A Digression: Remembering Eric Carmen
Interviewing Eric and Raspberries drummer Jim Bonfanti in 2005
What a shock to learn that Eric Carmen, the fabulous voice and driving creative force behind power pop legends, the Raspberries, died this past weekend. I wrote about Eric in my post “Brush (off) With Greatness:”
[On February 7, 2005,] … I found myself interviewing Eric Carmen and Jim Bonfanti, the singer and drummer for the fabulous Raspberries (Gen Z: you might know their tune “Go All the Way” from the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack). The band had miraculously reunited for a few shows. I’d caught them at the House of Blues Cleveland, and somehow wrangled an interview, which I successfully pitched to the legendary fanzine, The Big Takeover. (You can check out the interview in issue #56, or read it here).
I knocked on Carmen’s door and he answered (!). I introduced myself and he felt the need to do the same:
“I’m Eric.”
“Uhh, I know.”
He introduced me to Jim Bonfanti and went to fetch me a glass of water. Crazy.
We talked Raspberries and their reunion. We talked about the amazing Super Bowl halftime show Paul McCartney had just performed (Jim: “I absolutely loved his drummer!”)
In a departure from my usual subject matter and approach, in honor of Eric Carmen’s memory, following is a verbatim transcription of my entire interview with Eric and Jim:
HOWARD FENCL: I’d like to focus mostly on what the Raspberries are doing now or might do in the future, rather than “…what happened this week in 1972, what happened that week in 1973”-kind-of thing, if that’s OK with you guys.
ERIC CARMEN: I did one of those interviews last week for rollingstone.com, and it was just like, “…I don’t want to dredge all that stuff up again.” I mean, it’s like 30 years ago…
JIM BONFANTI: It doesn’t MATTER anymore.
EC: Not pertinent to this story.
JB: Yeah, I had one before Chicago [the Raspberries’ third House of Blues show, in January, 2005] like that. Gets old.
EC: And you know, at a certain point on these things, if someone catches me on JUST the wrong day, [Bonfanti laughs], I’m liable to say something like, “…well, ya know, you NEVER know — Wally and I could go at it ANY time!” [they both break up]
JB: Yeah, could be ANY moment…
EC: You never know, it could just blow up and be a nightmare!
HF: So I gotta know, did either of you guys see McCartney last night do the Super Bowl halftime? What did you think?
EC: He was just great, just great.
JB: Yeah, I mean, I absolutely LOVE his drummer.
HF: Who is that guy?
JB: I don’t know his name, but I love that drummer, I saw him in Cleveland.
EC:
[starts searching the Internet] I’m sure I can find that out.
JB: He’s a really big guy and he plays some of the coolest drum fills. I mean, they’re very tasteful.
EC: Well, Jim, you could do that too, if you like! One of the things I used to love about Jeff Vaccaro when I used to work with him, is that in a fill, the last hit was ALWAYS the kick drum.
JB: Um-hmmm.
EC: So it was like, [air drums] “BRUMMM-DA-DUM-dum da-dum, BOOM!” You know? VERY cool.
JB: Paul’s drummer just really sounds good. And I thought it was all very safe for the NFL after last year’s nightmare!
EC: [finds factoid on the ‘Net] …here it is, it’s Abe Laboriel Jr.
HF: I thought I caught Sir Paul doing it as a lip-sync unfortunately; I saw some lip-flap during “Hey Jude.”
EC: I saw it right at the beginning in “Drive My Car.”
HF: Kind of disappointing after all the lip-sync controversy surrounding the Ashlee Simpsons of the world. I mean, he recorded it live, you could tell, but then maybe used it as a helper track.
EC: I guess we don’t have to wonder whether Paul can sing, though. And I think there was probably concern that the feedback in a stadium that size can be so disconcerting.
HF: Well, there was no controversy over “wardrobe incident.” I’m surprised the Raspberries didn’t stir up more controversy. I mean, you guys wrote some SUPER horny songs! [Carmen and Bonfanti both laugh out loud].
EC: Uh, SOME of it!
HF: Why do you think YOU were able to get past censors — Raspberries played the Mike Douglas show — a ton of shows on TV. I mean, songs like “Go All the Way.” It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to know what you’re talking about in that one!
EC: Half the people thought we sang “Please Go Away!” You know, the story I have told is that when I was writing the song, I was thinking about how the Rolling Stones had to change “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” on the Ed Sullivan Show. Then I’m listening to Brian Wilson on “Pet Sounds” sing about things like living together, and I’m thinking, “…now why are the Beach Boys getting away with this content, and the Stones are not?”
And I determined, it was maybe because the Beach Boys were sort of non-threatening, and they sounded like choir boys. So, part of genesis of the song “Go All the Way,” was that I was walking through a drug store, and I used to peruse the book racks looking to get ideas for song titles, and I saw this book that had “Go All the Way” in the title and I thought, “this could be good!”
But I thought it would have to be couched in a different context, so I decided when I was writing the lyric to turn it around, and have the girl say it to the guy. I thought, “maybe it’ll work.” It was pretty racy at the time, but because it sounded the way it did, no one was terribly incensed by it!
HF:
Well then, what about the song “Tonight,” which is ALSO pretty horny?
EC:
That was pretty straight forward! I wasn’t trying to hide anything on that one! I guess I thought, “if we got away with that, we’ll get away with this too!”
HF:
I remember when my band learned “Tonight,” there’s chords in there I’d never heard in rock songs before, like a major 7th right in the opening riff, right?
EC:
[running through the riff quickly on air guitar] Lemme see, yeah there is. A lot of my songs have chords that are not in rock and roll. Wally used to tell me all the time, “…that’s a PIANO chord! That’s not a GUITAR chord!”
HF:
First time I recognized one in a rock song. My old guitar teacher taught me all those jazz chords, but until then, I never saw what I could use ‘em for. He was teaching me crummy old standards.
EC:
Like “Red River Valley?” I had a teacher who used to tell me “you gotta play ‘Red River Valley’ on the ‘E’ string.” But I’m saying, “no, I wanna play chords like John Lennon!” I went home and canceled the guitar lessons. Years later, I ran into him, and he says “OK, so I was wrong!”
HF: How did you get the enormous drum sound that you got on “Tonight,” [Bonfanti starts chuckling], and really on ALL of the “Side 3” album? If you listen to the way the drums sit in the mix on the first record [The Raspberries], which I did on the way over here, as opposed to the way they sound on “Side 3,” they’re HUGE.
JB: It’s a trick. You gotta have huge drums!
EC: There’s a few other tricks as well!
JB: We agree “Side 3” sounds the closest to what the band was of all the albums. We also think that it’s too bad that it wasn’t our FIRST album, and then it went on from there! Over the course of the history of the band, I was constantly changing drum kits. I probably had 10 different Ludwig kits. I like the sound of big toms. That’s what I like to hear. So I ordered a special set of special sizes. They weren’t oddball sizes, but it wasn’t a kit that you opened up the Ludwig catalog at that time and it was the “Holiday Edition” or the “Combo Special,” or whatever. It wasn’t there.
I said, “…this is what I want. I want these sizes. Fourteens, 16, 18, 24-inch bass, 6-and-a-half inch snare, I want ‘em rack mounted…you know? And I built the set. And I loved ‘em! Big! That big fat wet-kinda tom sound.
EC: Um-hmm!
JB: That’s what I wanted to hear. That, along with doing a better job recording too, you know [out of side of mouth] from the PRODUCER side helped that! [knowing laugh from Carmen]. But that’s what I like. And that’s the SAME kit I have now.
HF: Oh, is that right? I had read somewhere that you sold your drums.
JB: I did. I sold that drum set in 1977 because I just wanted to quit music. I just felt like I needed to do that. So I did. I sold them to a friend of a friend.
When I started to play again in 1992, and then Wally and Dave and I did a thing at the Odeon [small smoky rock club in the Cleveland Flats entertainment area] with Scott McCarl, for some reason, I said to my wife, “…you know, I’d like to get those drums back.” I said, “…I don’t know, for some reason, I think I should just have ‘em back.”
EC: Um-hmm. The planets lined up for the show.
JB: She said “…what are you gonna do with two sets?”
I said “I don’t know, I just feel like I should have ‘em.”
So I set out to find this person. Well, the luckiest part is he STILL HAD ‘em. This is 20 years later, he still had the drum set! He GAVE them back to me, and I refurbished them completely. Bought all new stands, and recovered ‘em and everything. And that’s the kit. That’s the same drum set.
HF: That’s just incredible.
JB: Yeah! And I got him two tickets to the show! I called him up, his name is Sandy, and I said, “…Sandy? I bought two tickets for you; I want you to come see ‘em, and I want you to hear ‘em.” And that’s still my favorite kit. I won’t let ‘em go anymore, regardless.
HF: One more question about “Tonight.” Who came up with the drum breakdown at the end of the song?
EC: [laughs with abandon]
JB: I don’t actually remember!
EC: I stole it! From the end of “Tin Soldier” by the Small Faces!
JB: Oh, that’s RIGHT!
HF: I did not realize that! And I’ve GOT “Tin Soldier!”
EC: But I think Jim did it better!
HF: ‘Cuz we’ve stolen it subsequently as well!
EC: Yeah! Yeah!!
Back to, you asked how you get the drum sound so big. Well another part of the equation is that, in addition to just having a great sound system there at the House of Blues, we were on such a budget-touring situation before, that at a certain point in time, our tour manager, Rusty, became our sound man. And Rusty rose to the occasion admirably, but it wasn’t his vocation. He mixed our sound over the worst pieces of junk that just happened to be at some club, or whatever, wherever we played.
Well, we’re putting this [reunion] together, and I have a friend in New York whose opinion I trust very much, and he’s a huge fan of the band, and has been for 30-odd years, he’s a drummer himself who greatly admires Jim. And I e-mailed him one day, I thought, “…who am I gonna ask about this? What if I ask Tommy? My friend Tommy Allen. So I e-mailed Tommy, and I said “if you could recommend the BEST sound guy to put together this House of Blues date, who would it be?”
And I got an e-mail back from Tommy that said, “…my number one choice, and I can personally vouch for his hygiene, is Pete Kepler. He does David Bowie’s front-of-house mix, and on his off-days he works with Will Lee’s band in New York. Here’s his e-mail address.”
I e-mailed the guy and said “…you interested? Here’s the date!” And he e-mailed back and said “…everything Tommy’s hooked me up with has ended up being fun, I’m available.” And I e-mailed Tommy back and said “…do you think you can loan him your Raspberries records so he can kinda catch up on what we’re actually doing before he gets there?”
And Tommy said “consider it done.” So Tommy gave Pete all of his Raspberries albums, and I sent him a makeshift songlist to tell him what songs to be listening to. And he came in on that first day, I think he came to one rehearsal.
JB: Yeah. But he didn’t mix it.
EC: Right, he didn’t mix it, he was just listening and making notes. And then we played that first House of Blues date --- we did a sound check, and everybody came back and sad, “…wow! WOW! This guy’s good!”
And then when we were doing the show in Chicago, Rusty, the guy who used to do our sound mixing, came up at one point and he looks up to me and he goes [emphatic whispering] “…this guy is unbeLIEVABLE!” And I was sittin’ off to the side while Pete was working on Jim’s drum set, and he kicked that bass drum, and it was just like, [playing air kick-drum] “BOO-O-O-O-OM!!!” You know?!
JB: Yeah!
EC: I mean, his drums just sounded like CANNONS.
JB: He’s good!
HF: So I got to the drum piece --- I have to ask you [Eric] how you’re hitting all the notes!
EC: [tongue firmly in cheek] Well, the majority of them.
HF: How do you stay in shape to do that?
EC: The thing that works for me is --- I sing best when my voice is just beat up. I learned to sing in smoky bars singing three, four sets a night. When my voice is hoarse and my vocal chords are swollen, that’s when it sounds good!
JB: It works good then!
EC: And it’s very controllable. When we used to record with the Raspberries, we’d go in, and for the first week or ten days, we’d just record the music. And then, they’d stick up a microphone for me, and I would go out and start singing, and it was like Donny Osmond. I’m like, “what is this??”
And so I’d literally go out into the studio, and this started, I think, on the second album [“Fresh”], and scream scales into a padded wall just before the session, just trying to rough my throat up. By the time it got to the fourth album [“Starting Over”], I actually had them set up a little booth out in the recording studio with a record player and a microphone and some headphones, and I would take the Small Faces and the Who and the Stones, and just sing along with those records for a couple hours before the session, trying to get to there.
Uh, then before my first solo album [“Eric Carmen”], I was sittin’ there getting ready to be singing, and once again I hadn’t sung for two, three weeks --- I said “…Gawd! Wish I could figure out how to get this voice propped up without screaming into a wall for hours and hours!”
And somebody said, “…smoke!”
[everyone roars]
EC: And it was at that moment that I started smoking! I went home, I remember, I was in a hotel, I bought a pack of Kools and a couple of cigars, went up in my hotel room, and I sat up that night, and I smoked. And I smoked cigars. And I went in the studio the next day, and I did “All By Myself,” and it was like, “…hey! HEY!!”
Now unfortunately, you don’t want to do that all the time. I HAVE to have a couple days of rehearsal before the show just to blow it out. Just to get the voice into that spot.
And it turns out there are some songs I wrote in such RIDICULOUS keys back in the ‘70s, that never shoulda been in that key to begin with. “Let’s Pretend” comes to mind. And there are other songs like “I’m a Rocker” that we used to do toward the end of the show, and you realize at a certain point, “…well, that was in ‘A,’” but by the time we GOT there every night, I was just str-u-g-g-l-ling. I’m screaming for an hour-and-a-half --- so maybe it makes sense to drop this down to “G” and see what happens. And lo and behold, we drop it one key, and now it’s like in my roundhouse! Two hours later and I can still bang that one out!
HF: The Northeast Ohio music scene, it’s not very nurturing. Do you think it hurt you guys that you came from here?
EC: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that Cleveland has such a bad self-esteem problem. I don’t know if that’s from the 70s when the river caught on fire, and Carson was making Cleveland jokes all the time; I don’t know what it is exactly.
When Jon Bon Jovi plays in New Jersey, or Springsteen, it’s like, “…he’s one of our boys, YEAH!” When you’re from Cleveland and you come back to play, that doesn’t happen. It’s a very odd thing. We were having hits all over the world. “Go All the Way” had been an international top-5 record. We come back here, and people would say things like, “…well, you know, why would I go to Cleveland Music Hall and pay four bucks to see you when I used to see you for a buck at the Cleveland Agora?”
In some ways, there was never as much support for the band here as there was in other cities. In New York, they totally got us. They understood. In England, they got it. In Japan, they got it. In Cleveland, it’s a strange situation here. It’s also partly, I think, because Cleveland isn’t a big media center, Cleveland’s not a hub. And the musicians go to L.A., and the musicians go to New York. I know when I toured with Ringo [2000 version of Ringo’s All- Stars], we had been out for about two weeks, and some interviewer was talking to the band. And we had Jack Bruce from Cream on bass, Dave Edmunds on guitar, Simon Kirke from Bad Company on drums and Ringo, and Billy Joel’s sax player, and the guy went to each guy in the band and he goes, “…who’s songs are the hardest?” And all at once, the entire band went, “ERIC’s!”
And when you think of Cream and Bad Company and whatever, you wouldn’t think that the guy in the Raspberries’ songs were the hardest to play. But, I mean, these guys were all musicians, and they’ll be the first to tell you, “…Eric’s songs are by FAR the hardest songs we had to learn.”
HF: Well, there are all those major 7th chords in there!
EC: Either Dave or Jack said one day, as I was trying to teach them “Go All the Way,” they said “…there’s a fucking chord for every WORD!” I never really thought about it, but, yeah there is! Dave Edmunds’ songs, and they’re simple rock progressions, and Jack’s songs are pretty much a riff, you know? If you can play [air guitar] “duh-duhh-duh-duh, DUH-DUH-DUH, da-DUHHH-da,” you can play “Sunshine of Your Love.”
But my stuff, there are chord changes…
JB: …piano chords on guitar!
EC: Yeah, there’s piano chords, there’s key changes from the verse to the chorus and back to the…you know, the Ringo band, they were having a rough time trying to sing the harmonies, and remember the chord changes! So, what were we talking about?
JB: A senior moment!
EC: I just think Clevelanders think that if you’re FROM here, that you just can’t be any good. Because why would you BE here? I think there’s the perception that if you’re still here, there must be something wrong with you. You’re not good enough to go somewhere else. And that’s a Cleveland problem.
HF: Well, you do have some very cool things going on now, like the Black Keys from the Akron area, they’re receiving accolades right now. And I don’t know if you guys have heard of, and my son turned me on to, the Six Parts Seven…
EC: …um-hmm!
HF: They’re an instrumental guitar band. They’re from Kent. There’s a whole Kent scene going on again. I mean, if you play it back, [history of bands from the Cleveland area], you’ve got Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor kind of came from here, and he worked at Pi Electronics on Brookpark Road. Stuff like the Pretenders --- Chrissie Hynde’s brother [Terry] is still working in bands out here [15-60-75 The Numbers Band].
EC: A friend of ours who was a rock writer told us once that he interviewed Chrissie Hynde. And he said to her, “…what were you trying to do back then, when you first started out?”
And she said “…just be the Raspberries!”
HF: I want to ask you what would each of you want to leave fans with. What’s the Raspberries legacy that you want to leave people with? Fifty years from now…
EC: …we’ll be doing another reunion!
JB: I think we’ve done that already. I think doing what we did in the last couple of months pretty much has set that legacy. For the first time, I think, the people who have been at THOSE shows have REALLY heard the Raspberries. And other than at the very beginning, when we started, it was like the whole in-between wasn’t REALLY the Raspberries. But now, people are FINALLY hearing the band.
I think that in spite of all that has happened, we have made a mark in music that seems to be getting bigger all the time. And if we can keep our momentum going, this little momentum that we started, I think that we have a lot more to do. It seems like we’re in the right spot for a lot of reasons.
I mean, we talked about the state of music and stuff today…there isn’t anything good. I think people are in search of something different now.
HF: Well, you guys actually perform. You actually get up there and sing.
EC: Sing and play, right!
JB: Yeah, right, yeah!
HF: You guys are credited with starting power pop!
EC: I think the legacy is the music. I think it’s astonishing that 32 years after we played our last gig together, or made our last record, in the space of 15 minutes, people assembled from all over the world to hear this band based on the PROMISE, pretty much, of what was on those records from 30+ years ago, and what they hoped we might sound like.
The fact that, as time has gone on, that people like Springsteen, or Kurt Cobain, or Courtney Love, guys in Motley Crue, Kiss, have ALL admitted to being Raspberries fans. Or being influenced by something we did. Years ago, I was first signing with Geffen Records, the head of A&R there said, “…you know, Axl Rose is a HUGE Raspberries fan.”
And I went, “Axl ROSE is a huge Raspberries fan?”
And he goes, “YEAH! He likes the ‘Starting Over’ album --- he was into the BALLADS!”
I said “…he’s into the BALLADS??” This is the ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ guy?? You know, somebody sent me a tape of Guns ‘n Roses in Japan, or somewhere, a live recording, where they had done this ballad from my first solo album called “Everything” live! And I was dumbfounded!
And I was reading this article about Motley Crue, and how they were formed, on a web site and it was like, “The History of Motley Crue,” and they were talking about how one of the first songs they ever recorded was “Tonight!” They were doing demos, and trying to get a record deal, and it showed up as a bonus on one of their recent re-releases. So there are these people… you know, Kevin Dugan --- one of our roadies, who has worked for Van Halen for the last 20 years --- he called me and he says “…you have no IDEA the influence you’ve had on the musicians I’m working with out here.” He said “…we would go out on the road with Poison, or whoever, and all they would want to know about was --- ‘tell me Raspberries stories!’”
So he said, “when you guys play here, I’ll make some phone calls, and we’ll have quite an assemblage of the rock elite to hear the band!” And I mean, that’s the legacy!
HF: So you think there WILL be some more Raspberries.
EC: Yeah! We’re talking about it now. And I have a friend, Tommy, who I grew up with since the 4th grade, and he went off into the music business in a different avenue…
JB: He left Cleveland.
EC: He LEFT Cleveland.
JB: And now he’s successful! [everyone hoots]
EC: And for the last six years he’s been with Irving Azoff’s management company. He managed Sammy Hagar, who is now singing for Van Halen again, and they have a deal with Van Halen to do their tour, and one day, my friend, Tommy Consolo, and Kevin [Dugan] were talking, and Kevin said something about being from Cleveland. And Tom says “…you know Eric Carmen?”
And Kevin says, “…do I know Eric CARMEN?! I was head of his road crew for years!” And blah, blah, blah, and they get talking, and they tell the stories, and Tommy sent Kevin back --- when Kevin came in to do the rehearsals, he said “…Tommy said to tell you, that if you guys want to go take this any further, please call him because he’ll get you the best deal and whatever.” Here, once again, it’s nice to have someone that I know for my whole life in a management position, because first of all he knows what he’s doing, he’s a GOOD manager. And secondly, maybe this is a situation that can HELP us.
So, we’re gonna talk to him, there have been other people that we have discussed things with --- we have to really sit down and say “…now, where do we want to take this next?”
HF: I think there will be a lot of people happy to hear that you are taking this SOMEPLACE next.
EC: Yeah! Yeah, I don’t think we’re done! We’ve worked too hard to get it up to here! Now the hard work is done!
JB: Right. Now it’s just a question of what to do. And we just, we want to do it right.
EC: Excuse me, one second. [he leaves the room]
JB: We’re trying to be careful, so we don’t make some of the mistakes that we made before. And if we do it right, we can keep the momentum going, and we can continue to have successful shows.
We’re gonna play again. We just want to be careful that we set it up right. ‘Cuz we’re having fun!
[Eric’s 4-year-old daughter flits into the room in a yellow taffeta ballet tutu]
Hello!
ERIC’S DAUGHTER: Hello, where’s my daddy?
JB: He went that-a-way! He’s probably lookin’ for you!
And it’s looking like it’s probably going to be summer [2005]. It’s sounding really good, and it’s getting’ better. It’s been a good thing. It’s really been a good thing or us.
ED: I think you’re talking about my dad’s concert.
HF: I AM talking about his concert, what did YOU think of it?
ED: I liked my daddy’s concert.
HF: How come?
ED: Because he sings good.
EC: [returning] Thank you, sweetie, [out of side of mouth] I’ll give you a quarter later!