Brooklyn born Earl Slick saw the Beatles on TV when he was twelve and within a few months had a guitar, learned how to play it and started putting bands together. Since then hes had a pretty damn good run and hes still going. Hes recorded very successful albums with David Bowie: David Live, Young Americans and Station to Station and first toured with him on 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. That led being invited to play with John Lennon on Double Fantasy.
After working with Bowie up until the late 1980s Slick had what he calls a career crisis and took some time off during the mid-nineties but now hes back with his best and most personal album to date. Its called Zig Zag, its all guitar by Slick and features lyrics and vocals by Joe Elliott of Def Leopard, David Bowie and Robert Smith of The Cure.
Check out the official website for Earl Slick
Daniel Robert Epstein: So youre talking to me instead of watching the Super Bowl. I guess youre not a big football fan.
Earl Slick: Zero. I dont have a clue about the game.
DRE: What about the other guys on the tour?
ES: I havent heard anybody talk about it. Our tour manager is an absolute sports freak. Hes a Brit so he usually watches the soccer [laughs].
DRE: Thats not a real sport.
ES: I think he actually knows American sports pretty well because he was watching baseball and I got a feeling hes into it.
DRE: If hes British and he likes baseball thats pretty bizarre.
ES: I actually think he likes American football as well.
DRE: I read that youre enjoying a second chance; do you think thats true?
ES: I think its more like a third or fourth chance. Its a weird life, man. Its up, its down, it changes. Its a really funny thing because I decided in the mid-90s to just get out because it wasnt fun. Things had just gotten kind of strange.
DRE: What happened?
ES: I wasnt enjoying what I was doing. The things I was doing just werent going anywhere and I absolutely think I lost direction of what I started doing this for in the first place.
DRE: At the time were you doing your own stuff or just working with other people?
ES: I was doing everything; I was doing some of my stuff, working with some other people. Sometimes the tail wags the dog. Thats kind of what ended up happening. When you do something for awhile all of a sudden youre just mindlessly going in a direction and before you realize it youve just kind of been on automatic pilot.
DRE: If you had to classify this would you call it a mid life crisis?
ES: Its possible.
DRE: Did you go buy a Porsche?
ES: A mid-career crisis. Ill give you that much
DRE: Its not like work wasnt coming to you. Youre still the go to guy for a lot of people, right?
ES: It wasnt coming as much and what was coming I wasnt very happy with. What I was creating on my own I wasnt very happy with. It was just that Ive been doing it a long time so I think I just burned out and lost direction.
DRE: So you took off for about seven years?
ES: No it wasnt that long. It was the end of 1994 until somewhere around 1998 when I started to get my feet wet a little bit. Then by 2000 I was back in.
DRE: What did you do for those four years?
ES: You know, for a year I put all my instruments in storage and then I pulled a few guitars out and I just played for myself. I still wasnt all that inspired. It was a bizarre thing that I never really thought would happen but in hindsight it was actually the best thing because it gave me a chance to really get away.
DRE: When you picked up a guitar did you just fall right back into it?
ES: Oh yeah.
DRE: Thats pretty amazing.
I told people that I was talking to you and some people were just like,Oh Slick is amazing. and others said, I dont know who that is. Is that the kind of thing that happens to you a lot?
ES: Within the industry Im well known.
DRE: Of course.
ES: Theres pockets of fans thatll know me and not everybody will. It depends on what kind of stuff they listen to.
DRE: Whats Zig Zag mean to you?
ES: The album Zig Zag was not even supposed to happen because I never did make another hit record after I started working with David [Bowie]. I started to get re-inspired so I just started writing for no reason and I was really digging it. Then as time went on I started compiling a lot of stuff and really liking it. So the next thing was that I just called up Mark Plati who ended up producing the record and said, You know Mark, why dont we put together some studio time and go cut some tracks. I think I want to make a record. Then it kind of went from there.
DRE: Its just that Zig Zag sounds like kind of thing that like Stevie Ray Vaughn would have called his album also. Its just something that works for you.
ES: Zig Zag is a place. Its a place up in the foothills of Mount Hood outside of Portland in Oregon. I lived there for awhile. Its a really beautiful forest and it was a place I used to like to go to because my sanity is nature especially forests. One of the first tracks that I wrote was this instrumental when I came back from there one day. The music started getting in my head in the car on the way back, I wrote the thing in about two hours and then I named it Zig Zag.
DRE: Did you write any of the lyrics?
ES: No, none.
DRE: When you were going to people like Joe Elliot and Bowie you were cool with them writing whatever lyrics they wanted?
ES: That was the idea. I had this music and we got to the point where we were talking about doing vocals. But David actually volunteered to do something on the record. I never realized we were going to end up doing an actual full-blown song. Then I gave him stuff to listen to and he wrote those lyrics and the funny thing is, especially the lyrics on Believe and Isn't It Evening those two songs and Zig Zag actually very much describe where I was at and things that Ive actually experienced. Its bizarre because I never talked to any of these guys about that stuff [laughs]. The music must have just reflected some kind of a feeling that caused them to write those lyrics
DRE: A lot of these guys are long-time collaborators and its funny that youre surprised that they seem to connect with you, because obviously they connected 20 and 30 years ago as well.
ES: Right, but the thing was that the lyrics were so like if I were to write lyrics myself.
DRE: Oh wow.
Why do you seem to have a block when it comes to lyrics?
ES: I gave up on it a long time ago. Ive got some songs I wrote lyrics to on some of my older albums but I never was very happy with myself as a lyricist. I should concentrate on what I can do best and I dont try to do things I cant do very well. Because I could spend a lot of time trying to do something that doesnt come naturally to me or I could develop the things that do come naturally to me.
DRE: How easy was it to get to Bowie and Robert Smith? Im sure you have a phone number that you can call them up. But was it a big deal?
ES: It wasnt. What ended up happening was that as we started recording some stuff things just fell into place. I never asked David or Robert or Joe Elliot to do their tracks.
DRE: How does that happen?
ES: With David I was on the phone with Mark Plati and David overhead the conversation. Then he called me and So youre going to go into the studio with Mark. Thats really good news. Im real happy about that. So I guess youre not interested in me coming in and maybe doing something, like background vocals or keyboards. It sounded like a good idea to me. With Robert it was Mark Plati again. We went in and redid a Cure song called The Forest. My version is on the new Cure Box Set. When Mark went over to London to mix it with Robert Smith, he brought over some of the stuff that we were recording and he played it for Robert. Robert got excited and wanted to get involved.
Ive never done an album thats fallen into place like that. I think one of the lessons I learned on my time off was do what you do and everything else will fall into place. You got to be patient, I had to learn that.
DRE: For you, for things to feel forced must be the worst feeling in the world.
ES: It sucks. I dont like when I have to force anything whether its writing a song or putting together anything in this business. I dont like forcing things. Its a funny thing because the best stuff that ever happened to me in this business fell on me.
DRE: What was that?
ES: Right off with the David Bowie situation in 1974 I had a very dear friend named Michael Kamen.
DRE: The film composer?
ES: Yes actually Michael passed away about in November.
Michael took me under his wing when I was like 19 years old and helped me out producing my band. Then when he went on the road he took me out because he had a rock band before he became a composer. It was band called the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble and he took me out as a guitar player. Bowie had mentioned to him he was looking for a guitar player and Michael suggested that I do it. At the time my focus was on the band and trying to go out and get a deal.
DRE: What band were you in at the time?
ES: I think the name of the band might have been Scandal before the other Scandal but I honestly couldnt tell you. There was a singer named Bo Jack. Then we had another guitarist named Jimmy Mac who also sang lead, they used to split the leads.
The John Lennon thing was another weird situation where my manager just got a phone call one day from Jack Douglas. Douglas said, Were going in the studio with John Lennon and he wants Earl Slick to play on the album.
Its the same thing that happened with this album and this last four years that Ive been working with Bowie again. We hadnt talked in nine years. Then all of a sudden I got contacted one day and they said, David wants you to come back and, and do some work.
DRE: It was also the internet that changed things for you as well.
ES: The funny story about the internet is on my time off I put together a site called, Slick Music Inc. We were repackaging peoples obscure stuff like demos and unreleased stuff so we put together this little record company on the internet. Thats how David tracked me down because I was pretty invisible at the time and they just did an internet search, found the site and left me a message
The email showed the office name and the phone number. My webmaster goes, we got this message on here to the webmaster from so and so at this phone number. I thought, oh thats weird, thats Bowies office.
DRE: [laughs] Whats it like collaborating with Bowie again after such a long time?
ES: Last time we actually did anything together was in the 80s so it had been a long time. It is different because were different.
DRE: Did you guys always get along well?
ES: Yeah, we always got along well but its hard to describe. Its really easy, its a lot of fun, were having a really good time and it feels more natural than it ever did.
DRE: Whats it like working with Sanctuary Records?
ES: I love Sanctuary.
DRE: Had you ever done anything with them before?
ES: No the way we came up with that was, I had a friend of mine named Frankie La Rocca whos worked A & R on a variety of record companies and we had been buddies since forever. Hes real good at this stuff and I said, I want to go get a deal. Obviously were not going to go to the majors so see what you can come up with. So he came up with a bunch of ideas and we ran through everything and he was really excited more than anything about the Sanctuary thing.
DRE: Why wouldnt you go to the major labels?
ES: First of all, I wasnt sure if they would be interested in me and if they were interested in me it would be only because I would be playing with David again; which wouldnt suit me well in the long term.
[Sanctuary Records CEO] Merck Mercuriadis signed me in the label because they dont even have an A & R department and I sat down and I told him what I was looking to do and how I wanted to do it. We were on the same page and it just felt like the right thing to do.
I want my music out there and Im not as convinced as everybody else that right now youre going to go out with a new record, put up a website and do enough business to keep going. I dont believe it.
DRE: I think youre right.
ES: I know Im right.
As much as there always artists versus the corporate thing, you have to realize that this is a business and you have to generate enough business so you can actually do what you love to do which is play music. Unless youve got some rich girlfriend that just wants to pay your bills and you can just run around playing for free for the rest of your life [laughs].
DRE: What was it like working with John Lennon and Yoko back then?
ES: It was pretty cool, how could it not be. It was great to work with one of the guys that was instrumental for me even being in the business in the first place, John and the Beatles. The Beatles were a big inspiration but Lennon was the one I gravitated towards when I was a kid. There are certain people that you work with that get it [laughs]. We went in the studio as a band, we were treated like we were a band, he was at the sessions every day and he liked the idea of being in the band.
We went in the studio and said, Hey this is the song for today, this is the chords, lets play it. Wed play it, run it down a bunch of times and if it felt good wed record it. Then hang out and get some lunch. I mean it was just like you were just hanging out with your own band.
DRE: Thats great.
ES: Thats why I dont do sessions at all anymore and I never really did a ton of em, because I dont like the idea of walking in to a situation where youre hired because you have a particular name or youre reputation gets you hired. Obviously I worked pretty hard for my reputation and it does serve me well. I got a call from somebody about doing a record earlier this year and I was called because I was with Bowie. These guys were so far off the mark, I ended up not doing it but I mean they couldnt have picked the more wrong guitar player for the project.
DRE: Thats no fun.
ES: Thats bullshit. At this point I dont have to do that, I dont want to do it. What Im really interested, besides working with David, is doing my own albums, scoring some movies which is something that were working on right now.
DRE: Did the idea to do movies come from knowing Michael Kamen?
ES: When I was working with Michael I never thought about doing it myself. Then right before I took a break in 94, I wrote some stuff and sent it out and I really wasnt getting any results out of it. But I also didnt really understand the machinery behind it all. Its very political and it takes a lot of to get yourself out there with the right people and I didnt realize that at the time. I had the bug about ten years ago to start doing this and now it looks like its going to be falling into place.
DRE: Can you say what?
ES: No theres nothing in particular happening right now. I have people working for me right now who are involved and very excited about it so things will pop.
DRE: When you get to do the scores is it going to be guitars?
ES: Yeah.
DRE: Have you toured with Zig Zag yet?
ES: No Im still on the road with David. Were in the middle of a huge tour right now.
DRE: I think I read it the tour ends in April.
ES: Not anymore [laughs]. I think maybe the summer.
What Im going to do for my album is at the end of the year I want to go out and do some dates but theres no way to do a tour because weve been out so long with David that when I get back, what I really want to do is to start writing again
DRE: Will that be another Earl Slick album?
ES: Another Earl Slick album and just writing in general. Then Ill start weeding through the stuff and figure out what Ill just save for other things and what I might use for myself.
DRE: How many bands have you been in?
ES: A lot [laughs]
DRE: [laughs] Youre talking twenty or thirty?
ES: No Id say probably about seven or eight bands. But Im not interested in ever putting together a band for myself again.
DRE: You dont think youll change your mind?
ES: My interests have changed. Maybe Ill put together a band to do gigs.
DRE: Right, right.
ES: But as far as saying, Im going to go find a great singer, Im going to put a band together. I dont want to do that. I like the freedom of being able to do my solo thing which leaves me open to work with David, which leaves me open to the movie stuff.
DRE: Are you with anybody right now?
ES: No.
DRE: Really?
ES: Nope.
DRE: Whats the problem?
ES: Ah, Im too busy.
DRE: [laughs] What about groupies?
ES: Years ago. Im not twenty-five.
The difference with that whole mind-set these days is todays my day off right?
DRE: Right.
ES: Im going to talk to you and then Im going to talk to a few other people and then Im getting picked up by Sanctuary and going down to San Diego to do a radio show. Im really realizing that one of the things that probably happened before is that my head wasnt really screwed on straight and I wasnt keeping an eye on my business
DRE: Did you get screwed?
ES: No I didnt get screwed, but my head wasnt screwed on straight. If anything I screwed myself by not staying on top of stuff.
DRE: Oh, alright.
ES: Which I think a lot of people in this business get guilty of is getting caught up in the moment and your priorities get a little upside down.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
After working with Bowie up until the late 1980s Slick had what he calls a career crisis and took some time off during the mid-nineties but now hes back with his best and most personal album to date. Its called Zig Zag, its all guitar by Slick and features lyrics and vocals by Joe Elliott of Def Leopard, David Bowie and Robert Smith of The Cure.
Check out the official website for Earl Slick
Daniel Robert Epstein: So youre talking to me instead of watching the Super Bowl. I guess youre not a big football fan.
Earl Slick: Zero. I dont have a clue about the game.
DRE: What about the other guys on the tour?
ES: I havent heard anybody talk about it. Our tour manager is an absolute sports freak. Hes a Brit so he usually watches the soccer [laughs].
DRE: Thats not a real sport.
ES: I think he actually knows American sports pretty well because he was watching baseball and I got a feeling hes into it.
DRE: If hes British and he likes baseball thats pretty bizarre.
ES: I actually think he likes American football as well.
DRE: I read that youre enjoying a second chance; do you think thats true?
ES: I think its more like a third or fourth chance. Its a weird life, man. Its up, its down, it changes. Its a really funny thing because I decided in the mid-90s to just get out because it wasnt fun. Things had just gotten kind of strange.
DRE: What happened?
ES: I wasnt enjoying what I was doing. The things I was doing just werent going anywhere and I absolutely think I lost direction of what I started doing this for in the first place.
DRE: At the time were you doing your own stuff or just working with other people?
ES: I was doing everything; I was doing some of my stuff, working with some other people. Sometimes the tail wags the dog. Thats kind of what ended up happening. When you do something for awhile all of a sudden youre just mindlessly going in a direction and before you realize it youve just kind of been on automatic pilot.
DRE: If you had to classify this would you call it a mid life crisis?
ES: Its possible.
DRE: Did you go buy a Porsche?
ES: A mid-career crisis. Ill give you that much
DRE: Its not like work wasnt coming to you. Youre still the go to guy for a lot of people, right?
ES: It wasnt coming as much and what was coming I wasnt very happy with. What I was creating on my own I wasnt very happy with. It was just that Ive been doing it a long time so I think I just burned out and lost direction.
DRE: So you took off for about seven years?
ES: No it wasnt that long. It was the end of 1994 until somewhere around 1998 when I started to get my feet wet a little bit. Then by 2000 I was back in.
DRE: What did you do for those four years?
ES: You know, for a year I put all my instruments in storage and then I pulled a few guitars out and I just played for myself. I still wasnt all that inspired. It was a bizarre thing that I never really thought would happen but in hindsight it was actually the best thing because it gave me a chance to really get away.
DRE: When you picked up a guitar did you just fall right back into it?
ES: Oh yeah.
DRE: Thats pretty amazing.
I told people that I was talking to you and some people were just like,Oh Slick is amazing. and others said, I dont know who that is. Is that the kind of thing that happens to you a lot?
ES: Within the industry Im well known.
DRE: Of course.
ES: Theres pockets of fans thatll know me and not everybody will. It depends on what kind of stuff they listen to.
DRE: Whats Zig Zag mean to you?
ES: The album Zig Zag was not even supposed to happen because I never did make another hit record after I started working with David [Bowie]. I started to get re-inspired so I just started writing for no reason and I was really digging it. Then as time went on I started compiling a lot of stuff and really liking it. So the next thing was that I just called up Mark Plati who ended up producing the record and said, You know Mark, why dont we put together some studio time and go cut some tracks. I think I want to make a record. Then it kind of went from there.
DRE: Its just that Zig Zag sounds like kind of thing that like Stevie Ray Vaughn would have called his album also. Its just something that works for you.
ES: Zig Zag is a place. Its a place up in the foothills of Mount Hood outside of Portland in Oregon. I lived there for awhile. Its a really beautiful forest and it was a place I used to like to go to because my sanity is nature especially forests. One of the first tracks that I wrote was this instrumental when I came back from there one day. The music started getting in my head in the car on the way back, I wrote the thing in about two hours and then I named it Zig Zag.
DRE: Did you write any of the lyrics?
ES: No, none.
DRE: When you were going to people like Joe Elliot and Bowie you were cool with them writing whatever lyrics they wanted?
ES: That was the idea. I had this music and we got to the point where we were talking about doing vocals. But David actually volunteered to do something on the record. I never realized we were going to end up doing an actual full-blown song. Then I gave him stuff to listen to and he wrote those lyrics and the funny thing is, especially the lyrics on Believe and Isn't It Evening those two songs and Zig Zag actually very much describe where I was at and things that Ive actually experienced. Its bizarre because I never talked to any of these guys about that stuff [laughs]. The music must have just reflected some kind of a feeling that caused them to write those lyrics
DRE: A lot of these guys are long-time collaborators and its funny that youre surprised that they seem to connect with you, because obviously they connected 20 and 30 years ago as well.
ES: Right, but the thing was that the lyrics were so like if I were to write lyrics myself.
DRE: Oh wow.
Why do you seem to have a block when it comes to lyrics?
ES: I gave up on it a long time ago. Ive got some songs I wrote lyrics to on some of my older albums but I never was very happy with myself as a lyricist. I should concentrate on what I can do best and I dont try to do things I cant do very well. Because I could spend a lot of time trying to do something that doesnt come naturally to me or I could develop the things that do come naturally to me.
DRE: How easy was it to get to Bowie and Robert Smith? Im sure you have a phone number that you can call them up. But was it a big deal?
ES: It wasnt. What ended up happening was that as we started recording some stuff things just fell into place. I never asked David or Robert or Joe Elliot to do their tracks.
DRE: How does that happen?
ES: With David I was on the phone with Mark Plati and David overhead the conversation. Then he called me and So youre going to go into the studio with Mark. Thats really good news. Im real happy about that. So I guess youre not interested in me coming in and maybe doing something, like background vocals or keyboards. It sounded like a good idea to me. With Robert it was Mark Plati again. We went in and redid a Cure song called The Forest. My version is on the new Cure Box Set. When Mark went over to London to mix it with Robert Smith, he brought over some of the stuff that we were recording and he played it for Robert. Robert got excited and wanted to get involved.
Ive never done an album thats fallen into place like that. I think one of the lessons I learned on my time off was do what you do and everything else will fall into place. You got to be patient, I had to learn that.
DRE: For you, for things to feel forced must be the worst feeling in the world.
ES: It sucks. I dont like when I have to force anything whether its writing a song or putting together anything in this business. I dont like forcing things. Its a funny thing because the best stuff that ever happened to me in this business fell on me.
DRE: What was that?
ES: Right off with the David Bowie situation in 1974 I had a very dear friend named Michael Kamen.
DRE: The film composer?
ES: Yes actually Michael passed away about in November.
Michael took me under his wing when I was like 19 years old and helped me out producing my band. Then when he went on the road he took me out because he had a rock band before he became a composer. It was band called the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble and he took me out as a guitar player. Bowie had mentioned to him he was looking for a guitar player and Michael suggested that I do it. At the time my focus was on the band and trying to go out and get a deal.
DRE: What band were you in at the time?
ES: I think the name of the band might have been Scandal before the other Scandal but I honestly couldnt tell you. There was a singer named Bo Jack. Then we had another guitarist named Jimmy Mac who also sang lead, they used to split the leads.
The John Lennon thing was another weird situation where my manager just got a phone call one day from Jack Douglas. Douglas said, Were going in the studio with John Lennon and he wants Earl Slick to play on the album.
Its the same thing that happened with this album and this last four years that Ive been working with Bowie again. We hadnt talked in nine years. Then all of a sudden I got contacted one day and they said, David wants you to come back and, and do some work.
DRE: It was also the internet that changed things for you as well.
ES: The funny story about the internet is on my time off I put together a site called, Slick Music Inc. We were repackaging peoples obscure stuff like demos and unreleased stuff so we put together this little record company on the internet. Thats how David tracked me down because I was pretty invisible at the time and they just did an internet search, found the site and left me a message
The email showed the office name and the phone number. My webmaster goes, we got this message on here to the webmaster from so and so at this phone number. I thought, oh thats weird, thats Bowies office.
DRE: [laughs] Whats it like collaborating with Bowie again after such a long time?
ES: Last time we actually did anything together was in the 80s so it had been a long time. It is different because were different.
DRE: Did you guys always get along well?
ES: Yeah, we always got along well but its hard to describe. Its really easy, its a lot of fun, were having a really good time and it feels more natural than it ever did.
DRE: Whats it like working with Sanctuary Records?
ES: I love Sanctuary.
DRE: Had you ever done anything with them before?
ES: No the way we came up with that was, I had a friend of mine named Frankie La Rocca whos worked A & R on a variety of record companies and we had been buddies since forever. Hes real good at this stuff and I said, I want to go get a deal. Obviously were not going to go to the majors so see what you can come up with. So he came up with a bunch of ideas and we ran through everything and he was really excited more than anything about the Sanctuary thing.
DRE: Why wouldnt you go to the major labels?
ES: First of all, I wasnt sure if they would be interested in me and if they were interested in me it would be only because I would be playing with David again; which wouldnt suit me well in the long term.
[Sanctuary Records CEO] Merck Mercuriadis signed me in the label because they dont even have an A & R department and I sat down and I told him what I was looking to do and how I wanted to do it. We were on the same page and it just felt like the right thing to do.
I want my music out there and Im not as convinced as everybody else that right now youre going to go out with a new record, put up a website and do enough business to keep going. I dont believe it.
DRE: I think youre right.
ES: I know Im right.
As much as there always artists versus the corporate thing, you have to realize that this is a business and you have to generate enough business so you can actually do what you love to do which is play music. Unless youve got some rich girlfriend that just wants to pay your bills and you can just run around playing for free for the rest of your life [laughs].
DRE: What was it like working with John Lennon and Yoko back then?
ES: It was pretty cool, how could it not be. It was great to work with one of the guys that was instrumental for me even being in the business in the first place, John and the Beatles. The Beatles were a big inspiration but Lennon was the one I gravitated towards when I was a kid. There are certain people that you work with that get it [laughs]. We went in the studio as a band, we were treated like we were a band, he was at the sessions every day and he liked the idea of being in the band.
We went in the studio and said, Hey this is the song for today, this is the chords, lets play it. Wed play it, run it down a bunch of times and if it felt good wed record it. Then hang out and get some lunch. I mean it was just like you were just hanging out with your own band.
DRE: Thats great.
ES: Thats why I dont do sessions at all anymore and I never really did a ton of em, because I dont like the idea of walking in to a situation where youre hired because you have a particular name or youre reputation gets you hired. Obviously I worked pretty hard for my reputation and it does serve me well. I got a call from somebody about doing a record earlier this year and I was called because I was with Bowie. These guys were so far off the mark, I ended up not doing it but I mean they couldnt have picked the more wrong guitar player for the project.
DRE: Thats no fun.
ES: Thats bullshit. At this point I dont have to do that, I dont want to do it. What Im really interested, besides working with David, is doing my own albums, scoring some movies which is something that were working on right now.
DRE: Did the idea to do movies come from knowing Michael Kamen?
ES: When I was working with Michael I never thought about doing it myself. Then right before I took a break in 94, I wrote some stuff and sent it out and I really wasnt getting any results out of it. But I also didnt really understand the machinery behind it all. Its very political and it takes a lot of to get yourself out there with the right people and I didnt realize that at the time. I had the bug about ten years ago to start doing this and now it looks like its going to be falling into place.
DRE: Can you say what?
ES: No theres nothing in particular happening right now. I have people working for me right now who are involved and very excited about it so things will pop.
DRE: When you get to do the scores is it going to be guitars?
ES: Yeah.
DRE: Have you toured with Zig Zag yet?
ES: No Im still on the road with David. Were in the middle of a huge tour right now.
DRE: I think I read it the tour ends in April.
ES: Not anymore [laughs]. I think maybe the summer.
What Im going to do for my album is at the end of the year I want to go out and do some dates but theres no way to do a tour because weve been out so long with David that when I get back, what I really want to do is to start writing again
DRE: Will that be another Earl Slick album?
ES: Another Earl Slick album and just writing in general. Then Ill start weeding through the stuff and figure out what Ill just save for other things and what I might use for myself.
DRE: How many bands have you been in?
ES: A lot [laughs]
DRE: [laughs] Youre talking twenty or thirty?
ES: No Id say probably about seven or eight bands. But Im not interested in ever putting together a band for myself again.
DRE: You dont think youll change your mind?
ES: My interests have changed. Maybe Ill put together a band to do gigs.
DRE: Right, right.
ES: But as far as saying, Im going to go find a great singer, Im going to put a band together. I dont want to do that. I like the freedom of being able to do my solo thing which leaves me open to work with David, which leaves me open to the movie stuff.
DRE: Are you with anybody right now?
ES: No.
DRE: Really?
ES: Nope.
DRE: Whats the problem?
ES: Ah, Im too busy.
DRE: [laughs] What about groupies?
ES: Years ago. Im not twenty-five.
The difference with that whole mind-set these days is todays my day off right?
DRE: Right.
ES: Im going to talk to you and then Im going to talk to a few other people and then Im getting picked up by Sanctuary and going down to San Diego to do a radio show. Im really realizing that one of the things that probably happened before is that my head wasnt really screwed on straight and I wasnt keeping an eye on my business
DRE: Did you get screwed?
ES: No I didnt get screwed, but my head wasnt screwed on straight. If anything I screwed myself by not staying on top of stuff.
DRE: Oh, alright.
ES: Which I think a lot of people in this business get guilty of is getting caught up in the moment and your priorities get a little upside down.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
mediapuzzle said:
da slick is fucking cool
one of my favourite riffs ever is 'stay' off station to station
Fucking word.