One Quarterflash, Three Parts Foolish

In the United States, statistics show, a girl is walking out on her no-good man every 15 minutes. Statistics also show that 15 minutes later they’re going out and buying the Quarterflash record.

“I’d say,” says Rindy Ross, tiny and pert and looking ready for a tennis game, “two-thirds of the people who buy the record are women. And they say things like, ‘I can really understand “Harden My Heart.’ ” In fact, one woman said it was her divorce song.”

“A lot of women,” says Marv Ross, slightly dishevelled and wrapped in a leather jacket, “claim to own the Song, like this is MY song. Interesting.”

“I’ve said that a few times in high school —you just tie into a song because it says everything you’re feeling at the time. There’s always,” she confides Cosmopolitanly, “some girl who’s breaking up with her boyfriend, and she’s just not going to take this shit anymore. This is it!”

This, in fact, is the Best Western in Seattle, a stone’s throw from Portland, Oregon, which, if it hasn’t been swallowed by volcanic ash, is Quarterflash’s hometown. The sun is shining, the birds are twittering :and Marv and Rindy Ross are doing a pre-show (with Sammy Hagar at the arena) interview; A nicer couple you couldn’t meet, not even on Family Feud. While all about them the moral fiber of their country is falling to pieces, and Geffen Records is crying all the way to the bank as Quarterflash is selling as fast as Valium to America’s womenfolk, Rindy and Marv are still together after It) years of marriage (“we met each other when we were juniors in high school, in an English class”) and have no intention of following their own advice and leaving each other for a life of rock ’n’ roll fun.

“We had fun,” Rindy insists.

“Most of the time,” adds Marv (they take it in turns, listening carefully to each other’s answer) “we don’t even mention the fact that we’re married. Most people, when we go to interviews, say ‘are you brothers or sisters or what?’ Because we just don’t want to project the idea that we’re too cute or something.” One of the reasons he wears leather. He still looks cute.

"A lot of women claim to own the song, like this is MY song. Interesting. --Marv Ross"

“I think we’re a little too wholesome, for some people, just the idea of it. But we’re definitely not trying to be the Captain and Tennille or something.”

“Or Donnie and Marie,” grins Randy.

But what got them into rock ’n’ roll, this nice suburban couple who used to teach school and wear earth shoes? What took them from Tupperware parties to rock ’n’ roll parties? Surely .not to get drugs and have lots of sex with strangers? What could the road hold for such a twosome as this?

“Well,” muses Marv. “Both of us went through Our party years younger. And I’ve always taken music a little more seriously, probably, than a lot of musicians do.”

“I think,” says Rindy, “we are out of the stereotype. We can’t really be plugged into that—and I’m glad. And yet I do feel I can communicate with those people that are totally into partying.

“I don’t make any judgement upon musicians who go through that, because perhaps if the situation were different and Marv and I weren’t together, maybe I’d be doing it too. But we’re just happy together, and that’s the bottom line.”

Uh, we’re not trying to add you to the divorce statistics or anything, but don’t you get on each other’s nerves? Don’t you go home after a concert and say, “I’ve got a headache” because of some criticism you’ve made of each other onstage? Don’t you just get sick of the sight of each other? Or are you just too wonderful for words?

“No, we’re not too wonderful for words,” says Marv. “We’re critical pf each other. If I think something doesn’t look good on her or the horn lick she’s playing isn’t appropriate for the song, I’ll tell her. It’s sensitive, because you have to keep your professional life and your married life separate.”

“Which,” says Rindy, “is fairly impossible, but you have to try.”

“There are moments,” philosophises Marv, “where you have to throw out the music and just discover yourselves again.”

“I think,” back to Rindy, “the fact that our relationship started before we were ever involved in music and developed in such a gradual way musically that We kind of know each other well enough to know which areas are really delicate. And another main thing why we don’t get on each other ego-wise is that I’m not a writer and Marv isn’t a singer. So we can make suggestions to the other person because it’s not coming from ‘I can do it better than you.’ So when he gives me a criticism I usually take it seriously and not as a threat.”

“It would be very hard, I think, to be a Buckingham-Nicks,” says Marv. Thank the Lord for that. “Both singing leads and both writing. It would be very hard for me if Rindy was writing great songs—I could see where I’d be jealous of her writing abilities and find it hard to deal with a love relationship. So I think we are very fortunate in that We complement each other and fit just right.”

“I guess he’s right,” smiles Rindy. “We’re just too wonderful for words.”

“That,” Marv takes a mental note, “would make good lyrics for a song.”

Which brings us right back to “Harden My Heart,” that song that fits into just about every American radio' format and flashes HIT from the second you hear the sax hook and get dragged into the catchy tune. As Rindy puts it, “Marv writes good radio songs.”

This one was written way back in 1979 when Marv and Rindy used to play in bars “and we got a real mediocre response to it or none at all.” As in turning their backs and walking out. “I think it really demonstrates the difference between what people in a bar want to hear and what people on their radio in a car want to hear.”

“It’s not,” says Rindy, “raucous rock ’n’ roll. It’s not music to drink to.”

Does such a creature exist? Yes, and it was recorded in the basement of the Ross house. They’d have supper, go downstairs and work in their “little studio” that they saved up for after experiencing anxieties and the ridiculous cost of booking real studio time. “We made our living playing the bars, four days a week usually, and the rest of the time the band spent down in the studio.” Marv gave Rindy “Harden My Heart” and “at the time we recorded it at home I was still reading the words off a piece of paper.”

Marv and Rindy don’t think it at all odd that he’s writing songs as a woman. “It’s just that Rindy and I have this relationship where I’ve been writing songs for her for so many years that this was just one of them. I don’t sing at all, so she’s really my voice, so a lot of time I think out the lyrics through her mental process—we’ve done it for so long now that it’s become easier for me. I wanted to write a strong song for her to sing, because that’s what she wanted at the time.”

An I Am Woman thing?

“Basically yes,” says Rindy. “Strong independent female instead of snivelling dependent female. Just a few years ago you were hearing those ‘I can’t live without you’ type lyrics coming from a woman. I’m tired of that approach, the subservient woman thing. And Marv knows me so well, it’s so much fun for me to have someone that can write lyrics from that point of view. I feel very lucky.”

After all, it would seem more reasonable for a guy to write for his women, saying ‘I’m going to be your abject slave, bring you breakfast in bed and perform all other marital functions’ than ‘sod you, I’m hardening my heart,’ wouldn’t it?

“That’s not Rindy. This song was written from a personal problem I was having with some friends of mine that I’d known for years, so I just sort of channelled those emotions.”

Anyway, the basement recording was released as a single on the independent Whitefire label (“it’s Whitefire number 001. There’s never been an 002”) and with the help of manager Jay Isaacs, they set about flogging the record to record stores and radio stations around Portland, where they’s picked up quite a following.

“Each member of the band had like four stores to cover, and we each had our own records and made sure we called once a week to see that they had enough records. And we always ran out, because we didn’t expect it to sell. We initially ordered a thousand copies, the minimum we could order. Lots of friends of ours in Portland had had local records, and they were always real lucky if they ever sold the first shipment.”

"The rock 'n' roll end of Marv rubbed off on me, and the folk part of me rubbed off on him, so eventually there was a meeting ground. —Rindy Ross"

“So we’d order 2000 more,” says Rindy, “and that would be gone immediately. We couldn’t believe it! We kept thinking, well, it’s going to peak, they’ll lose interest. And we ended up selling 10,000.” Everyone in Portland just about has a copy.

“We really learned the music business from the ground up,” says Marv, “the oldfashioned way, with the records in the back of the trunk and driving to a record store and trying to get someone to put up a little picture of the band. It was like Coal Miner’s Daughter or something.”

About the nearest thing they did to hyping themselves was rent Seattle’s famous (they tell me) Fish Man to hand out tickets to their shows in his “lovely fish suit—beautiful scales; it’s just wonderful,” or have their friends wear clam masks “and this guy would stand with a wet suit on and this clam head handing out flyers.” Not a strange northwestern ritual, but something to do with the fact that Quarterflash used to be called Seafood Mama when “Harden My Heart” first made waves.

Seafood Mama was a band that used to play a lot of swing music, with fiddles and harmonicas and the like. It dissolved when the musical direction of the band started following the path of Marv’s pop-rock songs, the songs that the record companies were already showing more than a little interest in. (Bigshot producer John Boylan went to check them out in Seattle and testified that this would be his only outside project of the year.) Geffen Records, a label Concentrating on already established artists like Lennon, Elton John and Donna Summer, was beginning to sniff at. Seafood.

Adopting a local band called Pilot (“don’t say ‘adopt.’ We’re not mom and dad in the back of the bus. We get a lot of shit about that—‘hey there’s mom and dad!’ Right now we’re trying to establish a band identity away from Marv and Rindy, away from Seafood Mama. And it is merging together”) they formed a completely new band. And “when you have a name like Seafood Mama it always focuses on the female member of the band, and I was tired of being the Mama.

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“We wanted a name a little more nebulous. We found the word ‘Quarterflash’ in a book of Australian folk phrases in John Boylan’s library. It means ‘one quarter flash and three part§ foolish.’ ”

“We thought,” says Marv, “that it fits rock ’n’ roll rather well.”

The rest of Quarterflash are Jack Charles on guitar and vocals (more vocals onstage than you hear on the album), Rick DiGiallonardo on keyboards, drummer Brian David Willis and bass player Rich Gooch, all from Portland and with the dubious honor of having once recorded for Andy Williams’ label. Say Rindy and Marv in unison, this band is working far better than any they’ve ever been in before, and they’ve been in several, from “hippie rock bands” to folkie things where “you wore to a gig what you got up and put on that morning.” Before they played music together but while they were still sweethearts, they’d be introducing each other to their very different tastes. About the heaviest Rindy ever went for was the Beatles, “but I was never a fanatic. I’ve never been the groupie type fan. I guess I’m basically shy. I’ve always liked popular music though, top 40 type stuff, radio songs.” Her biggest influence as a singer was, no, not Pat Benatar, wash your mouth out. Not even Heart. “The one who influenced me most was Joni Mitchell mbre than anything else.” While Marv was off listening to the Beatles and the Stones and going “wow,” and borrowing his big sister’s Motown albums and impersonating Jim Morrison in front of the mirror.

“We started influencing each other,” says Rindy. “The rock ’n’ roll end of Marv rubbed off on me, and the folk part of me rubbed off on him, so eventually there was a meeting ground.”

“We influenced each other a lot,” Marv confirms, “because I was really into the Doors and the Stones and Rindy was bringing me records by Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and saying ‘listen to these lyrics.’ It really opened my eyes to lyric writing as something that could go beyond the stuff that I was listening to. Sure, I hung around with the bad boys, the guys that cruised in cars and drove around. That was part of my life. But there was another part—I was very studious, school was something that I got things out of, and there was a side of me more in tune with what Rindy was doing.”

Somewhere along the line, Rindy picked up her dad’s alto sax and taught herself to play, so she wouldn’t have to do a Stevie Nicks and “Bang a tambourine on my butt during instrumental breaks—I’m not very good at that.” And add a touch of harmony—“the school choir syndrome thing, which was actually very important to me”—and you have what apparently the majority of Americans would like to have on their turntables.

“The album’s real consistent,” Marv gives as a reason for its huge success. “There’s no throwaway material. And when people are now spending nine dollars for an album, I think that’s important. And it does have some rock ’n’ roll excitement”—Marv’s first rock ’n’ roll excitement was seeing Guy Mitchell at the state fair “and he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it right off and sang. It shocked the hell out of my parents.”

“He was deeply affected by that experience,” his loyal wife confides. “I’ve been,” Marv confesses, “wholesome ever since.”