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from RIP magazine, November 1991
[In spite of the impression Junkyard liked to give off — that they were unpredictable, drug-and-alcohol crazed lowlifes — they really were one of the most ambitious, serious-minded bands I knew. Well, they were also unpredictable and sometimes alcohol and drug-crazed, but they did always keep their eye on the prize, which when I first knew them, was that all-important record contract. Shortly after he joined the band in 1986, Pat Muzingo enlisted my help in putting together a promo package. A bunch of the guys (and various girlfriends) were living in a run-down house in Hollywood (it was barely more than a shack), and I remember going over there. It was Sunday afternoon and Chris Gates was going through the paper, clipping coupons, which he would later take to Ralph's (the supermarket famous for its coupon doubling). This was apparently a weekly ritual of his. So I wrote a bio and took some photos (I still have the negatives), and proceeded to brag about them to every A&R rep I knew (back then, A&R guys frequently pumped me for information on promising bands). Eventually they got their record deal and they actually did better than a lot of other Hollywood groups, even if they never did get to make that third record for Geffen. Because I was there first, I kind of considered Junkyard my band, which explains the first couple paragraphs of the article. Why I was so down on Toyotas, I don't know... I actually was driving one at the time.]
It was outside of one of Hollywood's more yuppified rock clubs that I ran into Geffen A&R rep Mio Vukovic. "What are you doing to my band!" I screeched. "If this keeps up, pretty soon they're gonna have mortgages and be driving around in brand-new Toyotas!"
"Oh, I don't think it's gonna quite come to that," Mio replied in an attempt to placate me.
What had changed me from a mild-mannered reporter into a screaming maniac on Sunset Boulevard? The news I had just heard about Junkyard. The week the group's new album, Sixes, Sevens and Nines, was released, it sold nearly 100,000 units, and its single, "All the Time in the World," was added to 120 radio stations. It looked as if the lowlife scumbags I had known and loved for the past five years were poised on the near end of respectability. So I should have been thrilled, right? Actually, I was thrilled — after all, it's not every day that a band I helped discover gets a real shot at the big time. It's just that the word respectability seemed incongruous next to my image of Junkyard. Even though the record contained a couple of my all-time favorite Junkyard tunes ("Misery Loves Company" and the rollicking "Lost in the City"), the polish and production made me wonder if maybe there was something within the psyches of these guys that was willing to drop the torn-denim trappings and opt for — gasp! — mainstream acceptance. The very thought curdled my blood.
Perhaps my worries were a bit premature, because when I met with the Junkyard guys at their rehearsal studio, guitarist Chris Gates informed me, "We're still so far below the poverty level that we didn't even notice the recession! We can tell the economy's getting bad when macaroni and cheese isn't four for a dollar anymore."
"But don't you ever feel any pressure to try to be more commercial?" I asked.
"Fortunately for us," Chris firmly stated, "every single person involved with us on a business level knows that we are what we are, and there's really no point in trying to make us anything else."
"Plus, if we try to be more commercial," guitarist Brian Baker pointed out, "all we'd do is alienate everybody we know, play really shitty music and fail, and be stuck this way for the rest of our lives."
The truth of the matter, however, is that, for a while, Junkyard's industry associates did try to help the band out with its songwriting. "It was mostly because we were being completely unproductive," Chris explains.
"And insolent too," Brian admitted. "We were sitting in a room with a lot of equipment, and we 'wrote,' like, the Robert Johnson catalog. I mean, we were just jamming. We'd play blues songs for, like, 45 minutes and just go home."
"We were getting absolutely nothing done, and they were beginning to panic," Chris continued. "So they tried to send some writers our way. That was annoying. That was more annoying than trying to write our own songs. So we just wrote our own."
"The first guy," singer David Roach gruffly recalled, "he walked in and said we were the most unprofessional band he'd ever seen. He couldn't believe we had a record contract."
Let me digress here to mention that whoever this guy was, he must have had his head up his ass, because the Junkyard I know is one of the most organized outfits in Hollywood. I'll never forget the time, back in 1986, that drummer Pat Muzingo joined the band. He'd just left a wonderful, but completely self-destructive San Francisco group called Pirates of Venus. Grinning from ear to ear, he told me, "The guys in Junkyard are great! Everyone shows up for rehearsal on time, and we even have band meetings once a week!" You have to realize that for bands — especially L.A. bands — this is no mean feat. And once they got a deal and their responsibilities grew, they rose to the occasion. They met all their obligations without complaint (well, for the most part) and generally did what was expected of them (well, usually). If, on occasion, they went over the top, as musicians sometimes do, they still managed to keep their people at Geffen satisfied. Most of the time. Which brings us back to Brian....
"You know, the main thing wasn't the songwriters. We got productive as soon as we had a rehearsal space with air conditioning."
David nodded in agreement. "Between the air conditioning and this pro writer coming in and calling us losers, that's when we got to writing again."
Actually, Junkyard did have a little help with the songs on Sixes, Sevens and Nines, but not from some gussied-up Desmond Child wannabe. The original version of "Clean the Dirt" was written by guitarist Mike Martt, a longtime friend of Junkyard's and a fixture on the L.A. scene. And the moody, moving "Slippin' Away" was cowritten by country-rock artist Steve Earle. "That wasn't like an outside writer; that's a friend of mine," Chris explained. The two met years ago through Junkyard's former A&R rep, who is married to Earle.
"Slippin' Away," Chris continued, "was originally about Andrew from Mother Love Bone, who I thought was phenomenal. I had the intention of making the whole song about that, and then Steve brought home the point that there was a lot more to the subject. He broadened it out lyrically. So there's a verse about not being able to go home, and a verse about somebody dying and...."
"Junkyard depression," Brian interjected. He did have a point. After all, Junkyard's music isn't exactly about happy times. Angry, aggressively brooding and just plain ornery is a much better description. Makes you sorta wonder what kind of families these guys come from. Brian answered my unasked question. "My mom said, 'This record is much better than your first one. I think it's great, but all the songs are so sad. Are you okay out there? Do you need some money?'" The room burst into laughter, and he had to shout over the din to continue. "See, I didn't think it was depressing! I thought there was a little angst to it, but my mom, well, I guess she's my mom. She was worried about me. She wants me to be in Jellyfish or something."
"Things that don't even depress us might completely destroy the normal person," Chris said with a knowing chuckle.
Or even the normal band. After the record was in the can and ready to be released, Junkyard had to change bass players. Old friend Todd Muscat eased in without a hitch. Yes, he's related to Faster Pussycat's Brent Muscat — they're brothers — and no, that's not a fake name. "People come up to me and ask if that's my real name — 'You're using your brother's stage name!' Yeah, right, fuck off." Todd and Pat had played together in the punk outfits Decry and Shanghai, and everyone knew each other. So why didn't Todd join Junkyard in the first place? "That's when I was in Damn Yankees," he recalled. "I thought we were going to get a record deal." This Hollywood-bred Damn Yankees, by the way, bore absolutely no resemblance to the Ted Nugent group that formed a few years later. So much for assumptions.
Junkyard has also hired a keyboard player. That gave me pause. Some piano-playing dude in the midst of the chaos these guys create onstage? "It gives us something else to put our beers on," David grunted.
"'Slippin' Away' was written based around the organ part and the acoustic guitar," Chris reasoned. "Without the organ, it doesn't work."
Brian added, "Plus, my favorite bands in the world have always had key—" his face screwed up with distaste. "Keyboard's such a bad word! It sounds like Gerardo to me."
"We're talking about piano and organ," Chris reminded me. "And I always hated piano and organ and swore I'd never play with them. But that was before I started hanging out with Steve and was forced to listen to a lot of songwriters and realized how much it could do writing-wise — what was possible, what wasn't possible with just two guitars. I can play an acoustic guitar on a song if I want now, because there's a keyboard filling things up."
That makes sense. Perhaps Junkyard's growing beyond some of the more destructive elements of its punk-based past, although Chris admitted that when it comes to their live shows, "It's always a race to see whether we can destroy the equipment or finish the set list first." But when it comes down to business, the approach of these drunken wildmen is definitely sober. "We didn't hold out for an enormous advance," Chris said of their original deal with Geffen. "We got enough money to do things right, and that's all that matters. We didn't need enough money for all of us to buy Corvettes on the first advance, because we'll still get to make a third album. You know, you can buy your rock-star car the first month, and when your record comes out, and it sucks, and it doesn't sell, and your life's over in a year...."
"I bought my rock-star car," Brian insisted. "It was eleven hundred bucks!"
"And it's still running after three years," Pat added. "And you can live in that thing!"
That's Junkyard for you — ready to tackle any twist of fate, good or bad. And as far as I'm concerned, they can drive anything they want — just as long as they don't wimp out and go for some goddamn, mommy-hubby Toyota.
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