TAKE THE EL OUT OF MOTELS

TAKE THE EL OUT OF MOTELS

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ans it's Motes?

Sylvie Simmons

terms of that slutty image, I Don't think I've changed. --Martha Davis out

In a smoke-filled call up in Capitol Towers, that awesome Hollywood edifice modeled on an Ajax can. Martha Davis and Marty Jourard sit blinking under fluorescent lights and posters of Anne Murray. Motels. Two of them anyway. The other three (lanky bassist Michael Good-roe; new quitarist Guy Perry, famous for leaving Elephants Memory the week before John Lennon adopted them; and veteran British drummer and personal ac-quaintance of Jethro Tull. Bnan Glascock) area‘! around. One of Martha's two taunage daughters is. though. popping in and out wltlt Duran Duran pamphcmaia to dlscuss with Mom and me the virtue of English boy cheekbones:

with Duran Duran paraphernalia to discuss with Mom and me the virtue of English boy cheekbones. Martha Davis hasn’t looked this happy since that time someone told her she could lose weight if she just drank whiskey and didn’t eat. Marty Jourard’s looking like a Hare Krishna who just sold a dozen carnations. for the Motels these days,

like the Martha Davis all-whiskey diet, is one big Happy Hour. See, the Motels these days are STARS. Not that anyone really expected anything else. I can remember the time when there were more A&R men and execs on the Sunset Strip than muggers and whores, falling over each other’s feet in their attempts to sign this band and rake in the dollars. This was back when just about every muso in the City of Angels wore a narrow tie and smirked, or torn T-shirts and scowled. And the Motels stood out— rather Martha stood out, stalking club stages like a bloody great cat, all in black from her hair to her stockings to her sheath skirt to her spiked-heeled shoes, staring wide-eyed and pale-faced into the audience as the smoke climbed up the spotlight, tough but scared, theatrical film noir stuff that made you want to pop your fingers

instead of clap when the song came to the end; you know the stuff. Back-alley Hollywood. The songs were creepy, obsessive, mannered little numbers full of sex, mutilation, passion, desperation and hor20

Of course she looked a lot sleazier then —“a siutty'looking chick who sang lead and made a lot of noise with a guitar a few times” as it said on the cover of an old local compilation album—and the band was a lot rawer. But it was agreed they’d be big, these Motels, and before long out came those creepy obsessive numbers on a debut Capitol album:

’ Only Australia bought it.

It didn’t help that the power was diluted, the production an embarrassment and radio interest non-existent. The band reckoned Capitol would forcibly evict them, but out came a slightly more accessible second. It cracked the top hundred, which is more than the first one did, but still wasn’t the kind of victory you retire on. Still, with heavy management (George Benson’s people) and their label behind them, the. Motels seemed to be having the time of their lives as both companies’ “weird little band.” Martha and then-guitarist Tim McGovern were like Ron and Nandy heading up a loveable family of mischievous but well-meaning musicians. If their third album, All Four One, had been another “Hey, Hey We’re The Monkees” I wouldn’t have been surprised. Creepy obsessive numbers and psychodramas don’t tend to come out of utter bliss.. Only the Motels seemed to bliss out entirely, disappearing from the planet for over a year between records before returning from who knows what Nirvana with their big hit record. Quite what, you’ll find out later.

But how come they finally made it so big?

First, as the record company press releases have been telling me, it’s the Year of the Woman (nice to know we get one). Second (better late etc.) it’s the Year of New Wave. Third, everyone seems to have come to a comfortable compromise in this thing they now call New Music (an amalgam of “new wave” and good old “music” and less terrifying to aged programmers and record execs). In other wprds the synthesizer and energy and preferably female singer convince them they’re new, while the strong melodies, guitars and choruses convince them that the new’s not really so different from the old after all.

And of course there’s the production job, the overall slick sound of this album that soothed AOR types into giving it a shot. It’s definitely been tampered with, but then so have most albums, and few could have tampered with this band’s records worse than the guy who produced the first two. OK, All Four One is nothing like their live shows. But as everyone who saw them and were disappointed in the other albums, pointed out, in one way or another none of their records have been anything like their live shows. At least this record retains more authentic Motels soul and sound than, say, the latest from another female L.A. new music band that’s doing well for itself—-the Go-Go’s—who seem to have been primped into the musical equivalent of a Smiley bumpersticker.

But back to our happy band of Motels, who at this moment are looking a little grim.

“I was going to quit the band,” Martha tells me. “Quit her own band!” Marty echoes for emphasis.

“I was going,” continues Martha, “to open a restaurant. Seriously. It really got to that point. It was just everything at once.”

To summarize: Tim McGovern and Martha split up. Tim and Motels split up. Motels and management split up. Record producer was sent packing. So was the first version of the Motels third album. Session players—session players!—were brought in. The whole band nearly split. It was not, they nod, a good year. “It was an all-time low. Hell in a handbag!”

Six months after working on a third album—meant to be titled Apocalypso, now referred to as 3a—with the artwork ® ready, the lot, the band—already tense | with former lovers Tim and Martha trying “ not to stare each other to death—took the J finished songs to the record company. The ^ once-smiling executives had funny looks I on their faces. Bottom line: perhaps you z might want to do it again? - g

“They were looking for a hit single,” reckons Marty. “No doubt about it.”

“Basically what they said was, we can release it now—if you want to...” says Martha. “We liked the album when we turned it in. I guess you’ve no idea how much better you can do something until you do it, but at that time...But we’ve got to trust them in one thing: knowing how to sell a record. So we went marching, in, changing everything around.”

Val Garay was brought in; the record biz’s favorite son after making a big new wave star out of a former MOR singer with “Bette Davis Eyes.” Tim McGovern was kicked out. Good timing for someone who’s arguably a tyrannical producer (and > now the Motels’ manager) keeping in mind s that Tim had one of the strongest personal° I ities and ideas of musical direction in the | band.

“I tried to keep Tim in the band,” Martha o protests. “But it had gone too far” after 3 he’d moved out of - her house. “Bad & blood,” Marty shakes his head.

“I told him, it shouldn’t have to end with the band, you’ve got a separate life and I’ve got mine and let’s just let it go. But it was coming right onstage. It was becoming The Tim And Martha Show. Tim had his show and I had mine, and it was remarkable because I think new volumes got reached on guitars and vocals” as they tried to outdo each other. “And you get tired,” sighs Martha, “You just get tired after a while. The thing with Tim was very emotional. We could still a room. He’d come in before a gig and everybody’s backstage and the whole band would be like gaaaapahh! I was just exhausted and ready to pack the whole thing in.” Instead she was persuaded to “go, ‘Oh God,’ take a deep breath, let’s go.”

“We call her Slow Bum Davis,” chortles Marty. “Once she decides something, she won’t change her mind back.”

“There’s tons of slack to be had,” adds Martha, “but when that’s gone, it’s over. At that point I had a few pow-wows with Val and we were in recording the next day. Gone was Apocalypso; in was All Four One. Enter album 3b.”

The difference between a and b (“I still like that darn album!”) has something to do with the entrance of the entire Kim Carnes backing band. No kidding. Val’s session army trooping in on one of L.A.’s earliest new wave bands to take over.

Martha: “Val looked at me and said, ‘when Tim leaves, there goes the best musician in the band.’ So 1 went ‘great, what do you want me to do? Fire my whole band?’ Everybody was flipping. Val was completely blown away because he’d just finished doing ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ and now he gets this reject from Capitol! Everybody was going crazy and it was all on me. WaaaaU

“And I said, ‘well I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to fire my band. If we need to organize some things right now, that’s what we’re going to do and it’ll work out. When Tim left we didn’t have time to start auditioning guitar players. And Val was pulling his hair out. He said, i’ll get on the phone and get Kim Carnes’ guys over here.”

“Witness the destruction of my ego,” squeals Marty. “Sure. We’re the Motels, you’re going to do what? It was the typical cliche in Hollywood. Bring in the guys who can really play the instruments because us mere hacks who can jump around onstage a lot can’t do it. That’s the way it looks. It was a pain.”

Martha: “I just sat everybody down and said ‘look, we have this much time to do this album and this much money. We’ve already spent this much and it’s gone. We’re here for the songs. We’re not here for our health or our egos. We’re just going to have to grit our teeth and bear it and do whatever has to be done to make this album as fast as possible and as good as possible.’

“It would get to where if so-and-so couldn’t do the track in three hours, he was out and the other guy was in. It was real brutal and we had people crying and wanting to go home. I was waiting for them to bring the other singer in! In the end we ended up all working together, really closely.”

“I got real defensive,” Marty says; a bit guilty like a cult member who’d doubted his guru. “You know, ‘what do you mean I can’t play on beat?’ But it wasn’t like I had all the answers either and that someone was just ramming in on us. It wasn’t like everything was going fine till they brought in those damn session players! Things were not going fine. They were going wrong. Rapidly. We’re eventually maturing. Bringing in other people who do one specific thing for a living, they’re going to be able to do it better than me. If your ego is strong enough it doesn’t bother you. It isn’t holiday time when you’re making a record.’

Mature is a word that’s been raising its little grey head in most of the reviews of that last album. Slick’s another one. So’s professional. “We like professionals,” protests Martha. “We call them ‘qualified personnel.’ ” So’s sell-out. SELL-OUT! Allowed the Motels sound to be changed in pursuit of filthy lucre, eh?

Marty: “If you have a preconceived idea of what a band should do artistically, then you’re always going to be disappointed. Like I’ve been striving to become a slicker sax player. And slick never means good. My whole life I’ve tried to get better, in terms of playing more accurately and stuff, but still have the emotion there. The Beatles got slicker, you know. You can argue taste and say ‘I like their old stuff better,’ but I didn’t. And when you try and get professional and consistent and quote ‘slick,’ maybe it’s because you’ve been trying to improve. When we played the Masque”—the sleazy punk club under the Pussycat Theater where Martha downed many a sixpack and spent the night— “God, was that place a dive! It smelled terrible. I couldn’t wait to get out. Finally we got enough money together and got out and I was happy.”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22

“I loved it,” reckons Martha.

Back to Marty. “I lived in Hollywood for years and it was sleazy, and I finally got enough money to rent a house that’s not Hollywood, and I’m happy. You struggle upwards.”

“You sold out there,” says Martha.

OK, so what about Martha dumping the old thrift-shop sleaze for sophisticated togs then?

“My image has changed a bit,” she confesses. “When I first came out,in the old days”—this is early ’70s in Berkeley. Quick history: fell in love at 12, married at 15, moved to Florida with Air Force husband, had two kids, moved everyone but the husband back to Berkeley, got involved in the art-scene, formed a band called Warfield Foxes which by various mutations became the Motels, moved down to L.A., started forming a club scene; Martha you can come back again now—“I looked pretty similar to what Chrissie Hynde did when she first came out—just all fucked up and jeans and boots. I got bored with that image.

“Basically I’ve gone back more to stuff I was wearing in ’76, which is a kind of tailored ’40s kind of thing. I just had to figure out if I could play guitar in a dress. It’s real hard. You spread your legs and you hit powerchords. . .

“In terms of that slutty image, I don’t think I’ve changed much onstage. And if the music’s got better, slicker, I’m glad. God, can you imagine it getting worse?

“We did polish this album. We pulled out the scouring pad and Ajax and polished it right up. And I like it! I like the extra instruments. When you write songs and you hear in your head all the cellos and the oboes and all that stuff, it was really nice to be able to have all those great new things in there.

After years of having albums that didn’t match up to live shows, looks like the problem now’s the other way round. An extra musician—Iggy Pop’s old keyboardist —was brought in for their current tour.

But how’s she going to look dramatic onstage while singing all these happy little ditties she’s been writing nowadays?

“You’ve got to give her credit for more than one kind of emotion,” says Marty. “It’s like, what happened to the tragic, dark Martha? Well maybe she was miserable back then.”

“Corny as it is,” says Martha, “one of the reasons why I’ve avoided happy songs in the past is because they’re harder to write. It’s very easy to write about how terrible life is, the aky is grey and my heart is aching and my fingernail broke. All those things you can describe. But when you’re happy and in love”—she is; her daughters introduced her to a cute male musician, resulting in newfound domestic bliss—” what do you say? How do you describe that? It gets so corny so quick, and it*s hard to avoid that—take me in your arms and whisper words like always, I mean! But God, it makes sense! There’s no other way to say it.

‘I felt really stupid coming out of this thing with Tim and the album just starting again and all we’d gone through—and I brought in these really happy songs. But there are Some sad ones too.” Including a cover of “He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss.” Really? So you like being hit?

“No I don’t! That’s why I can sing that song. I heard it first time 10 years ago and it blew my mind. I called up the DJ and said, ‘what the hell is that song?’ and he said, ‘ooh, you’re into that stuff, huh? Into a little S&M there honey?‘ and I hung up.

“I think anybody hitting anybody is the most stupid bullshit in the world. And I’ve been through it before in relationships and do not go for it at all. The way it’s approached in that song is so absurd that to me it almost makes a point against it. ‘He hit me and I was glad.’ I mean, God/’ When we do it live I preface it with ‘this is not a philosophy I subscribe to in real life,’

Anything else they want to tell us before I head off to get some Duran Duran photos of my own? ,

“Yes,” says Marty. “Henry Mancini figures large in our lives.” Me, I only report this stuff.