THE ROCKETS NO RUNS, ONE HIT, NO BALLADS

THE ROCKETS NO RUNS, ONE HIT, NO BALLADS

FEATURES

J. Kordosh

by

I've fallen asleep and I'm dreaming. Through some inexplicable turn of events, I'm working in the promo department of RSO Records. Evidently no one bothered to check my credentials before they hired me. I'm sitting at my spacious, modern desk, the kind you get when you work in the record industry. I'm fiddling with a paperweight; it's a ten-milligram Valium embedded in clear acrylic. It seems that I'm working up a biography for one of our hottest acts, the Rockets:

Coming out of Detroit, the Rockets have managed to capture the essence of their streetwise, factory wise backgrounds on vinyl, making them logical successors to the Beatles as the unquestioned leaders of pop culture. Their three albums, Love Transfusion, Rockets, and No Ballads have all gone octuple platinum. Singing straight from their street-scarred souls, the Rockets captured the imagination of Detroiters early on...

I’m interrupted by the boss, who’s been reading over my shoulder. “What kind of shit is this?!” he yells. “That first record wasn’t even on RSO! We can’t release shit like this! What do you think you get paid to do, make things up?!”

After I clean out my desk, the boss calls me over. He seems to have cooled down a bit. “That first album didn’t really go octuple platinum, did it?” he asks.

I’m awake now and through some inexplicable turn of events I’m interviewing the Rockets for CREEM. I’m sitting in a modern, spacious den, the kind you can afford when you manage an up-and-coming rock group. With me are drummer/ tunesmith John “The Bee” Badanjek and lead guitarist Jim McCarty. Gosh, they look tired, don’t they? Well, you’d be tired too if you’d just come off a nine-month tour, opening for the likes of Seger, Kiss, Blue Oyster Cult, and ZZ Top. I’m tired just thinking about it.

The grind has culminated happily, though. The Rockets have just played a sold-out weekend at Detroit’s premier outdoor venue, Pine Knob—which is sort of a combination ski lift, concert hall, and parking lot for $10,000 vans with $3,000 paint jobs and $2,000 stereo systems permanently tuned to a radio station playing “Betty Lou’s Gettin’ Out Tonight.” And the Rockets were the headliners, proving they may very well be Detroit’s favorite Detroit band.

“We’ve got strong audiences in certain markets—L.A., Miami, San Francisco, Cleveland—but it’s not like we could headline there and do the same thing we did in Detroit,” Badanjek admits candidly. McCarty is even more unequivocal about the smash weekend: “I think that was the highlight for the band and for our lives after being together for eight years.”

Yep, eight years to fame. And before that, McCarty and Badanjek were original members of the Detroit Wheels. It sure was their lucky day when that kid in the record store asked for a copy of “Turn Up The Radio” backed with “My Bonnie.”

Whoops, I must be falling asleep again. What really happened was that the Rockets played Detroit’s bars endlessly during the early and mid-70s while profound trends like glitter and homosexual rock dominated the national scene. “Even from the start, when we were playing the bars, about 75% of what we played was original material,” says McCarty. “When we were playing the bars, the garbagemen who worked in Detroit were making more money than we were,” Badanjek adds cheerfully. And what fun years they were. Badanjek handled lead vocal chores as well as the skins. “At one point, John collapsed one of his lungs singing four sets a night,” says McCarty. “When you gotta play the drums and sing, it’s a pretty taxing situation. ”

Things finally started looking up when the Rockets met local magnate/producer Don Davis. “We were actually going to use Don’s studio for a demo,” Badanjek explains. “But when we heard the band, he loved us so much he wanted to sign the band right then and there.” The resulting musical marriage was, alas, an unhappy one, producing their first LP, Love Transfusion on the RCA subsidiary label, Tortoise. Check your local bargain bin for yourcopy.

“The sound was lacking on that album,” Badanjek says. “It was Don’s first rock ’n’ roll album, and everything was just baffled too much. It wasn’t live enough for rock ’n’ roll.”

In one of those crazy twists that so dominate the biz, though, Love Transfusion did give the Rockets their lead singer, Dave Gilbert. “We were looking for a singer for a long time, but we never could seem to find one who could fit into the band,” says McCarty. “Finally, Gilbert showed up one night—sat in with the band and did a couple tunes—and everybody said, ‘Well, we might have something to work with. ’

“We went into the studio to lay down the tracks for Love Transfusion without a singer,” adds The Bee. “Gilbert came in and sang the tracks for his audition. ”

It's a drinking-type band; a rowdy dance band. -John Badanjek

Even though Frampton look-alike Gilbert passed the audition, the Rockets weren’t exactly turning chart success into liquid oxygen. “We were still on RCA when we recorded the second album, Rockets” Badanjek recalls. “When we got down to Macon to record it, they changed their mind and decided they weren’t going to pay for the studio time. What happened, though, was after the album was made, RSO got interested in the group, RCA had said they’d release the band...but when they found out RSO was interested, they kind of said, ‘Wait a minute, what have we got here?’ So it took us eight months to get out of the contract.” While RCA was busy peddling Colonel Parker Can’t Be Wrong and other evergreens in their catalogue, Rockets began to turn things around for the Rockets. “The thing about Rockets is that it stuck around for so long,” says McCarty.“ We got three singles out of it.”

“The strange thing is that after the No Ballads album came out, Rockets sold again as much as No Ballads.. .so Rockets is sort of inching its way towards gold right now,*’ adds Badanjek.

And, as it inches along, the Rockets inch towards al larger audience. The band’s line-up—which includes Dan Keylon on bass, Donnie Backus on piano, and Dennis Robbins on guitar—has been solidified as firmly as their musical stance. How, does “no frills rock” sound? Pretty limp, I know. But what is the proper adjective for a band that would have the temerity to put “Oh Well” and “Lucille” on the same album?

“It’s a drinking-type band; & rowdy dance band. That’s where we’re from,” says Badanjek. “We spent years in the bars and we bring that kind of get-off-your-ass-andget-high aspect to the stage.” How about J. Geils meet the Rolling Stones as they try to cover Little Richard singing the Honeyman’s “Brother Bill?” How about “Be True To Your Roots?” How about let’s take as many chances as the Committee to Re-elect did in 1972?

Not so fast there, insect writer. “I read a review of the' last album,” says McCarty. “He said the Rockets are a bar band, but

We wan%more of a 1980sound... —John Badanjek I

they’re a damned good one. That was his summation pf No Ballads'. And I can see where people would say that—it’s not like we’re playing innovative music or anything. We’re not playing ‘new music’ in the sense that someone like Joe Jackson or the Police are. But our music has roots.”

You betcha, and judging by the crowd’s reaction to their hometown faves, those roots have wrapped themselves-around the sewer pipes. Just for fiin, I asked a trio of pockets fans from Flat Rock, Michigan, why they liked the band.

. “Yeah, Rockets are number one!” the girls cheered in( urtison. “They get you going! They’ve got a good beat!” Sure, and driving a car With a flat tire’s got a good beat. I remember my dream and*ask the girls how our boys stack up to the Beatles. “The Beatles’ stuff is so old,” says one. “it doesn’t mean anything today.” But jeez, girls, they just played “Lucille” up there. I’m really down.

But the Rockets aren’t. They’re off to L.A. to start working on their new album, with a new producer, Peter Coleman (of Pat Benatar fame) masterminding. “We want a better sound,” says the Bee. “We want more of a 1980 sound; in other words, we want a bigger drum sound and a bigger bass sound.”

As for me, I Want to go back to that dream and try to figure out how to get that Valium out of the paperweight. Where’s my spacious'desk? Where’s my record business boss?