In those heady days, a year could seem like a decade, so even though his first band only lasted a few years, Jim’s rock and roll blues odyssey – which took him from the Wheels, into Cactus, through the Rockets, with stops along the way to play with and for a host of other rock and blues greats – continues today and contains an enormous amount of history and insight.
Vintage Guitar: You’ve been in so many successful aggregations. When they broke up, often at the height of popularity, was it a heartbreaker or a learning experience?
JM: Some were defiantly heartbreakers. The Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels thing – we were all really young…that one hurt. I was 19 and Johnny "Bee" Badanjek was 16. If we would have had management that really cared about the band as a whole, as opposed to just focusing on the singer, there’s no telling what we could have done. However, they only focused on Billy (Mitch Ryder) and considered the band a secondary thing. I was vehemently opposed to that and let them know it, so when they decided to make Mitch a Las Vegas act, I was gone.
VG: Do you think the same would happen today if you were coming up in a band?
JM: When I was in Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, we were just kids and we were taken advantage of. These days the industry has evolved into a total business; if anyone has even a remote chance of a hit record, he’ll have himself a manager and every other piece of the machinery. So you’re not running much of a risk these days. You’re going to have people who take care of you.
VG: What years did you play with Mitch Ryder?
JM: We started playing at a place on Woodward Avenue in Detroit in ’63 called the Village, which is where we first got together. We used to back up the black acts, and Billy Levise (Mitch) came down one night and we backed him up and something immediately clicked. We went from there through ’66.
VG: Which musical influences from the late ‘50’s and ’60’s gave you your sound?
JM: We were all basically Eastside Detroit boys and what we had in common was the R&B thing as opposed to pop top 40. We had various musical tastes, but it was basically Motown and R&B. I was listening to blues guys. B.B. King made me want to pick up a guitar, was the first musician who made me cry, and really turned me onto the blues. This was the music that touched me even deeper than rock and roll.
VG: If that was the case, why did you start playing rock and roll rather than the blues?
JM: That’s a good question. Things happened so quick for Mitch and the band. A local DJ, Dave Prince, sent our demo tapes to Bob Crewe in New York and we went there and recorded "Jenny Take a Ride." I had only been playing guuitar for about a year at that time and was just sort of noodling. I played drums for 15 years; I started when I was 3.
VG: I listened to a recent recording of "Jenny…" and your two solos don’t exactly burst out at you.
JM: You were listening to the stereo mix. The original mono mix is better. When they put these things on CD they go to a stereo mix and the guitars get pushed to the background. In the mono, the guitar is a little more out front, but even then it was mixed low for some reason.
VG: I saw you do the song live with Mitch a few months back and you guys seemed to have all the enthusiasm you did 30 years ago.
JM: It’s fun to do it since it only happens once every couple of years and Mitch is one of the greatest voices in rock and roll.
VG: Do you look back fondly on that era?
JM: The band made some god records, but rock and roll is basically a young man’s game, which is why I don’t play that much of it anymore. I’m not a young man anymore and I get more satisfaction out of playing blues music these days because I’m able to express more of what I am and what’s inside of me. You have some guys like Mick and Keith, who are my age and still doing it, but how many Micks and Keiths are there?
VG: What gear were you using back then?
JM: On those "Jenny…" sessions it was a Gretch Chet Atkins Country Gentlemen through a Beatle’s VoxSuper Beatle amp. I wonder what band I was influenced by? I saw George Harrison with one of those guitars with 5 or 6 switches on it, and said "I gotta get me one of those." A few years later, in ’69 when I was playing with Buddy Miles, I had a ’54 Les Paul strung with Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings, and used Fender twin amps.
VG: What made you choose one set of equipment over another?
JM: The ’50s and early ‘60s Les Pauls just had a sound no other guitar could give you. Back then, I paid $500 for it. The same guitar today, if it was in good condition and working the way it was supposed to could get you [much more].
VG: Wayne Kramer of the MC5 told me he never owned a guitar that wasn’t stolen; what do you think happened to your old guitars, like the Les Paul?
JM: Some broke; some you got rid of – although years later you’d say, "Oh my god, I wish I had that baby today." Back then, guitars came and went
VG: What happened to you after you left Mitch’s group?
JM: I tied up for a while with Corky Siegle in the Siegle-Schwal Blues Band. We did a West Coast tour and when we were in L.A. playing the Whisky A Go-Go, Buddy Miles came down to hear us. He had just left the Electric Flag and was putting together another band and asked if I wanted to play guitar. Virgil, the baritone player, had played with Billie Holiday. I did three albums with them, the second produced by Jimi Hendrix.
VG: So you met Hendrix?
JM: Yeah, he eventually put together the Band of Gypsies together with Buddy, so he used to pop in all the time at our gigs.
VG: You were about 23 and there was the guitar master, Jimi Hendrix, looking straight at you while you were playing. How did it feel?
JM: It was nerve-wracking. He was sitting out in the studio, since he was producing the album, watching me do a few guitar overdubs. It wasn’t quite as bad when the whole band was playing, but when I had to go out there by myself with him sitting there, it had me sweating. But he dug Mitch Ryder and the Detriot Wheels, and he knew who I was, so it was cool. Myself, Buddy, and Jimi went to see Jerry Lee Lewis one night – it was a memorable evening, but I can’t go into the details (laughs). Jimi was actually a little shy with out a guitar in his hands, unless he was comfortable around you. He was one of those cats that comes along every once and a while and blows everyone’s mind. For some strange reason, they don’t last that long. Like a Louis Armstrong, a Coltrane, a Miles, a Hendrix – someone who comes along and invents a genre, redefines the rules. He doesn’t just do it exceptionally well, he reinvents the game. Hendrix was one of those. He took the electric guitar and made it the electronic instrument and he did it with soul. Nobody since has been able to duplicate what he’s done on that level.
VG: After you left the Buddy Miles group you formed Cactus.
JM: That was a strange, little, two-year segment. That band has a cult following to this day in Japan, Europe, and even here in the states. But it used to get blasted by the critics. To me, it was an experiment that never really jellied, but there were moments when it did and there was an amazing amount of energy. That band did not play dinner music. But after two years I couldn’t take anymore. There wasn’t enough playing together, and too much banging of heads. It featured another Drtroit boy, Rusty Day, on vocals, and Carmine Appice and Tim Bogart, who had been the rhythm section for Vanilla Fudge. At that time Cream had just broken up and you had 9 million bands trying to fill the Cream void. Cactus was one of those bands. I recently helped put out an anthology of the albums on Rhino records called Cactology. A big influence for me, besides Jimi Hendrix at that time was the Jeff Beck group, particularly the Truth and Beck-O-La albums.
VG: What gear did you use on the Cactus LP’s?
JM: I wish I still had the guitar I used on those. It was a ’59 cherry sunburst Les Paul, and that was stolen along with a ’54 Strat that is probably the greatest single-sounding guitar I ever owned. And they took a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic that belonged to Hendrix and was given to me after he died. That happened to me right after I returned to Detroit and put the Rockets together; that was my welcome home. (laughs)
VG: Who do you think has those guitars now?
JM: They’re probably in Japan. Collectors come over and write a check for $50,000 even though they cant tune the things. They just view them as antiques and investments.
VG: So Cactus crashed by the early 70’s. What did you do then?
JM: I was really frustrated, so I moved back to Detroit from New York. Me and Johnny Bee started talking about putting something together which eventually became the core of the Rockets. Originally it wasa a four piece with Johnny singing from behind the drums, and we spent three or four years in clubs in Detroit. But it was rough without a frontman. We tried Mitch, and Jerry Lacroix from White Trash, but no one seemed to fit with what we were trying to do. Then we latched onto Dave Gilbert, a good Detroit boy, and things seemed to take off. During that period, I used the Gibson for a while through a couple stacks of Marshalls, which was a hell of a combonation.
VG: The Rockets were together for 10 years.
JM: That band is responsible for what I am today – broke and schizophrenic (laughs)!
VG: And that’s a long time for a rock and roll band, but now you say you’ve moved into the blues. You say it gives you more room for expression, yet its chord progressions are pretty simple.
JM: Not any simpler than basic rock and roll. Rock and roll can get really sophisticated, but so can blues. When you say blues for the uninitiated, it means simple backwater, backcountry guy moaning about his old lady being gone. That’s hardly the case. It can range anywhere from country delta blues to extremely sophisticated urban blues. Jazz-tinges blues. There’s so many different colors, but for me it was always there, even from the beginning with Mitch Ryder. This was the music I really loved. It took until The Rockets disbanded for me to make a conscious decision that the next band I put together would go in that direction as opposed to rock and roll. It’s also the age factor. At 25 it’s one thing, but at 45, you look at things slightly different. Blues is music, you can play until they’re standing over you with flowers. It’s a little more difficult to picture someone being 65 and playing rock and roll, but it’s not difficult at all, as long as your health is reasonable to imagine someone 65 playing blues music. It’s a more mature form of expression, in my opinion. I’m not demeaning rock and roll; I love it and I had a ball with it. My interpertation of blues affords me the opportunity to express more of what’s inside me.
VG: Blues may be rooted in African American culture, but you’ve met and spent time with Eric Clapton. Do you think he has a handle on the blues?
JM: If he didn’t, I don’t think he’d have the balls to try and do it if it wasn’t in him. It’s difficult enough to try and do it when it is in you. Eric knows he’ll never sound like Otis Rush or Buddy Guy, but he does it. Eric is unique because he does the pop rock thing then bounces into the blues; he’s one of those rare individuals who can do that. There’s a lot of fine white blues musicians – Charlie Musslewhite, Paul Butterfield. Stevie Ray Vaughan had the ability to take honest blues and soul and mix it with the high energy of rock and roll and come up with a cross between Albert King and Jimi Hendrix.
VG: Now you’ve formed a new group with a new twist, you on vocals.
JM: Yeah, with this band, we’re taking that gamble (laughs). No ones’s thrown any beer bottles at me yet.
VG: What are you playing now?
JM: A Les Paul, but I just don’t deal with the old ones in case something happens. It’s a couple years old. It’s through an old ’64 Fender Pro Reverb and I also use a ’66 Super – you just can’t beat the old Fender stuff.
VG: Let’s put out the call right now: If you’re starting to have a bout of conscience after all these years, and if you have any of Wayne Kramer’s or Jim McCarty’s guitars, bring them in, no questions asked.
JM: (laughs) Thanks!
