Interview with Billy Zoom of X
September 2004 -- Page 2
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(*at this point, side one of the tape ended. I turned the tape over to continue recording, and didn't notice until about eight minutes later that I had only pressed the "play" button, not "record"*)
Oh my goodness. I'm really upset now.
Why?
Well, you're gonna be mad at me for this, okay?
What's that? You broke the tape?
You remember a few minutes ago when I said I had to turn the tape over?
Yeah.
Apparently I only hit "play."
Oh.
What did we talk about since then?
I have no idea.
It wasn't like -- it was only ten minutes ago.
That was forever. That was an eternity unless you remember what I said. What was the last thing I said on the first side?
Umm.... Aw jeez, I don't remember.
Why aren't you doing this direct to disc, by the way?
I don't know how that works.
But that's their old technology.
I can't believe I did that.
Ha ha....
The reason I said that is because I know that you're a tee-totaller and I know that I didn't drink until I was 27, and tonight I drank some.
Uh oh.
But don't worry about it! Don't be mad at ME! You were doing all kindsa DOWNERS and stuff! I know you!
Me!?
Sure! Why not?
I've never done downers.
Good. Good. I've never done anything. Except drinking.
The only thing I ever did was speed.
Shit, I'm a -- SPEED? REALLY? Did that help?
Uhh ... well, up to the point where it doesn't help anymore, yeah.
Ohhhh. Oh boy. Hey, do you have an e-mail address?
It helped keep me skinny.
Do you have an -- Do you --
Yeah, I have an e-mail address. This is very hard though. You're gonna have to concentrate.
Okay, I'm ready.
billyzoom @ billyzoom.com.
I can't remember. See? No. Because I would like to send you this and when you look through it, I'd like you to see if there's anything, you know, from the last ten minutes that deserves to be said. I'm so angry at myself for that, because I ALWAYS hit both buttons. That's annoying. But I'll tell you this: I'm really surprised at how friendly and open you are, because of this guy that interviewed you ["Nice Guy" by Buddy Seigal, OC Weekly] who said you were so scary. You know?
Umm....
And, and, and you're --
I'm really tall.
6'3?
About 6'3, yeah.
I'm only 5'11.
See? Maybe I'd look scarier in person.
No, you ARE scary! Just KNOWING that you're 6'3! But yeah, I do. I do! I like the second X album. You know? Like I like -- - I'll tell ya what -- - I really really love the first three albums. The fourth one, I know it's popular but I don't care for it so much. The fifth one I hate!
Let me tell you about the first and second album. I think you didn't record the part about Rick letting us record in his new studio.
That would be GREAT to repeat that part then. What's that?
Well, Rick. See, Rick keeps popping up -- Rick Perrotta was the guy that I was working with at Audio Concepts when we installed the sound system for the client that let me in to see the Ramones for free. And Rick and I used to work in the shop there together. We were techs together. Then Rick left the company -- I left the company to start X, and then a little while later, he left the company to go into a partnership with a guy named Paul who was building a studio. They built a state-of-the-art studio.
        And when we got signed to Slash, they didn't have a lot of money, but Rick called me up and said, "Billy, I wanna engineer this album. I've known you a long time, I've got this beautiful studio. Whatever money they give you for budget, I don't care what it is. You give me whatever you get -- whatever you get to work with, give it to me and I'll give you as much time as we need to make a good album. But I want you in here working with me. I don't want you looking at the clock and worrying about whether you're gonna have enough money to finish it." So we went into that studio. Rick engineered and we played everything basically live, except for overdubbing the vocals. And a couple songs I had guitar solos, so I just played the rhythm guitar straight through the solo, then overdubbed the solo, but it was like one or two takes. Very quick. And that album I like (Los Angeles, 1980).
Okay.
The second album (Wild Gift, 1981), Slash was running out of money. We didn't have as much money because they had rushed us into the studio to cut a single of "White Girl," which seemed like a good idea at the time, but actually it came out of our recording budget -- almost half of our recording budget for the second album.
FOR ONE SONG!?
Yeah. Well, one song isn't a lot cheaper than ten songs because most of the time you spend in the studio is setting up and getting the sounds and tuning drums and mic'ing things.
That song's not any --
Once you're ready to go, you just play the songs.
But that song's not any better than the rest of the album.
No, it isn't. It was a ... you know? Sometimes that happens. So then we wanted to do the second album, but because we were a punk band, we were shut out of all the mainstream recording studios, as well as being banned from all the radio stations across the country. So we tried to book time at a bunch of regular studios and they were very rude to us. You know, it was just, "Well, it's $200 an hour." "Okay. Well, what if we book a hundred hours?" "It's 200 times a hundred." "Well, what if we have a 24-hour lockout?" "Well, it's 24 times 200 -- "
Ha!
They just did not want a band named X that played punk rock in their studio. And then a guy came up to me at one of our shows who was a friend of a friend of a friend that I had met once. "Billy, I'm working at this studio." It was a studio where we had tried to book time, but they didn't let us. And he says, "I'm a second engineer at this place. I just got the job, and if you're interested in having me engineer a record for you, I can get you in for $50 an hour."
        And it sounded good at first, but we found out later that actually he was not an engineer. He was just cleaning up the place, and in fact his sister was married to one of the owners of the studio, who just gave him a job for her. And he had no idea how to run a recorder or anything. And because there was no money and we couldn't -- well, we just didn't have any choices! So we went in there and we started recording and it was a complete disaster.
Not to my ears!
And, well, but the thing is -- - the sounds were really, really -- - you know, the guitars sound really thin and fuzzy, and didn't have any --
But you don't think the songs are catchy?
Well, let me finish.
No, none of that.
Then, what we ended up doing is, because the sounds were so bad, instead of just playing -- you know, normally I fingerpick and stuff and play two or three parts at the same time and do my whole trip -- we had to separate all those, then take each part separately and overdub and double it about eight times to make it sound like a guitar, and then take each section and do that. And it ended up sounding not as thin as it started out, but it also doesn't sound like X. It kinda gutted the whole arrangement, the whole flow of the thing, because the sounds were so bad that we had to do, you know, 15 tracks of guitar instead of one because he didn't know how to mic a guitar.
        And also they had some problems -- it was pouring rain that month. It was one of those rare years when it rained and there was some kind of problem with the power pole out back. There was a hum on everything, so we had to roll the bottom off all the mics. We had to take it all out and then try to put it all back in! And then John decided that this guy should go on the tour with us and be our soundman.
WHAT!?!? HA!!!!
And I said, "Why? He's terrible!" And he said, "Well, yeah, but being a soundman's not as hard as making a record. And besides that, we don't have a soundman and he knows all the songs." "But he's awful." "Yeah, but I'm sure he'll be okay. It's better than having somebody who's never heard us doing the sound. That's always a mess on tour." "Yeah, okay." So he went on tour with us for a year, and then when it came time to do the next album, John told me he could engineer that one too. I said, "Why!?" And he said, "Well, he did the last one and he's been on tour with us for a year. How would he feel if we told him he couldn't engineer the next album?" "He'd probably feel like he had a couple months off!"
What was his name again? The guy?
I'd rather not mention names -- let's just call him "Clay Rose."
So what did Ray Manzarek have to do with all this?
Ray was like artistic consultant.
Was he around?
Ray was around. Ray wasn't a producer. Ray was a nice guy though; I don't want to put Ray down. Ray had a lot of artistic input. He was good as far as getting a good performance out of John and Exene, or just making suggestions on how they should phrase a vocal or something like that. But this is the truth -- Ray honestly doesn't remember making any Doors records. You ask him about it and all he says is, "Hey man, there was so much fuckin' drugs around in those days, I don't know where I was half the time." That's all he says! Plus the fact that he's about half-deaf and couldn't hear what was going on.
Were you a Doors fan? Was this a big deal for you? Or no?
Me? I was not a Doors fan. John was. John and Exene were. You know what? I liked the band, but I couldn't stand Morrison. He sounded too much like a Vegas crooner. "COME ON BABY, LIGHT MY FIRE!" You know, that kinda thing. He didn't sing rock and roll.
Yeah, but his poetry was so deep! DEEP!
I haven't read his poetry.
Oh, his poetry was hideous.
I always thought he was a nutcase.
Did you honestly only like the first X record?
Well, I was trying to finish that story, but you wouldn't let me.
I did! And you're done now.
So he [Clay Rose] got to engineer the third album also. By that time we'd gone from Slash to Elektra.
How come you never got credit for any of these songs though? I mean, you had a part in all of these songs.
I don't think I should answer that. Know what? When the band's finished, I'll answer that. Ha!
Well, you weren't on Hey Zeus! so I would say the band is finished.
No, I mean when the band's finished playing and I don't have to depend on it to make money.
You still depend on the band to make a living?
Yes. Absolutely. I never made any money with X until '98.
Are you serious!?
One thing that people don't understand about that article -- in that article, I think he said, you know --
You only do it for the money.
"Why did you come back?" "Well, because they started offering me enough money to really make it worthwhile."
Were they ripping you off?
You see, the part that people miss is that I originally left X because I couldn't make a living out of it and I was getting too old to play for free and sleep on peoples' couches and drive a 20-year-old car and not have a bank account, you know? You reach a point where -- by the time I left the band, I was about to turn 38, which is for all practical purposes almost 40, and I had never had a checking account or a credit card, I was driving a truck that was 27 years old, I lived in a little crummy apartment, and I thought, "You know?" And the punk thing was over and I was panicked. I figured, "It's downhill from here. I can't hang around." So I found my way out.
How did you survive it that long?
Insanity, I guess. No, uhh.....
That's ridiculous!
Nobody made any money.
A band that good to be that ... Well, what can you do?
Well, it was Lee Abrams' fault.
Okay.
It was Lee Abrams' fault, if you wanted to blame somebody.
Ha! I will.
Neither X nor the Ramones ever sold more than a hundred thousand copies of anything, which is a failure in the United States record business. That's usually not even enough to keep you signed to the label. Because we were shut off the radio. There were only like five or six stations in the whole country that had an open format.
But X's music -- 75% of it is so accessible!
But it didn't get on the radio. Well, look at the Ramones! All of theirs was. I mean, they were a hit in England.
They played a little fast though.
Their records were huge hits around the world. Just not here because of radio. And in the United States, because the country is so huge, no matter how big a trend gets in the major markets, if you don't have the radio you can't reach the people in Peoria and Cleveland and stuff, and you can't ever have --
Do you know how bands like Journey got on the radio?
Bands like Journey, I think, first of all got in right under the wire when they were first going to -- in the mid-'70s, they had this thing that was new called "radio consulting firms." Radio consultants. And at that time, computers were just starting to become available for businesses. Not the computers we have -- the big ones that take up an entire room. And Lee Abrams was one of the pioneers. He started a consulting firm and what they did was they would monitor the playlists of successful stations -- key stations -- around the country, and they'd monitor the ratings. And they would feed all the data into the computer, and the computer would spit out a formula saying, "Well, if you play these songs during this time of the day this frequently, and you put these in heavy rotation and these in medium rotation, and you subscribe to our service, we will send you a list every week telling you what to play. And we'll guarantee that your ratings will increase by this amount."
        And by the time the Ramones came out, about 98-99% of the commercial stations in the country were being programmed like that, by radio consultants. And the problem was there was a flaw in the system, which is it's one thing to give a computer data on what stations are playing and who's listening, but how do you decide what new music to add? And the two methods they came up with was (a) a band like Journey brings out a new album and their last three albums have gone triple-platinum and been in heavy rotation. The computer looks at that and says, "Okay. Put that in heavy rotation." Are you still there?
Of course I am!
You're making a lot of noise!
I'm making noise?
The other thing was if a new band puts out a first album, they look at what does it sound like? If they're being hyped to sound like Journey -- if people, you know, if they're a Journey type of group, and they should appeal to people who like Journey, then the computer looks at that and says, "Okay, Journey does good. We'll put this one in the same genre and because of the genre, we'll put it in light rotation. Then we'll monitor the playlists. We'll monitor the ratings and see how it does." The problem with that is what happens when the Ramones come along and do new music, they've never had a record out before, and nobody's ever done that kind of music before, and nothing has a track record?
        They'd put that stuff on the -- they had a "sudden death" playlist; "Do not play these records or your station's gonna get in trouble." I think the fact is that Lee Abrams just didn't like that kind of music. That's my opinion, just going by a few quotes and a picture of him. He looks like somebody who would probably hate anything I liked. But anyway, the point is in the late '70s, there were only literally like five or six commercial stations in the whole country that could play anything other than the same 30 songs everybody else was playing. They had it broken down by style; there was classic rock, country --
Isn't it even worse now though? With ClearChannel --
I don't think it's worse, no. I think it's very bad, and of course MTV is involved now which is the epitome of evil. I don't think it's as bad because here and there, there are stations like -- have you heard of Indie 103.1?
I haven't, no.
It's a new station in L.A. See, in the old days we used to have KROQ. They were the one station in the area that had a free format, and they played all the punk stuff. And they became the top station in the country, and they became so big that a corporation bought them out. Now they are the program consultants for all the alternative stations in the country. Now they suck! So we haven't had any open format stations until this year, and now we've got a new station called Indie 103.1, and their top DJ is Steve Jones, the guitar player from the Sex Pistols.
Hey! Don Bolles mentioned that!
And he had Johnny Ramone on a bunch, he had me on, he had John on, and they play old music and new music and in-between music, and they just play stuff that they think sounds good, and they're doing it really well. But around the country, there are stations here and there that play more than you'd hear on stations that don't play anything new. But it's still pretty bad. And a lot of it was screwed up by MTV too. And I, and I --
Do they even still play videos? Not when I look at 'em!
They do sometimes, and they have MTV2 also, which is supposed to be more music but I don't get that. They do sometimes, but it's all hip-hop or Britney Spears. Or bands that sound like Blink-182.
        But the thing is ... So much -- I don't really wanna say this; this is kinda something that really annoys me. It's that everybody thinks that corporate rock is evil, but they don't seem to understand what that means. The major record companies take all the heat for all the crappy music, and what people don't realize is that their business is to sell records, and they can only sell what gets on the radio and what gets shown on MTV. And if they know that the radio won't play it and MTV won't show it, there's no point in them signing it. They're up against the wall with that. I mean, sure they're a bunch of unenlightened corporate --
But they're people who are trying to make a living.
-- who are trying to keep their jobs --
People with a family, who are -- yeah.
Major labels have never been full of enlightened people who wanted to promote good music, you know. They've always been a big corporation that distributes and sells music. It's always been that way.
How did you get on Elektra?
Ever since RCA bought Elvis Presley from Sun Records -- you know, they didn't find him and develop him; they just bought him once he started happening regionally. That's what they're supposed to do. That's their job. But if they can't get stuff on the radio and they can't get the video on MTV, because they want somebody who looks like Britney Spears because they think that looks good on MTV, they're kinda screwed. I think that's the real problem, and people should think about it.
What was your biggest hit?
We never had a hit.
Even when you were on Elektra, you didn't?
Mm-mm. No. Uh-uh.
Not on MTV? Nothin'?
Nope. We had regional hits in areas where we got airplay.
Do you have a theory on why that is? That people didn't accept -- 'cuz your music is --
I just told you why. Because it wasn't played on the radio.
I mean, why radio didn't accept you.
Because of Lee Abrams and his programming.
Ohhhhhh. Okay.
In places like overseas in England, punk was the big, big thing, you know. It was the big trend. It's like there was Elvis and then there were the Beatles and then there was David Bowie and then there was punk. And that was kind of accepted everywhere except here. It was just not allowed on the radio. I mean, we sold records really well in Southern California, and in the key markets of major cities where there was a punk scene.
        I think in L.A., we probably sold as many records in the same amount of time as somebody like Phil Collins, but the difference is Phil Collins was selling records in Peoria and we weren't. But the Ramones would put a record out, it would sell 100,000. X would put a record out, it would sell 100,000. The Ramones would put another record out, it would sell 100,000. None of us ever really broke that 100,000 mark, and it's not enough to make any money.
Did you keep buying their records, by the way?
The Ramones?
Yeah.
I bought the first two, and then was pretty much living in a tour bus and didn't have any way to play records. And now I have the CDs. I think I have three -- I think I bought three vinyl records, and then I lived in a tour bus. I missed a lot of the '80s.
HEH HEH HEH! Well, there wasn't --
The first half of the '80s --
There wasn't a lot of good stuff in the '80s, so you were alright.
No, it was the part with the girls wearing pink and the shoulderpads and the big hair and all the stuff you see in the Brat Pack movies and stuff?
Yeah.
I never saw any -- I didn't know about any of that until the late '80s, after I left X. Because I was in a tour bus, I had sensory deprivation the whole time. You're completely isolated. We'd be on the road for like eight months at a time, and then we'd come back and we'd rehearse five days a week for about six weeks to work up new songs, then we'd go into the studio for two and a half months, and then we'd go on tour.
Did you ever tell John the certain types of music you didn't think were that great or might not sell?
What do you mean?
'Cause you said you only liked the first record.
No, I said I liked the first record, and then I didn't like the -- you cut me off. We didn't get past the third record. I did not like the second record because it was horribly recorded and we didn't have any money and we were forced to do tons of overdubs.
I'm looking at All-Music Guide. They gave it five stars out of five. I gave it 8 out of 10.
It breaks my heart because it was some of the best songs. Some of the most commercially accessible songs we ever did but the recording sucks!
You know how it SHOULD have sounded!
I know how it should have sounded. I'm also an engineer/producer, and it really is -- what they did to my music, I know better. I could have done better.
Okay.
And then the third album somehow came out sounding better. I like Under The Big Black Sun. But then the worst-sounding album we made was the fourth album [More Fun in the New World]!
HA!
And that was a shame too, because that had some really good songs on it. That just sounds like it was cut in somebody's garage. In fact, you know --
Yeah, you know --
When we --
It's a popular record though, you know.
When we finished that, Clay and Ray went off to Hawaii together.
Who did?
Clay and Ray.
Oh man.
And I was left to do the mastering. And I took it to -- I didn't like the place we'd been getting mastered, so I took it to Bernie Grundman. And Bernie -- do you know who Bernie Grundman is?
I haven't heard the name, no.
Oh, okay. He's a real famous mastering engineer. He's one of the top mastering engineers --
Do you hate me because I live in New York City?
No. Let me finish the story! I hate you because you're interrupting me. I took it to Bernie, he started listening to the tape, and he kinda turned some dials and he says, "Where'd you guys do this?" And I said, "At Cherokee." And he said, "Cherokee what?" "Cherokee Young." "Cherokee Studios on Fairfax?" I said, "Yeah." And he says, "Oh, what -- that little demo annex off on the side?" I said, "No, in the big room." And he said, "You did this in the big room at Cherokee?" I said, "Yes." He said, "On the A-range?"' I said, "Yeah." "You recorded and mixed this in the big room on the A-range?" I said, "Yeah! Why?" And he said, "Uh, nothing."
HA!
I said, "No! What? Why do you ask?" He said, "I, I -- it's not my place to say anything." And I said, "Come on, come on. Just between you and me. Please, I just wanna hear your feelings about it." And he said, "Well, I don't want to say anything, but you know, I thought you guys did this in your garage or something. It just doesn't sound like a professional recording. We'll try to pump it up as much as we can, but...." And then Clay got promoted to -- he ended up being our tour manager.
Do these original tapes still exist? Could you remaster it? Or no?
The problem with the tapes is that they were recorded poorly. So no. If you take something and record it poorly, you can remix it and remix it and remix it and remix it, and it might get a LITTLE better.
What did he screw up so bad?
Because he didn't know what the knobs did. He didn't turn most of them because he didn't know what they were for. And he didn't understand how to mic us, I guess. And Ray basically didn't know the difference.
Did you --
I like Ray, but the main fault I had with Ray is that he was oblivious to the fact that Clay was incompetent. So I used to fault him for that.
I hope it makes you feel better at least to know that fans don't know how it should have sounded. We only know that it sounds really good. The songs are great.
Yes, but I can't help thinking that my career might have gone better had it been recorded better.
You think they might have played you on the radio?
Well, you never know.
How would they have played you on the radio though?
You never know.
They were playing the Romantics.
Maybe it would at least have some kind of legacy.
You do have a huge legacy among people who love music. We're not talking about people who listen to Madonna. You have a huge legacy; people love Billy Zoom. Why do you think no one bought See How We Are or Hey Zeus!?
They didn't?
Did they?
I don't know. You know what, I've never been able to find out how many copies of anything we sold.
All I know is whenever I see people talking about X, they're always saying that it was one of the greatest bands in L.A.
Oh, I think it was. I think it's a shame that we didn't really get it on tape. I think we were much better live than we were on record.
All I know are the records, and I know that the first three records were great. The fourth one I didn't like a ton, and the fifth one was produced abysmally.
Well, the fifth one wasn't -- I mean, that wasn't anybody's fault. That was the year that John and Exene split up and got divorced, and that was the year that punk had finally officially died and heavy metal hair bands started getting huge. I'm surprised we even survived and made that record because John and Exene were going through a divorce and they were both writing but they weren't writing together. So John brought in his songs, Exene brought in her songs, and the management and record company were -- - you know, we hadn't done well, so they thought, "Well we can push them into heavy metal, and a bunch of those kids will buy it. Let's push them as that."
Oh no!
So I think Michael [Wagener] the producer was really getting it from a lot of directions about, you know, "Make them into this, because we can't sell that." And we've got songs that John wrote and songs that Exene wrote that don't sound like the same band at all, and not a lot of communication going on. And we were all kinda burned out by that point; we'd just been on the road for too long.
        See, I really enjoyed making that record. I enjoyed working with Michael, because it was the first time that we'd gotten to work with a real professional engineer. And even though I know the production style was wrong, he didn't have a lot to work with, and I think he was under a lot of pressure. But I did enjoy working with him and I learned a lot from him, and he was really nice about -- - you know, I'd sit in the control room with him and he'd always talk with me about like how to use this compressor and how to set the mic up in different ways... "Have you ever tried this? If you set it like this, you can make this happen," you know? And I just loved that, because that really fascinates me. "Have you ever tried to set it -- if you set it wrong like this, it'll make this funny effect." It was kinda cool.
Whose idea was it to do a Small Faces song ["All or Nothing"]?
I don't know. I'm not sure.
That was an odd choice, I thought.
Yeah, it was. I had never heard it. It just sorta came up at the session, and I don't know whose suggestion it was. Apparently John was familiar with them at the time.
None of you were fans of the band? You just kinda --
No, not really.
Wow.
I wasn't. I knew who they were, but I wasn't really familiar with their style.
So at this point, you like the first X album, you were disappointed --
And the third. Every other album ... is bad. Ha!
Ohhhhh. Billy, Billy! These are classics we're talkin' about! I understand that you know how they should have sounded.
I tell you what -- tomorrow, when you're fresh -- I want you to take Wild Gift and listen to "In This House That I Call Home," which I think is the first cut, isn't it?
I don't think so, no!
No? Well, you know the song.
Yeah, I know that song. Yeah.
I want you to listen to the beginning of that song. And then I want you to put on "Holiday In The Sun" by the Sex Pistols.
I'm not concerned about the production though!
And I want you to compare the guitar sounds, because -
"The Once Over Twice."
-- that's what the guitar sounded like in the room when I played it. It was this really full aggressive sound, and now you can't even tell it's a guitar.
Oh no! So after this second album came out, you complained to John, right?
To John?
To John, yeah. You said that's not how it should have sounded.
I complained to everybody.
And it meant NOTHING to him? Why did it mean nothing to him? You were a pretty key part of that band!
Why would I single out John? I think I probably yelled at our manager a lot.
I just thought John and Exene were the heads of the band or whatever.
That's your perception.
What's your perception?
I think, I think --
That the manager was --
-- the audience assumes that the person with the microphone is the leader of the band.
Of course.
And if there's a male and a female, and they both have microphones, then the male must be the leader.
So the manager was the leader?
In the beginning, I was. I was the one who started the band. And John was this kid, you know? And somehow along the way, it kind of started to become an ongoing struggle. But nobody ever made John the leader.
Well, what songs were you most involved with and why did you let them take all the credit?
I don't think I should answer that.
Don't then. Okay. Okay, well how about what songs were you most involved with then? How about that?
Let's put it this way -- John and Exene wrote all the lyrics --
But the lyrics aren't the reason that people love X! It's the music!
Well, John didn't play the music. John did not know how to play chords --
Then why did you let them have all the credit?
Sometimes John would just sing a melody to me and I would make up the music to go along with it. Sometimes he would play a little line on the bass and I would make up the music to go with it.
When you listen to "Johnny --" "Johnny Hit And Run Ex --"... uh, "Johnny Hit And Run Paulene," you don't think of anyone but Billy Zoom.
Yep.
Y'know? But you know, whatever. Aaaaaand it should, you know, it should -- did you ever actually -- Did you listen to the two albums they did without you?
No.
No? Well, here's a secret:
That's like obsessing over who your ex-girlfriend is sleeping with, you know? It's like, she's your ex-girlfriend -- who cares?
They weren't, um, they weren't very good.
They weren't?
No.
Well, I'm glad to hear that, but --
Apparently a lot of people like See How We Are, but I didn't.
Didn't that have "Fourth Of July" on it?
Yeah.
Wasn't that sort of a minor hit or something? That was a Dave Alvin song. That was good.
I don't know. I had the album and I sold it. But the important thing is that you -- Ever since you left X, you've been still writing songs, right?
Yeah.
And are you recording these songs at home?
Well no, I have a recording studio.
Have they been released?
No. Mostly what I'm doing now is instrumental soundtracks.
Would I have heard any of it?
Mmmmmmm... Mmmmmmmmm....
Well, let me ask you this then. You obviously --
I did a Nike commercial a long time ago. I did a couple of commercials.
Well, everybody knows you're an extremely talented player. Are you also a talented writer? In your opinion.
I'm okay. I don't know. I can write instrumental stuff all day. I only write lyrics when I'm forced to do some.
But lyrics, again -- like some people listen to lyrics, some don't. I always notice the music first, and I've always noticed that the lead guitar lines in X songs were really pretty awesome. Pretty rockabillyish, pretty strong, pretty tight, pretty fun!
If you want to hear us play really good stuff, you should check -- Have you ever seen X live?
I haven't.
Okay.
I'm in New York! Do you guys ever come here?
Yeah, sometimes. The really cool part about X guitar stuff isn't on the records because we had to change all the parts and start overdubbing to fill it up. Basically, X guitar is a combination of three things. You've got -- do you know who Scotty Moore is?
No! Who's that?
A guy named Scotty Moore was the guy who invented rock 'n' roll guitar. He played with Elvis Presley and Bill Black. He was the original Sun Records guy that kinda helped them get the deal with Sun.
So that's where rock and roll came from? Not Chuck Berry? Or --
I think it was invented in 1954 in Sun Studios by Elvis Presley, Bill Black and Scotty Moore, which was before Chuck Berry's first record. Chuck crossed over, but I don't think Chuck could have crossed over if he'd been first. Before Elvis. I think Elvis was the key. But anyway, Scotty Moore's guitar playing was -- are you familiar with Merle Travis? Merle Travis was a country guy who invented that fingerpicking style that Chet Atkins got his hits for. It's really, uh -- do you know what I'm talking about? You play the bass line with your thumb and you pick with two fingers and play the melody?
Yeah. Yeah, I never played it like that really.
It sounded kinda corny. So Scotty Moore came up with an approach where he'd fingerpick and play lead parts at the same time. It was a cool, more streamlined version of --
Did you ever play with picks?
What do you mean?
Did you ever play with picks or were you always a finger player?
I play with a straight pick and two fingers. But anyway, the X sound was a combination of Scotty's kind of fingerpicking style combined with what what we used to call when I was a kid "jazz chords," which were like minor sevenths and major thirteenths and stuff, and then you'd do all those passing chords, fingerpicking leads and rhythms at the same time, and you try to make it sound as much like Johnny Ramone as possible. And that doesn't come across on the records because we had to restructure all that because the tones we were getting were so bad I had to simplify things and just overdub them later, which I hated to do but it was the only way to get any kind of good sound on the record. But if you haven't heard X live, you wouldn't hear it on the records.
Well but no, but as a person who knows those records pretty well, it just seems like you take the speed of the Ramones and add in the, yeah, the fingerwork of people who can, you know, actually play the guitar.
And there's a lot of very funny chords.
(*tape ends abruptly*)

CONTINUED ...

Interview with Billy Zoom of X
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