The Blues Magoos Discuss Their Place in Rock 'n' Roll
The Blues Magoos
Now the original lineup is back for Cavestomp!, with frontman Emil "Peppy" Thielhelm still billing himself as "Peppy Castro." Castro is 51 years old, so he can do as he wants?including talking to his pals at New York Press about the Magoos' place in rock 'n' roll.
The Blues Magoos always seemed like the least commercial of the 60s punks to ever manage a chart hit.
I would say so. Yeah, we were one of the first undergrounds to go overground. FM didn't even exist back then. It was fun to watch it start, but then it went the way of all capitalist avenues.
Still, it came too late for the Blues Magoos.
We were way ahead of the curve. We were mainly about having fun and riding the wave of what was going on in the 60s. Our second single was called "Pipe Dream," and in those days you had to get the ABC radio stations to back a record. They were such a huge conglomerate, and they were afraid to do anything with the record. Our follow-up single was banned by the powers that be. We tried working the b-side, but that was kind of the nail in our coffin.
You guys were working the art vibe pretty hard.
We were always into being whacked out. I remember wearing a bowling shoe on one foot and a cowboy boot on the other, and walking into radio stations with one lens in my glasses and the other one out. We were having fun.
The songs also had some pretty forced drug references.
Yeah, we knew what we were talking about. The song "Love Seems Doomed," those initials were intentional, just like with "Albert Common Is Dead." That's actually a good, true story. We had a friend named Albert who worked at a bank. We talked him into dropping out. We told him that if he quit his job, we'd write a song about him. That's where "Albert Common Is Dead" came from. I understand now that he's a very wealthy banker in San Francisco.
You broke up the Blues Magoos to perform in Hair. Did that feel like a changing of the guard?
We had signed a triple-incestuous contract when the band started, and we went up and down. I probably ended up owing more money by the end of the first wave of the Blues Magoos than I ever made. We got ripped off pretty severely. So when Hair came along, I looked at it as a challenge. I wanted to know I could do something besides being a slave to the record business.
By then, the Blues Magoos had already become just you and some sidemen.
We began to see the puppetry, and that started a lot of battles between the band and the management. Then that turned into internal battles within the band. I did a revamped version of the Magoos because our managers approached me with a contract showing they had sold the band name to ABC/Dunhill. I turned them down at first, but then I started thinking about how long it would take to get another band together. That's when I made the Goin' Back to Georgia album. I wanted to explore a Latin vibe, and I had that album done before Santana came along. But it was in the can, and then Santana came out with the sound. New York radio was great, though. They gave me a lot of play.
So what's it like to get back with the original members now?
We're enjoying ourselves. The biggest problem we're having is the time limit and the immense absence of 33 years. We'll have about four days to put it all together. There's also the challenge of singing all this stuff in the same keys, and we're looking to find a theremin. I'm looking at all this as a millennium party concert. I'm not 17. I can only go so far back. But we've got four of us out of the five. The only one missing is [bassist] Ron Gilbert, who's in the hospital. He wanted to make it, but he's got health problems and we're all sad about that. But we've got a great young guy sitting in with us. He's teaching us a lot of the songs again.
There isn't a lot of pressure on you, since your songwriting career has gone pretty well.
Yeah, I've had songs done by Cher and Kiss and Diana Ross and Laura Branigan. I've written for Michael Bolton. And I've done jingles. That's a great career. It keeps you sharp. I did "Bounty, the quicker picker-upper," and Nestle Crunch, and Juicy Fruit, and the "Color of Life" for Kodak. It's funny, because I never took any of that seriously. I used to say that art imitates life, and jingles imitate art.
And your early 80s albums with the band Balance are back in print.
Balance was a great band. We were a musician's band. Our biggest fans were in other bands. Talk about timing: we had just come out when MTV started, and we shared management with Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Def Leppard, this amazing roster. And our song "Breaking Away" was beginning to hit, and we were screaming for a video. Nobody ever got around to making us one. That was back when MTV was crying for videos.
Well, maybe Balance can reunite for ProgStomp! someday.
Hey, I've got attention deficit disorder as it is. But it's kind of fun to go back. To me, this Blues Magoos show is a personal connection to my childhood. I'm rehearsing with Ralph [Scala, organist], and I look over at him, and it's like this ridiculous deja vu. It's like a message in a bottle that you don't get until 30 years later. At least everybody knows it's not about money. Nobody's saying these guys are out to make a buck after 33 years.
The Blues Magoos play Cavestomp! Fri., Nov. 3., at Westbeth Theatre, 151 Bank St. (betw. West & Washington Sts.), 741-0391. Tickets available through TicketMaster: 307-4100 or ticketmaster.com.