STROKING THE ROCK MONOLITH: BILLY SQUIER PAYS THE PIPER

STROKING THE ROCK MONOLITH: BILLY SQUIER PAYS THE PIPER

John Neilson

“I used to have like a simulated American Bandstand in my garage when I was nine years old. I would set up this cardboard box with a friend of mine, and one of us would be Dick Clark and would take one of those one-piece Victrolas that you have when you’re a kid and play the records, and the other one of us would mime and dance.”

There you have it. The whole sordid truth. Disgusting, isn’t it?

“I think there’s been some talk that they want ‘The Stroke’ for American Bandstand. I’d do it... it’d probably be fun. ”

From Fakin’ It To Makin’ It: The Billy Squier Story.

If I had expected to come away from an interview with one of America’s new Hard Rock Heroes reeling from tales of wild perversions, drunken bacchanalia, assorted debaucheries and hotel room terrorism, I would have been sorely disappointed. As it was, 1 had very little idea of what to expect. I knew that he was an up-and-coming guitar hotshot whose first album had been released last year and whose second LP Don’t Say No was in the upper reaches of the charts and splattered all over the radio. And 1 knew he played Heavy Met...

“It’s definitely NOT heavy metal!” Billy Squier is emphatic on this point. “That’s a misnomer.. It’s not heavy metal—it’s not that ponderous. When I’m pressed I will say Heavy Rock.”

We’re discussing the matter in Billy’s suite at the none-too-shabby suburban Detroit Troy Hiltpn, where he and the band are staying for their two-night Motor City visit. The previous night’s show at the Royal Oak Music Theater had been recorded for an upcoming King Biscuit radio* concert, and Billy is understandably tired from listening to the playback into the wee hours of the morning only to have to get up and make a promotional visit to a local record store. Still, he’s warm and candid as we discuss his current success.

“The last album was a radio success, but unfortunately it was not a commercial success. It’s getting close to gold, and it’s been out only eleven weeks. It’s Top 20 now,” he adds, with the pride of a father whose Littl^ League slugger batted in the winning run.

I ask if he feels that he has found his niche in the music world.

“I’d like to think I’ll move on, but then I’ve never really changed my direction that much. The focusing process becomes a little more defined, and the execution becomes a little bit better, but I don’t think my sensibilities will change that all that mu'ch. I just keep weeding out the things that aren’t really the essence of Billy Squier and work more on the things that really appeal to me.”

So far this weeding-out process has taken at least a dozen years to get Billy Squier to where.he is today. In the late 60’s he drifted in and out of a number of bands in Boston and N.Y. that were “nothing to speak of—

no famous lineages or anything.” His first real brush with fame came when he joined The Sidewinders, a Beantown group that featured Andy Paley on lead vocals and released one Lenny Kaye-produced LP.

“They did that just before I joined,” Billy says, explaining why he isn’t listed on the album jacket. “A lot of people made it out that it was MY BAND, because when I joined they were kind of a disorganized bunch—they never wanted to practice or anything —and I started to institute programs of serious rehearsals and stuff like that. It ended up being my band, though I don’t know if that’s to my credit, because we ended up breaking up.

“It just wasn’t happening,” is the explanation he gives. “There were different musical ideas—(Andy Paley) wanted to be a teeny-bop bubble-gum hero, which certainly wasn’t what I wanted—and it just became pointless to me to carry on and keep up and try to make something out of what I felt to be quite different musical positions. Although the band was good—it wasn’t a bad experience or anything—it just didn’t seem like the right vehicle for me, so I chucked it.”

"I'd like to eventually have a home and a family and alt those traditional American things."

I remark that Don’t Say No shares with the Sidewinders a certain pop feeling, and Billy is quick to agree.

“I like pop music. I grew up on pop music, so there’s a certain element of that in what Ido.” (Just for the record, Squier lists Lennon/McCartney and Ray Davies as his main songwriting influences, while the guitarists he admires are Peter Green, Keith Richards, Clapton, Beck. Hendrix, Page.)

After his experience with the Sidewinders Billy started looking for a vehicle that would take on the industry at the national level. He linked up with a management firm, and they in turn helped him to get an A&M record contract with a new oand, Piper.

“Piper was sorta like an extension of the Sidewinders—it was a little heavier, a little more me. It still had the pop element—i was still defining what I wanted to do.” He considers this a moment. “I don’t think I really focused on what I wanted to do tintil the new album. The first album I did on my own was a good indication. Everything I’ve done has seemed like a focusing process. You just keep finding out more about what it is you want.”

Does this mean a solo career is the inevitable goal of anyone with strong ideas?

“Not necessarily. It could happen to a band—you could have a band working together that finds out more about itself, but for me it did come to mean that. I did have a very strong idea of what I wanted to do, and because I am a writer and a singer and a guitar player and a producer it makes it difficult having the concept in mind to allow other people necessarily the space.. .1 mean there is space—I’m not stubborn, and I’m not greedy—there is space for people to work with me. I think that’s important. I think the way to succeed is to work with people who are talented at what they do, but you work it into your concept. For a lot of people that isn’t enough, they have to fulfill their own concept.

“As it is now I have a much better band than I had before when I Was trying to create democracies, and I think that’s one of the reasons it works, because there isn’t that friction'. If we’re doing a song and someone says ‘How about this idea,’ and I don’t like it, they don’t take it personally. They say, ‘Well, it’s Billy’s band, and he knows what he wants,’ rather than ‘That scumbag, how come all of his songs are on the record, and none of mine?’ You eliminate a lot of that bickering.”

So in a democratic situation your ideas are inevitably going to get diluted?

“Not necessarily! In a good band, like Queen (?!!)—which is probably the best example of a band because if any one of those people left they would suffer drastically—to compromise is to make things better. It’s not so much giving ground then as combining forces to make things better. That’s what I try to do with my band and Mack, my producer. We do compromise, but we compromise up, not down. We don’t give in and feel bad about it, we just take our ideas and put them together.”

As we talk it becomes apparent that— whatever one’s preconceptions about the man and his music might be—Billy Squier is just a real normal kinda guy who knows what he wants and knows how to get it, as they say. He includes among his favorite pastimes (other than music) sleeping, personal sports, reading, and movies, but admits that he has little time for any of these while on the road.

Do you have any long-term plans for yourself?

“I’ll do this until I don’t want to, I guess, which could be a couple of years, could be five...I mean there’s no reason to stop, as long as I want to do it.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27

“I’dlike to do other things, I’d like to produce other acts. I’ve had a lot of chances to, but I just don’t have time. Right now I think 1 have t6 work on Billy Squier for a while—since I’ve gotten this far. I could see myself doing that certainly when I want to settle down more. I’d like to eventually have a home and a family and all those traditional American things.”

I ask whether Billy thinks that spending more than five years performing would be, in effect, digging a rut?

“Unh-unh. No, because that comes down to what you so with your life. For a writer, in the end all music is a reflection of your experience—what you think about, what you do. If your life is in a rut, then your music is in a rut. And that’s the toughest thing about surviving in the business, especially when we go out and tour six, seven months a year. There’s certainly— very little inspiration on the road. I mean the shows are inspiring, but it’s very one-dimensional, because you only have one source of input and release, and that’s your audience.”

With the release (and success) of Don’t Soy No, Billy Squier’s touring commitment has been especially heavy this year. His band has already done a few months of headlining gigs as I write this, and they are scheduled to tour with Pat Benatar through mid-August, when they will make a return visit to England and the Continent. I can’t helpbut wonder out loud how well Squier’s music—which seems to be bom and bred for FM airplay in the American heartland— is received in the land of the setting sun.

“I don’t know yet. It’s a hard market to crack, they’re very loyal to their bands and music from their own countries. Especially England. It’s much more nationalistic, and the music is much more by-and-for the people—not like here. The U.S. is far too big for the music to have the same effects that is does there.

“I think that it will catch on. I just think it’s harder—you have to go over and play there without much radio support. There’s very few bands that just break out of England— unless they’re from England.”

The fall tour has them touring with Whitesnake and hitting the major Heavy Metal festivals such as Edinburgh and Reading, which inadvertently brings up the H—y M—1 question again.

“We’re by no means a soft, agreeable sort of act—I just don’t think we’re a Heavy Metal band. I think we can appeal to Heavy Metal fans—we still turn up and play loud and bash away—I just think there’s a little more subtlety to what we do.”

Back at the Royal Oak Theater that night for the second of his two sold-out performances, there is little doubt that Squier can and does appeal to a lot of people. The sound is horrible, and the taped introduction (one of the stock Baptist fire ’n’ brimstone rants about the Eeh-vullls! of rock music) is just plain silly, but when Billy comes out and turns on the charm he can do no wrong. The opening number, “In The Dark,” sounds like Cheap Trick when they were good, and shows that Squier’s music does fall towards the subtler end of the Heavy, er, Rock spectrum.

Throughout the show Billy flirts with the first few rows and pulls faces shamelessly— coyly winking one second and then grinning like an embarrassed schoolboy the next. The girls—many of whom look to be no more than 15—are eating it up, and it reminds me of the trio of star-eyed nymphets who had been waiting in the lobby of the hotel that afternoon—all giggles and make-up—for a glimpse of their Billy.

As the end of our interview arrived I asked Billy if this was a common occurance.

“Well,” he replied, almost shyly, “I get a lot of that now, with this new record.”

Does it feel stfange after all these years to suddenly receive all of this pre-pubescent attention?

“I like it. 1 think as long as it’s fun—as long as it doesn’t become serious to anyone writ’s quite nice. It’s certainly nice to me, ’cause I’m getting a response to wnat I do, and if my songs make then that happy, then that’s fine. That’s what it’s all about.”

That and American Bandstand, of course. Come back Andy Paley, all is forgiven.