By Ryan Sparks
Former 70's glam rock icon Michael Des Barres has definitely crammed many lives into his sixty four years. His recording and performing career spans out over an impressive four decades and the British born Marquis has toured the world countless times over with his seminal rock outfits Silverhead and Detective in the 70's, as well as a brief stints in the rock super groups Chequered Past and The Power Station in the mid 80's. He rubbed shoulders and shared a record label with the mighty Zeppelin and married one of the most famous groupies on the rock 'n roll circuit, Miss Pamela from the GTO's.
Michael has also continued to pursue his acting career which preceded his wild and crazy roller coaster ride in the music business. "I was watching the Olympics the other night and one of my friends on Facebook said that To Sir, With Love was on, which was this movie that I made when I was sixteen. So there I was in 1967on the television with my shades on. I turned around and looked at myself in one of my golden mirrors and said to myself 'Michael you're still wearing sunglasses' [laughs]. I thought what a wonderful life. I've just gone from one pair of shades to another".
While he has had his fair share of ups and downs, both personally and professionally over the last forty years, at this stage in his life he sounds like he couldn't be happier. "Everything is just fantastic", he says. "I've got this show NCIS, which I had no idea was such a huge show, it's so exciting. Everything is exciting, I'm just in this state of excitement, with the record, which gives me this incredible feeling of...working." The new record Michael is referring to is his latest release entitled Carnaby Street, which is named after the famed street in London where he hung out in the latter half of the swinging 60's. The new album, which seemed to come out of nowhere, contains ten, high octane, kick ass tracks that if anything, demonstrates that his passion for the music, is seemingly more alive now that it ever has been.
I recently had a chance to catch up with Michael as he was in full-on press mode to promote the new album. We discussed how the new album came to be, as well as the recently completed reunion shows with Silverhead, his memories of both the Power Station and Chequered Past, and how he abruptly conquered his substance abuse issues over thirty years ago. Read on to find out more about the incomparable Michael Des Barres.
Ryan: First of all I want to say congratulations on the new album Carnaby Street. I think my colleague Jeb Wright hit the nail on the head when he said in his review that "the album came out of nowhere and is a really nice surprise". I love how it has the best of both worlds, in that it harkens back to a time of real music and yet it sounds fresh at the same time.
Michael: That's brilliant because that's exactly what I wanted.
Ryan: Would you say that lyrically the album is mostly autobiographical? I mean the title track is pretty self explanatory, because you were right in the middle of that whole Carnaby street scene in the late 60's in England.
Michael: It's an interesting thing that you bring up and thank you so much for saying that about the album, because that's precisely what my hope was for people; not so much to extol the virtues of the past, but to be reintroduced to the incredible passion and rock 'n roll that was being made at that time, along with the innocence and brilliance of it. It made your hips move, it didn't make your brain move. It was soul music, it wasn't for the brain. I do believe there's a tremendous separation between those two things. Little Richard was not an existentialist philosopher [laughing].
The music that turned me on was existential in the sense that, you're in the moment when you're listening to it. It's in the great cultural moments of being in a trance and it's a rock 'n roll dervish dance, because you're in a state. That's a state that I was lucky enough to experience. I went to school with Mitch Mitchell for Christ sakes! We were standing together in ballet class and he told me he played in a band.
So, one goes to these clubs at fifteen and sixteen, at an impressionable age and one is subjected to, not just The Faces or Steve Marriott, both of whom I absolutely adored, but also Zoot Money, Georgie Fame and John Mayall. Mick Taylor was fifteen and was in a band called The Gods. There was this feeling and recognition that this music would lose face, and the irony is these young English kids were digging the blues. It was really, really interesting. Keith (Richards) expounds upon that in his wonderful book. So, I think fans will see this new record no so much as an homage, but as an invocation of that time, so you can enjoy it. You can feel like it's 1967 and you're in the middle of that. You're on the cobblestone streets of London where the streets are paved with velvet. You can just polka dot yourself until you're blue in the face.
Ryan: That's what music should do. It should take you away. It should be an escape.
Michael: That's right and I just want to fly you there and that's what the album is all about. When I play these festivals and look out into the crowd, everybody is wearing these Zeppelin shirts. And why are they wearing Zeppelin shirts and not Good Charlotte shirts?
Ryan: Well I think we know why [laughs].
Michael: You and I know. And by the way, I have no axe to grind with any of these new bands. My feeling is if you plug in, you're fabulous, god bless you, because it takes a lot of courage. You'll never hear me denigrate anybody. What I will say is, what has come from the precedent or template setting bands is just that, it's not shall we say a parody or almost a satire [laughs], but when someone unique comes along, like a Jack White, who will take something from the past and make it his own - I mean I love Jack White and The Alabama Shakes. I always say that there's so much great music, and the music business can go fuck itself. Well, it already has.
Ryan: My only complaint about the album and it's a good one, is that the album is too short. It's over too quickly.
Michael: It's great that you say that, god bless you. Beggars Banquet and Let it Bleed were the same length. I wanted to prune the shit down and bring it right the way down to where there was nothing extraneous. I didn't want it to be indulgent or all jerk off. I'm going to give you three minute songs, and thirty five or forty minutes, and guess what? I'm going to give you another thirty five minutes in a few months.
Ryan: I can understand that rationale totally. You're more interested in delivering quality over quantity.
Michael: Yeah there's guys that put filler on there. Man, I wrote thirty five songs for this record, my cohorts and I. I toured with it. I played every shit hole club and was happy and proud to do so. The music was born in those clubs in Memphis, Austin and California etc... until those songs were so tight and so part of my DNA, that when the band and I went in to record the album we did it in a week!
Ryan: It sounds like it, because it has this incredible live off the floor feel to it.
Michael: Doesn't it? What I love most about it, is when you can hear the tambourines being thrown between the players. That's my favorite part [laughs].
They're so wise, but rock fans are spoken down to by the pompous rock elite. I think they're treated like just numbers. But all I really think about is what that person is feeling, how are they feeling? How are they going to feel when they hear an ending as opposed to a fade? It's absurd to think we're bestowing the jewels of wisdom on people, because we're not. We're trying to invoke an energy and a passion to make you feel good about yourself. I'm not in this for self aggrandisement. I'm not in this to be adored and worshipped, along with some of the crap that I've seen in rock 'n roll in the last forty years. I have nothing to do with that. I'm an audience member and we're all playing the same songs and moving at the same pace. It's a template that we're all feeling. It's not artist and audience or audience and artist, because without either of those elements you have fuck all.
Ryan: I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this to you, but on some of these songs I couldn't help but wonder if this is what the Faces would sound like if they're were around today making music. Maybe part of that has to do with your voice, which sounds a lot rougher than I remember.
Michael: Well you know I've had a rough life [laughs]. I was raised on David Ruffin. My favorite records are by David Ruffin, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett. I was raised on those guys and so was Rod (Stewart), Steve Marriott, Frankie Miller, Terry Reid, Paul Rodgers and all the great British singers, so of course you're going to sound like each other. As for myself I went off on a tangent when I was so fucked up on heroin back in the Detective days, that I was almost in a trance of another kind.
One thing is for sure, I've led many lives as you probably know. Each life has been fantastic and terrible, difficult and joyous, but I've learned so much from it. I've lived a life you know? I'm sixty four years old, so I've had an awful lot of experience. What's happened is that it's taught me that it's not necessary to know anything [laughs]. Just be what you want. That voice you hear on this album is my true voice, because its relaxed and I'm not thinking about it.
One of the difference is, it's the first album that I've made, and I've made a few, with a guitar around my neck, so therefore I'm playing guitar and singing. So I'm more a part of the whole, rather than just being the singer going in to do the vocals. It all sounds so fuckin' calculated and I hate that. So everything you hear on this record and I'm not exaggerating in anyway, is a live take and every song was done in two takes tops. That's the gods honest truth. And everything you hear me sing is what I was singing right there and then in the moment.
Ryan: Rock 'n roll and even Hollywood is to a large degree a young man's game, so what's the secret to your longevity?
Michael: I think the real secret is that I really take care of myself both physically and spiritually. I exercise everyday and I enjoy every second of it. These are the pragmatic answers and I'll give you the metaphysical answers after [laughs]. Over the years I feel that I've really been able to bring out the best in people and make them feel safe, because I feel that way about myself. There's nothing to be scared of, there's no fear here. I don't have to have ambition. My confidence doesn't come from a desire to be loved. It comes from the idea that I feel a part of what's going on around me all the time. I keep abreast of every fucking band. I could tell you about any new band that is out there right now. I can tell you what's going on musically in Syria right now. I'm aware and enthusiastic about our culture and I haven't retreated from what's happening around me. I've become even more engaged with it as I've gotten older.
The other thing Ryan, and this is a wonderful question and forgive my indulgence in answering it, but the discipline that is required to deal with what is going on in the world right now; I know. Since I was eight years old working as an actor in a very difficult and stress filled profession, where if you don't deliver the fucking goods, you've got a hundred and twenty people looking at you and tens of thousands of dollars going by you every minute, well you better know what to do. I was taught that at such a young age and it's stayed with me all these years. Even during the drug years I would show up. I never missed a gig or missed a day filming. I said yes to everything. God knows I even did an episode of Alf! I've just said yes to whatever has come my way, because as an actor and coming off the various images that people had of you, that in order to dispel the notion of Ozzy biting off the head of the casting director, you've got to work and prove that you can show up and do it. I've had a lot to live down. It's funny, you've either got to live up to something or live something down, when you've been through this crazy little journey that I have. To answer your question, I just engage with everything that I do. I've got the skills to do it and I enjoy every fucking second of it man and that's what allows me to spend two hours out there with a guitar around my neck every night.
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Ryan: You can hear that the hunger is still there. I mean there's more piss and vinegar on this album than what I hear being made by musicians three times younger than yourself.
Michael: Well, it gets so studied you see, and when you're young you want to prove something. I have absolutely fuck all to prove to anybody. I don't even have anything to prove to myself. I'm talking about F.U.N. Having fun and enjoying it, instead of being all nervous and tightening up. Watching the Olympics is very symbolic for me because I'm always in a position where I could choke. Here I am looking into Clint Eastwood's eyes or literally singing with Jimmy Page and what was that like? What it was like was, don't think about it, because if you think about it, you'll fuck up. It's the same with these beautiful athletes, they're not thinking. They train so hard, so that when push comes to shove and they call their name and number, it's let's rock and they go out there and they do it. Sometimes it's glorious and sometimes they fall on their face. For myself, falling on your face is an art, so I can't lose.
Ryan: You once said that for yourself, rock n' roll was all about attitude first and foremost. When you were starting out, what musicians or bands first stood out for you and made you say "Oh yeah, that's what I want to do"?
Michael: Iggy!
Ryan: Iggy? Ok!
Michael: Without question. Iggy was the one that I felt who was as close to perfect that you could get, because he combined brilliant lyricism - let's face it, Iggy is an extraordinarily perceptive and profound lyricist and he combined that with an incredible physicality. I figured if I could marry really simple, brilliant couplets, which could be keys to the human condition and be completely and physically liberated, then I felt that I would be on the right path. He was the one. The other one that seduced me into stealing that passion, was Elvis. Seeing Elvis was shocking really. That a white dude in the middle 50's could come along and do what he was doing, was so incredible. Then it was the blues. So, I would say it was a combination of those three elements. Plus I also fell in love with America, railroads and Kerouac and Marilyn and Coca Cola. I wanted to be in America and be a part of this young country, rather than the decaying, hypocritical, masturbatory, absurdity of the class system in England. I wanted to escape that, because I was raised in these boarding schools. I had a Marquis and a title and all this crap, which was a burden in a sense because England is just that, it's a class war. It's always been a class war. So I wanted to escape from that nonsense and come to a place where I could bleach my hair and kick some ass in Mobile Alabama you know?
Ryan: You started out as an actor, something which you continue to do today. Was the transition from acting to becoming a full time musician a seamless one for you?
Michael: Yes, it was seamless in the sense that - what happened was, because of what London looked and felt like and was, it was pretty clear to me that, because I was an artist first, it became a question of what form I was going to use to express myself. In the beginning for me it was the British theater. That's what I did. I did a lot of Shakespeare and then I did British television playing punks and thugs. Then I got this musical and it was for The Dirtiest Show in Town, it was the nude musical. I played the part of an androgynous rock star.
Ryan: Talk about a perfect role!
Michael: Yeah, I thought "This is really fucking cool". I got to take my clothes off in the West end of London and get paid for it. Not as much as the strippers next door [laughing]. But I found that I had a voice and I could sing. Andrew Lloyd Webber was there and he put a band together with me, which was right around the time of (Jesus Christ) Superstar. I sang the demos for Judas and Ian Gillan was with Deep Purple, so Andrew hooked me up with Purple's management and then we put Silverhead together. So when you say seamless, it was seamless. It was a seamless dream you know? It just came true. I didn't plan it that way man, but it was just the timing itself and the fact of what I could do and what I enjoyed the most. I said "Wow, I could go to Japan now". God knows the Japanese loved guys in eye makeup. It was an easy transition.
Ryan: In the 70's you fronted both Silverhead and Detective. In the case of the latter a lot of money was thrown at you when you signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label. What was it like essentially having the members of Zeppelin as your bosses?
Michael: It was a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that they remain good friends of mine and I love Jimmy and Robert with all my heart and I always will. But, when Bonzo is head of your label, there are problems. The problems at the time were, people would say "Michael, you're with Zeppelin and you've got these millions of dollars, how bad can it be?" Well the fact that we had to wait a year to sign. Everybody wanted us and then we signed with Zeppelin because I knew Jimmy and Robert. Peter Grant I knew and of course there was the Miss Pamela connection as well. We had to wait a year for Jimmy to produce our record and we really wanted Jimmy to produce our record, of course, who wouldn't? The months went by and the indulgences continued, so on that level it was a blessing and a curse. But we did get the album out and people seem to enjoy it more today than they did when it came out. When it came out it disappeared because let's face it, it was on a vanity label. Nobody was promoting the record. Jimmy and Robert loved it, but that didn't mean Ahmet (Ertegun) was. It went gold, but it could have been huge. But I never think about that and I certainly don't have any regrets, because it was an amazing experience. To answer your question it was both a blessing and a curse. I love them dearly to this day.
Ryan: Speaking of Silverhead, the band reunited for some shows in Japan this past spring, the first shows in almost 40 years. How did that come about?
Michael: That's right. It was shocking, because I hadn't seen several of the members of the band for thirty eight years. It was an amazing story. What happened was (Pete) Thompson the drummer was over there with Robin Trower and a promoter approached him and asked him if he thought he could get a hold of the rest of Silverhead and myself and put the band back together for a couple of shows in Tokyo. Thompson said he would try. I got a message from him - Nigel (Harrison) I had stayed in touch with and he called me and said "What the fuck is this?" I told him that I thought it was an absolutely, incredible, wonderful opportunity, even if it was just to see one another again and have some closure, because it ended in a cloud of hashish, hostility and acrimony. I thought it would be an amazing experience to do it. The money didn't mean fuck all to me and it still doesn't, but it was substantial enough that we all agreed to meet in Tokyo. We hadn't seen each other in so many years and everyone lives in different countries. We arrived in the rehearsal room and after thirty eight years there they all were. I took one look at these guys and burst into tears. I could see forty years of hard roads written on every face.
I don't even have words to describe how the gigs went. The best that I can come up with, is it was two things. It was recognition of the band, because you have to understand that Silverhead was way ahead of the game, in terms of punkiness and this sort of fuck you, I don't care what you think and I'm going to fuck your sister. It was that kind of a band, but this was in 1972 when you could get shot for that. We were roughed up a lot. Collectively the band weighed a hundred and fifty pounds [laughs]. When we got together again we realized that we had only ever had to play to audiences that we had to seduce and win over. Whether we were playing in front of Deep Purple or Uriah Heep or whatever the band happened to be, we were the fucking opening act! We'd get lynched out there in our velvet and smudged makeup and the audiences would throw everything they had at us. Fast forward to Tokyo a few months ago and they know every syllable of every word. There's toothless sixty year old glam rockers with lipstick along with eighty percent twenty year olds who have discovered Silverhead on the internet.
Ryan: That's quite a different age demographic there.
Michael: Yeah. And also the older glam rockers were bringing there glamorous children, so it was a really extraordinary demographic. It was a very eclectic audience age wise. We had recognition because they knew every word. We'd look around at each other onstage and think that "Oh my god this is so unusual." The second thing was closure. At the end of it there were these endless lines of these people waiting to see us and we signed everything because the Japanese are fanatic collectors. They're also very sweet and loving people.
The only drama was our guitarist Robbie Blunt, who's really a phenomenal guitar player and who went on to play with Plant, his mother passed away while he was in transit flying from Wales to Tokyo. So we were dealing with his grief alongside this heightened reality of the mighty Silverhead playing together again.
Ryan: There must have been a wide range of emotions and mixed feelings.
Michael: It was a tremendous range of emotions. That's exactly what it was. To me it informed a situation that could have been trivialised. It was so heavy that we could have just dealt with it with typical British humour, but that wasn't the case. Everybody was so sensitive to Robbie's grief that we wanted to play our hearts out. We wanted to give those audiences the best shows they'd ever seen. I'll tell you that for a few minutes in those shows, we were the greatest rock band ever. But I believe that is true of any band. I believe that any band is capable of being the best rock band in the world, on any given night.
Ryan: You stepped in at the last minute for Robert Palmer when he left the Power Station. What was that like? I can imagine that on one hand to be handed that opportunity was an offer you couldn't refuse, but on the other hand it must have been difficult as well. I mean the majority of fans probably weren't even aware that you had replaced him?
Michael: Yeah, but I didn't think about things like that. Because the thing is I'm an actor. So I was cast to play Robert Palmer. I've never Ryan, given any thought to what people think of me. You're given this incredible opportunity - remember this was 1985, I had the biggest number one single in the world that I'd just written and it was huge, so I could give a fuck.
I was in Texas with Don Johnson and we're having a laugh and I got a call from a promoter in New York saying he had a band that needed a singer and he asked me what I was doing that summer. He told me there was a ticket waiting for me at the airport in Marshall Tx. and if I got on the plane I would find out. I was extremely intrigued because my band Chequered Past had just broken up over drugs, egos and whatever other reasons. So I caught a plane and went to New York and there was John (Taylor) and Tony Thompson and I thought "Oh my God", because they had the number one album at the time. It was already a huge hit. I knew Robert from Vinegar Joe years earlier, which was a cult band with him and Elkie Brooks. I had toured with them in the early 70's, so I knew the score and I knew the critics loved him and that he was this R&B, very musical guy with interesting arrangements. Had I thought about it for one second it might have been daunting, but you can't think about things like that. I had thirty songs to learn in ten days before we did a little show called Live Aid. So I didn't have time to think about what critics were going to think of me, not that I cared what they thought about me anyway. If they love you, then they don't love you enough and if they hate you then they hurt your feelings. I learned very early on not to care.
Ryan: Playing Live Aid must have been a major highlight for you and the biggest show of your career?
Michael: It was the biggest show of my career and the biggest show of everybody's career to this day. Nobody was expecting as many people as that.
Ryan: Not including all the people like myself who were sitting at home watching it on TV.
Michael: Yeah I heard it was like 2 billion people. To be in that place and wake up that morning and ask yourself "Michael, how did you get here?" was one of the funniest moments. It was all funny to me. If you look at me on the video I'm just laughing my ass off the whole time, because it was so joyous. I said to myself "Michael, it doesn't matter what got you here, what matters is you are here." There was Madonna all nervous with her twenty eight bangles, and Tina Turner was writing the words on her hand. Ozzy thought Ethiopia was a restaurant [laughs]. It was the funniest thing. There was Woody (Ronnie Wood), Dylan, Keith, Don Johnson and we're all sitting around on a couch and I looked at these characters and I thought "What the fuck am I doing on this couch?" I was struck by the fact that everybody was stoned out of their heads and they looked like a bunch of pirate mugs that you get in a chorus line. This was twenty years before Jack Sparrow. They all looked like members of his crew. It was the greatest day, but at night everybody stayed at the same hotel. Then we flew to, I think it was New Orleans and then our tour began. What was great for me was that for people who didn't know that Palmer had left, well they sure found out that day.
Ryan: It's been well documented that you struggled with drugs and alcohol throughout the 70's and you've been outspoken in your support for anti-drug awareness. What was the catalyst that made you stop? Did the birth of your son have anything to do with it?
Michael: Vanity. I'm being glib, but I woke up one morning and I looked in the mirror and had this flash of awareness. I said to myself "This is so pathetic, this is kid's stuff." From that day I haven't touched it. I didn't got to rehab. You have to remember that when I got sober, which was in June of 1981, it wasn't particularly de-rigour and something to get you on the cover of People magazine. I was a pariah, a leper. I was like something out of a Charlton Heston epic, biblical movie, like I had boils on my face. I was ostracized. People didn't understand that I didn't drink or do drugs, but I understood that it was for kids. It was making me psychotic and it was destroying my natural energy that I had had all my life. It made me listless and uncreative and I thought that was unacceptable. It was more important to be able to look into my sons eyes and be able to connect with him, than it was to look in the eyes of some lower companion with bad coke.
Ryan: You briefly mentioned Chequered Past earlier. Tell me about the genesis of that band, because that was almost like the first super group, before there even was such a term.
Michael: Yeah. It was in '81 and I was in England at the nadir of my drug use. Nigel and Clem (Burke) were with me. Jonesy (Steve Jones) I had met when I had gone to San Francisco to see the Sex Pistols, because I had heard that this was the beginning of something new and that what I was doing was irrelevant. I adored the Bollocks album and when I saw the Pistols I realized that was a new energy and that was the kind of energy that I needed to be reminded of.
Cut to '81 and he came to see us play and we went back to New York and we put the band together with Frank Infante from Blondie, so it was essentially Frank, Clem, Nigel, Jonesy and myself. We played the Peppermint Lounge and it was insane. We went back to L.A. and Frank went back to whatever it was he was doing at the time, so we got Tony Sales in to replace him. It was a fantastic band but the record was absolutely incomparable to the live performances. We acquiesced to EMI, which I later decided stood for Every Mistake Imaginable, because we listened to them. We tried to make an 80's rock 'n roll record. You can hear that some of it really rocks and the collectors and aficionados enjoy a lot of it. There are two or three things on there that are great. How could you not be great with those guys? But it was unsatisfying and we flogged a dead horse for a little bit and it tapered off.
There is a live bootleg out there and if you listen to it the people were insane and we went even more insane. It was incredibly powerful, it felt like The Who live.
Ryan: Were there personality clashes there?
Michael: No there were egotistical battles that were fueled by narcotics. I was sober and in the middle. The rhythm section wasn't and the two guitar players were going up and down and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. The rhythm section was shall we say liquefied and I was in the middle sober. If you wanted to make a movie about rock 'n roll, that's your movie. It was a great thing to be a part of, just to sit next to Steve Jones and listen to him play guitar. I was quite happy to do that you know? But he was really hurting and still dealing with the aftermath of the Pistols breakup and having to deal with Malcom Mclaren. It really hurt his feelings, because he's really a sensitive man. So, there were a lot of outside pressures and it became traumatic for everyone involved. I loved those guys. Everybody that I've worked with I'm fond of. I can't even express it, because they're a part of me and helped make me who I am.
Ryan: Your ex-wife of course wrote a couple of books based upon her relationships with some very high profile musicians. How do you think you were portrayed in the books?
Michael: Well my view about being portrayed in any of these books is, do you have good photographs? If you have good photographs of me in the book then I'll be very happy. There's nothing that I can do about what she wrote about me. I respect and love her to this day and I think the books were phenomenal and the portrayal of me was absolutely accurate. I have no axe to grind. When I was reading the galley's of it I never dreamed of going to her and saying "Oh you can't write this", because that was her experience. You can't tell somebody not to write something about you. I would never ask someone to change their version of who I am.
Ryan: We will see the day when we get a book or memoir by Michael Des Barres?
Michael: Most certainly. I think it will be a wonderful book that will be full of joy, promise and wonder. Hopefully it will give you the impetus and the energy to move forward and to enjoy every second and to create and be expressive. And to know that whatever you do come across, it's a message, it's a lesson and something that you can transcend and make something beautiful and worthwhile out of it, especially today. Because today we need to love and really support each other. I'm not being flippant and glib or trying to be some pompous, metaphysical person. I have been through hell and heaven and they all look the same [laughs]. Everything is what you perceive it to be and I've had a wonderful and blessed journey that hasn't even started yet.
Ryan: Last question. If you knew now what you didn't know then, would you change anything or do anything differently?
Michael: There was one night where I wore some silver pants that ripped and my cock fell out. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. That's the glib answer. The truth is... there's not one second I would change [laughs].
