Tremonti debuted their live video for “You Waste Your Time” today…and it rocks hard!

Sit back, crank it up and enjoy the tunes from Mark Tremonti and Crew. I cannot wait for All I Was to drop in July!

Opening up with “Jesus Frankenstein,” Zombie and Crew delivered non-stop rock and roll, covering ground for fans of all ages. One highlight of every Zombie show is “More Human Than Human.” Regardless of the level of your fandom, you can’t help but scream the lyrics, jump up and down, and bang your head. I personally enjoyed hearing “Black Sunshine” followed by “Mars Needs Women.” Nothing sums up Zombie’s career better than that progression…early 90s White Zombie followed by one of his most recent hits.

The encore brought Zombie and Crew decked out in red full-length coats, along with a sick staircase for Zombie to climb up and lead the crowd in singing “Dragula.”

All in all, it was your standard Zombie show (and that’s not a bad thing!). Great fire, great lights, great stage set-up…There seemed to be a little something extra in everyone’s performance though. There’s no doubt that everyone is excited to be on the road touring with an act like Megadeth. I think the level of excitement had to do more with this particular show being the tour opener. Sometimes with acts it’s easy to worry that the opening night won’t be that good. You have to work out kinks, everything might not be running perfectly.

With Zombie and Crew, though, that was not the case. It was a flawless show with a near-perfect setlist. If you haven’t seen a Zombie show, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but do whatever you have to to see him soon. It’s a show you won’t want to miss, and it’s a show you will want to see again and again and again.

Rob Zombie…you did not disappoint. Thank you for another killer show!

Edit this setlist | More Rob Zombie setlists

If you’ve heard the preview of a handful of tracks from the album, you know to expect a solid record with non-stop rock and roll. It’s as simple as that. Tremonti has created a unique sound that fits him and no one else. Our review of the preview tracks garnered over 1,000 “likes” on Facebook. The fans are ready for Tremonti to be unleashed, and All I Was does just that.

Are you ready for your first full-length sampling of the album?

Tremonti keeps the guitar strapped on and picks up the microphone and lets it all loose on his first solo single, “You Waste Your Time.” The debut single hit #10 on the iTunes Rock Singles chart just one day after being released. That’s right…One day after its release, and it cracks the Top 10. The tune is already spinning on rock radio across the country, and I am confident it is going to be one of the biggest songs around sooner than later.

With the success of “You Waste Your Time,” Tremonti is not keeping his mouth shut. “I am overwhelmed by the positive response the song has received already. I never imagined it would hit the Top 10 so quickly and that is a testament to the amazing fans I have,” he says. “I couldn’t have gotten anywhere in my career without them and want to thank each and every one of them for their support. I can’t wait until they hear the rest of it.”

I can’t wait either.

Have you heard “You Waste Your Time” yet? It kicks off in-you-face and it doesn’t stop for nearly four solid minutes. Tremonti’s vocals shine (no doubt he’s picked up a thing or two from Stapp and Kennedy), his guitar work is impeccable as always, and the overall sound of the song sets him apart from anyone else in the rock scene right now. He’s always been a quiet member of two of the biggest rock acts around, but now he’s taking a huge step into the spotlight. This song sets the stage for what to expect from the entire album.

I couldn’t be more excited for the album. Like I said in our review of the preview tracks:

Listen, Tremonti doesn’t need to do this solo album. He’s already managed to become one of the greatest and most prolific guitarists around today with his work in Creed and Alter Bridge. He’s not doing this to get the extra cash, he’s not doing this because he’s bored (Creed is in the middle of a country wide tour as I type this!). He’s doing this because he loves what he does, and it comes through crystal clear in these tracks.

If “You Waste Your Time” is a sign of what to expect with All I Was, I’d say get ready to hear one of the best albums – if not the best – of 2012.

Well, I just had the chance to talk with the legendary Steve ‘Zetro’ Souza, and I have never felt this pumped up before. Zetro has a level of energy that is unmatched. Every word that comes out of his mouth is fueled with a passion for one thing and one thing only: Heavy Metal.

I’m proud to wave the Metal Flag today and have this interview with Zetro documented…Even if you don’t think you know who Zetro is, trust me, you know who Zetro is. He lead the way for Legacy, the band that would later become Testament. He sang for the one and only Exodus. He formed Dublin Death Patrol with Testament lead singer Chuck Billy. He sings with the metal band TENET. He has an AC/DC cover band known simply as AC/DZ. And now, he is paving the way for the resurgence of classic thrash metal with his brand new band Hatriot.

Listen to Hatriot’s “Weapons of Class Destruction”

—

Where are you calling from, Zetro?

I am in the Bay Area. Calling from Oakland, California.

Alright, well, since you’re in Oakland…I’ve got to get something out of the way. I understand you’re a big Raiders fan.

I’ve got it tattooed on me, my friend!

Well, I’m a KC Chiefs fan. Do you think we can continue with the interview?

Laughing. Hey man, I get it. It’s going to be interesting this year during the season. But you know what, we hate the Niners because they live in the Bay Area. Only when the Chiefs come to town do I boo you guys. Boooo! But I’m sure you do the same!

You’re no stranger to the metal scene. Exodus, Legacy, Dublin Death Patrol, TENET…And now, your newest band, Hatriot, has caught the attention of everyone in the thrash world. How did Hatriot come to be?

We came to be about a couple of years ago. I do thrash metal, you know, it’s what I’ve done for 30 years. If Rob Halford were to do a band, what would you want him to do? Wouldn’t you like him to do something like Judas Priest? To me, people know what I do and what I like to do. This is what I am. The guys around me are well versed in that. I have listened to a lot of guitar players and a lot of bands over the years, and they just didn’t have what I have…they didn’t have what I needed to write around. Our guitar player, Kosta Varvatakis, writes all the music other than the lyrics. I met him at a show one night when I saw his band. Afterward I spoke to him for like four hours, just picking his brain about metal. He knew everything about me and the 80s metal scene and thrash and that’s what he wrote. I heard a couple of songs that he had written and I wrote lyrics to them. I actually recorded them in Chuck Bill’s (Testament) studio. And I let people that I trust listen to it. People who would honestly tell me, “Nah, dude, that’s been done before. You’ll be the laughing stock of the industry.” But that wasn’t the case. From Paul Bostaph to the guys in Exodus to Machine Head, everyone who heard it was like, “Oh my God, dude, you’ve got to do this. This is killer!” So I slowly pieced the band together, also making my son try out! He’s on bass, he’s a very good bass player, but there’s no nepotism here my friend. He had to try out. So I slowly pieced it together and over the last year or so we’ve written an album’s worth of material. We’re ready now. There’s a four-song demo, and I have two other songs recorded. We probably have five or six more songs that are ready for a record. We’re speaking to a couple of labels right now and we plan on recording this summer. Hopefully by late Fall or early 2013, you’ll see the new release. And then we’re ready for total world domination!

You guys are going back to your roots in metal. Do you think there is a resurgence of classic thrash?

I think everybody is trying to do it, but nobody has done it right yet. There are a bunch of great new young bands that I love, though. Shadows Fall is one of my favorite bands right now. They don’t do exactly what the 80s did, though, you know? They pull a lot of things from that era. A lot of people have told me that nobody has been able to pull this off like we have. It’s old-school but really fresh. Nothing sounds the same. This is what we’re shooting for. Everything sounds different, but still in the vein of classic, Bay area thrash metal.

Why did you decide to go back to that older sound? Why did you return to your roots?

It’s what I do. It’s what I am. I did some work with Glenn Letsch from Gamma. He played with Ronnie Montrose and plays with Robin Trower now. He told me, “You know Zetro, I’ve been reading up on you. They say you’re a legendary singer for thrash metal.” I told him to go back ten years ago when nobody cared! He said, “It’s interesting you say that. I was speaking with Robin Trower. He said in the 70s he was a rock star. In the 80s he was a has been, and now he’s considered a legend!” That’s exactly how I felt. To go back to my roots would be just automatic. It was instinct. I love the beat, I love the guitars, I just love the attack. I love the vocal delivery. I think until I’m 85, I’ll be trying to spit out thrash metal. I don’t know how that’s gonna work, but we’re gonna try!

You’re going back to the 80s for that old-school sound, but you’ve got a young band behind you.

It’s a bunch of young guys. But this creates that element when we write the songs. These guys are like, “Let’s put a blast beat in there. Let’s put in a triplet. Let’s speed it up a little bit there.” They’re fresh. They’re young. They’re wild on stage. They are everything that youth brings to metal. This is the complete package. This is going to work really well. The band is really solid. I’m not being arrogant, we are just really solid. It’s been from hard work and practice. I talk to these guys at every practice. You have to work hard. You have to put the time in. You’ve got to bake the bread every week, and then when you serve it, people will eat it all over the world.

For these young guys who understand what thrash metal is but didn’t necessarily live it, it’s got to be such an incredible experience to be taking their lead from you.

Every practice is a lesson. It’s a lesson. There’s the music, but then there’s the lesson to be learned. It could be anything. From your own bio for your endorsements to what kind of strings you need on the road. Everything I can teach them with my knowledge and experiences. I tell them they’re not as major as they think. You know, I’m 30 years in this business and I’m considered a legendary lead singer for thrash…and I’m also a foreman for a construction company. “Hey, wait a minute, I’m a rock star!” Nope. Nobody is above anything. It takes people like you who write articles and it takes record people and it takes everybody to make this whole thing work. Everybody’s job is very important. If you approach every aspect like that, success will be staring you in the face. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you to the best of my ability! Music practices is three times a week. It’s a job, don’t be late, you know?! If I stay with the formula, I’m not gonna have a problem.

Where does the name Hatriot come from, because I’ve got to be honest with you…that’s a killer thrash name. Is it political? I’ve seen a picture of an upside-down American flag on fire -

Whoa, wait a second! It’s not the American flag. It’s the Hatriot flag. Look at it, in the blue, those aren’t stars. Those are pentagrams. It’s the Hatriot flag. We’ve gotten into a bit of trouble in the south with people saying, “Hey now, boy, come down here and we’re gonna beat your ass.” The way I explain Hatriot is this: A Hatriot is somebody who loves their country but doesn’t necessarily agree with the hypocrisy that goes on with it. Perfect example is Jesse “The Body” Ventura. He’s a Hatriot. He loves his country, he’s fought for his country. But does he agree with what the government does? Nope. You and I, my friend, we’re Hatriots. We love our country, we love being Americans, but we don’t necessarily agree with the crap they pull. That’s what a Hatriot is. I’m no patriot, just a Hatriot.

You mentioned Shadows Fall earlier. Is there any other new metal out there that you’re a fan of?

I listen to anything that comes up. My daughter has been laying on me lately Asking Alexandria. I love Slipknot, I do love Machine Head. I love anything that’s coming up and is heavy. I’ll listen to anything that is good and heavy, man. High On Fire is a great band from the Bay Area. Anybody that’s doing it, I love. I love it.

So what’s on the horizon for Hatriot?

We’ve got a couple of record labels that are interested. I actually got an offer from a metal label in Germany. They’ve got some good acts and I’m very interested. I want to get a record out. I’m not gonna sit here and play games with labels. I’m getting older, I’m 48 years old, I want to put out music so people can hear it. The music does the talking. If the music is good and the music kicks ass, we’ll be OK. And I think my music kicks ass, so I think we’ll be alright.

It definitely kicks ass. What I’ve heard from Hatriot definitely kicks ass. Can we expect to see you guys take over the country with a tour?

That’s the whole thing. I’m not going to sign with a label that will not take us out on tour. My whole thing is that I’m gonna do a record and at whatever cost we’re gonna hit the road, even if that means I have to put us in a van. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna build this band so that in two or three years Hatriot is one of the biggest bands or well known bands in metal. That’s what I’m shooting for, my friend.

What’s on the horizon for Zetro, then? You’re not a man who sits still for very long.

I don’t sit still! I actually wrote four new songs for the new Testament album The Dark Roots of Earth. They’re talking about doing another thing. I always keep the AC/DZ thing going so I can be Bon Scott for an hour and 20 minutes. Basically, I want Hatriot to be the next thing so I’ve got all my eggs in this basket right now. I’m turning down vocal projects, I’m turning down other things, because I want Hatriot to cruise right into a record and a tour. And while we’re on the that tour, we’ll have another record written so there’s no delay. Bang, bang, bang. In the next five years, you’ve probably got three to four Hatriot records to listen to and you’ve seen us four or five times already. That’s what I plan to do and that’s what I did with Exodus. Record, tour, record, tour, tour, tour, tour! You kick their ass so they want to come back and see you! Everytime we go on stage I say, “It’s the Super Bowl, boys! We gonna win tonight? We gonna win tonight! We are going to win tonight!” That’s my attitude.

Brother, you have me pumped up!

Right on!

You’ve got a lot of experience under your belt. Have you ever considered writing it all down?

Everyone tells me that. I think I need to get some more experiences and then I’m gonna do that for sure. I’m so preoccupied with making the metal, though, you know what I mean?

I can just tell when you talk, you’ve got the passion behind you, man. It’d be a killer read!

One of these days! I just get on a roll, and I roll! Metal is what I am. I get so passionate about it. It bleeds from me, man. My blood is heavy metal, it’s Silver and Black Heavy Metal that drips there, my brother!

When you come through New York City with Hatriot, I’ll buy you a beer, man.

Hell yes, man! I appreciate your time to do this, I really do! I can’t wait to do the record!!

—

Listen to Hatriot’s “Weapons of Class Destruction”

Candlebox opened the set with “Bitches Brewin’” from 2008′s Into The Sun. This set the stage for the rest of the night…Over 90 minutes of non-stop rock and roll, all fueled by lead singer Kevin Martin’s incredible on-stage energy.

The audience was captivated by every single song, whether they knew them or not. That’s just the kind of music Candlebox creates. From the 90s all the way to their latest release, every song performed was full of fire and force.

I’ve never seen Candlebox before the show at The Gramercy Theatre. I can’t imagine what it was like to see them live when they exploded with their 1993 self-titled release. Martin gave a bit of insight, though, when he talked about playing Woodstock ’94. “300,000 people…I almost shit myself,” Martin told the crowd. “I probably did, I don’t remember much from that day!”

If you’ve never seen Candlebox, do not miss them live. If you’ve seen them before, you know as well as I do that you want to see them again.

Kevin Martin summed it up after two or three songs into Candlebox’s set. “I believe the term is rock and roll. Look it up.”

Candlebox. Rock and roll. The two go hand in hand.

Check out our Gotham Interview with guitarist and founding member of Candlebox, Peter Klett.

This marks the first piece of gonzo journalism by the great doctor, Hunter S. Thompson. The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved ran in the June 1970 edition of Scanlan’s Monthly.

The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved — June 1970 (Volume 1, Issue 4, pp. 1–12)

Originally posted on Free Gotham on May 6th, 2011.

—

I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands…big grins and a whoop here and there: “By God! You old bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good…and I mean it!”

In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other–”but just call me Jimbo”–and he was here to get it on. “I’m ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?” I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Naw, naw…what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What’s wrong with you, boy?” He grinned and winked at the bartender. “Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey…”

I shrugged. “Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice.” Jimbo nodded his approval.

“Look.” He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. “I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I’ve learned–this is no town to be giving people the impression you’re some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit, they’ll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have.”

I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. “Say,” he said, “you look like you might be in the horse business…am I right?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”

“Oh yeah?” He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. “Is that what you got there–cameras? Who you work for?”

“Playboy,” I said.

He laughed. “Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of–nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you’ll be workin’ pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That’s a race just for fillies.” He was laughing wildly. “Hell yes! And they’ll all be nekkid too!”

I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. “There’s going to be trouble,” I said. “My assignment is to take pictures of the riot.”

“What riot?”

I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. “At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers.” I stared at him again. “Don’t you read the newspapers?”

The grin on his face had collapsed. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Well…maybe I shouldn’t be telling you…” I shrugged. “But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They’ve warned us–all the press and photographers–to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting…”

“No!” he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. “Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!” He kept shaking his head. “No! Jesus! That’s almost too bad to believe!” Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. “Why? Why here? Don’t they respect anything?”

I shrugged again. “It’s not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country–to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They’ll be dressed like everybody else. You know–coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts…well, that’s why the cops are so worried.”

He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: “Oh…Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?”

“Not here,” I said, picking up my bag. “Thanks for the drink…and good luck.”

He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: “Nixon Sends GI’s into Cambodia to Hit Reds”… “B-52′s Raid, then 20,000 GI’s Advance 20 Miles”…”4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest.” At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her “stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom.” The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of “student unrest.” There was no mention of any trouble brewing at university in Ohio called Kent State.

I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn’t have any. “You can’t rent one anywhere,” he assured me. “Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks.” I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?”

I shrugged. “Where’s the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people.”

He sighed. “My friend, you’re in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby.”

I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: “Look, I’m from Playboy. How would you like a job?”

He backed off quickly. “What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?”

“Never mind,” I said. “You just blew it.” I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it–SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing–and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that says “Photog. Playboy Mag.” I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. “Never mention Playboy until you’re sure they’ve seen this thing first,” he said. “Then, when you see them notice it, that’s the time to strike. They’ll go belly up ever time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”

Well…maybe so. I’d used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger’s brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, “Hell yes, I’m from Texas,” deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable “tradition.” Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hadn’t missed a Derby since 1954. “The little lady won’t come anymore,” he said. “She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say ‘loose’ I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin’ out of style! Horses, whiskey, women…shit, there’s women in this town that’ll do anything for money.”

Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, “If I had any money I’d invest it in the stock market.” And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.

**********

The next day was heavy. With only thirty hours until post time I had no press credentials and–according to the sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal–no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two sets: one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States. And the more I pondered the fact, the more it gave me fear. How would he bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London and plunged into the drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegrass country around Lexington. My plan was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I’d rented from a used-car salesman name Colonel Quick, then whisk him off to some peaceful setting that might remind him of England.

Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan’s was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. “Hell, you can’t be serious,” he said. “The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there’s no more room…and what the hell is Scanlan’s Monthly anyway?”

I uttered a painful groan. “Didn’t the London office call you? They’re flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He’s Irish. I think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set.”

He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds but the clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.
“That sounds a little weird,” I said. “It’s unacceptable. We must have access tp everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don’t think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we’ll get inside. Maybe we’ll have to bribe a guard–or even Mace somebody.” (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor’s box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good…)

By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he’d changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning–demanding only one pass now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.
The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar-looking; when I mentioned Steadman’s name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, “You bet he did.” Then she favored me with a big smile. “Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?”

I shook my head. “I’m supposed to be working with him, but I don’t even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I’ll have to find him in the mob at the track.”

She chuckled. “You won’t have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him? What does he look like?”

“Well…” she said, still grinning, “he’s the funniest looking thing I’ve seen in a long time. He has this…ah…this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it’s all over his head.” She nodded. “You’ll know him when you see him; don’t worry about that.”

Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan’s press packet. Well…what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn’t think we’re abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set up an easel with a big sign saying, “Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!”

**********

I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.

But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman’s description and he seemed puzzled. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said. “Just keep in mind for the next few days that we’re in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You’re lucky that mental defective at the motel didn’t jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you.” I laughed, but he looked worried.

“Just pretend you’re visiting a huge outdoor loony bin,” I said. “If the inmates get out of control we’ll soak them down with Mace.” I showed him the can of “Chemical Billy,” resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management’s Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. “I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works.”
By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections “F&G”…and I felt we needed that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in “G,” along with Barry Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we’d be legal in a box in “G” where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby’s special vibrations.

The bars and dining rooms are also in “F&G,” and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that’s what they’re in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.

Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the “walkaround” press passes to F&G were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back, that didn’t leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn’t give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.

**********

Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I’d been to a Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. “That whole thing,” I said, “will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It’s a fantastic scene–thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We’ll have to spend some time out there, but it’s hard to move around, too many bodies.”

“Is it safe out there?” Will we ever come back?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll just have to be careful not to step on anybody’s stomach and start a fight.” I shrugged. “Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they’ll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It’s hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up.”

He looked so nervous that I laughed. “I’m just kidding,” I said. “Don’t worry. At the first hint of trouble I’ll start pumping this ‘Chemical Billy’ into the crowd.”

He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn’t seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry–a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient–to the parents–than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways. (“Goddam, did you hear about Smitty’s daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!”)

So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is.

On our way back to the motel after Friday’s races I warned Steadman about some of the other problems we’d have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. “You should keep in mind,” I said, “that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all.” He nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my brother.

Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South, England–just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.

Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into–then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who’d seen or even heard about his work. Ho couldn’t understand it. “It’s sort of a joke,” he kept saying. “Why, in England it’s quite normal. People don’t take offense. They understand that I’m just putting them on a bit.”

“Fuck England,” I said. “This is Middle America. These people regard what you’re doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off.”

Steadman shook his head sadly. “But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort.”

“Look, Ralph,” I said. “Let’s not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly.” I shrugged. “Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?”

“I thought it was because of the Mace,” he said.

“What Mace?”

He grinned. “When you shot it at the headwaiter, don’t you remember?”

“Hell, that was nothing,” I said. “I missed him…and we were leaving, anyway.”

“But it got all over us,” he said. “The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn’t see to draw when we got back to the motel.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The stuff got on her leg, didn’t it?”

“She was angry,” he said.

“Yeah…well, okay…Let’s just figure we fucked up about equally on that one,” I said. “But from now on let’s try to be careful when we’re around people I know. You won’t sketch them and I won’t Mace them. We’ll just try to relax and get drunk.”

“Right,” he said. “We’ll go native.”

**********

It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Fish-Meat Village. Our rooms were just across the road in the Brown Suburban Hotel. They had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn’t handle it anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the “darkies” in the kitchen.

Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I preferred the “French toast,” which was really pancake batter, fried to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter to resemble pieces of toast.

Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go ahead and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the next forty-eight hours. From that point on–almost from the very moment we started out to the track–we lost all control of events and spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat scrambled.

But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:

**********

Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of mud and madness…But no. By noon the sun burns through–perfect day, not even humid.

Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.

Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people’s front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: PARK HERE, flagging cars in the yard. “That’s fine, boy, never mind the tulips.” Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds.

Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in tight pink shorts, many blacks…black dudes in white felt hats with leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.

The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them nervously. “Why do they have those clubs?”

“Black Panthers,” I said. Then I remembered good old “Jimbo” at the airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic League…they were all turned away. “Move on, fella, make way for the working press.” We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went outside.

**********

Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. “Mayblossom Senility” (Steadman’s phrase)…burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?

The grim reaper comes early in this league…banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he’s the one who’s screaming. Bad DT’s and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.

Yale? Did you see today’s paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers…I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby today.

I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a group of young men around a table not far away. “Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!” he whispered. “Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!” I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was sketching. The face he’d picked out to draw was the face of an old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him “Cat Man.”

But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn’t have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar on Derby Day…fat slanted eyes and a pimp’s smile, blue silk suit and his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge…

Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn’t sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men’s rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. “They’ll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits,” I said. “But watch the shoes, that’s the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes.”

In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach Hotel.

The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since none of the awful things I’d warned him about had happened so far–no race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks–he shrugged and said, “Right, let’s do it.”

To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. “God almighty!” Steadman muttered. “This is a…Jesus!” He plunged ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take notes.

**********

Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track…nobody cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.

Old blacks arguing about bets; “Hold on there, I’ll handle this” (waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback, T-shirt says, “Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail.” Thousands of teen-agers, group singing “Let the Sun Shine In,” ten soldires guarding the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.
No booze sold out here, too dangerous…no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach…Woodstock…many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.

**********

We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd stood to face the flag and sing “My Old Kentucky Home,” Steadman faced the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice screeched, “Turn around, you hairy freak!” The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power glasses, there was no way to see what really happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph’s choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust Commander.

Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day’s Courier told of violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he’d “bagged a record tiger.” The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann’s glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was “retired contractor.” And then he added, with a big grin, “I just retired.”

The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can’t bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he’d been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis.

**********

Sometime around ten-thirty Monday morning I was awakened by a scratching sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the curtain back just far enough to see Steadman outside. “What the fuck do you want?” I shouted.

“What about having breakfast?” he said.

I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn’t cope with the chain! The thing wouldn’t come out of the track–so I ripped it out of the wall with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn’t blink. “Bad luck,” he muttered.

I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45. “Christ,” I said. “You’re getting out of control.”

He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. “You know, this is really awful,” he said finally. “I must get out of this place…” he shook his head nervously. “The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him–a model for that one special face we’d been looking for. There he was, by God–a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature…like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother’s family photo album. It was the face we’d been looking for–and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible…

“Maybe I should sleep a while longer,” I said. “Why don’t you go on over to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the streets at this hour.”

He shook his head. “No…no…I think I’ll go back upstairs and work on those drawings for a while.” He leaned down to fetch two more cans out of the beer bucket. “I tried to work earlier,” he said, “but my hands kept trembling…It’s teddible, teddible.”

“You’ve got to stop this drinking,” I said.

He nodded. “I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason it makes me feel better…”

“Not for long,” I said. “You’ll probably collapse into some kind of hysterical DT’s tonight–probably just about the time you get off the plane at Kennedy. They’ll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you down to the Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until you straighten out.”

He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went back to bed for another hour or so, and later–after the daily grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart–we had our last meal at Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher’s offal, fried in heavy grease.
By this time Ralph wouldn’t order coffee; he kept asking for more water. “It’s the only thing they have that’s fit for human consumption,” he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he’d caught the proper spirit of the thing…but we couldn’t make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he’d drawn. “Shit,” I said. “We both look worse than anything you’ve drawn here.”

He smiled. “You know–I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that…and now, you know what? It’s us…”

**********

Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway.

A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he’s been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger’s side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: “Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren’t sick I’d kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green–you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you…We can do without your kind in Kentucky.”

Wells’ Where We Meet hit storeshelves in March. This is his fourth album and arguably his rawest and realest. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it – and you’re a fan of honest, soulfully written music – pick it up today.

Wells is on the road in support of the album. He’s playing a second sold-out show at City Winery tonight, and fortunately we were able to grab a few minutes from the singer/songwriter.

You’re in the middle of a country-wide tour. You played City Winery last week and you’re back there tonight. How’s everything going?

It’s been great, man. I’m loving playing the new songs from the new record. We’re just hustling out here, and we’ve got two sold-out shows in New York which is always fun. We’ve got about another month on the road before we head back to California.

You’re latest record, Where We Meet, has been out for a couple of months. This is your fourth full-length studio album. What’s the reception been like?

It’s been received very well. I keep hearing that it’s my best work, which is really encouraging. I definitely took some time to get there. I took about two years and wrote about 80 songs that were considered for the record. It’s been received very well. I’m encouraged about it.

What’s happened to the songs that didn’t make the cut for the record?

We actually recorded around 24 or 25 songs out of those 80, so we are going to be releasing some of those in EP form or one form or another…And I guess the rest just get put down.

You say this new album is a fresh start for you. What do you mean by that?

You know, we had done two records previously with Universal. Being free from that relationship felt like a new start. I’m not a disgruntled artist. My relationship with the label is cool, but I was just ready to do my own thing. A lot of the momentum we had I felt was created by me and my team anyway. We preferred to do it independently and it has been really great to be calling the shots and have the freedom to do whatever we want to do.

How did you approach this record differently than the ones that were released with the label?

We could do it on our own time. We weren’t locked into any budget or preconceived notion about what the record should sound like just to please the radio people. We weren’t worried about that. Other than that, and other than the fact that we were funding it ourselves, in terms of the way I approached it, it really wasn’t all that different. I did enjoy the freedom to do whatever we wanted to do and release the record that I wanted to release without any sort of pressure at all. That was really freeing during the process of making it.

Working without a label, what was one of the harder things to overcome?

In terms of promotion and a radio team behind you…if you do want to take a single to radio, it costs you a little bit. We did release a single to radio, though, and it’s been doing well. We’ll see. There’s just so much going to radio from all over the place, so it’s a little hard to contend with the labels and their radio teams. It’s been doing well, though, in some cities. Hopefully that will translate to other cities as well.

Your last record, Metal and Wood, was released a couple of years ago. Even in that short period of time, technology has evolved so much. Did services like Spotify, iTunes and the Cloud affect the process of making Where We Meet?

It didn’t affect the way we approached it, but it definitely helped. There are more ears on it. There are more and more ways to come across music. It’s been great. I think there’s never been a better time for an independent artist to release a record than in today’s day and age. There’s just a lot of ways to be heard.

You’re in New York during a pretty tumultuous time with Occupy Wall Street in full effect. The May Day protests were yesterday…what’s your take on the Occupy movement?

I’ve just become more aware of it from my publicist. I don’t feel like I have enough information to speak intelligently about it. My wife and our two month old were walking around the city yesterday and somehow we didn’t see anything. We were out wandering all of New York and we missed it somehow.

You’ve said Where We Meet is just the beginning, but it’s your fourth album! What’s on the horizon for you?

I think it feels like a new beginning just because the sky is the limit as far as what we can do. I just feel like unfettered. There is nothing stopping me from doing what I want to do. This year I plan to release maybe three different projects. When you write as many songs as I do, it’s really freeing to know you can get them to the people when you want instead of waiting around. With every new song I write, it feels like a bit of new life. In a lot of ways, it’s the same, but it feels new.

Before I let you go, is there any new music out there you’re digging?

I really love a singer/songwriter named Ian Archer. I’ve actually written a little bit with him. He plays guitar with Snow Patrol sometimes on tour. He just writes beautiful songs. I’ve always loved what I call ‘vulnerability’ in music, where you can hear someone’s weakness. Instead of always representing strength, I like stuff that feels vulnerable. I don’t know what that says about me!

Do you think your music is vulnerable?

I try to make vulnerable music. I feel like it’s honest. It’s way more honest than music that is not vulnerable. I don’t know how better to say that. I don’t know if it’s for everybody, but Ian Archer is a singer/songwriter that I really love.

Thank you for your time, Tyrone. Good luck at City Winery tonight and with the rest of the tour! Congratulations on Where We Meet!

Thank you, brother!

Let’s get this thing rolling! Here’s the second part of our interview with Mark…and if you haven’t yet, GO BUY HIS BOOK!

Here is where we left off with Part 1: From Mark – Enjoy life and take the good and enjoy the good things that come along your way! But when the bad things come along, just keep turning the pages. Sometimes, when you get into it, and you get knocked around, sometimes it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it will come. Be true to yourself. You can learn a lot more from a mistake or a failure than what you learn from success. Success is easy to handle. Sometimes it’s worth it to strike out every once in awhile.

Not to say you struck out, but you say that if you were the right man for the band, you’d still be there…What do you think makes the “right” man for AC/DC?

Laughter. You’re asking the wrong guy!! Otherwise I’d still be there! Honestly, you have to be committed and dedicated to an unbelievable degree. You look at Angus and Malcolm, they were put on this earth to create that band. Their intensity levels and their vision, particularly Malcolm, is phenomenal. I always laugh when I read about Angus and Malcolm. It seems like the press plays them down and dumbs them down. Man, if you do that to those guys, you’re living a lie, because those are two really, really sharp guys! They know what they want to do and they’ve stuck to it. I’ve got a lot of respect for those guys and I hope it showed in the book. I think if I had maybe a couple of years under my belt of experience on the road, I would’ve realized the opportunity that was staring me in the face. But you know, it just wasn’t to be. I don’t look back at my time with the band with anything other than great memories. Of course I’d wish it ended differently, but that wasn’t in the stars, man. Take it as it comes.

Everything happens for a reason, I guess. You’ve got this book out, it’s doing well. What are you up to now? You’ve got a new album out, right?

I’ve got a duo with a great guy called Dave Tice who has been around for some times. He was in a band that sort of pre-dated AC/DC a bit, a very heavy metal band, a band called Buffalo. A great band. He put that together with a guy called Pete Wells, and when Buffalo split up, Pete went on to form Rose Tattoo. I’ve been with Dave for a number of years now, and we did just put a new CD out. We’re writing constantly. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m playing guitar, so I’m back where I started. We do a lot of original stuff of course, and we do a lot of rockabilly stuff. We’re both kind of blues, punk, and country guys. It all goes into the pot and comes out sounding like us. I really enjoy it. Dave’s just a really powerful singer. It’s a bit easier on the ears, too! I’m playing a bit of bass, too. I just started a new band called The Dinosaurs. That’s working well. We’re going in to record an album in June, and of all places we’re going to record it at Albert’s. We’re all back recording at Albert’s again. So that’s interesting.

Wow! That’s awesome. Congrats, man.

A ton of the other guys in the band have backgrounds with Albert’s, too. The album Dave and I did is available through iTunes and my website, MarkEvansBlues.com. Get an autographed copy of the book, too, and check out the archival stuff on AC/DC. The album is called Brothers in Arms. Yeah, things are good man, along with having a nice cold beer right here!

Before I let you go, two questions…First, are there any rock memoirs – other than yours – that you recommend?

I consume a lot of books, a lot of autobiographies. I just read Keith Richard’s. Man, how does he remember all that stuff? He’s come out great, hadn’t he? The Pete Townsend one is good, too. There is something interesting in each story, man. These rock n’ roll guys, it’d be wrong to single out too many. It’s just the way it is.

What about new music?

I’m constantly getting exposed to new stuff by my daughter. I’ve got to tell you, I’m listening to new music all the time and it’s just running over me. I love it. As far as music goes, I’m a little more of a traditionalist. I’m sort of still listening to a lot of old stuff. My daughter listens to a lot of hip-hop stuff, too, man. That is some wild shit! All around, though, music has to have that grunt to it, you know?

I get it, man. I appreciate your time. Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside AC/DC, this is just a great book. Mark, it is truly an honor to speak with you. I’ve got to say, you did a great job with the book. You could’ve written a tell-all with a lot of negativity, but you didn’t. You shared all the good memories. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks so much, man. The way the book came out is the only way it would’ve come out. It came out the way I see it, and that’s what’s in the book. And that’s only the story so far. Stay tuned, I think there’s going to be more!

Thanks again, Mark. Enjoy that beer.

Thanks for the call and take care!

So, I won’t.

What I will do is tell you about a new book, written by former bassist for AC/DC Mark Evans, called Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside of AC/DC. It was awesome talking to this man. I can’t emphasize enough how great his book is, too. If you’re looking for a dirty tell-all on AC/DC, this ain’t it. If you’re looking for a fun, rock n’ roll read, pick up your copy today. Don’t wait.

We’re going to split the interview up into two parts. Expect Part 2 sometime early next week.

Let there be rock.

Mark, it’s an honor to speak with you! I appreciate your time today.

It’s no worry, pal! What I’m doing right now is, I’m at the back of the house in the bar. It’s about 10:30 at night here, so I’ve had a beer to warm up. Just hang on two clicks.

No problem. Take your time.

Beer bottle opens. I’ve just knocked the top off another one to keep it rollin’, you know?

Congratulations on the book, Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside AC/DC. It’s been in North America now for more than a few months. How’s everything going with the book?

It’s going great, man. It’s just going fantastic. It came out here in Australia a little bit before North America, and the reaction here has been phenomenal. I wasn’t quite sure how the book would travel to America, because it’s written with a lot of sort of Australian-isms, you know? I’ve just been blown away at how people have adopted the book and reacted to it. I guess, in essence, I’ve got a lot in common with Americans. We’ve got similar brains and we find the same sort of things funny. And hey, who doesn’t love a story about rock n’ roll and girls and drinking?!

Well that’s the thing, man. AC/DC transcends borders and countries. It’s a worldwide band.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here in Australia, we definitely view them as an Australian band. But it’s one of those bands that not only transcends boundaries but it transcends generations. My tenure with the band was somewhat brief, but you know, I was there with them at the start. It was definitely an interesting learning period, let me tell ya!

What made you decide to write this book? You were with AC/DC in the 70s, thirty years later, why now?

I’ve been approached on a number of occasions to write a book. Obviously, at the outset, publishers wanted me to write basically a tell-all about AC/DC. But it’s not a band that you would be in and do that, you know? The timing of the book is interesting. After publishers told me “You should write about this,” I just kept saying I don’t think so. I came to a point, though, in my life where there were a couple of things that spun me around on a family level. It just seemed like the right time to sit down and draw a breath, not necessarily to write a book about AC/DC, but write a book, as you know, that is a memoir. It’s an autobiography. If I write just about my time in AC/DC, it wouldn’t make too much sense because a lot of the things I’ve done since AC/DC were actually influenced by when I was a kid.

That makes sense. I mean, the title of the book is inside and outside of the band. It covers everything.

The majority of the story is with AC/DC. But I was very aware to write about my whole life so far. The timing was right. The time became right for me on a personal level to put my thoughts down on paper. The process was very interesting. When I was writing, man, I was cracking up laughing at some of the stories. We definitely got down to some interesting stuff. There are some great memories, man. I really cherish my memories from my time with the band. We really were a great band. We worked hard, we played hard. There was nothing to stop us. I would’ve loved to continue on with the band, but that’s just the way life is.

You say you laughed and there are obviously some great stories in the book. There are also some tough stories, though. What was the hardest part about writing the book?

It surprised me, really. In the book there are a couple of family losses. The one that surprised me was writing about losing my father. I was prepared to write about the other stuff that happened later in life because I’ve grown to live with that stuff on a daily basis. But, writing about losing my father…you know, it’s a memory you’ll always have. You’ll take that with you. I was 12 years old when I lost my father. But recounting, in detail, what happened say in the last four or five hours, I went right back into pretty sort of graphic detail. I got back into living that. It knocked me around. To go back and relive it, I could even smell things. Part of what caught me on it, though, was at that time my youngest daughter Virginia was 12 years old. Looking at that from my father’s eyes, I thought about the effect it would have on Virginia. I found that very, very difficult to contend with. And to be quite honest, speaking about it now is not particularly easy. I can feel things welling up. You’re writing with an adult sensibility and looking back at that 12 year old kid and thinking, “Oh my God, what a terrible thing to happen.” It was a terrible thing to happen, it’s a terrible thing to happen to anyone. The end wasn’t pretty, either, you know? In essence, that was the most difficult thing to write about.

If your readers could take away one thing from the book, what would you want that to be?

Enjoy life and take the good and enjoy the good things that come along your way! But when the bad things come along, just keep turning the pages. Sometimes, when you get into it, and you get knocked around, sometimes it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it will come. Be true to yourself. You can learn a lot more from a mistake or a failure than what you learn from success. Success is easy to handle. Sometimes it’s worth it to strike out every once in awhile.

Part two coming soon!

***
Here’s Part 2 of the interview!

Scott Weiland was gracious enough to allow Spinner to premiere his contribution to the soundtrack of the upcoming “Avengers” movie. The album, entitled Avengers Assembly, also features the likes of Soundgarden, Papa Roach, Bush and Kasabian.

So, here is the Stone Temple Pilots frontman’s new track “Breathe.” The soundtrack will be available on May 1, and the movie will hit theaters on May 4.

Click here to check out the track, and then come back to Free Gotham to tell us what you think…Within seconds of posting the link on Facebook, Free Gotham Fan Lauri succinctly stated, “Love it.”

Personally, this Free Gotham writer isn’t exactly blown away by the track. As far as Weiland solo stuff goes, it’s about status quo. Poppier than STP, but still has his signature hook. It’s not a bad song…it’s just not a great song.

What do you think?