Post by IRON BALLS on May 16, 2006 1:34:51 GMT -5
MACH BELL
Q&A by: Rikki Rampage
8/11/04
1. NAME?
Mach Bell. My ma named me Mark Bell but I changed over to Mach (rhymes with rock) because this other guy, a drummer named Mark Bell was making waves with a band called Dust down in DC. That other guy ended up changing his name to Marky Ramone.
2. PLACE OF BIRTH?
Yellow Springs, OHIO
3. FAVORITE CHILDHOOD MEMORY?
Mostly I was out in the woods. Just a nature boy. But when I was 3 or 4 years old I’d always come inside to watch the Liberace Show on TV. It was a daily 15 minute long show. Liberace was this flamboyant dude who got all dressed up and wailed on a grand piano with a fancy candleabra up on top. I have photos of myself watching this guy, jamming on a little toy piano that I pushed up against the TV screen. I even put a little candlestick up on top.
4. FIRST MUSICAL INFLUENCES?
Yeah, so I guess it was Liberace and also this singing cowboy named Rex Trailer. He had a morning kiddie show on Boston TV. We moved to the suburbs of Boston after my parents finished at Antioch College in Ohio. My father ran a hi-fi and record shop in Wellesley and my mom has a great voice and she strummed a Silvertone acoustic - so they influenced me too.
5. HOW DID YOU DO IN SCHOOL?
I am a curious guy and I love to learn about stuff. As long as they were teaching things that I was interested in learning things went okay at the Holliston public school. The Sh*t hit the fan in seventh grade. That is when the Algebra began. Lucky for me a very different and daring kind of school called Sudbury Valley School was starting up in Framingham at that time. Goodbye teachers, goodbye standardized bullSh*t curriculum. Sudbury Valley had a small staff who maintained the buildings and grounds and worked to provide a free atmosphere where kids could discover and follow their own paths and figure out how to take charge of their own lives. We educated ourselves in the process. We were left alone to “do our own thing” rather than being constantly tested, evaluated and herded around like the lab rats at the state schools. We were poor, but tuition was very low. Thanks to my mom for letting me go to SVS when I was 15 years old!
6. HOW DID THUNDERTRAIN FORM AND TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE CLASSIC 1977 ALBUM "TEENAGE SUICIDE"?
The freedom of Sudbury Valley School allowed me to spend a lot of time listening and playing all kinds of music with my friends. We all shared the same KLH 11 stereo , so we took turns playing our faves and I studied everything. Leonard Cohen, Tull, The Fugs, Led Zep, The Mothers, Laura Nyro, Bubble Puppy...you name it! I grew my hair and wore whatever suited me. The Massachusetts public schools still had strict dress codes during that whole Woodstock era - you had to drop out if you wanted to look cool. When I finished SVS in 1971 the music scene was drowning in the fallout from Woodstock. Lots of hippie jammers, boogie bands, country-rock and tons of sandals and beards. I dug Keith Richards, the Yardbirds and all that British flash. I was a Faces fan. I was driving around in my ‘65 MGB and playing a Gibson Firebird. This really amazing rock drummer named Bobby Edwards spotted me playing at an outdoor rock show on the Holliston common. He invited me to join his band Biggy Ratt as the lead singer. So I became a singer. The top local band at that time was called Doc Savage. The brains & power behind that group was the Provost Brothers, Cool Gene and Ric on guitar and bass. In early 1974 I left Biggy Ratt and hitch-hiked to Hollywood CA in search of fame. What I found was Rodney Bingenheimer’s erupting glam scene on the Sunset Strip. A month later I got a call from back east, Bobby had teamed up with the Provost Brothers and they wanted me to return home to fill the vocal slot. Meanwhile, bassman Ric Provost found lead guitarist Steven Silva through an ad in the Boston Phoenix. Steven completed our team. Thundertrain used the Exile-era Rolling Stones as a proto-type, but we added heavier drums, overdriven guitar and raunchier vocals. Our sound has been compared to early Alice Cooper, The New York Dolls and Slade. Steven Silva added his wailing Johnny Winteresque bottle-neck guitar to that fiery mix. Thundertrain hit the road in the fall of 1974. We began as a glitter-glam spectacle and we were as loud as Blue Cheer. We released our first single (I’m So Excited/Cindy Is A Sleeper) ourselves in 1975. Thundertrain came to the attention of producer Earthquake Morton. He loved a new song that Steven had just written called “Hot For Teacher!” We released that one as a single in 1976 and it did really well for us. Something about Hot For Teacher! attracted this new underground crowd and we shot to #3 in the UK alternative charts alongside emerging bands like The Clash and the Sex Pistols.
In early 1977 our debut album “Teenage Suicide” was released. By then Thundertrain had lost the glitter and sharpened ourselves into a torpedo of fast & heavy rock’n’roll. The band was packing ‘em in at Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s and the Rat in Boston.
7. TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOU BEING IN THE JOE PERRY PROJECT.
Well Rikki, Joe Perry says “The new singer, Cowboy Mach Bell, was a rock ‘n’ roll guy who grew up in the next town over from me (Holliston Massachusetts) and had a group called Thundertrain. He loved to rave and be in a band...” that is a quote from Walk This Way - The Autobiography of Aerosmith. As a schoolboy I had seen Aerosmith play at the local teen dances in 1971. It was totally obvious from the start that they had “it”. Aerosmith weren’t like any of our other local bands - they had so much charisma and they generated incredible sexual excitement. All of us kids would stand there going “Holy Sh*t - these guys are gonna be huge...should we tell somebody about this?” Kinda like playing b-ball on the corner and suddenly have a young unknown Michael Jordan join your game, or having a 15 year old fully-formed Heidi Klum sitting behind you in ninth grade y’know? So during the Thundertrain years 1974-1979, all our adventures and successes seemed to pale next to what our jet-setting competition in Aerosmith were doing. This caused me to be very jealous and I would put Aerosmith down any chance I got. It didn’t help that as the other mega-watt quintet from Boston, Thundertrain was constantly getting compared to Aerosmith. There was this booking agent in Boston named Tim Collins. Tim had thrown a few gigs Thundertrain’s way over the years and he became a partner with our producer Earthquake Morton. In 1982 Joe Perry was seeking new management and he signed up with Tim Collins. Joe had already released two albums with his Joe Perry Project and now he was having some problems. His singer and bass player had just left his band, Perry’s manager and record label had left him. So Tim Collins was faced with putting a new Joe Perry Project together, getting it back on the road and landing a new record deal. I was picked for the singer spot and after a quick audition I spent the next two and half years on the road with Perry. We wrote seven songs together for our MCA “Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker” album. Our video “Black Velvet Pants” is still playing on the VH1 Classics channel today and I got to sing 300 live shows with the Project. Joe Perry is an amazing guy and I learned a lot from him. There is a downside to taking over for a guy who is part of a well established, beloved team though...Guys like Lennon/McCartney, Page/Plant, Jagger/Richards and Tyler/Perry were born to rock together. The world loves these teams and we all have a lot of emotional history invested in them. So getting the chance to be the brand new singer of your favorite Hall of Fame band can be tricky. Just ask Brian Johnson what it feels like to take over for Bon Scott. Or ask my friend Gary Cherone about how easy it is to become accepted as the new singer for Van Halen. I also had Brad Whitford with me in the Project for a lot of dates, and even Joey Kramer on a few. It was great to be standing in the spotlight singing amidst all these superstars, but something about it didn’t feel totally right...
8. THE NEW THUNDERTRAIN CD 'HELL TONITE!' IS A TRUE MASTERPIECE OF
RAUNCH AND ROLL , HOW DID THAT CD ALL COME ABOUT?
Thanks Rikki! Hell Tonite! was recorded after five years of constant one-nighters, writing, fighting and rock’n’rolling together. Disco was infecting people like a pox, suburban cover bands were slowly sapping the life out of rock’n’ roll and the punk craze included a lot of really bad players. Thundertrain just kept on rocking through it all - hard , fast and heavy and unpredictable - we stuck to our guns and we never sold out. In 1979 Thundertrain was recorded live at a biker roadhouse in Peabody MA. The whole thing was paid for by a big radio station. They brought in the best mobile studio in New England and caught a motherf*cker of a Thundertrain set. The edited tape was broadcast here in Boston the following week. Gulcher Records was able to obtain some of the original tapes and their new Hell Tonite! cd includes a couple of songs that were cut from the radio show. It turned out to be one of our final shows. We were very fortunate that the recording was made. Thundertrain really lived rock’n’roll, we fought for every gig and we starved so that we could keep our guitars strung and our speakers patched up. We rocked our asses off every night and became a tight brotherhood onstage and off. The Hell Tonite! album is like a snapshot that captures all those years of adventure. All that work, the miles, the women, the busts, the extreme highs and devastating lows of surviving just to rock another night.
9. IS THERE GOING TO BE A NEW THUNDERTRAIN STUDIO ALBUM IN THE FUTURE AND WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR YOUR OTHER BAND LAST MAN STANDING?
Thundertrain is unstoppable. We just completed another six date roadtrip with the original line-up: Bobby, Ric, Cool Gene, Steven and myself. The guys all live out of state now - but we still rock like muthas when we put it back together. Gulcher Records re-issued Teenage Suicide (with bonus tracks and a big photo booklet w/ the whole Thundertrain story) in 2003. We got great support from our local Boston Groupie News, The Noise, the Boston Phoenix and dozens of other magazines and websites around the world. Rolling Stone Magazine even gave us a nice review in July ‘03. David Fricke called Teenage Suicide “the raw parent of Appetite For Destruction”.
That led to the reformation of Thundertrain last summer. We have done 3 short tours since then. Gulcher Records “Hell Tonite!” (in July 2004) and we are all very proud of this new one. A documentary film feature about us called “Thundertrain-I Gotta Rock” is headed for film festivals this fall and it has lots of footage of us going wild at the Rat in Boston back in the 70’s. We were recorded live last month at the Paradise in Boston. That might get released. The idea of writing and recording some new stuff is sounding really good to me right now.
Last Man Standing is a monster that is still waiting to be discovered. We released one cd in 2002 and we did an east coast tour. Guitarist/producer Dave Zolla is my partner in that band and he and I write all the material. It is a departure from the rock’n’roll party sound of Joe Perry Project and Thundertrain. Zolla is a a thoughtful player with a very dark and intense sound. Dave spent two years of his life creating the Last Man Standing debut cd. Last Man is a gothic castle - a mothership - of a band. A complex pyramid with spirraling vocal staircases and plunging guitar lines. The biggest production I’ve ever been involved with by far. It’s an intense and mysterious cd, like the sphinx.
10. WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO OTHER THAN MUSIC?
I like to cook. I once worked as a chef at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I am into photography. I like monsters and hot rods. I dig writing.
11. FAVORITE FOOD AND DRINK?
Steamed Maine lobster hold the butter, with a Tanqueray and tonic, no lime.
12. FAVORITE MOVIE / TV SHOWS?
I like The Wild Angels by Roger Corman. I dig all the sleazy, cheesy drive-in flicks from the late 60’s and 70’s. Bikers, hot rods, rock’n’roll, monsters, swingin’ chicks, Italian sci-fi, vampires - good stuff like that.
On teevee I watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
13. NAME A FEW OF YOUR MOST FAVORITE ALBUMS EVER?
Yardbirds - Having a Rave Up
Rolling Stones - Out of Our Heads
Best of the Standells
Truth- Jeff Beck Group
The CD of JB - James Brown
Led Zeppelin (the first)
Slade- Slayed
G’n’R - Appetite For Destruction
14. WOMEN YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO MEAT?
Maria Sharapova, Janet Gunn, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mitzi Kapture, Jessica Biel, Deborah Norville, Patsy Kensit, Elke Sommer, Jocelyn Lane, Peta Wilson, Michele Scarabelli, Martina McBride, Priscilla Barnes, Liz Hurley, Sheree J Wilson, Susan George, Tea Leoni, Brigette Bardot and Ella Fitzgerald
15. MAKE 3 WISHES.
1. First off I wish that I get to meat all those women (from the last question) when they are 22 years old.
2. I wish that I get to meat each of them just as I am swaggering off the stage at a great rock gig with the SRO-out crowd stomping and chanting my name.
3. I wish that my current wife doesn’t read this interview.
16. WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT?
I just got a new SM-58 mic and a D harmonica.
17. THINGS YOU HATE?
Tightly formatted airwaves that leave little room for new voices and creativity.
18. HOW IS BOSTON'S ROCK N ROLL SCENE LATELY?
Boston has a healthy music scene, but rock’n’rollers still have to fight for survival here. We have a ton of bands. We have a lot of college kids and a lot of college radio stations. We have supportive fanzines like The Noise, Boston Groupie News, Soundcheck and Metronome as well as the mainstream press that covers the scene. Must be 20 clubs in Boston that book music nearly every night. Plus we have a half-dozen mid-level 300-1000 cap. rooms for breakthrough artists and plenty of large venues for the big tours.
Boston is a tricky market though. Hard and heavy rock are a very tough sell at the grassroots level. You will find a lot of garage-rock, emo, punk, pop rock, “alternative” and electronica around here to compete with. The Boston club crowd pretends to be a lot hipper than the typical suburban rock kid - and any band that shows up with a big drumset or rips into a hairy guitar solo can expect to meet some snotty resistance.
While the Boston club scene is thriving, our suburban clubs have been eliminated by stricter codes, political pressure and law enforcement. Back in the 70’s the Baystate countryside was dotted with dozens of rock roadhouses where a band like Thundertrain could crank up the Marshalls and go f*cken nuts. We built our following in the burbs - and then we’d launch an attack on the city every 3 or 4 weeks.
20. WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE NEW BANDS AROUND TODAY?
Pig Destroyer, The Hives, Big and Rich, Killswitch Engage, Andrew WK, Government Dictatorship, Bleu, Downbeat 5 and Crawlspace.
21. WHAT IS IN YOUR CD PLAYER RIGHT NOW?
I just drove back from Cape Cod yesterday, I was listening to Optic Rose (from New Hampshire I think), Blue Cheer - Live in Tokyo 1993, Swirls Away by Red Glance and then I dropped the top and cranked Electric by the Cult!
22. WHAT'S IN THE FUTURE FOR MACH BELL?
Next week I’ll be in the studio with Kenne Highland and his Vatican Sex Kittens (Stanton Park Records), helping out with some overdubs and adding my pagan vibe to their mix. I have been collaborating with Tobi Love, a young woman down in Florida who is doing some really interesting stuff with my vocal tracks. In September I return to my day gig, I am now a staff member at the good ol’ Sudbury Valley School where I got my start. I get to rock out every day with some amazing young players. Thundertrain will be reuniting for another tour soon, possibly in conjunction with festival showings of the documentary “Thundertrain - I Gotta Rock”. Come on out and raise some Hell Tonite with me and the boys!
Thundertrain Official Website
thundertrain.com/
Gulcher Records Store
gulcher.gemm.com/
Escape TV - See a clip from “Thundertrain-I Gotta Rock”
escapetv.tv/CurrentPro/current_prod2.htm
www.thundertrain.com/mach5
Q&A by: Rikki Rampage
8/11/04
1. NAME?
Mach Bell. My ma named me Mark Bell but I changed over to Mach (rhymes with rock) because this other guy, a drummer named Mark Bell was making waves with a band called Dust down in DC. That other guy ended up changing his name to Marky Ramone.
2. PLACE OF BIRTH?
Yellow Springs, OHIO
3. FAVORITE CHILDHOOD MEMORY?
Mostly I was out in the woods. Just a nature boy. But when I was 3 or 4 years old I’d always come inside to watch the Liberace Show on TV. It was a daily 15 minute long show. Liberace was this flamboyant dude who got all dressed up and wailed on a grand piano with a fancy candleabra up on top. I have photos of myself watching this guy, jamming on a little toy piano that I pushed up against the TV screen. I even put a little candlestick up on top.
4. FIRST MUSICAL INFLUENCES?
Yeah, so I guess it was Liberace and also this singing cowboy named Rex Trailer. He had a morning kiddie show on Boston TV. We moved to the suburbs of Boston after my parents finished at Antioch College in Ohio. My father ran a hi-fi and record shop in Wellesley and my mom has a great voice and she strummed a Silvertone acoustic - so they influenced me too.
5. HOW DID YOU DO IN SCHOOL?
I am a curious guy and I love to learn about stuff. As long as they were teaching things that I was interested in learning things went okay at the Holliston public school. The Sh*t hit the fan in seventh grade. That is when the Algebra began. Lucky for me a very different and daring kind of school called Sudbury Valley School was starting up in Framingham at that time. Goodbye teachers, goodbye standardized bullSh*t curriculum. Sudbury Valley had a small staff who maintained the buildings and grounds and worked to provide a free atmosphere where kids could discover and follow their own paths and figure out how to take charge of their own lives. We educated ourselves in the process. We were left alone to “do our own thing” rather than being constantly tested, evaluated and herded around like the lab rats at the state schools. We were poor, but tuition was very low. Thanks to my mom for letting me go to SVS when I was 15 years old!
6. HOW DID THUNDERTRAIN FORM AND TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE CLASSIC 1977 ALBUM "TEENAGE SUICIDE"?
The freedom of Sudbury Valley School allowed me to spend a lot of time listening and playing all kinds of music with my friends. We all shared the same KLH 11 stereo , so we took turns playing our faves and I studied everything. Leonard Cohen, Tull, The Fugs, Led Zep, The Mothers, Laura Nyro, Bubble Puppy...you name it! I grew my hair and wore whatever suited me. The Massachusetts public schools still had strict dress codes during that whole Woodstock era - you had to drop out if you wanted to look cool. When I finished SVS in 1971 the music scene was drowning in the fallout from Woodstock. Lots of hippie jammers, boogie bands, country-rock and tons of sandals and beards. I dug Keith Richards, the Yardbirds and all that British flash. I was a Faces fan. I was driving around in my ‘65 MGB and playing a Gibson Firebird. This really amazing rock drummer named Bobby Edwards spotted me playing at an outdoor rock show on the Holliston common. He invited me to join his band Biggy Ratt as the lead singer. So I became a singer. The top local band at that time was called Doc Savage. The brains & power behind that group was the Provost Brothers, Cool Gene and Ric on guitar and bass. In early 1974 I left Biggy Ratt and hitch-hiked to Hollywood CA in search of fame. What I found was Rodney Bingenheimer’s erupting glam scene on the Sunset Strip. A month later I got a call from back east, Bobby had teamed up with the Provost Brothers and they wanted me to return home to fill the vocal slot. Meanwhile, bassman Ric Provost found lead guitarist Steven Silva through an ad in the Boston Phoenix. Steven completed our team. Thundertrain used the Exile-era Rolling Stones as a proto-type, but we added heavier drums, overdriven guitar and raunchier vocals. Our sound has been compared to early Alice Cooper, The New York Dolls and Slade. Steven Silva added his wailing Johnny Winteresque bottle-neck guitar to that fiery mix. Thundertrain hit the road in the fall of 1974. We began as a glitter-glam spectacle and we were as loud as Blue Cheer. We released our first single (I’m So Excited/Cindy Is A Sleeper) ourselves in 1975. Thundertrain came to the attention of producer Earthquake Morton. He loved a new song that Steven had just written called “Hot For Teacher!” We released that one as a single in 1976 and it did really well for us. Something about Hot For Teacher! attracted this new underground crowd and we shot to #3 in the UK alternative charts alongside emerging bands like The Clash and the Sex Pistols.
In early 1977 our debut album “Teenage Suicide” was released. By then Thundertrain had lost the glitter and sharpened ourselves into a torpedo of fast & heavy rock’n’roll. The band was packing ‘em in at Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s and the Rat in Boston.
7. TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOU BEING IN THE JOE PERRY PROJECT.
Well Rikki, Joe Perry says “The new singer, Cowboy Mach Bell, was a rock ‘n’ roll guy who grew up in the next town over from me (Holliston Massachusetts) and had a group called Thundertrain. He loved to rave and be in a band...” that is a quote from Walk This Way - The Autobiography of Aerosmith. As a schoolboy I had seen Aerosmith play at the local teen dances in 1971. It was totally obvious from the start that they had “it”. Aerosmith weren’t like any of our other local bands - they had so much charisma and they generated incredible sexual excitement. All of us kids would stand there going “Holy Sh*t - these guys are gonna be huge...should we tell somebody about this?” Kinda like playing b-ball on the corner and suddenly have a young unknown Michael Jordan join your game, or having a 15 year old fully-formed Heidi Klum sitting behind you in ninth grade y’know? So during the Thundertrain years 1974-1979, all our adventures and successes seemed to pale next to what our jet-setting competition in Aerosmith were doing. This caused me to be very jealous and I would put Aerosmith down any chance I got. It didn’t help that as the other mega-watt quintet from Boston, Thundertrain was constantly getting compared to Aerosmith. There was this booking agent in Boston named Tim Collins. Tim had thrown a few gigs Thundertrain’s way over the years and he became a partner with our producer Earthquake Morton. In 1982 Joe Perry was seeking new management and he signed up with Tim Collins. Joe had already released two albums with his Joe Perry Project and now he was having some problems. His singer and bass player had just left his band, Perry’s manager and record label had left him. So Tim Collins was faced with putting a new Joe Perry Project together, getting it back on the road and landing a new record deal. I was picked for the singer spot and after a quick audition I spent the next two and half years on the road with Perry. We wrote seven songs together for our MCA “Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker” album. Our video “Black Velvet Pants” is still playing on the VH1 Classics channel today and I got to sing 300 live shows with the Project. Joe Perry is an amazing guy and I learned a lot from him. There is a downside to taking over for a guy who is part of a well established, beloved team though...Guys like Lennon/McCartney, Page/Plant, Jagger/Richards and Tyler/Perry were born to rock together. The world loves these teams and we all have a lot of emotional history invested in them. So getting the chance to be the brand new singer of your favorite Hall of Fame band can be tricky. Just ask Brian Johnson what it feels like to take over for Bon Scott. Or ask my friend Gary Cherone about how easy it is to become accepted as the new singer for Van Halen. I also had Brad Whitford with me in the Project for a lot of dates, and even Joey Kramer on a few. It was great to be standing in the spotlight singing amidst all these superstars, but something about it didn’t feel totally right...
8. THE NEW THUNDERTRAIN CD 'HELL TONITE!' IS A TRUE MASTERPIECE OF
RAUNCH AND ROLL , HOW DID THAT CD ALL COME ABOUT?
Thanks Rikki! Hell Tonite! was recorded after five years of constant one-nighters, writing, fighting and rock’n’rolling together. Disco was infecting people like a pox, suburban cover bands were slowly sapping the life out of rock’n’ roll and the punk craze included a lot of really bad players. Thundertrain just kept on rocking through it all - hard , fast and heavy and unpredictable - we stuck to our guns and we never sold out. In 1979 Thundertrain was recorded live at a biker roadhouse in Peabody MA. The whole thing was paid for by a big radio station. They brought in the best mobile studio in New England and caught a motherf*cker of a Thundertrain set. The edited tape was broadcast here in Boston the following week. Gulcher Records was able to obtain some of the original tapes and their new Hell Tonite! cd includes a couple of songs that were cut from the radio show. It turned out to be one of our final shows. We were very fortunate that the recording was made. Thundertrain really lived rock’n’roll, we fought for every gig and we starved so that we could keep our guitars strung and our speakers patched up. We rocked our asses off every night and became a tight brotherhood onstage and off. The Hell Tonite! album is like a snapshot that captures all those years of adventure. All that work, the miles, the women, the busts, the extreme highs and devastating lows of surviving just to rock another night.
9. IS THERE GOING TO BE A NEW THUNDERTRAIN STUDIO ALBUM IN THE FUTURE AND WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR YOUR OTHER BAND LAST MAN STANDING?
Thundertrain is unstoppable. We just completed another six date roadtrip with the original line-up: Bobby, Ric, Cool Gene, Steven and myself. The guys all live out of state now - but we still rock like muthas when we put it back together. Gulcher Records re-issued Teenage Suicide (with bonus tracks and a big photo booklet w/ the whole Thundertrain story) in 2003. We got great support from our local Boston Groupie News, The Noise, the Boston Phoenix and dozens of other magazines and websites around the world. Rolling Stone Magazine even gave us a nice review in July ‘03. David Fricke called Teenage Suicide “the raw parent of Appetite For Destruction”.
That led to the reformation of Thundertrain last summer. We have done 3 short tours since then. Gulcher Records “Hell Tonite!” (in July 2004) and we are all very proud of this new one. A documentary film feature about us called “Thundertrain-I Gotta Rock” is headed for film festivals this fall and it has lots of footage of us going wild at the Rat in Boston back in the 70’s. We were recorded live last month at the Paradise in Boston. That might get released. The idea of writing and recording some new stuff is sounding really good to me right now.
Last Man Standing is a monster that is still waiting to be discovered. We released one cd in 2002 and we did an east coast tour. Guitarist/producer Dave Zolla is my partner in that band and he and I write all the material. It is a departure from the rock’n’roll party sound of Joe Perry Project and Thundertrain. Zolla is a a thoughtful player with a very dark and intense sound. Dave spent two years of his life creating the Last Man Standing debut cd. Last Man is a gothic castle - a mothership - of a band. A complex pyramid with spirraling vocal staircases and plunging guitar lines. The biggest production I’ve ever been involved with by far. It’s an intense and mysterious cd, like the sphinx.
10. WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO OTHER THAN MUSIC?
I like to cook. I once worked as a chef at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I am into photography. I like monsters and hot rods. I dig writing.
11. FAVORITE FOOD AND DRINK?
Steamed Maine lobster hold the butter, with a Tanqueray and tonic, no lime.
12. FAVORITE MOVIE / TV SHOWS?
I like The Wild Angels by Roger Corman. I dig all the sleazy, cheesy drive-in flicks from the late 60’s and 70’s. Bikers, hot rods, rock’n’roll, monsters, swingin’ chicks, Italian sci-fi, vampires - good stuff like that.
On teevee I watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
13. NAME A FEW OF YOUR MOST FAVORITE ALBUMS EVER?
Yardbirds - Having a Rave Up
Rolling Stones - Out of Our Heads
Best of the Standells
Truth- Jeff Beck Group
The CD of JB - James Brown
Led Zeppelin (the first)
Slade- Slayed
G’n’R - Appetite For Destruction
14. WOMEN YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO MEAT?
Maria Sharapova, Janet Gunn, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mitzi Kapture, Jessica Biel, Deborah Norville, Patsy Kensit, Elke Sommer, Jocelyn Lane, Peta Wilson, Michele Scarabelli, Martina McBride, Priscilla Barnes, Liz Hurley, Sheree J Wilson, Susan George, Tea Leoni, Brigette Bardot and Ella Fitzgerald
15. MAKE 3 WISHES.
1. First off I wish that I get to meat all those women (from the last question) when they are 22 years old.
2. I wish that I get to meat each of them just as I am swaggering off the stage at a great rock gig with the SRO-out crowd stomping and chanting my name.
3. I wish that my current wife doesn’t read this interview.
16. WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT?
I just got a new SM-58 mic and a D harmonica.
17. THINGS YOU HATE?
Tightly formatted airwaves that leave little room for new voices and creativity.
18. HOW IS BOSTON'S ROCK N ROLL SCENE LATELY?
Boston has a healthy music scene, but rock’n’rollers still have to fight for survival here. We have a ton of bands. We have a lot of college kids and a lot of college radio stations. We have supportive fanzines like The Noise, Boston Groupie News, Soundcheck and Metronome as well as the mainstream press that covers the scene. Must be 20 clubs in Boston that book music nearly every night. Plus we have a half-dozen mid-level 300-1000 cap. rooms for breakthrough artists and plenty of large venues for the big tours.
Boston is a tricky market though. Hard and heavy rock are a very tough sell at the grassroots level. You will find a lot of garage-rock, emo, punk, pop rock, “alternative” and electronica around here to compete with. The Boston club crowd pretends to be a lot hipper than the typical suburban rock kid - and any band that shows up with a big drumset or rips into a hairy guitar solo can expect to meet some snotty resistance.
While the Boston club scene is thriving, our suburban clubs have been eliminated by stricter codes, political pressure and law enforcement. Back in the 70’s the Baystate countryside was dotted with dozens of rock roadhouses where a band like Thundertrain could crank up the Marshalls and go f*cken nuts. We built our following in the burbs - and then we’d launch an attack on the city every 3 or 4 weeks.
20. WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE NEW BANDS AROUND TODAY?
Pig Destroyer, The Hives, Big and Rich, Killswitch Engage, Andrew WK, Government Dictatorship, Bleu, Downbeat 5 and Crawlspace.
21. WHAT IS IN YOUR CD PLAYER RIGHT NOW?
I just drove back from Cape Cod yesterday, I was listening to Optic Rose (from New Hampshire I think), Blue Cheer - Live in Tokyo 1993, Swirls Away by Red Glance and then I dropped the top and cranked Electric by the Cult!
22. WHAT'S IN THE FUTURE FOR MACH BELL?
Next week I’ll be in the studio with Kenne Highland and his Vatican Sex Kittens (Stanton Park Records), helping out with some overdubs and adding my pagan vibe to their mix. I have been collaborating with Tobi Love, a young woman down in Florida who is doing some really interesting stuff with my vocal tracks. In September I return to my day gig, I am now a staff member at the good ol’ Sudbury Valley School where I got my start. I get to rock out every day with some amazing young players. Thundertrain will be reuniting for another tour soon, possibly in conjunction with festival showings of the documentary “Thundertrain - I Gotta Rock”. Come on out and raise some Hell Tonite with me and the boys!
Thundertrain Official Website
thundertrain.com/
Gulcher Records Store
gulcher.gemm.com/
Escape TV - See a clip from “Thundertrain-I Gotta Rock”
escapetv.tv/CurrentPro/current_prod2.htm
www.thundertrain.com/mach5