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about his new album Pills and Ammo
‘I rather catch the moment than write something that I think is perfect’
[16-7-2010]
The evening before his gig at the Dutch Bospop festival, on July 10, the editors of the online music magazine Be True speak with Southside Johnny, about his new studio album 'Pills and Ammo' and other things. Although he had arrived in the Netherlands on the same morning and stayed only for a quick visit (in the early morning after the show he will return home), Southside is in a very cheerful mood. He walks into the hotel lobby, whistling.
Jos Westenberg & Muriel Kleisterlee
Be True: We have been counting, it’s your 16th studio album, and counting all the compilation albums and live albums, I think it’s the 26th or 28th album you have done.
Southside Johnny: Well, I really don’t know how many albums I have out there, I mean when we started recording in '65 or '66, whenever it was, I never thought we would make another record because it was so different from what other people were doing. So I consider every one as a very precious thing. I always think it’s gonna end. I am not pessimistic, but it doesn’t seem possible that I could have a that long career. I know how difficult it is, being a professional musician or singer, putting out all kind of things, live things and compilations.
It’s more even in the later years, the last decade, that you started to release the outtakes, the live albums, older live albums also.
Hood, who has been my roadie for a very long time, came up with the idea of a Jukebox and all the outtakes. Because I am always looking to the future, I write for the future. I sit down and think: what will I do. And he just loves everything Juke. Every time I get a souvenir, I give it to him and he takes care of it. So he is responsible for the Jukebox record, I had nothing to do with it. That sounds so uninvolved in my own career, but that is not true.
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Yes, much edgier, much more agressive, much more rock & roll-based. That has to do with the economy and how I felt a year and a half ago. I started writing songs for this. I realized there was a little bit of anger, about things that were going on. But I also remember when great rock & roll records come out, it sometimes triggers a feeling of release, if it is a bad time. I thought maybe that is something I have to try too. It is much more aggressive, much more on the edge, so that people can vent some of their anger and their frustration but still have a great time. I don’t want to go marching in the streets or anything, but sometimes you do. I did not feel in the mood for romantic or soul, I felt much more rock & roll.
So, ironically, I said to my keyboard player, who I write with now: great, let’s make a guitar album. Anyway, we got two guitars, we got Andy York from John Mellencamp’s band and he played with Bobby. It was great, it was the perfect thing to do. They triggered each other and everybody got inspired by that too, in the studio. You’re gonna let things happen in the studio. All the songs came out of a real a Rolling Stones, Small Faces, even The Clash, some of that, real guitar-oriented up tempo, a little bit angry rock and roll.
The role of Jeff is imminent on this album. He was already writing songs with you on Going to Jukesville and Into the Harbour. This album is full of your collaborations. Is that something that you feel good about now, working with Jeff?
Yes, Bobby and I wrote a lot of songs. But now he is with Jon (Bon Jovi). And he is trying to find his own way through. He’s doing shows in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a mixed group of people, some Jukes, some not, whatever he feels like doing. And Jeff is of course a player, and a great collaborator too, we fight a lot, which is always good. We argue about lyrics, we argue about songs. It’s very stimulating. After a long time of playing, you start taking things for granted sometimes. And I hate that, I don’t like to do it on stage, and I certainly don’t like to do it in writing. So Jeff is a new kind of collaborator for me. I know him now obviously well, but I had never really written in a constrictive effort before. We banged heads a lot, it really brought the best in both of us, I think. I have written songs with other people, which has been just easy and fun and those kind of songs come out, friendly and fun, up tempo happy songs. For this I needed someone who would also push me, and I pushed him.
[Laughs.] I said that in passing on one of the records and Joe Prinzo said: you have to put that on the record, at the end of one song. See, we were in the studio with the rhythm section, because they are so good. Shawn Pelton and all the rest, John Conte and Jeff, Bobby and Andy. We just let them play. And in the end, when the song is over, you give them another two, three minutes just to play, fool around with the song, get louder and softer, to find out what else is in there. At one point we started doing a rave-up, they all started playing louder and crazier and stuff, and that’s when I sit back. Because I was singing live with the band in the studio. Of course I was in another room, because they were so loud and it’s only me, and I can’t hear.
We saw an interesting interview with Alain Toussaint, you know the great New Orleans songwriter and piano player. He would write every part, he would write every bass note and drum note, all of those parts. And these great New Orleans musicians respected him enough to go and play like that. But I am not like that. Steve Van Zandt sometimes gets like that. But he does not mind to let things happen, he likes to see people go after their ideas. I look at these musicians and I see how good they are and where they go, and see where it goes. I rather catch the moment than write something that I think is perfect. They are better that I am, so…
So you give a lot of freedom to the Jukes?
Yes, a lot of freedom. Unless a guy can’t play. 'You play this.' I had to do that before too. Most of the time you try to be with the best people you can in the studio. They understand you and you let them go with it, let them be free.
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That’s a reference to my life as a musician too [laughs].
I think it’s also a little more the personal John Lyon, I think, the more introvert and private life. How do you keep that balance between the two personalities?
Well, they are all just the same personality. I mean when I am on stage, One More Night To Rock, sometimes I as say I get the feeling it may not be happening yet, you really just want to let it all loose and the most you can out of that night, that moment that is in front of you. But then you get off stage, sometimes you want to be left alone. I have become over the years much more reclusive than I used to be. You have to remember, since I was a teenager, I’ve been hanging out in bars. With bands, until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. As much as I love playing, I don’t really want to do a lot of that anymore. People want me to go out after shows. But first of all I am too tired, I have done that for so long, and a lot of times I don’t want to be in a bar. I live in a small town, people know me, they know that I am a singer, but they leave me alone. Because they know also that that’s what I want. But you go to some places and they are all over you. I’ve seen it with Bruce and Jon Bon Jovi especially. That’s definitely not what I want. I went walking with Bruce Springsteen down the boardwalk, and I look behind us and there is about three hundred people following us. And you know, we were just two guys talking, walking over the boardwalk. I could not stand that. You can’t go anywhere without somebody staring at you and all. That’s not for me. So that’s what that song is about.
But do you think they never have any time alone?
Bruce is good at it that he makes it happen. He’ll go somewhere with Patti or without her. He just has that aura of “yeah, leave me alone”. And I’ve seen him do that. But there is also some psycho coming up screaming and yelling. I couldn’t… that kind of life is incomprehensible for me. I like to shop, for my vegetables. I like to wander around, you know. Drive… think thoughts. If there are a lot of people coming up to me where I went, I would hate it. You gotta imagine how it would be like to live in New Jersey, I mean Bruce Springsteen, and to try to have a private life and just be a regular person. It can’t be done.
The Jukes went through a lot of changes, there are about 100 names on the Jukes family tree.
130 by now...
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Well, Joey Stann was suppose to come over, but he got ill... And we found out as we were entering the plane, so Joey is not going to be here. Eddie Manion is here, he has his baritone sax, he’s gonna do some of the tenor parts on the baritone. See what happens [laughs]. He may be nervous, but I’m not [laughs]. Bobby is with Bon Jovi. Andy York is with John Mellencamp now. Glenn (Alexander) is gonna be here with us. So it’s only gonna be one guitar player, and that is gonna be interesting because it is a two guitar album. But Glenn is a great player, so I don’t worry about it.
And you also got a new drummer Tom Seguso. Where do you find all these guys?
In the beginning we had auditions to find guys, and I got tired of that pretty quickly. And once you got a reputation, because this being a good band to play with live, you get phone numbers and people would be recommended by other people. Rusty Cloud recommended Jeff. Jeff recommended John Conte. Tom Seguso, “the Goose”, came recommended by couple of people too. We tried him out and he’s great, a great Juke. He fits right in. He’s no frills, if you know what I mean. He’s no prima donna. That’s what you need in this kind of band. As you can see from the schedule, there’s no lear jets, no valets. It’s just brute work, when they hit two hours on stage. You have to have guys who can really put up with a lot of real work. But Tom’s great.
Do you know G.E. Smith? He is a famous guitar player, he played with Dylan and all that… He does, I think Saturday Night Live or something like that. He’s a friend of a number of us for years. And we’ve played with him a lot of times. I was gonna get him to play on the album with Bobby, but he had a conflict. Then we were gonna get Warren Haynes, from the Allman Brothers that we know pretty well but he was out with other guitar players. I think it was John Conte or Jeff or somebody who said, you know Andy York is in town, let’s try him. And I wasn’t really that familiar with him. I mean, I like John Mellencamp but I never really paid attention to the musicians. So he came and I said, okay bring him in, try him out. Right away.
And how are the arrangements with Bobby, can he join the Jukes again?
Sure, when he wants, I think he could do that. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with Bobby. Jon has dates, we have dates. We’re gonna play a couple times together. And then I don’t know what’s gonna happen, to tell you the truth. It depends on what he wants to do. He’s trying to do some things with his own music, he’s trying to finish an album. I think he‘s probably tired of the Jukes after twenty years.
On this album you also play with Gary US Bonds. Little Steven played with you on the radio listening party. How was it to play with these old friends?
It was great. Gary and I have really hit it off over these years, I go out to his house on Long Island and it’s one of these relationships where each other is putting the other down, making fun. His wife and his daughter, we all get along, you know. It’s one of these very comfortable situations. And I had this song in a New Orleans setting and I thought, gee, I’d like to sing with somebody, who can I get? And it took me about a month to figure out, oh yeah, Gary. And he came in and it was really easy, it was fun. There is a lot of kidding on the record, which is what happened in the studio. Nothing written down except for the lyrics. And Steven, I don’t see him as much ‘cause he is so damn busy. And as I said, when I am off, I don’t go out. But he came to the listening party and I had to drag him up to play but he had a good time. He loves that garage rock thing, and that’s what we were doing. The listening party was completely fly-by, see and dance. Call out songs, making stuff up, so it was really a garage band.
June 2 2010 (Photo: John Cavanaugh)
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He is always more than welcome to come up on stage with us, but there are no formal plans. But when I finish this little run in July, I sit down with him and try to figure out what he wants. Maybe we’ll make a record again. He goes through his periods when he wants to make metal music or wants to get this or wants to do that. I don’t really know, I haven’t spoken with him so I shouldn’t speak for him. But if he wants to work, you know, I love working with Steven. He’s one of the best people I ever worked with, he’s a great songwriter. To me, he’s one of the best songwriters in America.
Over the years, there have been quite some benefit shows in New Jersey, where a lot of local musicians, you and Springsteen shared the stage. The school benefit shows, the Christmas shows and so on, playing with old friends from the Jersey Shore. In these shows there are some real nice collaborations and special renditions of songs. Do you see these shows as special too?
I guess they are special in a sense, but for me they are easy because I don’t have to carry the whole show for two hours. I don’t have to worry about selling tickets. I can have a few drinks if I want to. And Bruce is usually in those shows in such a great mood working, just doing stuff. And I love to see that. And it’s usually a different cast of characters, it’s Bobby’s band and whomever shows up. And it’s easy because we’ve been doing this now for thirty or forty years together. Steven and Bruce and Bobby. I imagine among us, we know a thousand songs. So if somebody is calling out Bo Diddley songs, piece of cake. It is fun for me, they are not any strain.
When I first saw Bruce playing, he was just improvising all the time. He is not able doing that a lot anymore, because he’s got such a large body of work and he knows that people want to hear a lot of these songs. We have the same problems. Now I have a new record out and I want to do some of those things, but you only have so long. It’s kinda hard. When he’s in those benefit shows, it’s pretty spontaneous.
October 17 2009 (Photos: Jos Westenberg) Tomorrow you play a festival show, your only show in Europe in the summer now. But how is it to play a festival like Bospop?
Well, we played one last year which wasn’t Bospop but another, in Belgium. I wasn’t really happy with that show because I didn’t like the sound onstage. That’s the one problem I have, you usually don’t get a sound check. But the audience was great, I love coming over here. Europe to me is always an achievement, anywhere I go outside the United States. ‘Cause coming out from a small town, I always wanted to travel. So anytime I am over here, I think, I actually done something, I’m out of New Jersey. Not that I don’t love New Jersey, but the idea of seeing the world is great. And the audiences here are usually very, very enthousiastic. They don’t get to see us that often. With the horns and all that. That sloppy lead singer.
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Yes! We got into soccer many, many years ago when we played England in the seventies. So I’ve been watching soccer for a long time. Finally in America, people are watching and talking about soccer. The World Cup is very big in America. Even if a lot of critics say, who cares about soccer, a lot of people watch it. So it’s been fun for us. We would have liked to see America go through, I think they did well for what they are. I talked to my Belgium girlfriend, but Belgium wasn’t in it. I asked, can I root for the Dutch? She said, well I guess so.
We had an experience years ago in American football, a team called the Pittsburgh Steelers, they won the Superbowl, but three times in a row, four times... We were there one year, when they won we played that night in Pittsburgh and they were insane. There were a hundred thousand people on the streets. So we walked on stage and got a big standing ovation for five minutes and we hadn’t played a note. They wouldn’t have cared. We could have been Tiny Tim or the Carpenters, they wouldn’t have cared. They were just so happy. So every song we played was brilliant [laughs out loud].
Did you already pick some songs that you will play tomorrow?
No, I’ll figure that out tomorrow. We will do some of the new stuff and some of the old stuff. I know people want to hear 'I Don’t Want to Go Home' and things like that, but I want to play some of the new songs too. And then we have a lot of room to see what happens. That is one of the great joys of making music, the happy accident. Somebody makes a mistake and just go with it and it leads you in some other direction. Sometimes the audience gets a little bewildered, but sometimes it leads to some really good stuff.
in the fall you are coming back to Europe. I think it will be your 12th or 13th show at the Paradiso in Amsterdam.
Is that right? That many?!
And there will be one in Groningen. There seems to be an annual return to Europe each year. Can we expect that for next years also?
As long as I don’t have a bad time, you know. Then we never come back. No, we love coming back. As I said, I love coming to Europe. Hood loves coming to Amsterdam. Because he likes to do the things that are not allowed in America. At the Paradiso , when we first played there, it was so wild, a church and the hash smoke, it was so different. There is always that thrill for us to play there. I’m not sure if I will bring over a second guitar player in the fall, we’ll see about that. Maybe John’s brother Steve Conte, he was out with the New York Dolls recently. He’s a real rocker. He knows a lot of songs.
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It’s harder, you know, a record company can go to a radio station and say, you gotta play this, or we won’t get you the latest Lady GaGa, or whatever their cloud is. So it’s hard, and of course at my age, a lot of the radio stations are only interested in the young demographics. But with the internet and a solid fan base, you’ll do alright. Hopefully we can do more with this record. I think it is a little more accessible. So we’ll try, I have been trying to go to radio, Sirius Radio which is the satellite radio, they’ve been great to us. The vice president is an old friend. Steven’s got a show, all these other people I know have shows. We’re lucky with that. We like to get it played more, especially in America. It’s a tough thing to do. It’s a hard for them to pay any attention to you if you’re not the latest thing.
But luckily you have your website, you have the social media, we saw you are also on Twitter and Facebook.
That’s Jeff (Kazee) doing that. And (my tour manager) Joe Prinzo. To me, that’s alien territory.
It’s great to be connected to the fans.
Yeah, the best thing I’ve liked, and I said this many times, people like you can go to the internet and find out what’s going on, and make friends with people like in England, America. Wherever. And if you’re feel like going to shows, like Bruce is playing one week, and I am playing next week and there is something in between. You can come and stay with those people or they could drive you around. I think that is great. If I would have had that when I was a teenager, I would have traveled everywhere to see bands. You know, blues bands, Otis Redding, Hendrix and all. But we didn’t have things like that. You read about a show in Atlanta, Georgia, it was almost impossible to think of going there. We didn’t have any money, to take a train down there. You know, with the festivals they used to have in the sixties. It was tough to get to know these things for guys like us, you know, we just didn’t have any connection to stuff like that.
Do you remember the first show that you saw?
The first show that I ever saw, you mean? One of the first shows I ever heard was BB King, ehh back in … '62. He played in a place called the Orchid Lounge, this little concrete block club in the black section of Asbury Park on Brickman Avenue. My brother and a couple of his friends and I went over, we couldn’t get in, we were twelve, fourteen years old. And we stood outside and listened through the window until a guy came out and chased us out. You know, these little skinny white guys in this tough black neighborhood at eleven o’clock at night. And I remember ringing this guitar, coming through the walls… ow, that’s great.
And BB King is still doing it.
Yes, he’s still doing it too. You know, the year I was born, he was doing three hunderd and some one nighters. That’s amazing.
Southside Johnny's new album Pills and Ammo is available, also as a digital download, at the Pills and Ammo page of his website.
In October, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes will play in the Netherlands in Amsterdam and Groningen. Tickets for both shows are still available.