PUNK ROCK (BEFORE GROUND ZERO) Imperial Dogs
Mar 10, 2010
"We were just trying to shock people out of their hippy-dippy complacency": The hard-rocking early ‘70s L.A. band did just that.
BY JOHN B. MOORE
On an October night in 1974, the Imperial Dogs played a blistering hour-long concert at California State College to hundreds of stunned teens and 20-somethings. I have no way of knowing exactly what the audience was expecting, but judging from their tepid, and often awkwardly quiet reaction to this fantastic live set of a dozen or so songs - collected on video, and recently available on DVD, for anyone who wants visual evidence - it clearly was not this.
The L.A. foursome, together for less than a year at this point, delivered the first glimpse of punk rock to an audience that clearly wasn't ready the frantic mix of loud guitars, tongue in cheek lyrics and shocking visuals. The show is a brilliant look at punk rock before many even knew the genre existed. Though The Imperial Dogs never really got the national exposure they deserved, the Live! In Long Beach (October 30, 1974) DVD will hopefully educate an entirely new generation that punk rock is more than skinny jeans, asymmetrical haircuts, and Blink 182 reuniting.
Dogs frontman Don Waller was kind enough to indulge a handful of questions recently.
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BLURT: You guys were playing punk rock long before many in the U.S. had ever heard of it. How did people react to the music and the band's image at the time?
WALLER: Well, what used to be called "punk rock" is now called "garage rock" 'cause the Ramones caused everybody to redefine that term. And none of what we now call "punk rock" bands (The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, etc. - with the exception of Iggy & The Stooges) even existed, let alone had made records, when we were doing this...
As far as people's reactions ... our friends - at least the ones who understood what we were doing - and some of the people who came to see us liked us, but most people either HATED us (yelling insults, calling us fags, telling us to turn it down or "play something we know") or - like you see on the DVD - just stood there like a Goddamn oil painting. They didn't know WHAT to make of us. And of course, people always told us we couldn't play -- 'cause we didn't sound like Led Zeppelin or Genesis or Yes or Jethro Tull -- which, as you can tell from watching or listening to the DVD, is total bullshit. Basically it was a combination of apathy and antipathy, so we just got more aggressive musically and acted even wilder to combat this. When I jumped into the audience swinging a chain or faked chain-whipping a heckler in a wheelchair - who then spit blood capsules all over himself - when we played Rodney's the first time, we sent half the people in the room screaming onto the sidewalk. (The guy in the wheelchair was our pal, Eric Saari, who can be seen dancing with that girl - another pal of ours - to "Sweet Little Strychnine" on the DVD.) We wanted to shock that Hollywood crowd and get 'em talking about us, but we didn't think people would take it so seriously.
What do you remember about that show at California State College that is documented on the DVD?
It was a nightmare. I've always said that it's the worst show we ever did. To begin with, we'd distributed thousands and thousands of flyers advertising the show to every high school, record store, music store, stereo store, etc. within 20 miles of the college, so when only 250 people showed up, which meant the room was only about a third full, we were disappointed.
Then we found out the lights would have to remain on so the primitive camera could capture anything, which not only made the stage hotter than the proverbial seventh circle of Hell, but made the audience - 90% of whom had never seen us before - feel like they were under surveillance. And made us feel like we were under a microscope. It's hard to create any sense of drama or mystery when you're in a metaphorical Petri dish.
Plus, there were all these "technical difficulties," such as my chain belt breaking as soon as we take the stage, which forced us to bring everything to a halt so I could repair it (which is why there's that odd interruption before we start the first song), which derailed the momentum we were trying to build.
And although you can't see this on the DVD, the entire wall behind the camera was floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows, which causes the sound to bounce back. (There's a good reason recording studios don't have a lot of glass in them.) So, not only could we not play as loud as we wanted to, we're getting this non-stop stream of feedback that only abates when the band is playing 'cause we're drowning it out, and is, of course, a constant annoyance to both us and the audience.
Then - 'cause of all the heat from the lights and 'cause leather will s-t-r-e-t-c-h when you're sweating like a toad and jumping around like a baboon in heat -- my trousers keep slipping down, which is extremely distracting and prevents me from doing all the stage moves that I wanna do.
And ... the audience's non-reaction is extremely frustrating, which is why when Paul (Therrio, guitar) breaks a string at the end of "I'm Waiting For The Man" and has to attach a new one, my intro rap to "This Ain't The Summer Of Love" gets elongated and turns into this over-the-top, exercise in audience-baiting. (Laughs.) Finally, when we watched the tape for the first time, everything that went wrong -- including a couple of clams that aren't all that obvious to anyone but the boys in the band -- got completely magnified. (I also learned that wearing sunglasses prevents you from making as much audience contact and expressing as much emotion as you want, so I never wore shades onstage again.) We also thought that some of the material didn't work as well as we thought it would -- we wanted people to dance -- so we immediately dropped some of those songs and wrote new ones. Basically, we all thought it was a great disappointment. (And I really hated it.) When we played Rodney's for the first time two weeks later, we did a much better show. Which says a lot for studying "game films."
A lot of the band's imagery - like the swastikas - would probably not fly today. What was the reaction from those who saw it?
You're right that more people are disturbed by that Reichskreigflagge today. (We originally intended to have a U.S.S.R. flag on the opposite side, but amusingly enough, those were harder to find and we hadn't gotten around to it.) We weren't advocating white supremacy. We were just trying to shock people out of their hippy-dippy complacency. After all, everyone from surfers to bikers had already appropriated Iron Crosses. Tim put the swastika on the "barf bags" that we passed out at the door, which was a riff on the blood and foaming capsules that I used to simulate a puking O.D. onstage in the instrumental section of "This Ain't The Summer Of Love" (because the camera is operating from a fixed position you can't see this -- on any of the rest of my "floor work" -- on the DVD). We didn't know he did that until we got them back from our pal who'd silk-screened 'em.
As far as "Amphetamine Superman" goes, that song is about how the Nazi high command was a bunch of speed-freaks (hey, the Germans invented amphetamine and fed it to their soldiers) and the real message of the song is that if you don't take control of your life, there are always people who are more than willing to do so for you. (And, of course, it's about the feeling of omnipotence created by a massive ingestion of amphetamines ...)
Most people just thought of all this stuff - the fake blood, the flags, the self-flagellation and chain-swinging audience invasion --as shock theatre. We never had people coming up to us and complaining about it. But then, maybe they were too intimidated...
What do you think about the current state of punk music?
Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I think it's like a suburban version of the blues. It's a form that people still play and enjoy, but long since divorced from the reality and the vitality of socio-cultural environment that spawned it... Almost a museum piece. Like "Say hello to Sid Vicious or Darby Crash for me." And I really don't like how so much of it has no socio-political content whatsoever - no fuck the police, fuck the school, fuck the adults, fuck the square heads - it's all "please join our gang" (and buy our T-shirts and merchandise). Of course, there are a few exceptions and good on 'em.
But who am I to tell some 12-year-old kid who's just discovering this for the first time that his or her feelings aren't valid? If you dig that music and want to play it or listen to it, go head on. There are certainly a whole helluva lotta more horrible things that people are listening to. If I had children - which I don't - I'd rather have 'em aspiring to be on the Warped Tour than "American Idol."
Are you surprised the punk music is actually considered safe now and even used in marketing and on TV shows?
Yes and no. After all, punk music - in the form of the first Ramones album - has been around for 34 years now and mainstream pop culture will eventually assimilate almost everything from Bollywood soundtracks to all kinds of African music to electronic blips 'n' bleeps. On one hand, it kinda shows how de-fanged punk music has become. On the other, it's a wonderful vindication of how great it really was. I'm glad so many of these acts are finally getting paid for their work 'cause they certainly didn't make any money back in the day. I mean, The Ramones music has been used in more than 40 movies, not to mention TV shows and commercials, 'cause the tunes are catchy and they're an immediate sonic signifier/shorthand for "now this is punk-rock."
Of course, it was once surprising to hear "Search And Destroy" or "Everybody's Happy Nowdays" blasting out of my TV set, but that sort of thing has become commonplace. Truth is, you hear better music in commercials than you do on the radio - unless you're listening to satellite radio or an Internet station.
Yeah, punk's safe as milk - unless it's carrying an overt radical political message. Nobody's gonna give anyone a forum for a song that says we need universal, single-payer health care here in America. Or that the whole war in Iraq was/is a waste of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. Or how deregulation in the name of free-market economics has made the rich richer, the poor poorer, and is wiping out the middle class ... Or ... or ... or ... well, there's still an awful lot to be pissed off about. (Laughs)
Ever thought about getting the band back together?
Ever since the DVD hit the streets, people keep asking us that. But it's really not feasible. For one thing, Bill (Willett, drums) just shuffled off this mortal coil, and there's no way we could do a proper "reunion" without him. He was a monster drummer. Plus, Tim (Hilger) lost his bass, his amp, and everything else he owned in a house fire back in the early-'80s and hasn't played since. And ... we all live hours apart, so getting everyone together to practice the material would be difficult. And we would have to practice 'cause a lot of our material is more complex than you might think -- it's not like we could just go out there and hack our way though the equivalent of "Louie Louie."
Furthermore, Paul, Tim, and Bill all have (or in Bill's case, had) high-paying jobs (computer programmer, accountant, and aerospace engineer, respectively), so someone would have to pile a whole lotta money on the table -- more money than any reasonable promoter would want to risk -- to get those guys to even consider doing something like that.
Finally, I'm not sure that we could ever get to that crazed level of intensity that you see on the DVD. And anything less would just tarnish whatever reputation we have. And, to me, the idea of going onstage with a bunch of replacement musicians is just pathetic. And the same goes for Paul and I doing acoustic versions of those songs.
Do you have any unreleased material from the band that might surface?
Oh yeah. But first let's sell all these DVDs and prove there's an audience for that.
To begin with, there are three songs that appeared on Unchained Maladies that aren't found on the DVD: "The Bad And The Beautiful" and "13 Sons Of Satan" ('cause we hadn't written those at the time the Long Beach show was taped) and "Needle & Spoon" from the Gazarri's tape - 'cause we'd dropped that from the set 'cause we thought it was "too conventional" (Laughs). There's also an Imperial Dogs' original called "Suck City Shakedown" and a pair of strong covers (Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown" and Earl Vince & The Valiant's' "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite") that are on that practice session tape and I wouldn't mind making any of that stuff available in the future.
What's next for you?
I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball -- last time I looked, mine were both flesh and blood -- basically, I'm gonna keep writing for anyone who's willing to pay me even a halfway decent wage. I don't like to talk about projects that haven't been firmed up yet 'cause there's many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip. I think Shakespeare said that.
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