The first time I confronted the Foghat problem was in 1972 on what was their first mouthful of the American sandwich. They’d been second on the bill and I’d arrived late, just in time to catch the tail end of the “far out/ they got down/ they boogied” audience testimony. Oh well, I thought, another Johnny Bull boogie beast. How do you sjiell aferage ?

Later that evening, I walked through a hotelroom door and there they were — all lazing around drinking up the evenihg’s profits, laughing and jiving with the assembled multitudes and being generally happy as pigs in shit. They were babbling onenthusiastically?iabout how wonderful it would be to get to Akron, the next-day destination in their string of one-nighters. My God, here they are going full-tilt in the Motor City, and already they’re drooling for 4kron. Oh well, I thought, it’ll take about two road months to blow off the hot air in these maniac sails.

A year later Foghat was still orrthe road.

Fogw/nri? Granted .that when they began dispensing gold records to Uriah Heep I relinquished any responsibility 'for the musical preferences of rock & roll America, but it continues to dumbfound me that a band can sell albums at a consistent quarter million clip and still remain virtually anonymousIt seems at times that the only people who recognize the name are'the ones who’ve already got their cash on the counter. Mention Foghat to anybody else and you’re lucky if you get so much as a “huh?” How could four nobodies manage to appropriate av quarter million from our very ranks and leavg us completely oblivious to the thievery? .

To get the answer you have to backtrack as far as Savoy Brown, most venerated of all the British boogie machines; Though they’ve been pumped so dry on the Savoy subject that they’ll allude to it only as “that other band,” what few facts exist are as follows L sometime in 1970, guitarist Lonesome Dave Peverett, bassist Tony Stevens and drummer Roger Earl departed Savoy Brown for reasons that hardly matter now. They enlisted another guitarist in the person of Rod Price, and became (courtesy of Lonesome Dave’s childhood scrabBleboard) Foghat, an invention which they test-drove through a two week tour of England seconding Captain Beefheart. As things have turned out, that’s been the last time that they’ve played in their home country.

-Having heard though in a Todd Rundgren-produced demo tape. Albert Grossman was persuaded to sign the band (managed by Tony Outeda, a friend from the “other band” days) to his fledgling Bearsville label, and a first album — produced by erratic rock & roll renegade Dave Edmunds — was brought into the world, in the spring of 1972. When the record began showing sales readings without the benefit of substantial radioplay or advertising, an American tour was slapped together. On the very first gig — in Oshkosh, Wisconsin — the band was called back for three encores. And they’ve been here ever since.

Not bad for openers, but any random assortment of bar hacks with the fortitude to wallow through the collected works of Canned Heat could eventually stumble upon the right succession of riffs to bring the masse? to their feet at least twice. What makes Froghead any different?

Music, for one thing. Given the Current dictum (which I’ve never quite understood) that rock & roll should have something to do with music, Foghat can more than hold their own in anybody’s arena. The rhythm section of Tony Stevens and Roger Earl reminds you of the Stones, if not exactly in style than certainly in approach: not particularly flamboyant, but never off the mark. In Lonesome Dave and Rod Price, they boast as formidable a guitar duo as can be found anywhere. They can bounce solos back & forth with enough thunder to thrill even the most discriminating techno-freaks, and yet never lose sight of the song. And songs — hardpulse rockers that improve with each album §p| are what'single ^Foghat out from the “Dust My Broom” derivations of the blues-wasted pack they’re commonly assumed to run with.

When you add to that proficiency a healthy dose of flash, the package takes on even more appealing dimensions. Not flash via the rerun sensibility of the Bowie ilk, but just enough to’ve won them scattered catcalls and whistles , from audiences whose, preferences in the early days ran toward smelly moccasins rather than satin or silk. It all stems from the (what should be) elementary idea that you have to utilize every tool at your disposal to make the audience part of what you’re doing. And this has. ' kept innumerable specimens like me — who’ve been conditioned to tune out at the first sign of advancing boogie — from the clutches of doze-out at $6.50 a ticket.

Most. important in any account of Foghat’s fortunes, however, is sheer persistence. From that first gig in Oshkosh thev didn’t let up for close to eighteen months, taking time off only for rehearsal and recording. Response was so good that dates multiplied out of each other until a three month four had mutated into a raving eighteen month monster.

And these maniacs actually enjoyed being strapped to the'grindstone, and they went so ^ far as to double ' their! travel time by driving between gigs whenever possible. Just so they could cruise with Top 40 blaring and get an eyeball OD of America. They were so strung out On Americana, in fact, that when somebody finally took away their guitars and sent them home for Xmas ’73, they simply stored all their equipment in Los Angeles and began counting the days until their return.

•Talking to Roger Earl and Rod Price during their imposed vacation, it was obvious that the disease had reached critical proportions. They’d been home for less than four days and already were on the phone to one another, nervously bitching about the lack of anything to do.. No gigs. No Holiday Inns. No pay toilets. No Star Trek. They’d gladly have traded, I’m sure, all of the peace and quiet of their English countryside for just orie go at a cheeseburger deluxe.

18 MONTHS OF THIS?

Foghat bassist Tony Stevens here submits what he in good faith asserts is the typical daily routine when his band is on the road. Not that we’d ever doubt the fad, but a year and a half...

1) Wake up.

2) Shower. \

3) Brush teeth/comb hair/shave.

4) Drink orange juice and cup of tea.

5) Car ta airport; airplane; arrive; check into hotel.

6) Watch Sesame Street;eat tuna sandwich.

7) Go to auditorium.

8) Play rock & roll (“Encore I Encore!”).

9) Party time.

10) In bed by 5 a.m.

11) , Up at 7 a.m.

(reprinted courtesty of Circular.)

“Everybody certainly feels more at* home, more comfortable over there,’L. said Roger of the rock & roll promised land. “America is just the best place to work from every point of view. From the professional side of being able to do proper shows,, have good promoters, just being able to present yourself in such a way that you can give the kids what they paid their good mopey to see. And . all my early heroes were American. Rock & roll started in America; I mean, it wasn’t our fault that we were born over here.

“Too . much talking is done in England. You pick up the paper each week and they’re raving about somebody who’s just sort of appeared. They don’t ever seem to get down to the really important things; the actual enjoyment of it. They go through this ritual of new things, and it seems sometimes that the ritual is more important than what^s actually done,” •

The members of Foghat are from the “We just love to play” school of musician that’s been notorious for driving more than orle aspiring journalist back to the gas station or shoestore. But it’s just as boring to give stock answers as it is to receive them, and when Foghat do have something to say, they just say it. And then get back to the party.

“When audiences are giving us so much, how can we possibly not give it back to them?” Rod. Price has now jumped in with his two centswprth. “We’re no different than anybody in our audience. The thing you always have to keep in mind is that any audience is just as capable of giving us a good time as we are to them.

“We don’t want to be classed as one of those hype jobs. We’re a road band, and we like playing to audiences more than recording or anything else. So when we got on the road, we just stayed there. If we go crazy, we just go crazy and keep going. The Only place we haven’t been to in the States is South Dakota, and we’ve got our sights on thaf One vwhen we come back. By the way, do you know what the weather’s like in Florida now...?” At least he didn’t ask about the Dow JoneS Industrial Averages. Not yet, anyway.

“C$m these kids know something that I don’t,” the 'machine gun music biz voice from New York whimpered after walking in cold on a Foghat show. “They were all so active and enthusias-; tic. I felt sooo embarrassed; it made me wanna be out of the music business and back, on the street. How do they find out about these things...”

The Los Angeles Forum is one of those huge athletic caverns that don’t always lend Jhgmselves well to rock & roll, as Foghat are discovering this night. They’re on with Humble Pie to a packed" house, and the sound is not reaching the cheap seats with the impact it should. The bulk of the trouble rests with Dave’s guitar, wjiich just isn’t challenging the rest of the band. But the instant flashback ,of “Honey Hush” (which, they’re quick to point out, is not a “Yardbirds “Stroll On” cop; the original can be traced to the Johnny Burnette version of this song and his guitarist Paul Burlison) is reaching the audience anyway. Then Dave steps forwaid to solo and it’s all there. His guitar suddenly surges on, lashing out in dinosaur thrusts and pushing everything into dynamic focus. And from then on it was easy.

TURN TO PAGE 77.

FOGWHAT?

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 30.

The subject occupying the seat in front of me had been screaming throughout the set, elbowing and punching the friend beside him while bellowing incoherent encouragement in the direction of the band. During “I Just Want To Make Love To You,” he pegan jumping up and down on his seat in the throes of sorpe kind of soporific seizure. He pulled up his friend, by this time slapped halfway to jello, and began shaking him like a madman. Finally he shook once too often and they both went tumbling off-balance over the seat in front of them and out of view.

At the Conclusion of the set the announcer bounced right into his number: “And now, before we bring on Humble Pie. . .” “Fuck Humble Pie in the ass!” a voice loudly interjects. Our lunatic friend is back again. “Bring back Foghat!” he screams over and over again, In a voice** so imposing that it battled Steve Marriott for the audience’s attention the rest of the evening.

Consider that a warning, South Dakota.