by Paul Zollo
We had too much time on our hands. I didn’t know how to live in the world. I just didn’t know how to do it. We’d always been in this really uniform schedule: There’s going to be a sound check at four, and then a meal at six, and you’re going to play, and then you’re going to travel here. And if you’re home, there’s a session Monday through Friday. It was really organized. Suddenly we were just home. Eight years have gone by, and we don’t know what to do. To me, it just seemed like one big fast thing that never stopped until then.
And then I realized, ‘Hell, I’m not very good at living life.’ And also, it was the first time we were recording at home. I built a studio in my house. And it got very loose. Sort of like a party. There were a lot of people showing up. And The Heartbreakers had always been a very closed set, you know? [Laughs] Really tight. There was nobody in the sessions much. Not many visitors. Suddenly there’s a lot of people coming around. Work was very slow. We weren’t coming up with track after track. It was moving very, very slow.
How was your songwriting during this period?
Well, I wrote “Rebels.” I think that was the first thing I wrote. And that kind of set the stage for what I was doing. And “Rebels,” I couldn’t get it right. It drove me mad. I couldn’t get it right. I had done a demo. Just me and an electric 12-string. It sounded great. I couldn’t get the track cut.
You were producing?
Yeah. Then Dave Stewart [of the Eurythmics] showed up. [Laughs] He’s one of the biggest characters I’ve ever met. I met him in the Eighties. When music really turned to shit. People were trying to do something, but it was all these fakey keyboard sounds. A lot of prancing and posing. So Jimmy lovine was looking for songs for Stevie Nicks. And he came to me. I said, ‘I don’t really have anything left over. I don’t have anything I can give away.’
And he said, ‘Well, you know I’m frustrated, I’m trying to find writers. Who do you think would be a good writer?’ And Dave had just come out with that “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This),” which I thought was a really good song. And then I heard one or two more that I thought were really good. I said, ‘You should try this guy Dave Stewart. He’s in England. I don’t know him, but he seems consistent as a writer. He seems really good.’ So the next thing I know, not many weeks later the phone rings, and it’s Dave Stewart. And he says, ‘Hey, I’m here, and Jimmy told me I got the gig from you. I’ve come over to write some stuff for Stevie and other people. And why don’t you come down? Let’s get together. I’d like to see you.’
We hooked up at a studio in Hollywood. Sunset Sound. I went down there and we hung out, and we got along really well. Quickly. And it was his first trip into L.A. and he was going to stay awhile. So we really hit the town. We started hanging out. He came to my place in Encino. And we were hanging in my studio, and we were working. We wrote the song “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” And Dave was helping me produce it. And that became kind of a month-long job doing that track.
It is entirely unique.
It’s so unusual; it’s not like anything I’ve ever heard before.
That drum beat and that sitar sound.
Just the whole arrangement. And it’s such a weird song.
How did you write it? On acoustic guitars?
Somewhat. Dave had the basic idea for it. He had the chord pattern. And I think I added some chords in, and tagged on that thing at the end, where it goes double-time. We kind of edited Stanley onto that.
Does Stan play that whole track?
[Dave] had that beat on his drum machine. So we took that, and then there are some real drums as well through there. And then it goes to full-on Heartbreakers. So it was quite a production.
There’s a little bass lick in the beginning of the song that’s a real quick, spacey lick. And that was David sending the tape to England, because he knew this great bass player he’d been working with, and he wanted him to play the bass. And he sent the tape to England, and the tape came back, and it was just this really weird jazzy bass playing [Laughs] that was useless, but I did keep one lick that starts the song. [Sings lick]
But it was kind of a wild trip. There’s even one point where, going into the middle bit, we recorded a piano note, and actually had Bugs pull the tape across the capstan really fast with his hands. [Laughs] And it made this brrrrrrr kind of really weird sound. So we were kind of nuts.
We were getting into that and going all over town. And lots of people were coming around. And Dave liked it so much that he bought a house just a block or two away. In Encino. Which is still going to this day. He bought the house and started adding onto it immediately. With no permits [Laughs] or anything. And he built a pretty nice studio there. Later on, the house was sold to Michael Kamen [The late, gifted arranger and composer who created the great orchestrations for Wildflowers and Pink Floyd’s The Wall] bless his heart. And he did a lot of work there, and the Wilburys did their first album there, or part of it, anyway.
So we were just having a ball. We went to Nudie’s and bought cowboy hats and had the tailor, Glen Palmer, make us rhinestone cowboy suits with embroidered skulls. And we were going around wearing these. That’s some indication of where we were at at the time. [Laughs] We were having a ball. He would have these parties that I still think about sometimes. These really wild parties that always seemed to have midgets. Timothy Leary would be there. And McGuinn. It seemed everybody in L.A. would be at these parties. And we were just hanging around and having a good time. I remember that year ‘84 as being really creative though we were overdoing it a little bit. But there was a lot of creativity going on.
I think the rest of The Heartbreakers were a little wary of Dave. They didn’t embrace Dave the way I did. It was the first time somebody from the outside had come into The Heartbreakers’ circle, which was a really tight little circle.
You had producers come into this circle, right?
Well, they did, but not in the way Dave did. He was writing with me, which they were really suspicious of. [Laughs] And Dave’s a really vibrant character. So I think they were a little wary of him. Though they got to know him, and I think they got to like him.
We had a ball. I mean, we were going everywhere, going to all kinds of clubs and this and that. Staying up all night. Just having fun. So Dave kind of remained in the picture for years and years, one way or the other. I still see him. And we’re still friends. And then he convinced Annie Lennox to move out to Encino as well. So she was there part of the time. And I kind of remember the period fondly.
That was Dave. Dave would go away to England. And then sometimes my gate would ring. And it’d be Dave, completely unannounced. Maybe if I hadn’t seen him in months. The gate would ring, and it’d be Dave, and he’d be in a safari outfit, where it looked like he’d been in the jungles of Borneo or something. [Laughs] I remember that once. And he was just, ‘Whoa—let me in.’ And he walked in the house, and my kid was eating some cereal, and he said, ‘Give me some of that. Have you got some of that?’ [Laughs]
And he’d just be sitting down eating with the kids, and immediately plugged right back in. But you’d never know when to expect him. He may show up on a big Harley Davidson. And he had a big, long ‘60s Cadillac with the big fins on it.
He was very flamboyant. Dave was one of those people who really liked being famous. He really enjoyed it. He thrived on it. Where I was a little more with-drawn from it. But he really enjoyed it. He was just a ball. We had so much fun. On “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” was that a real sitar?
No, it’s a Coral Sitar. They were made in the Sixties. They’re pretty cool instruments. It’s like a guitar, but there’s an autoharp thing built onto it, under plexiglass on the top. So you tune this, with lots and lots of strings, like an autoharp, so it will ring on the note that you want. And then it actually sounds like a sitar. Each note on the guitar makes a sitar sound. So they were used a lot in the Sixties Like the Boxtops. “Cry Like A Baby.” There’s one on that. I bought one, and we had it there
, so it became the main lick.
Then, of course, there was the video. That was an idea Dave and I had. Dave was right away saying, ‘Well, you’ve got to make a great video of this.’ And he said, ‘Well, I see myself with a sitar on top of a giant mushroom.’ Okay. [Laughs] And that’s how we started on the idea.
But it was a crazy time. That record, “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” there’s a cello on it. I said, ‘Cello would be good,’ and Dave said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get a cello player.’ And he comes to the session and he says, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a guy coming from the L.A. Philharmonic with a cello.’
So this guy shows up. Dave and I were in our rhinestone cowboy suits, sequined up. And I think [the cello player] was a little frightened by us, maybe. He came in, and we said, ‘Hey, come on in, and plug into this vibe. We’ve got this really good thing for you to play.’ And he said, ‘Well, I need to see the music.’ So, of course, Dave hadn’t gotten the music written out. I said, ‘The idea is that we’ll just play the tape, and you jam along and play what you want, and we’ll find the best bits that way.’ And [Laughs] I remember the guy saying, ‘Well, I’ve never played anything that wasn’t written down.’ And that to me just sounded so strange. He’d never played anything that wasn’t written down. And Dave said, ‘What’s your name?’ And it was Larry or something. And Dave said, ‘Larry, you’re going to have a lot of fun tonight.’ [Laughs]
And so we got the guy just to start to jam. And he was really elated by it. He was amazed by it. That he could just start to play something and it would sound good. And we showed him how he could find a bit, and we would edit it in, and use this bit or that.
And that was kind of the epitome of Dave. That’s the way Dave was. He was a madman, but a really sweet one. Really a sweetheart. But loony as they come.
And there are other strings on that track, aren’t there?
The other strings are Benmont on a string machine, on sampled strings. That’s all Ben; Ben came up with that arrangement about midway through.
It was a long record to make. We were making it to be a single. I wanted it to be a single. It was intended to be a single. And we worked probably two or three weeks on it. To get it all done. Trial and error, this and that.
Did you write the melody?
Yeah. Dave had some of the melody in his head.
I like the stops in it, where you sing the word, “Stop!”
That was his idea. To go, ‘Stop!’ And we used girls, which was kind of an accident. Because when we started it, we were working at Sunset Sound, and Stevie [Nicks] had booked the time. And the girls that sing with her had turned up for the session, but Stevie had canceled the session. So the girls were still there. Dave said, ‘Let’s get them out here and see what they can do.’ And then they did that great bit. [Sings “Ah ah ah ooh ooh.”] And then there’s a girl named Stephanie who we brought in to sing that really high, wailing thing at the end. [Laughs] She was having a little trouble finding her thing. And Dave actually ran into the room in his underpants as she was singing that bit. And that actually worked, and she went up into that register and did that note, and then burst out laughing. But he was that kind of guy. He figured, well, this will get her jazzed up.
So we were really happy with it. I think when we brought it to the record company, they were very mystified by it. Because it wasn’t like anything I had ever done. I think they were a little concerned that it was a little too far off the map. But I thought, at the time, Prince had come out with “When Doves Cry.” And I saw it as kind of going for the same kind of thing in a different way. And I remember saying, ‘Listen to this Prince record. That’s really far out too, but it’s really popular.’ So I think they got behind it. Especially when we made the video, they thought it was really going to go, and it did.
Did The Heartbreakers like it?
[Pause] I don’t know. I think Mike didn’t like it at first. I remember him coming over one day and saying, ‘I played this at home and everybody hated it.’ And I thought, well, I don’t hate it. I think it’s really good. I believed in it. I really liked it. I still like it when I hear it. You know, it wasn’t something we were going to do a lot. But it was just anything to get out of what we’d been doing. I desperately wanted to find a new page. [Laughs] To get somewhere we hadn’t been. And that helped, in that sense. I’m really proud of that record. It really came out good.
Are you going to work with Dave again?
I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while. He lives in England. He drops in now and then. But he always drops out of the blue. You never know when he’s going to appear. I used to see him when I’d go to England. He knew George [Harrison] as as well. When I’d go to George’s house, he’d show up there sometimes. We were very close. My kids always thought Dave was kind of strange. But they liked him a lot. He was really weird. He videoed everything. Once I went over to his house, and he’d been in the hospital for something, he videoed the whole thing. I went over there with my kids one time, and he said, ‘Whoa, wow, you’ve got to see this—I videoed this nurse giving me an enema in the hospital.’ And I’m like, ‘No…I’ve got my kids here.’ And he said, ‘You don’t see anything, it’s just my face.’ And I said, ‘Dave, I don’t want to see you get an enema.’
But we did one thing that was really, really great. He had a TV show [Beyond The Groove] briefly going in England that was just film vignettes that he did with different people. And he did one with me that was really good. I’ve only seen it once. I actually saw it when I was staying at George’s in England, and it came on TV that night by chance, and we watched it there. And it was filmed out in Griffith Park [in Hollywood], where they have that cave that’s been used in a lot of films.
Yeah, the Bronson Caves.
Yeah, it was filmed there. And I did this sort of ad-lib thing, where I was there by this campfire. It was supposed to be this apocalyptic thing, after the third war. And that’s all he gave me, and I had to ad-lib from there. And I did it pretty well. And the greatest thing about it—and only in Hollywood could this happen—in the middle of the scene, an entire regiment of western cavalry came riding up. They were on the wrong set. They’d gone the wrong way, and they’re riding into our set. So without dropping a beat, I kept the improv going. And we got the cavalry for free.
And then we did another one that is really good—you know how they pull cars on a trailer in films, the cars not really rolling, it’s usually on a trailer and there are cameras mounted all around it? He put me on this Cadillac and drove me all whole over town. All over Mulholland and the Valley. And I just did this improv the whole time. And it’s hard to find. It’s on one of our video collections. It’s about a twenty-minute clip. I don’t know if it ever got used or not, but it’s really fun. For weeks after that I’d see the trailer go by, with lights all over it, with Dave standing in the back. I mean, he was crazy. [Laughs]
He wasn’t always right. Because he tried so many things, he could be terribly wrong sometimes.
About music?
About anything. He spread himself thin, I thought, at times. But when he got something good, it was really good. He’s a very underrated guitar player. But I don’t think he’s ever had that kind of light on him as a guitar player because he does so many things. I think a lot of people thought he was a keyboard player, which he really isn’t.
Yeah, we really had a good time. The only thing he did that I didn’t like is that he talked me into taking horns and girl singers on the road right after that.
You weren’t into that?
I wasn’t. But for some reason, I listened to Dave, who kept telling me it’d be a great idea. And I never even talked to the horn players. I showed up at the first rehearsal with no idea of what they were going to do, or what the girls would sing. The band hated it. And we quickly dispensed with it. But we did make a live record in that period, so there are horns all over the record. Which I’m not all that crazy about. So you live and you learn. But that was all Dave
’s fault. [Laughs]
There are horns on Southern Accents, on a few songs.
I think that was the idea, that we were going to be doing that album, and we could reproduce it more faithfully if we brought the horns and the girls. But we’re just not that kind of band to have a lot of side people. For the first time then, people who weren’t in The Heartbreakers started to appear on Heartbreakers’ albums. I think only a few people, maybe Stevie [Nicks], had ever been on a Heartbreakers record.
So we started to use girl singers on that. And horns. Have said, ‘Horns. You’ve got to bring horns in. You’ve never done anything with horns, and it will be a different vibe.’ So we did that. We did a few tracks with horns. But the trouble was, I think it flawed the album. I think we made a great single with “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” But I think it flawed the album. Because it left the concept. I thought it was a Southern phrase: “Don’t come around here no more.” But it didn’t really have much to do with the album. And important songs—“Trailer”—were relegated to B-sides. The album suffered that way. And I think it didn’t get finished, because I was just exhausted and couldn’t finish it. There was a lot of partying going on. And my house had just become crazy. There were all kinds of people there. We were recording in the middle of the night. It was just a little bit nuts.
I needed guidance and help. So I brought Jimmy back. And he was wise enough to say, ‘I’m pulling you out of your house, first thing.’ And we went down to Village Recorder and finished the record there. But we still hadn’t finished “Rebels.” [Laughs]
You wanted horns on it?
Well, I wound up with horns on it. I did this whole production. I did it so many times. And we were mixing it. And I was in the other room. And I played the demo. It was so much better than what we were doing. And I was so pissed off that I couldn’t get the track as good as the demo that I slugged the wall. And completely shattered my hand. I shattered it. To powder.
Which hand?
My left hand. You can still see the scars where they sewed it up. I powdered it.