Sonny Vincent is a true punk-rock journeyman; from his 70’s NYC punk beginnings with the Testors through the ensuing decades, he’s put out high-energy rock and roll of the first order, from his solo work to his notable collaborations with other punk and art-rock icons.
His latest project is Spite: a supergroup featuring Damned drummer Rat Scabies, Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, and Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay, who perfectly compliment Vincent’s raw guitar and impassioned vocals.
Their new album Spiteful (available on Ultramafic Records) is a classic mix of old-school punk and garage rock, an unholy racket that sounds straight from the 70’s in the most refreshing way (click here for my review).
I recently had a chance to speak to Vincent, who discussed his new album, his artistic approach, and what it was like to be in punk’s formative years. Enjoy our spirited Q&A below:
SLIS: So I read your post regarding the making of the Spiteful album. It sounds like it was a very fun, spontaneous and organic process, but it took awhile for all the pieces to come together. How long did it take from conception to execution?
SV-Yes the initial recording experience was a combination of fun, spirited madness and hell! Lots of laughs as well as insane psycho drama’s. The guys showed up in Brussels at various times and lived in the ‘studio house’ for some days. There was some overlap, actually, after me and Rat Scabies finished the basic tracks, Glen arrived. Since we were done and satisfied with the ‘basics’ there was a bit of celebrating. Rat had been drinking some special Portuguese wine (well maybe more than ‘some’) and he was running around proclaiming that he was a Pirate or something and Glen got in the middle of all that. Glen got really irritated and wielded a knife, but the whole situation got defused when I mentioned it was a butter knife and looked ridiculous, we all broke out laughing to the point of tears. That was a funny moment but there was also big stress as well as moments where the music was ‘ playing us’ rather than us playing the music. A sort of ‘zone’ that can occur. It was all intense and at times pretty raucous.
When we were working, we got very focused. I’m still reeling from the intensity of the work! I usually say it was 3 years in the making, but when I start looking at the dates it was more than that, over three and a half years. Part of the reason for the long time in the creation of the album was that the studio had all this great vintage gear from the 50s and 60s. We were hooking up all this stuff and finding out which pieces worked and which were not functioning. Some stuff was literally covered in cobwebs and dust and even caught on fire. Other parts of the gear worked well and that was sweet. The actual recording process from myself, Rat, Glen and Steve was very natural and fast. But the whole thing was on these giant reel to reel 24 track tapes with alternate ‘takes’ and …. Well… its was challenging! But worth it!
Then I did my ‘rough’ mixes, that I love, but, they sounded like what the ‘The Sonics’ would sound like if they were recorded in the hull of a giant steel oil tanker. Really present, in your face, but perhaps a bit ‘over the top’ and distorted.
So after a month in the rough mix phase, I looked around for someone to mix the album and that was a two-year intensive search in itself. I had folks do mixes of the album but I didn’t like the approach. Many people tried mixes, but I was never satisfied. Mostly they were making it too huge, like giant arena rock band mixes. I hated it and almost puked sometimes, very disappointed. Then I found Larry Ramirez and he was the right guy. I met him in Los Angeles at DOB studios but I live in Europe so after a year or so of concentrated trading of files over the internet, listening and adjusting (“Oh can you make the sax louder here, the snare drum too!”) I finally had to go to L.A. and mix it with him. Then the mastering, and so on. I had it mastered a couple of times till I discovered Bob Lanzer.
SLIS: You have one of the best punk lineups ever on this album. I think the main question from anyone who hears it, will be a desire to see this band live. Do you have any plans to tour this album and will it feature the original lineup?
SV- We might tour, it’s a possibility. We already are usually touring with various bands of degenerates but since the album is so juicy we might enjoy doing some live shows and ripping it up together! Ha! Ha! Look out!!
SLIS: I know that this album was all recorded in Belgium on vintage equipment and I think that’s fantastic. It really sounds straight out of 1977. And even though the bass and sax was added later, it feels like you guys were playing live as a four-piece. How important was it for you to stay analogue in a digital world?
SV- Very important. I really don’t like the digital sound much, its easy to use and very fast but the sound is cheesy. I produced the album and I’m a perfectionist in some ways. I’m satisfied and excited to realize that I got the best out of the guys. Everyone gave lots of raw passion. There’s no other way in my world.
SLIS: The amount of musicians you’ve played with over the years is pretty staggering. When you work with different artists, does it change your creative approach at all, or do you always have a general sense of how you work out the material?
SV- I never work with any premeditated plan or tactic. I try to let people do what they do best and add that to my insanity. Certainly I have my own goals subliminally, usually that has a lot to do with capturing something that is real, something worthy of our time on earth to express. I do tend to push people. Sometimes they get pissed off, but the end result is important to me. I don’t know how to explain it exactly but I do have motivations and goals that I mix together with the folks I work with.
Usually the musicians understand and the challenge is to get the technicians in the right mindset to not destroy what we have done. Michael, I appreciate that you love the sound of this album, but I really must stress that it was nearly a war to get it this way. It was very challenging for me to get these results in a digital world where some people equate and make aesthetic decisions based on the concept of money and current commercial trends. This was part of what the Punk thing was against and I am still that way! Most of what I hear peripherally these days wandering through our current time and culture, reeks and is soulless.
I don’t want to keep saying the word ‘puke’ but I really almost could puke on the music industry. When you understand how its run and controlled it’s amazing anything good gets out at all!!! Thankfully there still are many people out there who are not programmable androids and thankfully some are still in the music industry!!
SLIS: Where does that collaborative spirit come from to work with so many different artists and projects?
SV- I don’t know maybe they like my butt! Just kidding! I always dreamed in the early days of making a band with 4 persons and getting a certain success, you know the ‘four lads from Liverpool’ scenario, But after some time trying the music thang, sometimes people found that their path was to go back to school or start a family or be a Guru or whatever. When no major financial success appears that will often ‘hold a band together’ (you know some of those rock stars who still tour and earn millions actually hate each other, that’s a bit false, no?), People tend to fall by the wayside and adjust their life goals. I’ve always known my goals and they always were more concerned with art and not as focused on commercial success. Anyway at some point rather than having an endless ‘rotating line up’ I decided to be ‘solo’.
People from my past know the door is always open. Sometimes I get a call ”Hey Sonny, Architecture school was great but this ain’t the life for me, lets hit the road” or “ Yeah the girl of my dreams just divorced me and ran off to Hawaii with Danny DeVito’s nephew, can we tour?”
Anyway like I said, I am ‘solo’ which in some ways is unique, it does allow me to play with new people I meet and … well …whoever is motivated and ready to tear shit up!
When I plan an album or a tour I look around and see who is excited and shows passion and suddenly they are onboard for a thrill ride. Often its new people, sometimes it’s musicians I’ve played with before. I try to play with players who share some of my taste and attitude so collaborating is easy. Although I have experimented with making music with players from diverse opposing backgrounds and points of view, to mix it up.
SLIS: Given this album is old-school in the best way, and your general aesthetic…are there any new artists these days that you like at all? What’s your general sense of where music is at in the 21st century?
SV- Yeah there are new artists I like but if I make a list or mention some it would slight the other ones I forget to list. Suffice to say there are many that are raw and mind-blowing, still holding the torch. Alright I’ll mention one , ‘Lenguas Largas’. I was on tour in New Mexico, I think it was, and I was using the van as a dressing room, waiting to go onstage, I was listening to the other band playing and I was drawn in. Incredible, beautiful, otherworldly punk. As far as where the general 21st century ‘popular’ music direction goes, meaning the stuff that gets the millions pumped into it and brainwashed into the minds of the little lambs, all I can say is, I think the Illuminati probably has a slightly better taste in music than the trolls who run the music industry these days.
SLIS: Following that up: I know a lot of American rock musicians have stated how much more of a market there is for rock music in Europe. Is that one reason that you live overseas currently? Why do you think there seems to be more of an appreciation there then in the U.S. at the moment?
SV- Nah, it’s the same everywhere. Of course there are special ‘pockets’and areas where people are obsessed and go mental more than other areas, but its global, Toulouse France to Alabama, it’s the same types everywhere. They dig deeper and are dissatisfied with the crap being foisted on them and force-fed to them, They search out the special brew. Definitely the drives are shorter in Europe, though! On my last USA tour we had a section of the tour that covered the deep south, that was great!
SLIS: At this point the NYC 70’s punk era has a great mystique and nostalgic factor to it. As a progenitor of that scene, when you look back on it with hindsight, what stands out the most in your memory? For those who weren’t there, how can you best describe the vibe of that era?
SV-The whole scene was pretty wild and off the hook, in music and art as well. It started off rather small and insular, but eventually the creative people, outsiders , losers, dreamers, schemers and degenerates were flocking to the Lower Manhattan Punk scene. Some were an inspiration, some were vampires who needed fodder and new ideas. From my point of view what stands out the most was the focused intensity all around. The discovery and excitement combined with a suicidal thrust into the sun. It’s hard to explain. To value something to a great degree but willing to set it on fire or smash it like a glass bottle against the wall and destroy it. That doesn’t make sense but its real.
In Testors, when we played live, we always purposely ended the songs like there was some really awful sour mistakes made, like pots and pans falling down loud and unpleasantly in a kitchen. Such was our disdain for the grandiose rock star coliseum song endings.
There was a lot of ‘divorce’ in the early NYC punk, a divorce from the trappings of the fake stuff that came after the 60s. It was a situation that I felt was very unique in that although there were aspirations, there was also an almost ironclad certainty that there would never be a chance to really succeed in a wide range. Later I was very shocked when I heard Punk has spread to Germany and France etc., I really never imagined that. If you look at some of the band names, that alone can show the part that was in a way ‘suicidal’- “Yeah this is special, this is important and needed, but typically we will be marginalized, so now we can really go for it because we don’t give a fuck”.
People may think the names were there for shock value, but they represented more. Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, Dead Boys, Testors (after the glue company), Sick Fucks, Pure Hell… we never ever thought there would be someday an announcement “And now the Universal Grammy Oscar Emmy award goes to Lydia Fucking Lunch!” or “Richard Fucking Hell”! Sure some of the bands ‘made it’ when they listened to their producers and softened their approach, I don’t begrudge them of the success, they were softer and more palatable for general audiences, but the ones who were really artists stayed marginalized, as we knew it would be. That said, the atmosphere was not morose or defeatist, it was somehow heroic and even hopeful.
So much music, the grit of the entire city of New York at the time, I can still feel the grit between my teeth. The city was in default, the middle class had bailed, garbage everywhere, gangs, graffiti, broken glass. One good thing was you could rent a giant loft or rehearsal room for 90 bucks a month! Landlords were taking on anything to bring in money. So in a way it was a fertile ground for experimentation and general insanity. The city was ours, albeit it in a kind of David Lynchian black and white deserted factory landscape, but we owned it. There was this little irritation called ‘disco that was being marketed all around, but we were strong and could weather it, even though it was somehow harmful.
I can still hear those high whiney Bee Gees voices , ouch! I don’t believe in tone or ‘sound’ esoteric theories, but right around the time of all that disco crap there was a new crop of serial killers, I don’t directly blame the Bee Gees though. With all that and more as a setting there was still an unmistakable mercurial beauty running through NYC, sharp and edgy. And the clothes, man, we wanted to make people take notice but the people in the general public really had a negative reaction. Suddenly we went from wanting to be provocative to a clear cognition that the whole thing was somehow a huge threat to society.
They even blocked the Ramones from the radio. WTF? They wouldn’t play ‘Rockaway Beach’ because of the fear that right behind the Ramones, following like hungry wolves were Lydia, Richard and Stiv!! Haaa!! Haaa!! Haaa!!I guess in a way, they were right in being fearful!!! Don’t open the door! Look it’s the Cramps!!!
Anyway there was an explosion in creativity and a driving force, along with some wild parties, drugs and unpredictable scenes.
SLIS-You’ve had a very colorful and often tumultuous past. Give your involvement in visual arts, have you ever thought about chronicling your life in a documentary?
SV- Maybe, sounds like a lot of intense work to make a documentary, a life chronicle. I’m such a perfectionist in some ways, I would have to work with a trusted source.
Currently I’m working on a few things, but I bounce back and forth and it always seems the music wins the most attention. There is a ‘work in progress’ Testors documentary that was filmed in N.Y.C.. I suppose 15 hours of filming and I have edited it down to a half hour, but it needs more filming. I started a book about my experience with Moe and Sterling from the Velvet Underground but I didn’t send it around, I wrote a screenplay, and finished some of my non linear film collages, they were shown in Montpellier France. Recently I had Art exhibitions of my hand painted ‘work’ in Zürich Switzerland .
I do want to write a book, but it will have to wait, because I got the music fever… I’m already working on an album that sounds like a steel mill set on dentist drill speed, with James Brown running down the street with his hair on fire. Sure to be whopping commercial success!!! And a plan for a grandiose ballads album with beautiful songs. It’s a collection I’ve written of songs that capture beauty without the grit.
SLIS: Well I’d like to thank you very much for your time with doing this interview. Before we wrap up is there anything else you’d like to discuss or promote?
SV Yes, I like a group called ‘The Monkees’, I figured I might as well admit this before it is uncovered. Also while I’m at it, I have a Burt Bacharach album that I love and I sometimes cried when I missed Jimi Hendrix in this world. I still hate the police, I still hate the ‘system’. I have some hope and faith in people but hate everything that limits their freedom and controls. People ask me if I am still Punk or rebellious, all I can say is, it’s always a challenge to go shopping with me. I’ve done my best to fit in but it never works out.
A big thanks to Vincent for taking the time out for this interview. You can order Spiteful through GetHip by clicking here or via the iTunes link below.
And you can keep track of all things Sonny Vincent on his official website.
