Interview with
Derf Scratch of Fear

Founding bass player for Fear, Derf Scratch tells it like he sees it about his dealings with Fear frontman Lee Ving, and the unique music and characters of the band.

By Mark Prindle

Derf Scratch was the hilarious original bass player for L.A. punk legends Fear. Renowned for such classic zingers as "Eat my fuck!" and "Why do girls have their little holes so close together?," Derf was unfortunately fired from the band after appearing on only one LP (The Record (1982) -- one of the finest punk rock records ever!). When Derf e-mailed me saying that he had read my Spit Stix interview and would be willing to give me a "long, definitive, answer all questions, spare no one, finally once and for all truths interview," I was so happy, I carried my wife like a six-pack of beer!

Below enjoy his many fine words. My questions are in bold; his are in fine print.

By the way, DerfScratch.com is coming soon!
In the meantime, feel free to contact him at Only1DerfScratch@aol.com.

---

Hello?
Could I speak to Derf?
Speaking.
Hey!
Hey.
I can barely hear you.
Hold on a second.
Okay.
How's that?
Much better!
Okay, good.
How ya doin'?
Alright. Who is this?
This is Mark, the guy that's gonna interview you.
Oh, Mark! Yeah, Mark Prindle [of CITIZINE]?
Yesiree!
Oh cool.
So how are you doing?
Good.
What's going on these days?
I've got a band and I'm playing music and I've got a little 16-track here at my house. So I sit around and play music and paint with my airbrush.
What kind of music do you play now?
Basically it's rock and roll, I guess. I don't know. Somebody recently said, "That's acid rock!" So I don't know. It's pretty eclectic actually. We go into a lot of different styles.
What's the name of the band?
I'm calling it right now "Derf Scratch & Friends."
Oh, okay. Are you recording anything for --
Yeah, I've got a CD that I'm gonna release real soon.
Oh, excellent! Very nice. Are you --
I'll send you one.
What's that?
I'll send you one.
Oh, I appreciate that. Are you playing the bass or a lot of different things?
Yeah, I play the bass and I'm singing.
Were you in other bands throughout the '80s and '90s?
Yeah. I had a band called Scratch for a while in the '80s.
Did you release anything?
No, not really. We did over in Czechoslovakia. And before Fear, I was in a band called Marquis De Sade and another called Trashy Ted and the Dog Shit Canyon All-Stars. And the Sweet Jesus Fish & Mattress Company.
That's another good one too!
Yeah!
What was the '80s one called? Scratch what?
It was just called Scratch.
Oh, okay. I thought you said "Scratch House" or something. So what's the Fear story? You said you were gonna give me all the goods.
Yeah, you got a little while there?
Yeah, I do!
Because I wanna just say this once and not have to, you know -- when people ask me about Fear, I can just give them this interview and they can read it.
Yeah! Yeah.
Okay. Well, let me start at the beginning. Let's see... Lee Ving. His real name is Lee James Jude Capalero. He called me up one day; this was back when the Fleetwood Mac Rumours album was happening.
        The Sex Pistols had just toured in the USA (January 1978), and Lee calls me up after he'd seen me at the Troubadour. He saw me playing with Trashy Ted and the Dog Shit Canyon All-Stars, and we had a mutual friend named Billy. And he inquired about my bass playing because Lee was friends with this guy named Bob Seidemann.
        Bob Seidemann was the guy who did the album cover for Blind Faith -- you know, with the girl holding the hood ornament. And he also was a famous San Francisco photographer/artist. You know, Stanley Mouse and Rick Preston and all those guys. And Bob Seidemann was hired by Rolling Stone magazine to photograph the Sex Pistols tour, so he went and did that, and after the tour he called Lee up and says, "Hey, if you wanna make some money in music, start a punk band, okay? And I've got the name for it; the name would be 'Fear.'"
         So first of all, the name was somebody else's idea. So Lee goes, "Okay." So he gets my number from Billy and he calls me up, and I went over to his house to talk to him one day. And I was a long-haired hippy type, and I'd gotten to the point in my life where I'd realized that usually everything that I ended up hating became a big hit. From the very beginning, I hated punk rock, you know? And Lee asks me if I want to start a punk band and I thought to myself, "Wow, I really hate this fuckin' music. Yeah, why not?"
         So I went over there and I talked to him, and then I got a phone call from him and he goes, "You know, I'm gonna go with some other people first." He wanted to try it with some other people, which I never found out who it was or whatever, but it didn't work out. About a month later, he called me back and he goes, "Listen, it didn't work out. Come on over and let's try this again." So I went over to his house and we started talking and became friends.
         And picture this -- he lived in the Valley, out in a house out in Van Nuys with a guest house out in the back that his mother-in-law stayed in. And he was married and had a kid and he had a pool. We became pretty close friends, I thought. And I did kinda wonder why he would never look me quite in the eye when it came to serious matters. He'd always be one of those guys who'd look away, you know? You know those guys who can never look you in the eye? And when he'd get nervous he'd always start singing or humming to himself.
Yeah.
So we started doing this Fear thing, and at that point in time I had just passed my real estate -- you know, had just gotten my real estate license, and I realized that I wasn't really very good at it. Disco was really happening; places like that were really flourishing, and the album out then was Rumours, you know, by Fleetwood Mac and it was selling -- I think they got like half a million dollars up front. And all this kinda stuff. This'll all make sense later on in the story!
Ha!
So then we had this drummer named Johnny Backbeat, and he I guess was the drummer who played with what's his name... Mitch Ryder? And the Detroit Wheels. He was one of their drummers for a while. Anyway he had these teeth that came out of his mouth -- you know, full dentures that came out of his mouth. And mind you, Lee had been in a band back in -- he was from Philadelphia, and he was in a band called Sweet Saving Chain, which was like a blues band.
What were they called?
A white singer with a bunch of, uhh... He was the only white singer; the rest of the guys were all black. And I guess they threw him out of the band because one day he said, "Ya'all" to them -- like their lingo -- in a way that they didn't take to, so they fired him or something.
         So he got here and we decided to start a punk band. And basically it was like, "Well, we've tried all these other bands." I was in a fusion band before that. I'd gotten a degree in music, and we all knew how to play our instruments, and we decided, "Well, hell. We could be the first punk band that can really play."
         So Johnny Backbeat was one of these guys who would go around and he'd tell people, "I don't play in no punk band. Fuck that punk shit. I don't play punk music." And then we'd call him on it -- we'd go, "What, did you really say this?" And he'd go, "No! What I said was 'I didn't play punk music with anybody but YOU guys!'" So he'd turn it around like that. So he's the guy that's on the first single that we put out, which was an eight-track called "Must Have Been Something You Said" or "Now Your Dead" -- that song and "I Love Livin' In The City." It was pretty much just an eight-track. And then after we cut that, we realized that we had to get rid of Johnny.
         So we get rid of Johnny Backbeat and then there was Lee and I, and I had to go to the real estate office in the morning. I shared a desk with both my parents, and I told them I was gonna go out and look at property when in actuality I went over to Lee's house and we'd brainstorm about the band. Jump in any time if you have any questions!
Ha! No, this is good. I didn't know any of this. This is all really good stuff.
Yeah. Okay, good! Yeah, I'm just gonna tell the whole fucking thing, so.... I'm tired of -- Now that I know the reason why Spit and Philo left the band, it'll make sense why I kept my mouth shut and everything for so long.
        So what happened was Lee knew this good friend of mine named Rick Fiske, who was this black drummer and singer. He was a really good singer, and he was getting into an acting career. And so we figured he'd be great as the drummer for us. And then Lee asked him this question; he goes, "Listen, now say we had a date and we were gonna play somewhere, and then you got a call for an acting gig. Which one would you take?" And Rick said, "I'd have to take the acting." So we went, "Ah okay, well, we can't use him because acting before music? Screw that." And at this time, me and Lee were really close and becoming like brothers, you know? And we'd sit around to brainstorm about what kind of songs we'd have to write, and --
Here's a question I have: What was he actually like at that point? Was he like the character he portrayed on stage -- the conservative gun-totin' war-lovin' American?
Not really. He got me a job later on -- he was working at the Great American Food and Beverage Company as a singing waiter, and Susan, who was the manager of that place who later married Spit, got me a job there and I was a singing bus boy. It was the one in Westwood. And he was just a pot smokin', beer drinking person like all of us. A musician, you know? That's what I thought he was, you know. He wasn't about guns or anything.
Okay.
(silence)
Where were you at in the story before I interrupted?
(silence)
Are you still there?
Where was I?
It cut off right after you said something about Lee.
Yeah, he was just some -- you know, I looked at him like we were just talking. Ah yeah, what I was gonna say is that we should've all gotten credit for songwriting on that record. Before I didn't realize, but later on I realized that songs like "I Don't Care About You" that I thought he meant towards the masses was also directed at his band members too. You know? He was just, he's just -- ugh. I'll keep going.
         So we had to find a drummer and a guitar player, so from working at this place called Phonodisc and through a friend of this guy Rick Fiske, there was this guy named Burt [Good]. And Burt was one of these guys who thought he was Keith Richards -- he plays guitar, he was a rock and roller, but I guess he had inherited a lot of money from one of his parents passing or something like that. And he came to a rehearsal to try out for us, and he brought Spit along. I got Burt to come to rehearsal and he brought Spit along, so Johnny didn't show -- Johnny Backbeat didn't show up that day, so Spit just kinda stayed. And there -- we had him.
         And Philo [Cramer, guitarist] we got through a friend of mine named Eric Dugdale. Philo lived down the street from Eric. And just his name intrigued us -- Philo is the Latin word for Love -- so we got a hold of him and he was just so warped and wonderful, he was perfect, you know? So there we had the four of us; we finally had the right group of guys.
         What's weird is we ended up rehearsing at this place called DAYMAX, which was a storage garage out in Van Nuys. And ten years before that, when I was in this band called The Marquis De Sade, we were the band that first declared this a rehearsal space and made it into a rehearsal space -- it was a storage garage. And I hated it! It was hot in the summer, it was cold in the winter, and goddammit if ten years later, I wasn't back in the same cubicle as I was in this other band.
Ha!
It was really strange. And so there we were rehearsing, and we started rehearsing four days a week religiously. Basically we had to rehearse four days a week because -- it wasn't so much remembering the songs as you had to keep your muscles in shape! Because everything we played on guitar and stuff was all downstrokes. There was no double-picking really going on. There's a different sound when you hit eighth-notes all downstroke, as opposed to double-picking. Like double-picking is "di-duh, di-duh, di-duh, di-duh" like -- I don't know how you're gonna write that, but downstroking is all "duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh," like that. The Fear sound was basically eighth-notes on the -- let's see, eighth-notes on the kickdrum and hitting every downbeat on the quarters on the snare. It was like "duh-duh-DAH-duh-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH" on the snare, and the kick drum's going "buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh."
Yeah! It was a pretty different sound for punk, wasn't it? Definitely.
Yeah, yeah. With the bass following it, it really made it a hard -- that was basically our sound. So that's what we really rehearsed at. With songs like "Disconnected," we tried to figure out what was the time signature on, you know, "We Destroy The Family" and "Camarillo" and.... It didn't matter how -- you know, you could count them any way you want to. As long as we started in one place and ended on the same spot, that's the way we did it. It wasn't like we counted it out and did the music that way. We just went, "Okay well, I might be playing in 7 and he might be playing in 13, but somehow it works and it comes together in the right way and it sounds weird. Let's go with it."
         Philo and I came up with the arrangement for "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place," because he's playing in G and I'm playing in F-sharp. And there's only like two places where we come into key, and that's between the verses where he hit an E and an F together and it goes "bwom-bwom! We gotta get out of this place" or -- yeah. And there's one place where we come together and we hit the same tonic note -- he plays the tonic chord and I play the same bass note. And we were trying to "Let's fuck this song up as much as we can," so we're doing it and Lee hadn't shown up for rehearsal, and he pulls up and he hears it and goes, "Ah yeah, let's do it!" So we ended up keeping that arrangement. Years later, I ended up spending a weekend with Eric Burdon, and he told me that was his favorite rendition of it that he'd ever heard other than his.
Wow! Really?
Yeah, that was pretty trippy.
What were you doing with Eric Burdon?
Well, Bob Seidemann -- back to him -- he had a few parties, and like Big Brother And The Holding Company, he knew all those people, and a lot of artsy people and stuff like that. And there was one artist named Ming, this woman named Ming who lives out in Palm Springs. And I'd go out there and I'd visit James Gurley, who was the lead guitar player for Big Brother. And when I was out there, I don't know how it came about, but I went over to see Ming and I was looking for James I think, and I went over to see Ming and Eric was there. And me and Eric, we just started chatting it up and before I knew it, the weekend had passed. And that was that. He's a great guy.
Cool!
Yeah! And so where am I now? Anyway, so what happened basically was that for the first four years, that was the band. Basically I'd found Philo and Spit, and formed the band with Lee and basically put up with a lot of his horseshit. He'd burn bridges for no reason; I never could understand that. When we'd go on the road, he'd make sure he carried with him religiously like the autobiography or the biography of Adolf Hitler.
Really!?
Yeah.
Why?
One of the last gigs I did in San Diego, we were driving back from San Diego and he goes, "Derf, I see armies of skinheads," and I go, "Lee, we're a fucking band. We're not a political movement, okay? We're entertainment." And this was right before I left. If he hadn't fired me, I might have quit.
         Because we were a shock band. People would come to see us who got the jokes which we were playing on people -- you know, insulting everybody. And there was the mosh pit that was happening, and people were watching all the punks that were really trying to scare people. Then there was the crowd that would come see us and sit back and watch the newcomers who were really scared and laugh at them with the inside joke we were having with the crowd.
         And then there was the real hardcore punkers who were really slamming and having a good time, and it was like the whole show, the crowd itself was part of the show. We'd get our applause before we'd come on, because afterwards there wouldn't be any applause because people would be throwing shit at us.
         One time Philo and I decided we would pack our cigarettes full of those exploding things, and we stopped in the middle of the set and said, "Hey, I think it's time for a cigarette break. What do you think?" "Yeah, me too!" We'd pass out these cigarettes -- this was at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go -- and like thirty seconds later, people started throwing all kinds of shit at us, and they started exploding in their mouths as they lit them. Hey, can you hold on for a second? I've got a call coming in.
Sure.
(pause)
Hello?
Yes.
Okay. So we had a good time, me and Philo. Anyway, through the course of everything, there's that part in Spit's interview where he says I wasn't holding my end up. Well, what had happened was that I had caught Lee -- remember in his interview he goes they had caught him taking money because he was paying them less than what he was getting?
Yes.
Well, I found out he was doing that before they ever did. And what I would do -- I was like PR guy for Fear. I would go out, and there would be Lee married up with his wife and kid, and Philo got married and Spit was with Susan, and I was the only guy who was single and I had gotten a place that was right -- at first, I was living in Philo's garage. So this stuff about me having lots of money and all that shit was a lot of horseshit too. I didn't have any money. I was living in Philo's garage during this whole period.
Why did that rumor go around?
I have no idea. I heard a lot of strange rumors. I think there was some slander going on by Mr. Ving. And so what happened was that there was this movie called Get Crazy. Oh, we played this gig at the Vet's Hall where we were supposed to get $800 for the set and Joey Vex paid us only $500, and he said, "You don't want me to go look for the other $300, do ya?" You know, talk to the bouncers. And out of character, Lee didn't sound him on it, and I thought, "That's odd." And later I found out that Lee pocketed that. And so what I did is I decided, going out on the street and stuff, and I was out there with the fans and they were all my friends and stuff like that, and I was getting more press than Lee. You know, I got beat up at one show and my face was broken in twelve places, which ended up with me getting a full-color picture of me in Rolling Stone magazine.
Wow! Really?
Yeah! Lee couldn't stand the fact that I was getting as much press, if not more, than him. It really rubbed him the wrong way. Like Philo wrote the song, "Johnny, Are You Queer?" Remember that?
I don't know that one.
You do?
I don't know that song.
It was Josie Cotton. It was a pretty big hit. These guys named the Payne brothers who were the producers played on it and messed around with it a little bit, who later Lee despised. Lee had this way of burning bridges for no reason. I didn't understand it at all, but I --
         Anyway, so the Payne brothers heard Philo's version of "100 Downers," which turned into "Johnny, Are You Queer?" The Payne brothers rewrote the lyrics and rearranged it and said, "Hey, Philo! We'll give you half-credit -- you know, whatever you want. We're gonna do this with your song." But Lee hated them so much and Philo didn't really have that much of a backbone. He really hated confrontations; he'd do anything to avoid them. So he called Lee and said, "What should I do?" and Lee goes, "Don't take any credit. Don't have anything to do with it." Well, the song became a hit, and Philo did what he said -- he didn't take any credit. I mean, he would have made 50 grand, you know? I can't believe that Lee would do that. And so.... So, umm.... Let's take a break here. Ask me some questions. You got any questions?
I just like the story!
Yeah well, I'll keep going. I just need a break. I gotta roll a cigarette.
Oh, okay. Let's see -- did you hear the records that came out after yours?
Yeah. As a matter of fact, I was told by the guy that engineered the second record -- the More Beer record -- that actually the person playing bass on that is me. And I didn't know it! The engineer, one of the brothers that owns Cherokee Studios, when we were doing the sessions for the -- you know, John Belushi was a big fan of ours and he was a good friend of mine -- and uh... Let me put you on speakerphone for just a second.
Alright.
Can you hear me?
Barely.
Okay. Well, hold on a second.
Okay, no problem.
The guy who runs Cherokee Studios -- I ran into him and he told me that while we were doing the song for the movie Neighbors, which John was in -- we were supposed to do the last song in the movie, but it never came to fruition -- we cut some basic tracks. And those basic tracks are the ones that are on that record. Did you hear me?
They used the basic -- you mean just the basic bass track? Or the basic everything?
Hello?
Hey! Did they use just the basic bass tracks? Or the basic everything for that album?
Here we go. (phone feedback) Hello?
Hello?
Here we go.
Ha!
Sorry about that.
That's alright. No, I was just asking, "Did they use the basic, like, ALL the tracks? Or just the basic --
I don't know, because I don't really remember. There was like four or five or six songs that we did. We were just fucking around in there. We weren't really serious about getting anything down. I didn't think we were getting it for anything yet. You know, like the first record, you take all your best songs and you put your best songs on it. Your second one, you take the songs that you could have put on the first one and didn't. And Fear -- we painted ourselves into a corner. After we shocked everybody, where do you go from there? I wanted to maybe go out and call ourselves The Happy, where we'd be wearing pastel jumpsuits with buttons, something like that.
Ha!
Anyway, that didn't happen. So let's see -- so let's get to the point where I left the band. Oh yeah, well I'll say this also. Slash Records wanted to sign us and put our record out. And we'd had a few record deals. I'd found our manager, who was Danny Hutton, one of the singers from Three Dog Night. He managed us for a while.
Really!? Did he like the music?
Oh, he loved us! That's where we got the equipment!
The guy from Three Dog Night!?
Yeah!
Oh my God.
He managed us and financed us.
Oh my God! That's insane!
Yeah!
Wow. Okay.
And so --
Oh, another question: did you end up liking punk rock? Or at least liking --
Oh, fuck yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Oh yeah. I totally jumped into it. It totally won me over. Oh totally. It was just one of those things where -- you know, I hated disco and it was a big deal and.... I didn't understand it. And once I understood it, I went, "Yeah, okay. I get it now." I'm glad that I gave it a chance.
         And so Danny Hutton managed us, and Slash Records made us a record deal, but Lee was looking for the record deal like Fleetwood Mac had gotten -- you know, half a million front money. That's the record deal he wanted, so he was saying "No" to everybody.
         And by that time -- Keith Morris, the lead singer of the Circle Jerks, was the guy who started Black Flag. He was the first lead singer for Black Flag. He would show up at all our gigs. The first time I met him, I poured a beer all over his head. He was a real fan of ours, so we gave Black Flag their first gig at the Hong Kong Cafe opening for us. And then later, I guess they threw him out and they kept going and he started the Circle Jerks.
         And so by this time[1980], Black Flag had put out a record, the Circle Jerks were putting out a record, and we still hadn't put out a record. And we hadn't gotten that pie-in-the-sky deal. And I had to go back to Slash and beg Bob Biggs to extend the offer so we could sign it, and I promised him we would. And then I went to the band and I told the guys at rehearsal, "Listen, if we don't take this deal, I'm gonna quit. Because we're gonna be looked at as like the second generation of this punk movement. Our record's gonna come out way after all these other people, and we're not gonna be where we should be." So we took the deal with Slash.
         I had worked at Sound City, where we cut the album, years before, and I knew Gary Lubow. I grew up with Gary Lubow, and he now has since passed. And we got him to co-produce it with us, and we cut it at the same studio where Fleetwood Mac cut their Rumours album, so it was the same studio that Fleetwood Mac did their thing in. It's funny that Fleetwood Mac keeps coming up so much, because I heard even Lindsay Wag -- Lindsay Buckingham was a big fan of ours too.
I've actually grown to like that Rumours album over the years.
Yeah, me too.
It's well-played. It just got played too much on the radio, I guess.
Yeah, Gary worked on it and stuff. Anyway, so I forced their hand into the record deal and the producer, and then we come to the -- there was a movie by Ralph Bakshi we were in called American Pop. Did you ever see that?
Say it again?
There was this movie called American Pop -- a cartoon movie.
I've seen the commercial for it a ton.
We were in that!
You were in American Pop!?
Yeah! We're like the punk band at the very end.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah. Check it out.
Do you guys talk? Or do they just have your music --
Yeah, we talk. I'm sitting on a piano bench, and we got the guy who goes into this song called "Night Moves." You know, by Pete Seeger.
Bob Seger.
Yeah. And it's Philo, me and Spit. And we were waiting to do this -- they had to yell to come and get us because we were walking down the street to get some beer on our way to do it. And then we did this movie called Get Crazy, right?
I've heard OF that. That has a Ramones song in it.
Yeah. Well, that's the movie where at rehearsal Lee comes and he goes, "Yeah, we've all got a part in this movie called Get Crazy." And I thought, "Cool. Now we're all gonna get our SAG cards." And so we get there and Philo has a principal part, Lee has a principal part, and I'm just an extra and Spit is just an extra. And so for three days, I didn't sign my waivers or vouchers. And there was a couple thousand people extra at the shoot.
         So I didn't sign my waivers and vouchers and I got established in most of the shots, and after three days I went to the producer and I said, "Hey, I was told I was gonna have a principal part in this movie, and I want one. Otherwise you're gonna have to reshoot the last three days." And so the next day, I had my own trailer and I had a part in the movie, which I think was a little bigger than Lee's!
HA!
And at the last rehearsal I did with them, I said to Lee, "Don't you dare forsake this band for an acting career." And we got pretty heated -- it came almost close to blows. And he goes, "Oh no, don't worry. I won't." And then during that movie is when I got fired. Then he took the part in the movie Flashdance.
         What was funny is right after he fired me, we had a tour up and down the West Coast where we were guaranteed two grand a set, and when the bookers found out that I had left the group, they dropped the guarantee down to 500 dollars. So they came back and asked if I would do this last tour with them, and I told them, "Yeah, only if you guys fly me where I have to go and you pay for my hotel." Because it really crushed me. I really thought he was a bro, you know?
         I'd go out and I'd get press for us -- for Fear. It was for the band; it wasn't for me. And I didn't realize I was rubbing him so wrong. And he knew that I knew that he was trying to skim off the top, and I didn't tell the other guys in the band that that's what he was doing. And I couldn't say it after they fired me; it would have sounded like I was just being spilled milk, you know -- sour grapes. "Hey, Lee's doing this!" "Yeah, right. Sure, Derf."
         And the reason it looked like I wasn't carrying my weight was because I knew he was trying to skim, so I would go out and get a roadie. I'd hire my own roadie. SVTs are pretty big amplifiers and my roadies did that, and I'd be in where the money was when it was getting paid out, and I'd make sure that all four of us got equal pay and he couldn't skim. And I think that's another reason why he wanted to fire me. And then he told me when he fired me over the phone, "Oh, I'll tell everybody that you quit," and I said, "Yeah, right. No way. I'm gonna tell everybody I was fired."
What reason did he give you? Because you weren't pulling your weight? That's it?
Yeah, that kind of thing. And that I was a junkie. I wasn't any more of a junkie than anybody else. I just liked to party like anybody else. I was no Keith Richards, you know? I don't know. It kinda backfired on them, I think.
Oh, it definitely did. Look what happened to the band!
Huh?
Look what happened to the band. It definitely backfired on them.
Yeah!
I'm like the only person I know who likes the second record, you know? People kinda buy the first album and say, "That's it."
Yeah, and you know what? It's picking up on sales again.
Really?
Yeah, I'm still getting royalty checks.
Wow.
Yeah. Anyway, I think that's pretty much as far as I can go with it. I don't know if there's anything else I can remember. But if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Oh yeah -- John Belushi had just died (March 1982), and people were looking at me because I was hanging with him the night before, and I also yelled at Bob Biggs for putting money into this other band when he should have been promoting us.
         Lee had a bunch of bogus things, and basically I just said to him, "Why don't you just face it, Lee? We're just spent on each other. You just don't like me anymore. That's why you're firing me." And I've tried to talk to him since then, but he won't have anything to do with it. He won't even talk to me.

CONTINUED ...

Interview with Derf Scratch of Fear
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