A Conversation with Al Anderson (continued)

PM: I read an interview with you this morning, actually, from 30 years ago.

AA: From where?

PM: From the unofficial website, by a guy named Paul Bezanker.

AA: I know who you're talking about, from Hartford.

PM: Yeah. It's very interesting to read an interview from 30 years ago with someone whose career and recent music you're familiar with now. And you can see and you can hear the person already, as a young man. He's excited about having joined NRBQ, but he's already pissed off about not getting paid. And you realize that, wow, he's already a veteran at that young age. He's already lived through a bunch of shit.

AA: Yeah, I got screwed from the first single.

PM: He's already been screwed royally, and he's only about 22. He's about to embark on the adventure of his life with these amazing knuckleheads. And that gives one perspective on--this cat's been doing this music for quite a few twenty-four hours...

AA: I was 21. I moved to New York with NRBQ in the summertime of 1971. But the knuckleheads rarely let the business get in the way of getting the music played.

PM: Right. With NRBQ, one doesn't know where to begin, if one is a big fan of that band--which I am, a diehard fan of that band. There'll never be anything else like NRBQ. And to have been one of them for all those years, I mean, it's not a subject that's easily approached, I'm sure by questioner or answerer.

AA: Right. You couldn't label it.

PM: Yeah.

AA: That really screws people up.

PM: Oh, yeah.

AA: It screwed the press up. The New York Times, they speak fondly of the band today. Back then, when they were trying to talk about the band--I'd read this article about us and I'd think, "What the hell are you talking about?"

[laughter]

AA: They didn't know anything.

PM: And in fact, that unclassifiability was the very thing that defined the band--that at any given moment, they'd play any frickin' style that came to mind.

AA: Yeah. We were not part of the machine.

PM: Yeah. And yet, my impression of the Q records, wrong or right, is that, as prolific as you've been, apparently your whole life--because I know Leslie [Tomasino, of Tom-Leis Music--our mutual friend and a publisher/song plugger extraordinaire] has been listening to some 1,500 songs of yours. I mean, that number just made me fall down and laugh. I haven't heard that number as somebody's--

AA: I think it's 1050 songs, but that's not really a lot for 15 years here, or 14 years, I guess it is.

PM: Well, it depends on who you ask. But [laughs] it's a writin' mofo any way you look at it, right?

AA: But before I came here I only wrote about 30.

PM: Is that how it was?

AA: Yeah--well, maybe 50 total.

PM: So that's all since you got here.

AA: Yeah.

PM: Holy Jeez, Al, you've had your pen to paper.

AA: I was a mess.

PM: Really? I could talk about NRBQ ad nauseum, it's hard to even begin. But what I really think is fascinating, and largely unknown, even for fans of Al, is that period where you reinvented yourself from an iconic guitarist with a totally unique and perhaps the best rock 'n' roll band in history, to a very successful songwriter on Music Row.

AA: You just take one of the things that you learn from them, because I got a precious education. It was an amazing school, a lot of history on those bus rides, all that old music that Terry and Tom had.

PM: They were the collectors. Terry and Tom were the--

AA: Record collectors. "There are only two kinds of music: good and bad." [laughs]

PM: Ain't it the truth. I mean, that was my favorite thing about the band, that you could go and you'd hear every style on any night.

AA: Yeah, it was an outer space kind of band, but they could come down to earth and hit on one genre and it sounded like they knew what they were doing, like they invented it or something. The band before I was in it, with [vocalist Frank] Gadler and [drummer Tom] Staley, that's the best. The first two albums of NRBQ, that's the shit. I had no perspective on it when I joined, but that was really the wildest, the youngest, the most free.

PM: Oh, see, I got to get that now, because I don't know that era very well.

AA: But you go on in a band, and you're that way, and you're crazy, and you get a little more crazy on purpose rather--

PM: Right. It becomes a design.

AA: Yeah.

PM: I met Tom Staley at Joey's wedding. He was a very funny character. [Victor Meccysne and I were the ushers.]

AA: NRBQ did a reunion last May, and he's still playing his ass off.

PM: Oh, really? I'm still kicking my ass for that--I don't know how I missed that. I just didn't have it on the calendar. It was something that stupid. I didn't get there.

But one of the phoned-in questions, figuratively speaking, from the Q community was just that: How did you feel about the 35th Reunion, now a year removed? How was the experience for you?

AA: Overall, it went really well both nights.

PM: And did you play all night, kind of a thing?

AA: No, I was intermittent. I came out with the first band. We came out all together. Wait a minute, I'm wrong. Everybody that was ever in it was on stage for "Do You Feel It," and we all got off and the original band got on--that first NRBQ album on Columbia, Forget About It, that's as good as The Band.

PM: Really?

AA: I put it up with The Band.

PM: Oh, my God! How can I not have that?

AA: The Band was insane, too. Now, there were five dysfunctional guys.

PM: When I go back to their music today and listen, it's always "Yeah, that's what I thought it was." Damn. Yeah, I listened to "Tears of Rage" the other day, it's mind boggling.

AA: Well, Levon Helm seemed to have the overall picture--he knew what was going on. Maybe Robbie did too, I don't know.

PM: He's the one that walked off with all the dough, they say.

AA: Did you ever see that show on PBS, with John Simon, when they tear that 2nd Band album apart, and they just have Garth Hudson playing? He's from outer space, too, in a great way.

PM: [laughs] Absolutely. So speaking of NRBQ and that original band, what became of Frankie Gadler? He's a guy I don't know much about.

AA: He wants to get the band going on. We're talking about doing a record.

PM: Wow!

AA: And I don't know, things are starting to fall apart now. There's no more band, currently.

PM: It's in some serious transition at the moment. That's the other phoned-in question from the Q community: Have you been approached about doing any Baby Macaroni gigs? [Baby Macaroni is NRBQ without co-founder keyboardist Terry Adams, with assorted guests. Terry had been doing some gigs with a Japanese pop band.]

AA: No. I don't think Johnny would like it. I think he has a problem with me being around. [laughs] He's playing great, I think.  continue

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