Mojo - The Music Magazine

MAYBE IT WAS SOMETHING in the water, but America’s Pacific North West produced the hardest-hitting garage punk combos to emerge from the mid-’60s ooze. The Kingsmen, The Wailers and Paul Revere & The Raiders were tough enough. But most savage of all were The Sonics, the snarling, thumping purveyors of Psycho, The Witch, Strychnine and Have Love Will Travel.

Since they split in 1968, The Sonics have only grown in legend, influencing three generations of garage punkers from The Cramps to Nirvana and on to The Hives and The Horrors. Indeed, the latter support The Sonics when the band roar into London as part of Le Beat Bespoke 4 – the annual Easter Bank Holiday Beat-fest assembled by The New Untouchables, self-styled 21st Century Modernists and champions of ‘60s culture.

Underlining the renewed demand for their prehistoric stomp, The Sonics’ March 21 show at The Forum sold out in a day, and a second show has been added on March 23. [For more information on Le Beat Bespoke 4 as a whole visit www.newuntouchables.com or www.229thevenue.co.uk.] News of their awesome return at the Little Steve-endorsed annual Cavestomp festival in New York last November has travelled fast.

The Sonics’ touring line-up includes three founder members – Jerry Roslie (vocals/keyboards), Larry Parypa (guitar) and Rob Lind (sax) – but the replacements lack nothing in vintage, with drummer Ricky Lynn familiar to original garage fans from The Wailers, while bassist Don Wilhelm cut his teeth in The Daily Flash, another seminal ‘60s Seattle combo.

As the reconstituted five-piece prepare for their first UK visit, frontman Jerry Roslie joins MOJO on the phone from his home in Tacoma to discuss the past, present and the future of the garage legends.

MOJO: Hello, Jerry. How are you?
JR: Fine, thanks. And quite surprised about what’s happening around us right now.

Why’s that? Didn’t you realise that the band’s appeal had grown in your absence?
Well, yes and no. People did tell us about it and we knew that the records were still selling but I think we were shocked when we found out how much people cared. It was strange.

I guess the reason that people still care is because the records still sound so good.
I suppose they do! But we had no idea that they would when we made them! We had no idea about anything at all!

The Sonics formed in 1963. What music were you into at the time?
Oh, we all loved rock’n’roll. Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all those guys. And of course we did get into The Beatles and the British bands but we liked things simple too.

You recorded and released Here Are The Sonics in 1965. How did you record it?
Basically, it was pretty funky. We had no experience recording. When we went in there they said ‘Let’s do the band track’. We were like ‘What!?’ We didn’t know that things had to be recorded separately because we were just used to playing together as a group. They explained that we had to record the music first. In the end we got our way and we put our voice on different tracks.

So how long did it take you to record?
You might want to take an average. Maybe a day or two. It wasn’t much time. It wasn’t like nowadays where bands take a year. It was pretty rough.

The album came out on the Etiquette label, which was The Wailers’ own label. How did that come about?
The Wailers were already going and we all liked what they did. They were a big band. We used to go and see them and watch them right at the front of the stage, so we were really happy to sign to their label because we knew that we understood each other.

Hendrix was a big Wailers fan and he used to go and see them all the time as a kid at the Spanish Castle Ballroom. Were you aware of him?
Not at all. The only time we heard him was when Purple Haze came out and we were amazed by what we heard him do.

Going back to that first album, where did the inspiration for songs like The Witch, Psycho or Strychnine come from? These weren’t traditional subjects to say the least…
Well I suppose not. I guess I was always into the darker stuff. But to me it was always better than singing things about ‘I’m gonna love you soon, like the moon in June’. I just liked things that sounded nastier than that.

What happened between the first album and the second album [Boom, 1966]?
By the second album we had a sense that we could do anything that we wanted… as long as we didn’t swear! Cinderella was a good example of us going balls-out and trying to go further with our sound.

Your songs were big local hits weren’t they? The Witch went to Number 2 in Seattle and sold 25,000 copies in your home state, but you weren’t really playing commercial pop music…
We did have hits but a lot of things counted against us. Being as rough as we were musically, a lot of radio stations wouldn’t play our music. They wanted pretty music. That’s what they were used to. They just thought we were too far out. They wouldn’t play a song like The Witch, for sure!

You supported the Beach Boys, which must have been like chalk and cheese…
Yeah! We went on right before them in Portland and it was great. The audience had heard our records so they knew who we were. I said something on the mic with an English accent for some reason and, because we were so fresh, no one knew where we were from. I thought that if I used an English accent they’d be into it more. After the first song I said [does semi-Scottish-sounding Beatles accent] ‘Thank you very much, folks! We’d like to thank you for your kind applause!’ And all the girls went ‘Ahhhhh! They’re from England!’ and went nuts. They didn’t know that we were from 100 miles up the road!

You moved from Etiquette to the Jerden label and recorded a third album, Introducing The Sonics, which you did in LA and then disowned, describing it as “garbage”. Why?
We should have stayed on the path that we’d been on, but for some reason we didn’t. That album, it just didn’t have the balls. We lightened up there for a little bit. These days we look at it and think ‘What were we thinking?’ It was just all wrong but I can’t explain why we did it. Even now that we’re not teenagers anymore we realise that you have to be who you really are. There’s no point in us pretending that we’re going to have fun dancing around wearing ballet shoes. That’s just not us.

Would you have reformed the band now if you didn’t think you could still keep it raw?
Because we’re not going to be teenagers again, it’s important to do what we want to do and screw anyone who doesn’t like it! You know Larry has this grinding guitar sound and I like to scream, but when we did that [third] album the engineer told us not to be so loud, to play normally and they’d fix it when they mixed it. What does that mean? We knew what we wanted our album to sound like but they did it their way. That was a crock! Can you imagine anyone telling Jimi Hendrix not to play so loud, not to grind on his guitar? Or to lighten up and be a sissy? Oh, yeah!

So was that album the beginning of the end? Why did the band fall apart the following year?
Well, like most rock bands you get egos and, when you’re all staying in the same hotel room, it’s a bit like being married. We’d been gigging for four years and playing a whole bunch. I think we’d just all got on each others nerves and that was really what ended things. To be honest, I just wanted a break. I didn’t know it was going to be a 40 year break, though!

So if you could do it all again, what would you change?
There would be nobody telling us how to play, the way they did that time. But we were so new at it. We were in Hollywood and we were told that these people were starmakers. That wasn’t us. It was better recording in the small studios we used up here [in Tacoma]. The place we did He’s Waiting was an old grocery store. The guy who ran it was a country musician himself but he let us do whatever we wanted. He had a load of old egg cartons all over the walls and we said ‘Man, we don’t think that’s good for our sound!’ We didn’t know anything. We took over and recorded He’s Waiting as loud as we possibly could.

The Sonics could record again, couldn’t they?
The thought has crossed our mind. I’ve been thinking evil thoughts for 40 years. So I think we could.

What subject matter have you been thinking about?
Oh, you know. The usual dark stuff. I told my current girlfriend, I’m going to record a song a dedicate it to you. It’s called Whipping Boy! She said ‘Oh, stop it!’

So have you written any new material?
During the years the ideas haven’t stopped and I’ve run to note books and written them down. I’ve got lots of notebooks full of this stuff. There are a lot of pieces that are waiting to be finished.

So would you consider a new Sonics album?
I’d love to. I love writing songs and creating new things. And I think we have something that might be different from other groups. So let’s see what happens.

Before playing Cavestomp in New York last year, were you worried about performing after all this time?
Oh yeah! They asked us a long time ago if we wanted to play and we kept saying no because we didn’t think we’d be good enough. In the end we decided to try it. We had a lot to do to shake the rust off so we really had to rehearse a whole bunch.

People are excited at the prospect of The Sonics playing London…
Well, I hope we can deliver for ‘em. I guess we do still have that attitude that we always had. We’re coming over to kick butt and take names! That’s the way we like to play. It’s the only way we know how to play.

Interview: Phil Alexander

The last few remaining tickets for The Sonics at Le Beat Bespoke4 on Sunday March 23 are available from www.kentishtownforum.com or by calling 0844 847 2405.