1990 was a huge year for music and so this year I ‘ve been chasing up some of my favourite albums of that year. One of the very best was Little Caesar’s debut album ‘Little Caesar’ and the story behind it isn’t for the feint-hearted! We caught up with the wonderful Mr. Ron Young to step back 30 years and look at the release, dispel some myths and find out what really happened…
Ron: How’s it going?
Mark: Not too bad mate, how’s things over there?
Ron: Umm, good if you like the circus (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) It’s a wonderful time of year isn’t it – the election and the pandemic!?
Ron: Yeah, being an election year and having, how ‘shall we say’, a controversial figure with the hand on the rudder, it’s a basic shit show.
Mark: By contract things are good here, the only Coronavirus we seem to have in the West of Australia are ships crews arriving with that little gift, otherwise we have none ourselves.
Ron: yeah well people probably took it a little bit more seriously than they did here, and it didn’t get quite as politicized. But unfortunately the virus doesn’t vote and the virus doesn’t care what people believe of don’t believe. We’ve got portions of the country where people are being outwardly defiant against the protocols. I don’t know who they’re trying to teach a lesson to, so unfortunately right now it’s exploding all over the place. It doesn’t look like it’s gonna calm down anytime soon.
Mark: And the same sort of story in Europe and the UK too.
Ron: Yeah, France, The Netherlands, Scotland, all over the place. But it’s pretty cold so at least people are going indoors. I don’t know, I don’t know what this is gonna do to everything in the music business. I know lots of venues and they’re barely hanging on, and if this keeps going, they’re gonna be toast. And it’s unfortunate you know, because to really only have big concerts to go to when that eventually starts to get back up, and that being the only thing that thrives, it’s really gonna hurt.
Mark: I think globally it shows us one thing, how much our governments value the industry that we’re all involved in, there’s no money wherever you go except for some of the ‘highbrow’ stuff.
Ron: No, it’s at the bottom of the food chain unfortunately. And I guess this is one of the things about being in an industry where people try to hide their money.
Mark: (laughs) I’d never thought of that.
Ron: There’s a lot of money that used to come in ‘under the radar’ – alcohol sales and merch revenue and all that stuff, so unfortunately when you need to go to governments and show them that you need support, the government says “OK then show us the kind of business that you do” so they can figure out what you’re rightfully open to, it doesn’t look very good on paper. (laughs) I know a few people that I won’t mention, but it’s kinda rough. A lot of musicians can’t show any revenue, you know, they get paid cash, or they get their money ‘under the table’ and try to hide it so they don’t get taxed. So when they ask for benefits from the government they can’t show any real revenue to show that they’ve lost, you know?
Mark: It is a horrible situation to be in especially when your main source of that income has pretty much ground to a halt. Let’s hope there’s some kind of solution sooner rather than later.
Ron: Hmmm.
Mark: Before we look back 30 years, how was your chat about ‘Manic Eden’? (Ron was being interviewed by Classic Rock about that project the day before)
Ron: Oh it was good. It was with Dave Reynolds from Rock Candy, he was writing for some other publication. But it was good. Adrian is doing a re-release of it so people are starting to talk about it again, so he just wanted to get my perspective on it – how it all came about, all that stuff. All good pleasant memories it was nice to recall.
Mark: That’s great. Let’s go even further back then. I’m doing a series of interviews on my favourite albums of 1990 which just happened to be 30 years ago…
Ron: (laughs) Yes I know that well!
Mark: (laughs) When we all had maybe a bit more hair and were packing a few less pounds!
Ron: (laughs) Yes a few less pounds, and a little more attractive to the ladies (laughs)
Mark: I still remember, and I was talking to someone about this the other day, it’s weird that if you’re of a certain age, you can remember where you were and when you bought a particular album. If you were to ask me that these days I wouldn’t have a clue, but I can remember very, very clearly buying your first EP ‘Name Your Poison’ the year before. It was at a little record store in Nottingham called Way Ahead Records, they had it in on import and I’ve actually got the shrink wrap on it just split down the seam to get the vinyl out, I was really careful in those days.
Ron: Nice!
Mark: That was an EP that at the time blew me away and led to bigger and better things, but the story wasn’t quite as it seemed?
Ron: You’re right, the back story of it is actually very contrived. When we were working with Geffen and realised that it was going to be quite a while until we got in to work with Bob Rock because John Kalodner got into a fight with Bob and they weren’t speaking for a while. So we started to look for another producer and Bob had booked another act or two before they kissed and made up. So they eventually said we’d just wait for Bob, but what would we do in the meantime? And they said “Well Guns ’n’ Roses did really well with their EP, why don’t we put something out on Metal Blade? Stuff that we know won’t make the record, we’ll just take the demos and put it out and make it look like these guys kinda came up organically?” So it was all contrived (laughs).
Mark: Contrived or not there were some great songs on there. So before we finally get to the album let’s look at the story of the ‘Hard and Heavy’ compilation that you appeared on even before the EP- is that what got you the deal with Geffen?
Ron: (draws in breath) Actually all of that stuff was orchestrated. I put the band together and at the second show, the thing was being Hollywood there was a big sort of motorcycle community that connected to the music scene, and I was friends with all of those guys. I didn’t even have a car at that point, I was just driving my bike everywhere. So for all of the like-minded guys the big activity was to bounce from club to club on their bikes and show up and make a big scene. So anyway when I put Little Caesar together I was working the door at a couple of clubs, that’s what I was doing to pay the bills, I was a doorman. So I just went to all the venues that I knew and said “Listen give me a Saturday night, prime slot, if we don’t draw well you don’t ever have to book me again.” So we just put the word out with all the motorcycle guys ‘please come to the show’ and by the second show that we did Jimmy Iovine’s assistant was there and I got a phone call literally the day after the second show and it was Jimmy Iovine and he said “Hey, I’m hearing great things about you guys, that you’re totally different, that you’re more song-oriented, that you’re more Blues-oriented, you don’t drew like women – all of that excites me – can I see the band?” So Jimmy came down and saw the band and he was like “I’m sold! I’m gonna get you guys a record deal in no time” So we were like “OK whatever you say.” And literally by the fourth or fifth show it was starting to be a big feeding festival, with Jimmy’s name attached and everything. And so Jimmy did his magic while we just kept playing around for like six months, and all this time Jimmy was doing things like taking us into A&M Studios where U2 was recording and Tom Petty and giving us demo time. So we just started to throw things down on tape and Jimmy started to do his little ‘”Let’s get a track on this, let’s get MTV down to see the band” the idea was so that when we were done with all this we had support from all these people. There was a lot of wheat being thrown around on our behalf and so ‘the usual band in the Clubs, slowing toiling and slowly climbing the ladder’ it didn’t happen. It was very, very orchestrated, very contrived, the heavy-hitters pushing their weight around, and the funny thing is that’s one of the reasons the band went away so quickly. Because when we hit some bumps in the road and had some bad timing with stuff all of these really powerful guys that were used to having everything go their way started a fight with each other pointing fingers; and at the end of the day it was the band that suffered from that because it’s really easy for guys like Jimmy and John Kalodner and David Geffen to put things upon the shelf where nobody sees it to ask any questions because of what it looks like for the rest of their business. So we saw it coming (laughs) at that point it was all great, but the expectation around the band was huge.
Mark: It must have been.
Ron: I remember when we released the first record, the singe which was about three or four weeks before everything that could go wrong did go wrong – starting with the sale of the label, blah, blah, blah, on and on. We came out of the box with like 120 adds on radio and big strong sales when ‘Chain of Fools’ went to number 78 on the singles chart in the first week. All of these things that would make any other band think they were on this really great initial start, you know, and the label was like “Really? You didn’t start out in the Top 40?” It was really crazy, we were like “What do you mean?” And they all had the attitude like “Well, when Jimmy Iovine speaks the water should part, when John Kalodner speaks the water should part, when Bob Rock produces something it should go right to the top of the charts!” (laughs) And we thought “Well it goes to the top of the charts if you’re The Cult and you’ve had four records; it goes to the top of the charts if you’re any one of these other established acts that he works with, but we are still a new band remember?” We have to build it from the ground up! It was weird because this was the band speaking from a point of truth and experience and moderation, while the label was just expecting everything all to happen at once.
Mark: And then it really went wrong?
Ron: And then like I said within four weeks our label manager got fired for masturbating on a secretary, Geffen sold the label and our records were sitting in WEA’s warehouses while we were now being distributed by BMG while we were on the charts. And sales weren’t showing up because there was no product in the stores. So literally everything that went wrong did. And back then everything got a six week window you know – they geared up the machinery and if everything didn’t align… But then the Japanese came in and started to look at all the books, and Matsushita who bought Geffen realised there were 268 acts on the label, of which they’d only heard about 3% of them. So there was just this whole tumultuous thing going on behind the scenes, and unfortunately when you don’t have enough behind you to weather that storm you just tend to disappear. And that’s what David Geffen did, the biggest fight we got into was when he didn’t like that I was speaking the truth to the press when people were asking what happened and I’d say “He sold the label, our records aren’t in the stores and so on and so on” and David didn’t like the fact that I didn’t just shut up and go with flow and he came up with all these other excuses.
Mark: It’s interesting to hear that again, I know we’ve talked about the break down at the label before, it’s a crazy set of circumstances. Let’s talk about the initial band that made the record because there’s two of you guys left standing still.
Ron: Actually there’s three of us, three of the five. It’s me Loren and Tom from the original band, and Apache our first guitar player he left right after the first record.
Mark: Of course Tom! That’s the trouble with not looking at my notes, you always forget the drummer don’t you! (laughs)
Ron: Oh of course! (laughs) Of course, it’s required! (laughs)
Mark: (laughing) I’m keeping that in, or maybe I’ll edit that out and he’ll be the first name I put up there! (Apologies to Tom Morris, a wonderful drummer)
Ron: (laughs)
Mark: So moving onto the songs, you mentioned already that the EP was made up of the songs that weren’t going to make the album. To me over the years the reason the album stands out so much and the reason I keep coming back to it, is that it has that wonderful blend of Soul and Hard Rock, something that you mastered and no one else really was doing at the time. And some of the slower numbers like ’In Your Arms’ just gave the band a whole new dimension. Did you have a lot of the songs before you put the band together?
Ron: Yeah, I mean that was kind of the reason that I put the band together. I mean I’m in LA, I’m working the doors, I’m meeting all these guys, and everywhere there’s all these guys with these giant hairdos and they’re all trying to be very Pop, glittery and glamorous, and the focus of the music was very Pop, so I was trying to find other guys who had reverence for the more Classic Rock type music which is Soul and Blues-based. So I played in a band with Tom previously that as short-lived and I had bumped into Loren, and Loren knew Fidel the bass-player because Fidel’s wife was actually Loren’s girlfriend before, so they had some history! (laughs) And then I just met Apache when I was working this club called ‘Club Lingerie’ in L.A. A couple of people had told me “This guy’s a great player, he’s totally what you’re looking for, he loves all the same music.” So oddly enough the first thing we decided to do just to have something to jam on and let me do a ‘proof of concept’ was say – “How would you guys play it if AC/DC did an Aretha Franklin song?” (laughs) and so the very first night we put ‘Chain of Fools’ together.
Mark: Wow.
Ron: And that was exactly what I was talking about, how do you ‘Hard Rock’ how do you ‘grit up’ a Soul or R and B standard and what would it sound like? And so fortunately Loren was a very prolific song-writer, Apache was a really prolific song-writer and so the chemistry of all the guys put together kind of kept that sensibility of, you know we were all ‘big chorus’ guys. You know the great thing about Motown and Soul and all that music was great song-writing. So we knew that one of the things we didn’t like about current music was it was all relying on production and visuals, and we wanted to get back to the classics. You know, write a great song, write something that’s memorable and then how do we put our own little twist on it so that it fits in with MTV but… If you break it down just in chord changes and melodies it still very Classic based in Soul and Blues and Rock. And so it all really worked and it seemed to come together, oddly enough when things started to go a little off the rails was when we produced the record we wanted it to be more gritty, and honest and more organic. And when we were up there doing the record ‘Dr. Feelgood’ made it to umber one and Bob started to push to make it slicker, more processed, with more reverbs and more overdubs and on and on and on. And when the record came out and they were having all these troubles a common comment was – “Wow you listen to ‘In Your Arms’ and then you look at a picture of the band and it’s like wow!” You know – how does a band that looks like they’re a motorcycle club do these kind of very melodic, very soulful songs? And Geffen kind of fell back on that and were giving us a hard time, but that’s just the excuse they were giving to hide all this other behind-the-scenes B.S. And we were thinking this is exactly why we wanted to do more of a stripped down kind of a record, because then the picture would match the music. Even still it was all based on really strong melodies – there were four guys that sang in the band so we had great background vocals, you know all the classic things – and it did set us apart and I was grateful for that.
Mark: There’s not a bad track on there – and there’s not many albums I can play from go to whoa, but this is definitely one of them.
Ron: Well thanks, we really enjoyed collaborating around songs and it was funny because that’s how the EP came about, we saw those songs as not quite up to the songs that made the album but still worthy of releasing. I thought that was one of the real strengths of the band you know – the guys that we all gravitated to, all the guys that came in and out – like when we brought Earl Slick in for the second record – all these guys understood that you can’t just have a riff, or you can’t just have some trite melody. You always need to try and dig deeper and find something that stands up as a song in its own right before you give it your signature.
Mark: I remember meeting Earl here in Perth about nine years ago, he was playing with the New York Dolls at the time, and you should have seen his face when the first thing I asked him was about his time in Little Caesar rather than the usual questions about playing with Bowie!
Ron: (laughing) Yeah, that as a big blip on his radar! He was kinda beat up by the music business when he joined us and it didn’t help joining us because we kept getting beat up! (laughs) I think he wants to forget those couple of years that he was with us!
Mark: (laughs) It made him smile at the time! I’m always fascinated by bands interactions with producers and their experiences in the studio. How was it working with Bob (Rock) on that first record at the time, was it just ultimately disappointing?
Ron: Yeah, you know the thing is when you’re making music you have this fantasy of what it’s going to be like when you finally get to do what all your heroes have done, get in a room and create this magic with the use of whatever technology is available to you. So you think of Jimmy Page and Andy Johns and all these great creators and producers and when we first sat down with Bob and met him in Los Angeles, and this is actually a couple of years before the record ended up coming out we just told him we wanted to do a classic record like Skynyrd would do it or Bad Company would do, or The Stones would do and he said “Well why are you guys coming to me, I haven’t really been making records like that?” And we said well you’re the producer you have to love those records right? And he said “Of course and I would love to make a record like that but I’ve been doing records with Aerosmith and The Cult and all these other bands.” And the talk amongst the band was –why are we meeting with Bob Rock? Why don’t we talk to Ed Stasium or Tom Dowd? And that was the kind of guy we wanted to work with but John Kalodner kept pushing for Bob. And so when we met him and he said he would love to make a record like that we believed him.
Mark: I sense a but…?
Ron: And then when we got up to Vancouver I don’t know what was happening in his life at the time but we were kinda living in this hotel, we had our own little suites over on the sketchier side of town, but we all had our own places. And at this point I’d brought my bike up and I’d brought my bike up and there we were hitting up all the strip clubs and the bars every night and then coming in to work with him in the day. And for him it was very much of a factory type of thing, he’s got perfect pitch, he’s very anal, and so it started off on a good foot and then like I say when we were up there a couple of months into it ‘Dr. Feelgood’ went to number one, and his career and his phone all of a sudden are lighting up and he started to realise that he couldn’t really make the kind of record we wanted to make and not have it kind of ‘colour’ his whole plan for what Bob Rock’s career was gonna be and the kind of records he was gonna make. I think he was more comfortable attempting to try and make that kind of record before it really exploded for him. So all of a sudden that’s where it kinda got strange, it got very mechanical, it got very factory like and very cold and precise. And we were calling back to L.A. calling back to John and calling back to Jimmy and saying “This is taking a weird turn here, all of a sudden we got keyboards and 64 track digital machines going up and this is not what we talked about.” And unfortunately when you have the weight of a John Kalodner, and you know, Bob Rock is now the number one producer in the country saying “no, no, no, we’re gonna make the record that walks the line perfectly.” And the first bunch of mixes that we finally got to – and this is after five months being up in Vancouver because Bob was so anal retentive and we had cut so many solos on so many tracks, that we started to sort through it all and try to make sense of it to try to make a record out of it. At that point it stopped being fun, it became molecules at that point. You know the first mixes were these huge bombastic, cavernous, arena-type productions, and all of the personality disappeared from the performances of the band.
Mark: Wow.
Ron: So we called back to L.A. and said “You better get up here now” and the battles began. And what you hear is kind of the compromise. A whole bunch of that stuff that he started to put in on it went, and he got kinda frustrated about that and we kept asking “Hey man we thought we were gonna make this other record?” And he said “Well when I got into t I started to think of this other approach.” And we said “Don’t you think you should talk to us about it?” But at this point so much money was spent and so much time was spent and though John and Bob’s momentum we kinda had to capitulate a bit, you know. Jimmy came into bat for us a bit, but you know at this point he was starting to get his whole Interscope thing up and running which is ultimately why we had to fire him, well David Geffen made us fire him because there’s a law in California that you can’t be a Record Distributor and a Manager, it’s against the law to occupy both positions in the industry. So he wasn’t going to give up his record label dreams, so we had to get a new manager.
Mark: There are so many components to this story Ron!
Ron: I know.
Mark: So thirty years on how do you look back on that set of songs now, and one question I guess I’ve always had is bearing in mind of everything that we’ve talked about and obviously the anniversary makes this rather topical, have you ever been tempted to re-record it?
Ron: You know we’ve talked about that, in fact, and I won’t name names but there’s a certain member or two of the band who are more paranoid about getting ill if we get together in a room, it drives me crazy, but we talked about going in and doing a live performance of the whole record in its entirety and I’m really looking forward to that as a kind of ‘proof of concept’ thing. Of course we’d love to re-record those songs and do them in the style that we have done the last few records. Unfortunately the trade off without having a big label behind you is that we did our last three albums so quickly – 21 days from getting sounds to mixing it down – which is really, really fast (laughs) and it’s not even full days ‘cos guys are working! But it does have that sort of honesty and that transparency that I would love to apply to the first record. So we might do that, we’ve talked about it.
Mark: It’s a horrible situation that we find ourselves in with Covid, I’ve talked to a number of guys who released great albums in 1990 and they had a variety of plans to celebrate that. Everyone I know loves this album, especially friends in the UK who are lucky enough to get you down regularly, and here in Australia we’d love to see you down here, but the pandemic has just put paid to everything!
Ron: Yeah, and you know I had this year so mapped out. I sat down with the guys last year and said “Listen if we’re going to do this we really need to try to push it over the hill, and push everything that little notch up, and that means more engagement on Social Media and getting out there more and playing so that our name stays out there – we should really reach out our tentacles” because we’d kinda got comfortable just doing like a month in Europe and a couple of weeks in the UK. So I booked a whole bunch of weekend runs around the States and started to work with Golden Robot Records and we were talking about trying to get us down to Australia, and then this whole thing came along and just snuffed out all of that. (laughs) It was really disappointing because we had so much good stuff in the works, you know.
Mark: It’s horrible, even over here where we’re OK with Covid, but we’re still missing out on those big live shows that made up so much of the fabric of our lives. It’s been the longest time in my life waiting since 19th March when I saw my last international act here in Perth.
Ron: Yeah and you’re talking about a lot of artists and bands who you know, they were struggling to begin with. I try to articulate this to my non-industry friends – you have to understand that a lot of these bands can’t just do one-off type things – they have to put strings of shows together. It’s the only way to make it financially feasible to take out a bus or a van for a long period and put a bunch of guys on the road, you can’t just fly-in, fly-out. You have to minimise all of those expenses by doing a string of shows. And unfortunately that means going into all these different markets, plus planning it six months out. And this virus thing has made that such a gamble. And then you add to that, one region will allow this, and one region will allow that, and all that can change in a second. Not to mention that right now nowhere in the world wants an American in their country! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Ron: But everyone I talk to has just said “We just picked everything up and we’ve transplanted it a year from now.” So we just picked things up and we’re looking at October of 2021 and even now that’s starting to look really risky. And you combine that with the fact that these smaller promoters and the venues don’t even know if they’re gonna be in business. On top of that the initial agreements that you worked out based on what you can show them you can do as a band, now these promoters are telling the bands “Listen I don’t know if I’m gonna be at 30% or 50% or 70% so I don’t know if we can offer you 30% or 50% or 70% of what we usually pay.” And then the bands go how do I pay my crew? How do I guarantee them? How do I pay for travel and the equipment rental – you can’t! And those costs don’t go down by 30% or 50% or 70%. And I try to explain this to people. It’s not like you can just flip a switch and the machine just comes to life again. It’s a long process that requires a lot of speculation. And the one thing about this virus is you can’t speculate about anything, and so that adds to an already dire economic situation. A restaurant can open its doors and let people back in tomorrow, but things in the music business, especially the touring situation, it doesn’t work that way.
Mark: No, the one that that has happened over here with 70% capacity now is that with no international acts local bands are reaping the rewards – bands that pre-Covid might have been pulling 20-50 are selling out up to 200. So the desire to see live music hasn’t gone away, people still need it.
Ron: Yeah, and that’s the final thing in all of this – “If you build it will they come?” you know. Right now because of all the media exposure and the fighting between people that think it’s all over-blown versus people that think it’s the Black plague. At the end of the day, especially when you’re talking about my demographic and the age of my fan-base – do people want to risk going into a situation that they have no control over, with a bunch of people that they don’t really know, who they are unsure if they are going to take it seriously or not take it seriously. And the other thing is I know guys who are getting a lot of flak on Social Media for going out and playing! So now a lot of people are getting really uncomfortable announcing that they’re going to play in the middle of all this trying to survive, and they have a whole bunch of their fans thinking that they’re being irresponsible! And so there’s a sort of stigma attached to it.
Mark: Even though I’ll bet the events are being done under the guidelines?
Ron: Yeah. We went and played this motorcycle rally two weeks ago and you know we had to work out all the details so that we could be safe. We ended up playing in this like pool area that had a steel fence around it so we figured OK we can go in, load in, and set up and be socially distanced from people. And we looked out and there was a whole bunch of people who were just partying and all over each other, and there was no alcohol involved as it was a sober motorcycle club. Some of the guys were a little bit nervous about it. Things that you never had to worry about when you did a show are now part of the equation. You have to worry if people will even come, and if they do will they feel safe enough and will they really have the enjoyment of what a musical experience is supposed to be? If they’re watching everyone around them wondering why this guy doesn’t have a mask? It kinda takes the spontaneity and free spirit out of it.
Mark: It is a different problem wherever you go too, and with so many varied solutions. What is quite big in Europe is the drive-in concert, which is ‘interesting’; and in Ireland they’re having car park concerts.
Ron: Yeah. ‘Interesting’ that’s a diplomatic way of saying it! (laughs)
Mark: (laughing)
Ron: To me a real musical experience is all about being in a densely packed room where the energy of the audience takes on its own life and it combines with the energy from the band to create a moment in time that will never exist again. Every night is different and that’s one of the most charming aspects of it – in knowing that you saw a show where the way it was played and the way it sounded – that moment can never be recreated. And that’s a huge part of music – that magic.
Mark: I don’t think I’ve ever heard that so beautifully put Ron.
Ron: So all of these constraints now keep people away from the real thing. It’s kind like having sex in your doctor’s office, it’s not very spontaneous! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Ron: And without that spontaneity, the enjoyment level suffers.
Mark: That’s going to be a reoccurring picture for me now Ron! (laughs)
Ron: You’re welcome! (laughs) I’ll accept royalties for that! I aim to please.
Mark: And just as we draw to a close and to completely put you on the spot – which song do you most enjoy playing from that first Little Caesar album?
Ron: You know there’s several, but a couple for different reasons. I love doing ‘In Your Arms’ because it really is a classic ‘R and B’ based song and I get to launch into my best Motown version both stylistically and emotionally and vocally. That’s a huge favourite. I get to do my impression of a Soul singer from 1968, not a bit Heavy Metal at all.
Mark: I think over the years that has been the one I’ve come back to, but I must admit I haven’t really heard two quite as good covers as ‘I Wish It Would rain’ and of course ‘Chain of Fools’
Ron: I love ‘I Wish It Would Rain’ too, I love doing that song, and it’s funny because ‘Chain of Fools’ we didn’t even want to record it let alone let it be the first single. It’s just a song on its own we could never be a patch on the original – Aretha could sing the phone book. So it’s funny that you say that.
Mark: I think for me it was more the fact that all of a sudden there was a Rock band who did the other sort of music I loved and weren’t afraid to do it.
Ron: I see. I get that.
Mark: Now Ron, here’s the one I’ve been dying to ask. As we are all isolated and we’ve all got a lot of time on our hands I’ve been doing a lot of musical exploration- asking bands what they recommend we should checkout in lockdown?
Ron: A band that I absolutely love, well it’s a guy actually, is this act called ‘The White Buffalo’ – and a couple of albums back there’s one called ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ and he’s sort of part Johnny Cash, but he’s got this American thing going on and an incredibly signature voice. He has some really great songs and stories that he tells, and it’s produced phenomenally. It was produced by Bruce Witkin, the guy who has produced the last couple of Little Caesar records and it’s one of those records that the more you listen to it the more it gets ingrained in your soul. And there’s an ‘edge’ to it and an honesty to it that is really, really good, and the song writing is just phenomenal. He did a whole bunch of stuff on the Sons of Anarchy show, maybe five or six songs. He’s really great, you hear his voice and it cuts right through you.
Mark: And I guess the last question I have to ask is, after ‘Eight’ your last album are you guys writing again?
Ron: No, you know. Honestly we haven’t been getting together. I’m sure that all the guys, because we always collaborate, I’m sure they all hard hard-drives full of riffs and chord changes and stuff so that when we eventually start getting back together on a more regular basis I’m sure that will come to life. But we’re trying just so hard now to get through all this. On the side I have this little Soul cover band that I do, and Mark the new guitar player in Little Caesar he’s kinda come in and joined that and we’ve been done a Facebook live thing with our producer in on that and I’m trying to get Little Caesar to do that for the first album live on Facebook because he’s got a great sound in that room its where we record –so put a couple of Go-Pro’s up and there you go. For me I can’t wait till everybody is of a common mind and feels safe enough to just get in there and do this because what a lot of people don’t know is Little Caesar is a really good live band. We don’t need auto tune, or to get the audience to sing the high parts for us like some of our counterparts have been known to do from time to time. (laughs) And I really want to showcase that because so many of our fans have never gotten to see the band live. But what you see on YouTube the recordings are terrible, it’s somebody’s phone so I’m really hoping that in the next few weeks we’re gonna pick up the steam here and all commit to doing it. It’ll be great to get our chops back a little bit and go for it.
Mark: I’ll be watching out for that for sure. And hopefully we’ll get you down here before the thirty fifth anniversary of the album!
Ron: (laughs) Yeah, right! Yeah just be patient for another thirty years dude!
Mark: (laughs) One of the things I did notice about the first album is that it has never been re-released making the original vinyl quite a collector’s item?
Ron: Yeah that amazes me. They’ve never reprinted this record. When we went away after our big battle with Geffen they just held onto it, and they did that with Neil Young and Don Henley. So it’s great if you’re a collector and you can sell our first record to a fan for a hundred bucks, but it’s still out of print and it all just keeps it really obscure and they still hold onto the licensing of all this stuff and they don’t let anybody do anything with it. So after thirty years you think they would loosen up – but no! (laughs)
Mark: It does happen more than you might think, though usually of course it’s the other way and things get licensed to death. But it drives some bands nuts hence why a lot re-record their material. And just a few weeks ago I picked up something I didn’t know existed – it was a US promo version of the album on CD the size of 7” record that folds out and there’s a pop-up in the middle. It’s kinda cool.
Ron: Yeah the guy pops up! A lot of our fans have that and they display it proudly on social media! (laughs)
Mark: Well now I can join them Ron! (laughs)
Ron: I wish I had a copy!
Mark: As always Ron Thank you so much for your time, I’ve always enjoyed our chats over the years. Who celebrates 30th Anniversaries anyway? – I’m holding out for 33rd Anniversary and the ’33rpm tour’!
Ron: Now there’s a thought! (laughs)
Mark: I’ll take royalties for that (laughs)
Ron: (laughs)
Mark: Thank you again Ron, stay safe and keep making music.
Ron: Same here Mark. Thank you so much I really appreciate it.
https://www.littlecaesar.net/
