02:33:44 The visuals are poetic. The acting, Rutker Howard, I mean, come on. And Harrison Ford's best fucking role. Yeah. What do you think about the funny, the funny, uh, noir voiceover intro? It was the future. The original theater release had the, the voiceover. Is that what you prefer?

Starting point is 02:34:07 I do because I've seen it many, many times and I've seen it without the voiceover. And the voice, the voiceover is necessary. It's a good guide. But it sounds insane. But the visuals were all based on the, on the idea that there would be this narrative. So, you know, usually in storytelling, it's show, don't tell. Yeah. But because they were telling, it wasn't shown.

Starting point is 02:34:30 There would have been too many big gaps. And then subsequently, they did a release without the, they've done many releases. They did the release without the voiceover, which I didn't like, maybe because I had already seen it like 50 times with it. And then they did another edit where they added one shot. I thought made the movie better because it you know because the way the original ending the way the original one ends

Starting point is 02:35:00 you don't know you know they pose this question you know have you ever taken that test that void count test yourself Decker? Yeah. When Rachel says that to him you know hinting on me because she discovers that she's a

Starting point is 02:35:15 replicant she didn't even know And that's the whole the whole point of the ending is oh was he or wasn't me. Just the thing. But there was a scene shot in the movie that was taken out. And that scene was, there's a scene in the middle of the, in the movie where he and Rachel are sitting at the piano and he takes a drink and he sits on the couch and

Starting point is 02:35:40 fall asleep. Right. And in the movie, he just kind of wakes up and then they, he grabs her and they make out and all that kind of stuff. But when Ridley Scott shot was a dream secret. where he has a dream of a unicorn, right? So it's just all you're doing is witnessing Decker have a dream, right? So now we as the audience know his dream.

Starting point is 02:36:02 So, but that wasn't in the original cut. So at the end of the movie, when he goes back to his apartment and Gaff has left that little origami unicorn, that's Gaff saying, I read your file. I know your dreams. but that unicorn had no meaning without that scene. It was just, it was just, it was just Deckerd knowing that he had been there. Interesting.

Starting point is 02:36:30 What's the poem that like do, do whatever dream of electric sheep? Is that, that's for Blade Runner, right? Yeah, it's a novel about Philip K. Dick. Great book. Right in high school. Great writer. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:36:43 Yeah. A lot of good stuff. Which is like, that seems, that seems like also kind of the whole point of like, well, he's dreaming of a normal unicorn. so I don't know if a robot can do that. You think he's a replican? Is that what you're saying? Oh, he is a replicant.

Starting point is 02:36:56 Yeah, I always thought he is. That was Gaff. How else would Gaff have known about the universe? He read his file. Yeah. I mean, I mean, this isn't my interpretation. This is what is it. Right.

Starting point is 02:37:13 And it's clear. It's like, why else would Gaff leave that unicorn behind? Because, you know, the whole point was everything that Rachel said to him was, you know, She tells a story about the spider that builds a web outside of her window and then the thousand baby spiders come out and eat the mama. You know, she goes, I don't know whether that's my memory or one of Tyrell's nieces. And because they have all these memory implants, they give them all these memories to think that they're an actual person.

Starting point is 02:37:44 So, Deckard's dream was an implant and Gaff was telling him that I know your dreams by showing him the unicorn. And that changes the whole context of the movie. And now they did a more recent edit where they changed my favorite line in the movie. I mean, I remember in 1982 being in the movie theater and Rutger

Starting point is 02:38:05 Howard going up to Tyrell and going, I want more life. Fucker. All right, well, check this out. Ridley Scott considers Deckard a replica. Harrison Ford considers Decker a replicant, which, you know,

Starting point is 02:38:20 they've retcon. in the sequel. Hampton, Fancher, and David Peoples, who wrote the screenplay, do not consider Deckerd a replicant. Oh. And in the novel by Philip K. Dick, he is not a replica. So who do we believe, who do we trust here? It's just like the Cromax.

Starting point is 02:38:42 It's not because the film is a standalone thing. Yeah. And in the very first cut, he was left ambiguous. Right. Because the film production company didn't want it to be depressing. Oh. They took out the dream of the unicorn and they put in that whole scene at the end where they fly off and who knows how much time. When Ridley Scott made the movie, it was clear that he was a replicant and then the movie ends with Gaff telling him you are a reptican and know your dreams.

Starting point is 02:39:13 Interesting. Gotcha. Well, there you have it. And that's our hard lore blade runner discussion. Read the book. It's fabulous. I've read it many times. He's got a lot of good books.

Starting point is 02:39:23 The solo of auto is excellent. Minority Report, right? Blow my tears, the policeman said, are my three favorites, those three. There's quite a lot of, very prolific. If only I could read, you know. Well, I got to start there. Well, Paris, thank you so much for your exorbitant amount of time. This was unbelievable.

Starting point is 02:39:42 This is an instant classic. It will be the talk of the town. Are there any kind of final thoughts you'd like to leave the listeners with, you know, the Chromeags fans, the Peromax fans, the parents? the Paris fans, the Cromag's haters. I'm just a guy who writes songs. Figures out a way to get them out there. I'm glad a lot of people like him.

Starting point is 02:39:59 Fuck yeah. If you're one of those people, I'm glad you got to listen to this and I hope you listen to my new album, Rise of the Agros. Yes, listen to Rise of the Agros. That's exactly what I'm going to be doing. I can't wait to listen to Rise of the Agros.

Starting point is 02:40:13 Yeah. Go to my YouTube page, YouTube.com slash Theagros and subscribe because it makes a different. If you want to support the band, especially in a time where artists aren't making any money and you want to support them. Promoters, they look at subscriptions. They look at likes and all those kinds of things. So if you subscribe to my YouTube page, it makes it more likely that I'll get booked and play more shows.

Starting point is 02:40:41 And that's my goal. I want to go on the road and support this record and play this music live that I worked so hard on harder than I worked on anything in my. entire life. You like the programs. You'll like the agros. It'll be very familiar to you. It'll just be a lot more. There you go. Period. Thank you so much for your time, Paris. Thank you all for watching and listening. We will see you next week. Bye.

HardLore - Parris Mayhew (Cro-Mags)

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