Full confession upfront …
I am a BIG John Cafferty fan.
They hooked me from the very first note I heard when their music was performed in the “Eddie And The Cruisers” movie … and I’ve loved it ever since.
And it’s not just the movie tunes (although they’re great and are probably his best known tracks.)
John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band continued to have hit records beyond the Cruisers soundtrack(s).
When “On The Dark Side” and “Tender Years” were first released as singles in conjunction with the film being shown in theaters, they really didn’t do much, peaking at numbers 64 and 78 in Billboard … and the soundtrack album really didn’t make much of a dent either. In fact, the film itself died a quick death in movie theaters and in nearly every other similar situation, would have been written off as a bomb and quickly forgotten.
But then it started showing on cable … sometimes six or seven times a week … and all of a sudden, this music caught on. Both tracks were re-released in late 1984 and THIS time “On The Dark Side” made The Top Ten, peaking at #7 during an 18-week run. And “Tender Years” (which I absolutely LOVE by the way) climbed as high as #31.
Suddenly, the soundtrack album went triple platinum … and got as high as #2 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums Chart, where it stayed for over a year.
The band then released their “Tough All Over” album and the title cut went to #22. “C-I-T-Y” (which is catchy as hell) followed, reaching #18, and then “Small Town Girl” hit #64.
After that, it was back to more movie music … Cafferty and his band provided the tracks to two Sylvester Stallone movies … “Heart’s On Fire” (from “Rocky IV”) hit #76, “Voice Of America’s Sons” (from “Cobra” reached #62 and “Pride And Passion” (from the inevitable “Eddie And The Cruisers II”) got as high as #66.
The band was faced with an unusual situation … everybody knew their music … but watched it being performed by actors in the movie, miming and lip-synching to their records. Still, literally overnight they were transformed from a damn good bar band that was always working the clubs to a successful rock act with hit records on the chart … yet nobody knew who they were or what they looked like, even though the records now bore their name. (Talk about an identity crisis!!!)
Well, after 37 years, the band is back with a brand new album called “Sound Of Waves” … and I’ve gotta tell you, they sound amazing … JUST like they did back in ’83!
(Check out the video clip for their first single, “Day In The Sun” … I swear, you’ll feel 40 years younger just listening to it … and who out there doesn’t need to feel THAT!!!)
I was given the chance to talk with John Cafferty and jumped at it immediately. (He and The Beaver Brown Band are doing some dates as part of Rick Springfield’s “I Want My '80’s” Tour which, unfortunately doesn’t have a scheduled stop anywhere near Chicago with John onboard. That’s ok … I know people! Lol We’re going to figure out a way to have John play here as a headliner!)
When he first called, we had a bad connection and he was very hard to hear … but I played around with my phone a little bit and got a better connection … John told me that’s what he does when he’s making a record … he hits the “that’s better” button in the studio! (lol)
KENT KOTAL / FORGOTTEN HITS: I’m going to tell you right up front that I am a VERY big fan of your music and have been since Day One – so you’re going to find this to be a very positive interview.
JOHN CAFFERTY: Oh, well I appreciate you saying that!
kk: It’s more than just saying it … I fell in love with your music the very first time I ever heard it. I just love your stuff.
JC: Well, thanks again for saying that.
kk: So, getting started, I guess the most OBVIOUS question is:
Where the heck have you been for all this time?!?! (lol)
JC: Where have I been? Well, I’ve been playing with a rock and roll band in Rhode Island for all these years. You know, at a certain point, you know, we travel all over the country and you see people who are so talented everywhere you go – but what they don’t have is, they don’t have an opportunity to showcase that talent. And you know WE had an opportunity and it was a window back in the ‘80’s – it was a very STRANGE opportunity in that our music and our talents were going through the mouths of actors, you know, it was like them lip-synching on screen what we did in real life. And it was taken however it was taken, but that was our opportunity and it led to another open door and we got to make a couple of records and we had a couple of hits and then, as the music scene does every few years, it changes colors and revolves and evolves and that window of opportunity sort of changed … and we just went back to Rhode Island and continued on doing what we were doing before we made records. We started playing the clubs and the colleges and the small theaters only now we had a couple of hits to take with us, so we were able to travel all around the country.
kk: Once “Eddie And The Cruisers” started showing on cable, everybody got hooked on the music and fell in love with the band, Eddie and the Cruisers … the band that they saw on stage in the film. It had to be, in some fashion, a little bit of an identity crisis for you guys at the time … people were falling in love with the music and the band they saw up on the screen, but never really connected with the REAL band providing that music.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: I had a mail order record business at the time and sold a LOT of copies of the soundtrack to this film … and I can’t tell you how many times people would write back and say, “No, not THIS album … we want the one we saw in the film … the one by the REAL Eddie and the Cruisers.” I had to continually explain to them that the record I sent them was the only recording available … it was a fictitious band they were seeing on screen … and they would argue with me because they saw the cover of the OTHER Eddie and the Cruisers album in the film! – kk]
JC: It was (laughing) sort of a veil to look at the band, so to speak – maybe they weren’t sure who the real band was, but in reality we were a seasoned bar band that had been playing for 10+ years and we were pretty good at what we did and that was our opportunity that we were given. So we took advantage of that and we tried to get signed to record deals and record companies didn’t really think … they thought we were good, but they just didn’t think that we had a sound that would sell records … and that basically is what the record business is … it’s a business that needs to sell records.
kk: It IS a business … and artists and fans sometimes lose sight of that fact but, like anything else, the record business is a business and it needs to be run like one … and a business needs to make money to survive ... and that all comes down to making sound investments. (pun only partially intended lol)
JC: I don’t know how you define the record business NOW … but at that time, it was all about needing material that could be played on the radio in a format that would have sell-through, and they didn’t think that we had that. So, no matter how good they thought we were … or WE thought we were … we didn’t get signed because, regardless of anything they said, the bottom line was the bottom line.
kk: Interestingly enough, though, is that once people HEARD that music … once they were exposed to it … you proved them all wrong … because once people got the chance to actually hear that music – forget the face, because there have been a lot of faceless bands throughout the history of rock and roll – once people heard the music and fell in love with the music, that’s what really mattered. The first round of records may not have sold well, but then they got re-released again once there was a buzz going on about the film (and I remember there being a VERY strong buzz at the time … EVERYBODY was saying “You have got to see this movie!) – they all became hits – the very same records that "weren't good enough," all became hits this time around.
JC: I know, I know … and that is the fun and the mystery of this music.
kk: Hey man, it happened to The Beatles!!! Those records came out here that first year and they didn’t do a thing … and then once “I Want To Hold Your Hand” hit and The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, people couldn’t get enough of them … and they just re-released those very same records and they all sold like crazy!
JC: The Beatles almost didn’t get signed because people thought they were too much like The Everly Brothers. I mean, I’m sure The Beatles were very much inspired by The Everly Brothers, but they also had something else to offer once people got the chance to hear it … so thankfully, there was a George Martin who said, “Let those boys come in … turn on those microphones.”
kk: Well, it’s funny because when you guys first got started all the hype was … and I’m not saying the hype was created by you guys … but the main focus circulated by the public and the critics was “Oh, they’re just a Springsteen sound-alike band.” And it’s funny, because when I first heard that music back in ’83 or whatever it was, I kinda got some of that vibe … maybe it's because I was preprogrammed to hear it that way ... but you listen to it now, and it doesn’t sound ANYTHING like that.
(both laughing)
kk: And, if I’m not mistaken, HE’S one the guys who encouraged you to get back out there now, isn’t that right?
JC: (laughing) Yeah … but he was always very supportive … I mean, we knew him from way back in the early ‘70’s when he used to come up and play around here with his first record and we met him up in Boston and in Providence and then when we would play down in Jersey Shore, he used to come up and play with us all the time. And he was always very, very encouraging to us, as were all those guys down there. We were all East Coast bar bands … we were all roughly the same age, we are all listening to and being inspired by and playing the same music from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s and in the end, it ended up coloring the original songs that we did because they were all inspired by that. I mean, Bruce and the E-Street Band, they were always great at that. And let’s face it, you’re talking about a one in million talented songwriter in Bruce, but you know their band was very steeped in the history of rock and roll. And, my band was as well. We grew up with the 45’s, listening from the late ‘50’s on, with a very heavy emphasis on the ‘60’s, where, when we were kids, that’s what influenced us to pick up the instruments in the first place.
kk: It’s funny because Eddie and the Cruisers, the music that you guys created, was not really of that era, that ‘63/’64 era, which is what the movie depicted … your music was far well-advanced from that era … and yet it still worked, it still fit the story they were trying to tell … and in that bar setting, the way the band was portrayed in the movie, it just worked – the music just worked. The songs still resonate today.
I know you mentioned that we both know Tom Cuddy and have a Tom Cuddy connection and that he mentioned the website to you and I’ve got to tell you, we did a thing a few years ago … we put it out to the readers and the radio stations and we got over a million votes and we asked them to vote for the all-time, all-time most essential classic rock songs ever made … and we put together a list of The Top 3333 (John laughs) for the 33 1/3 designation because it’s all album rock by this point, once you hit classic rock – so it's The Top 3,333 Most Essential Hits … and two of yours made the list!
[EDITOR’S NOTE: “On The Dark Side” came in at #693 … and “Tender Years” placed at #2366. -kk]
JC: WOW!!!
kk: And this is in the present day … we just did it a couple of years ago … so these are songs that have lasted and stuck with us for all these years … and two of yours made the list … and “On The Dark Side” made The Top 700!
JC: WOW! That’s amazing – considering all of the incredible, amazing songs that have been recorded throughout the pretty vast history of music, I mean that’s a pretty big honor.
kk: And it’s a feather in your cap because you wrote all this stuff, right? I mean, obviously, you still do your covers (both in the band and in the bars as your tribute to the ‘60’s), but for the most part, you’re the writer of all these hits.
JC: Yeah, and I think the reason that our stuff worked in the Eddie and the Cruisers movies was that the colors of our songs were very much from that era. We weren’t a band FROM that era, but the elements were from that era, with the piano and the saxophone …
kk: Oh man, the sax made it!
JC: And the clean guitar sound … I’m talking about the sound before guitars got very, very heavy and distorted … so I think that lent some credibility to it all and was the basis of our sound.
And don’t forget, the guy who created that sound for the movie … and the guy who found us ... was a guy named Kenny Vance, and I know you know who he is with your vast musical background. You know, Kenny Vance was in a band called Jay and the Americans when he was a kid! And HIS producers were Leiber and Stoller and I know you know who THEY are … all of this resonates with you and resonated with us as the sound we were going for. I mean, Leiber and Stoller were part of the kings of this whole thing and so these were his influences … so when you’re walking down Bleecker Street and we were playing at The Bitter End and you heard the sound of the band coming thru the window, it kinda stopped him and he said, “Yeah, this is pretty good” and he walked in and he watched us – we never knew he was there – and about a year later, he came across a movie script from Marty Davidson of Eddie and the Cruisers and they were looking for someone who might be able to provide the music and they’d already had a few people come thru and give it a try and Marty wasn’t happy with it so Kenny said, “I saw this band and I think they’re from Rhode Island or something – let me find out who they were and what they’re up to – and you know, he contacted us and the next thing I knew, I was talking to you! (lol)
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Kenny Vance is one of the most knowledgeable and respected people in the business and has his own documentary making the PBS circuit right now about all of the great doo-wop artists that never made any money back in those early days of rock and roll. It’s called “Heart And Soul” and it’s well worth seeking out. Speaking of which, if you haven’t seen “Eddie And The Cruisers” in a while, give that one another look, too. It’s a fun film with some great music. -kk]
kk: While that may have been your first big break, it isn’t just the Eddie and the Cruisers soundtracks that you guys are known for … there were a couple of other soundtrack hits thrown in there in between …
You hooked up with Sylvester Stallone at some point …
JC: Yeah, Sly was always great to us. Actually, we went out to dinner a couple of years ago. I was on my way up to do a show for the Veterans up in Boston and me and Gary Gramolini, who produced this new record with me, and we’re in my car on the way up there to do this show and I look at my phone and I see “Sylvester Stallone” and I’m thinking, “This can’t be real, right?!?” I picked it up and it’s really him! And he's like, “Hey, Johnny, how ya doin’” … and it’s really him! And I said, “Oh man, what a surprise, what’s up?” And he said, “Well, my brother’s playing up in Atlantic City and I see that you’re going to be close by so I’d like you to come over and open the show.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Peterik tells a similar story about the first time he received a call from Sylvester Stallone when Sly was looking for music for “Rocky III.” I gotta say one thing … Sly knows EXACTLY the kind of sound he’s looking for for his films! That one just happened to produce a song you may be familiar with called “Eye Of The Tiger!” -kk]
So we went down the night before and we went out and had dinner with him and his brother Frank and it was just wonderful. I mean, he’s so funny and talented … just a great writer.
kk: Well, there’s no question that he knows what he likes. I’m pretty good friends with Jim Peterik here in Chicago, who I’m sure you know …
JC: (laughing) Oh yeah, I know Jimbo!!!
kk: He just happened to write a Sylvester Stallone theme song, too (both laughing)
JC: How would you like to have Jimbo’s mailbox? I mean he’s written two of the most iconic songs of all time, ever, with “Vehicle” and “Eye Of The Tiger.”
kk: Two of those immediately recognizable songs in the first five notes.
JC: And, of course, he wrote “The Search Is Over,” that my good buddy Jimi Jamison, rest his soul, sang for Survivor. Jimi was a really good friend of mine and I used to hang out with those guys … I still do shows with Jimbo now and then. We were both on the same label there for a while.
kk: Well, Peterik’s back with The Ides Of March now … he’s been doing that again for about the past twenty years or so after Survivor split up. They play here all the time … I mean, they play EVERYWHERE … they do the cruise ships, they play everywhere.
JC: Nice, nice … he’s SO talented, he’s just unbelievable – he’s just another one of those guys who is a creative force and I always really enjoy being in a room with him. All the stories …
kk: Oh yeah, he’s seen it all. In fact, the cruise ship I just mentioned that The Ides did, one of the groups on the cruise ship was The Platters … and of course, there are no REAL Platters left … there’s not a single Platter in the group anymore … but they approached him on the ship and said, “What would you think about writing us a song?” so he wrote a song for The Platters! The guy can do just about anything … he is ALWAYS creating something new, always writing – constantly working, looking for new ideas, always thinking about new ways to present things – just a real creative guy.
JC: Nice, nice … but I mean, what else are you gonna do? It’s too late to learn how to swing a hammer! (lol)
kk: During all those off years, when nobody really heard about you, and you guys were still playing clubs that whole time … were you still writing during all this time? And are any of the guys in the band on the new album – are any of these guys that were in the original band?
JC: Well, we’ve got myself, obviously … and Gary Gramolini on guitar – he produced the new record with me – and, of course, “Tunes,” Michael “Tunes” Antunes on sax – and he was the sax player in our band and also the sax player IN the Eddie and the Cruisers movie – those are three original members that are in the band – a couple of the guys from the original band have passed on and one of the guys retired - and then we picked up a couple of new guys, very seasoned, veteran guys, to come and play along with us. It’s a pretty good representation of the music and keepin’ it alive. You know, we had our 50th anniversary a couple of years ago … and it’s taken us a couple of years to blow out all the candles … and hopefully this will add another chapter to our story so we can have fun with it for a couple more years.
kk: Those “37 years between albums” … were you writing that whole time? Were you still creating new music but just didn’t have an outlet to share it?
JC: You know, I didn’t write at the pace I was writing when we had a record deal because there wasn’t an outlet for it, but I did write new songs – but just like when I made the “Tough All Over” album, I originally thought I was going to make an album of all the songs that we were playing in the bars before we got signed, and then when I got signed to the record deal, I didn’t – I wrote all new stuff. So when it came to making this new record, I thought I was going to use a bunch of the songs that had been around for awhile in the interim and then all of a sudden, I just wrote all new stuff again. But I’m glad that I did because it speaks to who we are now and the new material is informed by the stuff that came before it.
kk: And if this new album clicks, you’ve got a little bit of a backlog now (lol) You can dip into the vaults like The Stones and create another whole new album (lol)
JC: lol – unbelievable, right? Who would have ever dreamed?
kk: And they’re bigger than EVER!
JC: It’s unbelievable. I remember seeing them in The Boston Gardens in the early ‘70’s and I thought, ya know, “Wow, these guys are still doin’ it” … and it was like 1974 or something. “Wow, they’re STILL playing … in ’74!”
kk: Well, they keep saying they’re going to do The Wheelchair Tour – hey, more power to ‘em!
JC: You know, if you can just kick the ego thing, the music just lifts people’s hearts up and it lifts your own heart up and it makes your foot tap. I don’t know why, it just does. So as long as you can do it, what a gift.
kk: And the lead single, “Day In The Sun,” is just brilliant … I mean, it takes you back forty years and who of us out there can’t use THAT feeling once in a while! There’s nothing better than feeling forty years younger … and this music makes you feel that way.
JC: Thank you, I’m glad you like the new music. We had a lot of fun making it. The album comes out April 11th … we’re doing a launch party show in New York City on the 10th at The Cutting Room that Tom Cuddy put together.
It’s that whole Brill Building / New York sound … it’s got that “cha-cha-cha” sound to it, sort of a cross between East Coast and West Coast music.
And would you believe “Day In The Sun” has already been in a movie?!?! Another soundtrack song for us – we’ve had quite a few of them over the years … I think we’ve done something like forty of them now! … which is pretty unbelievable for a bunch of guys from Rhode Island!
I got a call a couple of years ago from the Farrelly Brothers, who are from Rhode Island, and they asked me if I had anything new ‘cause he was doing a movie in Australia and I’ve had a couple of my songs used in his films and I had “Day In The Sun” already done – we hadn’t even started on the album yet, I was still writing songs for it at the time – so I sent it to him and he used it in “Ricky Stanicky.” Peter Farrelly, he won an Academy Award for the movie “Green Book” – I don’t know if you ever got a chance to see that one, but their work is pretty well known.
kk: It’s got such a super hook to it and it sounds just like the old days … This new campaign had to be pretty well planned out … the new album is great, the single sounds just like you guys sounded back in ’83 … you’ve got a brand new video (see above) and now you’re about to go out on the road as part of Rick Springfield’s “I Want My ‘80’s” Tour … all calculated and orchestrated and timed out to hit all at once and draw some attention to The Beaver Brown Band again.
So tell me how this works … you’re going to be doing some of the dates on the Rick Springfield tour?
JC: Yeah, yeah – it all started in Cancun –
I was sitting there with some friends of Jimi Jamison in Memphis and actually Jeff Adams, the bass player from Starship, asked me if I wanted to bring my wife and join them for a couple of dates down there and we did this MTV Music Event down there called “’80’s In The Sand” and Rick Springfield was headlining at another part of the festival and I knew a couple of the guys in his band and they came over to see me and Jeff and the guitar player George says, “You know, you’re just as good as you ever were! I’ve gotta tell Rick!” And they had a few dates where Paul Young couldn’t make it so they called me up and asked me if I might like to sit in for a couple of weeks so I said “Absolutely! That’d be great!” And so Rick had an extra bunk in his bus and now it’s off to the races with Wang Chung and John Waite and Rick Springfield.
kk: Oh, that’s going to be a hell of a show … I wish it was coming to Chicago but it looks like we’re not on the list … or at least not on the list at the time that you’ll be part of the line-up unfortunately.
JC: They’re probably coming later on … I’m only doing the beginning of the tour. And then we also have some dates with my own band … we’re starting to fill up pretty much for the summer … but I thought it’d be a good opportunity to get back out there and play in front of some people and some places that I might not otherwise get the opportunity to play in front of … and also have the opportunity to get out there and talk about the new record.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: We are making every effort to bring John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band to Chicago for a couple of concert … as a headliner. Stay tuned for more details as they develop. – kk]
I mean, let’s face it … People don’t necessarily follow exactly what you’re doing … so if you’re out of the spotlight for a while … I think for us it’s something like 37 years between records! … but for us, we just continued on as a band … we just went back to what we were doing before. We weren’t in the record business but we were still playing. Part of the life of being a musician … most of your life is spent being a performing artist … at least a band like ours … and very little of it is spent in the recording studios. And the type of music that we do, we had that window of opportunity in the mid-‘80’s, and I’m very thankful for it and then things changed and people started listening to something different.
kk: I would love to see if I can get you guys booked here to do a couple of shows in Chicago … maybe your management team can try to string together some other Midwest dates to make it all worthwhile … but we would LOVE to see you
JC: I would absolutely love to come back to Chicago and play a couple of dates … we haven’t played in Chicago at a ticketed date in so long I can’t remember. I remember doing a show YEARS ago with a couple of guys at The House Of Blues, if it’s even still there. I mean, we’ve done a few corporate events with guys like Peterik and Jimi Jamison back in the day, Mickey Thomas - I’ve gotten to know more of the guys from that era in the past twenty five years than I did in the first twenty five years ‘cause we were all working at all the same places, but just on different nights.
kk: What I find, doing what I do talking to all of these artists today, is that back in the day – when you all were “in the zone” so to speak, you were pretty unapproachable – well surrounded and well protected from just the average fans – but now I find that so many of these artists have become much more appreciative of the fans that have stuck with them for all these years that they don’t mind interacting with them so much – because, to a degree, you share a history with them. Because the fans who grew up on this stuff still love the music and still want to come out and see you. You tend to be a little more accessible these days as opposed to being “in the moment” back then – that’s one of the things I like most about what I’m able to do now – is to be able to talk to these artists and look back at those moments and appreciate all the fans who have stuck with them … and through our forum, with interaction between the fans and the artists, they can communicate with one another, which is something that never would have been possible back when you were in the eye of the hurricane.
JC: Well yeah, there’s a certain element that’s true about what you said … when you’re riding around on a tour bus all across the country and you’re on a moment to moment schedule of where you have to be next, no, you aren’t interacting much with your fans. But in our case, we’ve been back on the bar circuit for so long now that people can come up and talk to us all the time.
But even back then, our band tended to play on smaller stages – we weren’t that high up the totem pole – so we’ve always been a little more approachable, for sure. But we did get to tour with some of the big names of the day – The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, and that was just such a thrill because these guys were our heroes. And then we got to play with some of the contemporary folks from the ‘80’s like Foreigner and Bryan Adams and people like that.
Right now, we’re just trying to get this new record out there so that people know we’re still around and we’re still doin’ it … and if we can do a couple of dates in Chicago, that would be just awesome. Maybe this record will add another chapter to our story – even though we do have some lifelong friends and fans who have followed us through it all, the music business in general tends to just move on. We’ve had a lot of encouragement from that fan base and our peers and other songwriters that I just really respect about the new record and now we’ve just got to get it out there.
We had a Greatest Hits record come out a couple of years ago on Iconic Classics – a friend of mine, Jeremy Holiday, he used to work at Sony called me up – and he’s a REALLY good friend of Jim Peterik’s – and he said, “What do you think about doing a Greatest Hits?” and I said, “I don’t know – with my music career, with all the films and record companies and entanglements, it’s like spaghetti – I wouldn’t even know how to go about sorting all of that out” and he said, “Well, I do – I know who to call” and he was able to put together this greatest hits package on Iconic Classics Records that is just a beautiful collection of who we are – it’s our songs, it doesn’t differentiate between the songs I wrote for the albums, the songs I wrote for the films – it’s just a bunch of songs that were written by this guy and played by this band and this is the best of what they did.
kk: And the songs – not just the movie songs – but I mean I listened to “C-I-T-Y” just this morning – they’re just great songs – and the new stuff fits right in!
JC: (laughing) You ARE a fan! I would love to come to Chicago – see Jim Peterik again – you know, he and I got together for a couple of memorials down in Memphis – you know, that’s where Jimi Jamison is from – did you know he was in The Memphis Music Hall Of Fame?
kk: I know about The
Memphis Music Hall Of Fame but I didn’t know he was a member!
JC: He’s a member. People think about the ‘50’s and the ‘60’s – Elvis, Jerry Lee, Stax/Volt, Roy Orbison, and all of that comin’ out of Memphis, but you know Jimi was the voice that was all over the radio in the ‘80’s and TV, representing Memphis – so he’s in The Memphis Music Hall Of Fame – and when you look at all the names, you just can’t believe it. I loved Jimi – we did a lot of things together. And he had such a great voice – and he sang most of the big hits during the ‘80’s. And Jim Peterik wrote those classic songsl
kk: He wrote a couple of big hits for .38 Special, too - two of their biggest hits. In fact, we're going to see them Friday night ... and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Peterik showed up to play with them if he's in town.
JC: We used to do a lot of what I call “invisible gigs” – a lot of these guys like me and Jimi Jamison – Mickey Thomas, Mike Reno and a few others – we’d go and do things to like raise money for St. Jude’s Hospital, Ronald McDonald House, or raise money for breast cancer, that kind of stuff – stuff that the general public doesn’t necessarily see you do – but this is just a great group of guys with big hearts, especially with children’s charities and stuff. And the guys in .38 Special were part of the band.
kk: Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today … we’re going to do our best to help get the word out about the new CD and try to get you out here for a gig in Chicago in the not-too-distant future.
JC: Thank you so much for taking an interest in our band and the fact that we’re making new music. It’s hard to believe that we’re in our 70’s and have decided to take another swing at it. Hey, what else ya gonna do?
kk: Well, I wish you all the luck in the world – you deserve it.
A few more John Cafferty videos to enjoy …
TAG:
Once the interview wore down, we just kinda carried on our conversation into everything from the origins of Forgotten Hits (John heard about us thru glowing endorsements from Tom Cuddy and David Salidor … thank you guys very much!) to baseball … to whatever else happened to come up.
I have just GOTTA bring this guy to Chicago to do a couple of shows … between The Arcada and The Des Plaines theaters, The Genesee, City Winery … there are a number of places they could play here to a receptive crowd that hasn’t had the chance to see them perform live here in DECADES …
A chance to plug the new album, play all the old hit, reconnect with Jim Peterik ... maybe even do a show with him ... and visti some of the other old Chicago haunts … this would be a win/win for everybody!
Read on if you like … from this point on, we’re just a couple of guys shootin’ the shit! (kk)
JC: Hey, before I hang up, just tell me a little bit more about what you do – I know that you have the blog where you talk about the whole history of the music, you’re like another Tom Cuddy – you’ve probably got more stories than Finnegan’s Pub on St. Patrick’s Day
kk: Well, I’ve been doin’ it now for about … well, actually it’s been OVER 25 years now, we just had our 25th anniversary last year …
JC: Oh my God, wow!
kk: And it caters to guys like us that remember this music and how great it was - the variety of styles you were exposed to back in the day of Top 40 Radio … it’s called Forgotten Hits and it started because if you remember 25 years ago, when radio play lists only had 200 songs on them and that was it – and they just kept playing those same 200 songs over and over and over again to the point that songs you loved, you were turning off because you had just gotten so tired of hearing them …
JC: Yup
kk: And so I started Forgotten Hits and I basically catered it to the music fans because there’s like another 20,000 songs that you ALSO know and you also love, but you just don’t get a chance to hear them anymore. I mean, we all grew up listening to this same music and we remember how many great songs there were that just don’t get played anymore because of these tight play lists dictated by the radio stations and the programmers and the consultants who decided that the attention span of the listeners can’t comprehend more than these same 200 songs … so we’ll just keep feeding it to them because odds are they’re going to turn the radio off any minute anyway. And that just seemed insane to me! Why not give those listeners a REASON to listen longer??? Why not keep them tuned in, just to hear what you’re going to play next?!?
Because when you hear them, you WILL remember these songs … you just haven’t heard them in a while. So we kind focused on that and then we targeted Oldies Radio, back when Oldies Radio was still a terrestrial thing that you could pick up in your car and we basically said, “Think outside the box here a little bit … and we’ll help you. We’ll put some song suggestions together for you that’ll make YOUR radio station sound a little bit different than all of the other ones out there that are playing the same old stuff. And some of them went along with it, but most of them didn’t because they were of the thinking that “Hey, this MUST be what people want to hear ‘cause everybody’s playin’ it!” And it was true – at that time, you could get in your car and literally drive from one coast to the other and hear EXACTLY the same songs no matter what state you were in because EVERY oldies radio station in the country was playing from that exact same “tried and true” list. And I said, “There’s more to oldies music than this … we’ve gotta do something about it.”
Then Internet Radio started … and now you’ve got, obviously, satellite radio with their decades channels and the playlists have expanded and you’re hearing a lot more great music that was otherwise being ignored by terrestrial oldies radio. We kinda cover the whole thing, from the mid-‘50’s when rock and roll first started on up thru the mid-‘80’s and everything in between … I kinda look at it as The Top 40 Era and that’s really what we focus on … but over the years, we’ve had any number of deejays and artists jump onboard and write stuff for us, they’ll do interview, they’ll comment about what it was like there at the time ‘cause they were in the thick of it. Peter Noone was a great one … we did an interview with him several years ago and he just got totally hooked on it and he was telling everybody about it and we picked up a number of new readers that way … and he would comment on their songs and their recording sessions and he would tell some great touring stories … but now he’s got his own radio show so he does it all on that! (lol)
JC: We used to do … there was this great Carole King song that they did, “I’m Into Something Good,” and we used to do that in the bars.
kk: This music is so infectious … and it’s funny because when my kids were growing up, which was in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s … my oldest daughter was born in 1985 so she’ll be turning 40 in a month! … but at all their birthday parties and pizza parties and bowling parties, it was always the oldies that they’d be playing at all these parties … and the kids LOVED it and they knew all the words and sang along … if you can imagine a bunch of seven year olds in 1992 singing “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” at a birthday party! (lol) It just proves that this music is timeless … and I still maintain that if WE fell in love with it … and kids today are given the chance to hear it … THEY’LL fall in love with it, too, just like we did … because it’s just good, fun music, not like the stuff that’s coming out today. (Seriously, can you imagine ANYBODY, fifty years from now, singing these songs and doing these raps and telling everybody, “Oh yeah, man, that was my jam!”) Today’s music has an expiration date … but the music of the ‘60’s and the ’70’s – most of it anyway – still sounds just as fresh today. It's timeless.
And that’s kinda been my focus … how do we keep this great music alive so that others can discover it and fall in love with it, too? And that’s why I love it when the artists participate because not only does it give credibility to what we’re doing here, but it gives the fans the chance to interact with these artists in a way that they never could before. You just wait … a couple of weeks after this interview runs, I’ll be emailing you back telling you that I got a letter from a reader and HE wants to know … or, “Why didn’t you ask John this?” So the interview will run and then there will be follow-up after follow-up, which gives the whole thing the chance to promote itself again … and feature some more of the music and talk about the new album. It’s a win/win for everybody because we keep everybody talking about your music and the readers feel involved because John Cafferty answered my question! And then when they hear this stuff again, even if radio isn’t playing it, they’re all like “Oh yeah, I remember this song … I really LIKED this song” and it keeps the memories alive.
JC: I remember in some of the interviews I’ve done for the new material referring to the new stuff as being made out of this vintage, stretchy pre-washed material that already sounds like they did in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.
kk: But you know what it is? The new stuff sounds like the way you want John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band to sound … ‘cause it takes you right back ... I personally LOVE the fact that you still sound like that. There’s a connection to what I grew up loving.
JC: Well, you know we all grew up in that Top 40 era with the AM radio, around here listening to all the New York stations coming over the water, coming over the Long Island water and into Rhode Island and it was all the ‘60’s stuff, all the Brill Building songwriting, and all the stuff was a little three minute or four minute hit song that had hooks – instrumental hooks and lyric hooks – and it’s just that whole format –
I remember hearing John Lennon doing an interview back in the ‘70’s back when it wasn’t hip to be on AM radio – everybody was doing these long, extended interviews on the FM stations – and they asked him what he thought about the music of The Beatles looking back at it and he said that they were very proud of what they did and that they got to say what they wanted to say, they got to play what they wanted to play, but they used their craft to get it all into a format that would get it heard on the radio.
You had mentioned earlier that song “C-I-T-Y” and before I made that “Tough All Over” record, I changed what I was doing writing-wise, still saying what I wanted to say, still playing what we wanted to play, but I tried to get it into a format that would make it through on the radio – and we had hit records with that stuff and I was very, very proud of that … pretty cool.
So again, I really, really appreciate you getting the word out there and letting people know that we’re still counting to four on stage somewhere and we just never stopped.
So now, let me ask, which are you, a White Sox fan or a Cubs fan?
kk: lol - I have been a life-long White Sox fan … and we can now brag about having the losingest record in major league history!
JC: Oh man! I played in a golf tournament with Steve Lyons, he played for the Red Sox and the White Sox
kk: Well, there’s a real rivalry here, for sure, between The Sox and The Cubs – you have to be one or the other, you’re not allowed to be both (although I will admit to rooting for The Cubs when they were in The World Series a few years ago) – but growing up, you cheered for every Sox win and every Cub loss.
JC: Well, you know up around our house, you’re either a Red Sox fan or a Yankee fan. My dad used to take me to Fenway Park to see the Yankees play ‘cause they were the champs every year, when I was in Little League. I used to go sit in the bleachers in Fenway Park and sit right behind Mickey Mantle – the Yankees won the pennant every year back then – but now, over the years, The Red Sox have really gotten better – you can lose friends over the rivalry now!
kk: I’ll tell you how bad it is here … I’ve been married 25 years and my wife has never been to Wrigley Field! That’s how bad it is here.
Now I might go to Wrigley Field to see The Cubs play The Sox because they do that now – back when I was a kid growing up, inter-league play was unheard of – but now they do it all the time, it’s a regular thing – so I have been there a few times to see a Cubs/Sox match-up … but as a general rule, I would never go ... I just can’t risk somebody seeing me there … I could never live it down. lol (My dad took me one time when I was a kid, maybe ten years old, just so I could see both parks – but I’ll bet I didn't go back again for at least another 25 years, even back then!)
JC: OK, so you’re a pinstriper, that’s what it is! Nice, nice. Well, they both have a great tradition. I remember those guys back in the Nellie Fox days – that’s how old I am – Nellie Fox on one side of town and Ernie Banks on the other – good grief!
kk: OK, so one last plug …
John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band are playing at The Cutting Room in New York City on Thursday Night, April 10th ... and the new CD is out April 11th ... so be sure to get yourself a copy. (It is going to be a CD, right? Or is this a download only?)
JC: No, it’ll be out on CD. In fact, I just sent a message to Bruce Springsteen and told him that the CD’s came in and they’re on my porch – lol – I just got a bunch of them delivered. I think it’s nice just to have something to hold in your hand.
kk: You know, it’s funny you said that because I feel exactly the same way – I just like to have something to hold in my hand – I’m definitely very old-school in that way.
JC: You know, when we were kids we used to collect albums and stare at the pictures and read all the words, I mean, that’s what we knew – there was no internet to look everything up – we knew what was on that album cover.
kk: I like the fact that with a CD, I can take it with me and listen to it wherever I want instead of being tied to a chair or chained to the computer and having to listen to it there. I wanna be able to pop it in my car and play it again and again.
Thanks, John … I really enjoyed talking to you and wish you another round of success. Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’, because we love it.
