Java.Dummy.2016

Why Phoenix? How come you have stayed?
The weather motivated me. I lived in a great music city, Chicago, and
loved going to shows there. But I didn’t think I could make it there. It
seemed so wide open here back in the early ’70s and I hooked up with
a new concert club called Dooley’s [which was most recently known as
the Electric Ballroom, located on Apache Boulevard in Tempe, but the
building has not been an active concert venue for over a decade and
now houses a charter school]. Had some great times in there. Broke
a lot of great bands, like the Police, Talking Heads, Cheap Trick, and
made friends with Muddy Waters there. Some years later, we broke
Nirvana in there, No Doubt, Black Crowes and so many others.
[Writer’s note: I still have my ticket stub from seeing Nirvana in October
of 1991 at After the Gold Rush—which was what Dooley’s was called
in the early ’90s—and it was an epic show not long after Nirvana
broke the music world wide open. Thanks for that, Danny!]
Is there an “Arizona sound” and if so, what is it? Who are the
quintessential Arizona bands and artists?
Not really, but there are lots of great bands. Roger Clyne and the
Peacemakers, Jerry Riopelle, Alice Cooper, the Tubes, Stevie Nicks are
all from here and are all very diverse. Lots of great new bands, too,
like Kongos, getting attention.
What advice would you give yourself if you could go back
40 years?
Start getting guitars signed before 1990. It drives me nuts I wasn’t
asking Nirvana and Muddy [Waters] and Stevie Ray [Vaughan, who
died in 1990], to name a couple, for signed axes. I love getting
cool signed stuff. I also wish I would have kept Compton Terrace
as a venue and not gone along with the guys who built Desert Sky
14 JAVA
MAGAZINE