DAVID HULL 9/24/99 Phone Interview, Part 2

By Mark Blair

Yeah that was a surprise. I had picked up the Japanese single and noticed that was the b-side and thought, Wow cool!
Bone to Bone is a really good example I think of why I was the bass player in that band. Because I think the reason why Joe got me was because I had a background in playing R&B. A lot of the Joe Perry Project stuff, especially on the 1st album is really funky, it's Joe's riffs which are really kind of this twisted rock funk thing, Bone to Bone, Discount Dogs those kind of songs.
Rockin' Train.
Exactly.
Awesome song.
Yeah awesome song. An I think he wanted a bass player that could handle that stuff and make it convincing. But that could still rock, and most people are one or the other. There's some brilliant R&B bass players but they don't understand rock and roll generally and visa versa. A lot of the great rock players really can't handle the funkier stuff. There was a story that Joe told me, we were in New York and he had gone to Leber Krebs office one day, who are Aerosmith's manager and he had a dub of his record, Ted Nugent was in the office and he played it for Nugent. Nugent said "awesome rhythm section man where did you find those guys"? Joe said "you should know .The guy played bass on your last record".
I'm sure Ted Nugent was pleasantly surprised.
I guess.. I don't know
I'm sure most of his musicians weren't too happy. Plus his attitude on stage is even worse, I hear if he thinks your trying to upstage him he gets pissed off.
Well it's hard to up stage a guy with a raccoon tale coming out of his ass.
And where is he now anyway he can even do shows now.
He's got a facist talk radio show now in Detroit.
It's like Dee Snyder.
At least Dee Snyder was laughing at himself too.
I think Dee Snyders a funny guy anyway. He should be a comedian.
He is, Dee Snyders a lot funnier guy than Nugent is. Dee Snyder's actually clever, Nugent's not, he's a dumb ass. And Detroit rock and roll has always been gloriously dumb.
Isn't Detroit where Motowns from.
Well Motowns the exception to that, Motown did a lot of genius stuff, in the 60's & 70's before they moved to LA. I'm a big Motown fan and I really like Detroit bands like the Stooges and the MC5 to me those were the real Detroit bands.
I mean I thought the Stooges were awesome.
Oh the Stooges to my mind were the greatest. The original and the best punk band ever, they were just great.
Iggy is such a legend.
Well Iggy in those days, have you ever seen video of the early Stooges?
Well I know he used to throw himself into the drums and rolls around in glass onstage.
If you ever get a chance to grab any video on the early Stooges which is just like pre 1972. It's unf**kin believable.
Does that stuff even exist though?
Well I've seen clips of it on TV. I saw a VH1 thing on the Stooges and they had some clips, It was definitely the real shit. The Stooges were the original issue, so many people stole so many components, musically I think there's alot of Stooges in early Alice Cooper and even mid-period Alice Cooper. Billy Idol Jesus ripped off song titles and a whole lot of stuff from the Stooges. What was his record called? The Worlds Forgotten Boy? That's a Stooges song, A lot of stuff found it's way into different other bands.
Sex Pistols too right?
Yeah definitely another band.
A band that Joe was into also.
When we'd be on the road and Joe would be playing the music on the bus, it would be Dolls, Cheap Trick, Ac/Dc, Stooges and stuff like that.
The real hard edged stuff.
Yardbirds. He was big into the Yardbirds, Hendrix, big into Hendrix. I think if he had to pick one main influence for him it would probably be Jeff Beck. I don't know you'd have to ask him on that, but that would be my guess. Also he was big into Peter Green & Fleetwood Mac- Rattlesnake Shake, Green Manalishi I think we played a couple of times. That was something that he and Charlie shared, they were both big Fleetwood Mac freaks.
Any songs that you wanted to play live that you couldn't play? Just because you didn't think they'd go over well?
You mean songs that The Project recorded that we couldn't play?
Or covers or things like that.
Nah you know that band had a really big repertoire. There were always a bunch of covers in the set and we played different ones different nights. We'd throw in a couple of Aerosmith songs maybe if Joe was in the mood. You know do Same Old Song And Dance or Get The Lead Out and the main part of the show would always be The Project stuff. But in longer shows the band had a wide repertoire and pretty much anything we rehearsed we would play.
I thought Charlie sounded good on the Aerosmith tunes.
Ralph kind of reminded me of a cross between Steve Marriott and Frankie Miller, who was this Scottish singer, who sounded a lot like Ralph. He was a real screamer, but he wasn't really durable as a person or as a singer. He would blow his voice out a lot, he would not be up to full strength a lot of times. Charlie has always been a really functional guy. Charlie's not about to get on stage and not sound great, it's just not in his makeup. He's gonna go out there and be great, he's just a very determined guy.And being a rock singer especially a front man you know fronting a high energy band is all attitude. It doesn't really have to do with the quality of your voice or what notes you can hit. Now Charlie happens to be a technically really good singer, I mean he can hit any note, and he's really powerful. But really it's more about attitude and if you're going to overpower a band playing that loud that with your voice you've gotta be very determined. I think that was the great thing about the band when Charlie was the singer he had a lot of determination.

(My tapes ends here, so I add a new tape and David starts on a new subject)

Yeah you know but the Aerosmith book that came out, I felt there was a lot of ink devoted too how f**ked up they got. You've got to ask yourself what's you job, what's your role in life are you a musician or are you a drug addict.
Well when you look at it, they're in the spotlight. But the people around them that weren't were probably the same or even worse.
There were people that were just as bad anyway, I mean I think both Steven & Joe were both really excessive people. But there were a lot of people in the music business that were making a lot of money that were just as excessive if not more. Aerosmith's contribution to world culture is as musicians and as a great rock band. Not as role models, I mean (laughs) they should put a picture up of Aerosmith, kids don't do this or you'll end up like him. I'm certainly no saint myself, I did my share I'm not trying to minimize my part in any of this. But I'm just saying those guys made great music dispite their drug use. Not because of it.
Sure, I think it's a lot of different things too. I mean there's probably people tugging at them going "come on put out a book". With Zeppelin putting out "Hammer of the gods" I think they might have got intrigued by that.
But I read "Hammer Of The Gods" and there was a lot in it about the progression of Zeppelin's career. For instance what the world was like when Zeppelin hit the scene, what the scene actually was like, why did Zeppelin make such and impact. There was a lot of stuff being said about their recording sessions and how the songs came about, how the shit was recorded and Jimmy Pages role as producer, stuff that he used to do in the studio, things like that. I didn't read the whole book I have to admit I went into Barns & Noble and I opened up to the index. Anything that had my name in I read (laughs).
Sure I would do the same. (laughs)
They're really lucky that they were able to revive their career. A lot of people didn't, and I definitely thought Aerosmith had a lot of talent. I mean individually and collectively they're great. I can't take anything away from them. Man I don't go out and crusade about this, I don't contribute money to anti drug foundations and things like that. But drugs are the enemy man. On that level, using hard drugs on a daily basis for years.. it's just not a good idea.
Then again the band was always known as The" Bad Boys of Boston," that was always their label. So if they put out a book saying "Hey we don't do drugs" isn't that kind of telling a lie too?
I think most addictive drug taking is more the result of insecurity and fear than a desire to be bad and reckless. I think that's what it comes down too I think it's something to do to cover up and to stuff insecurities back in the closet. I know with me a lot of times getting high, I'd maybe not feel that out going that day. Maybe not feel like I wanted to get on stage in front of 5,000 people and kind of act that role, and you'd do some drugs and all of a sudden it inflates your personality, inflates your ego to a point where you get out and do that repetitively. I mean being a rock star is kind of an unnatural state of being and those guys were definitely prototype rock stars and that they had a whole cocoon around 'em. They had handlers, they had care takers you know I don't think these guys balanced their own check books a lot.
Well they got robbed in the early days.
Yeah that's right they got robbed every step of the way and now they're older guys and you know what? They're sober and they can get paid for what they do, and that's really good. There's nothing glamorous about getting ripped off by some f**king opportunistic manager. If you're a manager you're suppose to have your artists best interest at heart. You are hired to act in his behalf. Their first managers, I can't really start naming names but some of the principles were really not very nice people.
You always hear you really have to watch yourself in the music business. Especially if you're a new band.
Yeah the music business is great cause anyone can make a million dollars and it's all fueled by creativity. That's the good part, and if you're a musician you're always at the plate, you can always step up and hit one out of the park. It's really great and you have the creative high and all that stuff. But the business itself mainly exists to eat it's own ass, the purpose of the music business is to keep itself going. It's not to act in the artists best career or even best interest. Because when the artist's career is over the music business just does its work with another artist's career. It's basically parasitical.
I was reading a book on Hendrix and the same thing happened to him it seemed.
Hendrix is a perfect example of somebody who was creative on such a pure level.
That's all he wanted to do.
That's all he wanted to do and that guy brought more innovations to rock music than probably anybody at the time. He was creatively way out ahead of the pack, I mean Jesus when Hendix was alive what was the competition, Eric Clapton I think was spending all his time trying to sound like Freddie King, just imitating the blues masters, Hendrix you're talking about a guy that already emulated and internalized and in some cases transcended his influences. He was a blues master himself. He wasn't trying to sound like someone else anymore he had already done that, he was already him and he was a f@ckin blues master. He had all that psychedelic song writing and everything and he brings that to the table and marries it to the blues. The business practices that went on around him were horrible, parasitical. The guy I had worked for Buddy Miles played drums with The Band Of Gypsies and so I met a lot of the people that were around Hendrix. What a seedy bunch of characters, what a bunch of thugs and criminals. And you know who's to blame for that... Hendrix, he just didn't want to be bothered he couldn't get it together. And he paid the price for it. Another drug causality and that's a tragic one, because he was one of the most creative people around.
He's my favorite, it's just as far as pure brute power of creativity. Only Hendrix could have written a blues song for instance in the 1st person by an unborn baby, know a fetus still in the womb who's looking around trying to decide if being born is such a good idea after all. Or a blues song where the protagonist is not born in Mississippi where the cotton grows tall or not born in Chicago. But born in Jupiter in the middle of a methane sea. You know what I mean (laughs).
Way out there that'd for sure (laughs)!
Yeah!
Like where the hell did you come up with that!?
Where the hell did you come up with that! And I used to think "Man this Jimi Hendrix guy can just imagine more shit than anyone else!" But now in retrospect I think that's just what reality looked like from where he was standing.
In a book I was reading on Hendrix he was saying to people he was from a plain near mars or something. And people were probably believing him.
I think he believed it (laughs). I don't think in some ways his elevator stopped at every floor, but it stopped on a lot of floors where everybody else's didn't. He was definitely plugged into some higher thing.
His music always sounds current almost ageless.
Yeah his stuff always ages very well and I think the same with Aerosmith. Their stuff ages really well. Joe is one of the great riff guys of all time, his sensibility of like where do you leave those pauses, what do you play and what do you leave out? He's a genius at leaving out the notes that don't make sense. I think that's his great contribution the riffs, I think of "Discount Dogs" where the riff is just so relentless (David makes rhythm sound). and you just want to keep hearing it and keep hearing it and finally he releases the tension with the part (makes rhythm sound). And at every point in that song your thinking "oh yeah let me hear it again, let me hear that f**king riff!".
Let it go on forever. Same with the other song Rockin' Train the end just goes on.
Yeah and then it stops and there's a pause and the singers sings something and then (makes rhythm sound) and then it comes in again. And you're thinking "Yeah! give it to me again"! Yeah and that is not easy you know. I think that's easy for Joe, but I think he works really hard at it.
Joe during the 1st year of The Project when I joined up with him, had a really strong work ethic. He was working really hard all the time, an people that think that all he did was hang out and do drugs and f@ck off are really mistaken. He was a really focused guy to the point of almost having blinders on. I mean he was living and breathing that 1st album, and I think it's a very strong album, I really do. I think the 2nd album was equally as strong, but I think in a more collaborative way, it had more to do with the other people in the band.
Charlie had mentioned that you banged that 2nd album out in month?
Less. I think it was a couple of weeks. We recorded in The Opera House for a week.
Now when he say's bang that out, does that mean doing the whole songs from scratch right then and there in that 2 weeks?
It was done in 2 parts. We set up in the Opera House with a remote truck in the ally in the back of it, right? So they run mic cables into the Opera House and basically mic-ed up the stage, almost like you would for a live show. Put some room mics out in the house. And the band would get up and play the song live and sing it. A lot of Charlie's vocals are scratch vocals that he didn't even have the words written for yet in some cases.
So your almost like rapping the song?
Yeah exactly, making it up on the spot. The guitar solos are live and there really was not all that much in the way of overdubs. So we did that for a week, wrapped that up, drove the truck to The Wherehouse in Waltham. At that point we did overdubs, there were some vocals, I remember I did my vocal there as an overdub. There were a few guitar solos that got done over, but it was pretty minimal, I don't think we worked at the Warehouse for more than a week.
Routinely recording an album can go on for months. I've spent 3 months 4 months making a record. So it was done really fast and very spontaneous and I think that a lot of that energy came through. It was very much how the band sounded live.
So for your part are you making up the bass line on the spot or is that something you kind of work out. Or do you follow Joe's lead ?
Well you have some of it worked out in rehearsal.
Is there a basic tape you bring home overnight and you come back and say OK here's the basic lines?
I was given a lot of freedom in Joe's band. Basically he would say "OK here's how the song goes" and he'd play the guitar part and I'd just start playing and pretty much make up the bass part. Occasionally he'd say "Hey can you do something more here can you play less there" things like that. But pretty minimal direction, and I think that was another reason why he settled on me as the bass player, we just jelled. Basically what I played was what he wanted to hear. And I think that's the best way to put a band together, it's really a f@cked up process to have a band where people have to be directed in a lot of detail. You're going to get a lot stronger energy where there's a chemistry between the players. And basically the people are playing with each other because they mutually like how they play.
Like friends jamming.
Yeah and that band jammed a lot. We would jam at rehearsals for long periods of time and really get used to the way each other played. To the point of where we could second guess each other. You know if Joe was going to make a solo longer than how the arrangement was rehearsed it was fine we'd keep playing it and I think we hit a lot of peaks that way. It was a pretty jamming band.
What you do is you get a structure together that's your starting point and that's how the song goes, right? And then over a period of time you play the stuff live, you feed off the energy of the audience and they feed off of your energy and you get that energy going back and forth in kind of a feedback loop and parts evolve . And songs evolve and take on a whole different shape and that happened a lot with The Project. It was definitely a band of strong musicians, not all rock bands are you don't need a great bass player sometimes to have a great rock band. You need a good singer and good drummer and everything else is a bonus.
So it's pretty much a feel thing? I remember reading a statement of Joe's where he said something like whatever he liked that sounded good to him usually turned out to be what a lot of other people liked too.
Well that's lucky for him (laughs), and I think that's why his stuffs so popular. And other people the stuff they like may be good, it just doesn't happen to be what a lot of people like at the time. It has a lot to do with the time period the you're working in, the musical climate at the moment too. I think Aerosmith was real lucky in that what they did well zillions of people happen to love. There are other rock bands that are really good, that that many people don't like. But Aerosmith's music had a real populist element to it. Also I think another thing about Aerosmith and also about The Project is that there wasn't a lot of over thinking involved, it was a very non anal environment. It was pretty loose and free wheeling there was a lot of spontaneous energy at the recording sessions always. If something was kind of sloppy but it still had energy it stayed on the tape. There were blemishes on those things, especially on the 2nd record, it's not a perfect record. Every hair is not in place and I think that's what makes it great.
Charlie had mentioned too that a lot of the 2nd album was done live. That would show more of the mistakes but more of the magic too. I guess it takes out if it's more controlled?
Yeah any performance should be a one time thing. You get a good one on tape then you've got a great record with a band like The Project. It very much relied on live energy, even in the studio.
So what type of stuff are you doing currently?
I've been playing with this singer Pete Droge, who's great for the last couple of years. He had a hit song called "If you can't love me I'll kill myself" it was in Dumb & Dumber. His album "Spacey & Shakin" is one of my favorite things I've ever played on. I did some touring with him. Right now I'm working with a trio, a rock trio that you should come and see, it's called The Peasants. It's me and this guy Pete Cassani, he's the guitar player and singer. We're probably going to play a club or two around town and then go out on the road sometime in November. Great band.
Other than that I'm building a studio, I'm putting a studio together and I'm playing with some local people. I play with this guy Peter Parcheck sometimes, he's sort of a blues guy, hard to describe, great guitarist. I'm writing and I'm basically working on my studio a lot right now. I'm buying gear and wiring my house up, I live in an old house so I'm doing things like putting circuit breakers in, snaking wires, buying speakers and that kind of stuff. It's pretty boring but I hope to have it finished, I'm about 3 months away from having everything installed so that'll be good.
Now is this going to be solely for your bands or more to produce other people?
Well I produced a track for this guy Kid Bangham, he was a guitarist in the Fabulous Thunderbirds. He came over and we worked on a track here at my house and then brought it to the studio and transferred it onto 24 track and finished it there. So when the record comes out I'm the producer of that and I play bass on it, sang and actually played some drums on it too. So I'm definitely looking to produce people, I'm more focused on writing, publishing and just getting my tunes out there right now. That's what I plan to spend the winter doing once the studio's up and running, I kind of gutted it and got rid of my old gear, so it's not really running now. I plan to spend the winter kind of hibernating in the studio and probably do some touring with Reeves Gabriels. He's a guitarist who plays with David Bowie, in fact I think he just left Bowie's band after years. He co-produced and wrote most of Bowie's last two records and has been playing with him for years every since the Tin Machine. We had a band called Modern Farmer that split up about 3 years ago when he went back to David Bowie's band and I joined up with Pete Droge.
So there's albums out?
There's an album out called Modern Farmer it's on a local label called Monolyth
So what other albums are you on?
I did the 2 albums with Joe, I played with Joe Cocker for a while but I didn't record with him. Did the Farrenheit album, did the Nugent album, I did 4 Buddy Miles albums when I was a kid. I was on probably his biggest seller ever, he had this record called Them Changes which I play on, there's a Buddy Miles Live album that's kind of hard to get. But I think is really great from 1971 and came out in '72.
He plays drums or does he play guitar?
He played drums then he plays some guitar now. But mainly he's known as a singing drummer. He played drums with Jimi Hendrix and The Band Of Gypsies and he's on a bunch of Hendixes albums actually. I did a album with Arthur Lee & Love, I don't know if you've heard of Love they were a west coast band from 60's & 70's. I did a record in the early 70's with Arthur Lee that albums called Vindicator (laughs), probably impossible to get that. Dirty Angels did 2 albums that was my band in the 70's and I left that to go play with Joe. I just finished a great album by James Montgomery. Played on a very cool record by Mike Welch.

Part 3

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