Mr. Misten Talk Talk!

Mr. Misten Talk Talk!

Sylvie Simmons

Imagine Hall & Oates and the Police getting together at Toto’s place for a singsong and getting gatecrashed by Don Henley. Take half the age you first thought of, add Sting’s hat size, and what have you got? Lord knows, but it might look or sound a bit like Mr. Mister. Whit: means it’d sound pretty darn good, a: anyone who’s sank into the sounds t “Broken Wing” or “Kyrie” or, heck,an,, thing off their second album, Welcomed The Real World already knows.

There’s drummer Pat Mastelotto,] man with a grin wider than Meat Los who has tales of working with Nick Gilds and Michael Des Barres and of playin: with just about every members Autograph in one L.A. band or anothe There’s Steve Farris, who used to pis guitar in Eddie Money’s band, a greatgi who also happens to be the World Leading Rock ’n’ Roll Turtle Expert (que tions about your snapper, red-ear or so1 back can be sent to Steve c/o ROC1 SHOTS). And there’s Steve George, plays keyboards and sings, and RicheK| Page, who plays bass and sings eve louder and gets to drive fab cars videos, and these last two are the 01 who are telling me the Mr. Mister sti A long way back it goes, too.

It all started in Phoenix, Arizona, di ty hometown of Alice Cooper, the Tub and Stevie Nicks. Richard and Sti played in a bunch of Top 40 bai together, “club bands; then we wenti to Vegas and started playing seven eight sets a night,” says Steve.

“We started at ten and worked 'tilf in the morning,” nods Richard. “Myvo lasted two days. And I said, T can't this!’ I left and went to L.A.”

Which wasn’t much better, ancfyj didn’t get to play the slot machines.

“I started struggling, figuring out™

I was doing. Then I called Steve upa said, ‘Do you want to move here and™ some songs? There’s no money in ii| but maybe we can get something goij

And he said, ‘Sure They put together a group call: Pages, and three albums came out br virtually sinking without trace.

“It was in that gray area in the 70s,” says Richard, “when there disco music and there was heavy corporate rock,” a real wasteland musicians, which is what Steve Richard always considered themselve^Bu be. “There really wasn’t anything 1"r^Ut tween. They said that we > studii sophisticated, too musical for the averja livi person. It wasn’t easy...” Riche

Indeed it wasn’t; they had to tr«: tobe around the country as Andy Git didn (remember him? The brother with|band almost-subtle teeth?) backing band, and nsidered it the Break of Breaks...that’s c how easy it wasn’t!

•'Believe me,” laughs Richard, “five 1 hundred dollars a week sounded great to ¶ all of us, coming from nothing!” Sounds great to me now, for that matter!

And it was a great experience; we c were immediately zapped into the big 'I arena thing, so it was a good training ground for us. And one thing led to i another.” Word spread about their back>1 ground singing, and offers of session " work piled in. All sorts of stuff—anything from singing on Molly Hatchet albums to *Briting for Donna Summer and working with Quincy Jones. And Richard even managed to fit in singing a Budweiser commercial! To prove it I got him to sing 11=: “This Bud’s for you.” And very well he does it, too. If the pop business doesn’t work out...

e i Bit's a very lucrative business singing e1 jingles,’ Richard laughs. “As you can im; agine, you go in for an hour-and-a-half n: and get paychecks every week. It helps

e‘ Pay the bills.”

llvS RU!wasn t what they wanted.

I I. . It S kind O Pofn hAir

I “It’s kind of a safe existence, being a l s,uclio musician, and a great way to earn ive' ^living. But we came into this,” says Richard, ‘‘always knowing that we wanted 1° ^e, 'n tror|tWe just got sidetracked. We Gdidn’t have the immediate success of a (it band like Tears For Fears, say—22 years

d, major hits in a year—that didn’t hapfor us. We kind of took the long way ound. But we’re older and wiser—older, 'lywayl—and I think our time is now. It ferns to be that way. It’s sort of come ound again and melodies are backore sensitive music may be the word for -and a lot of bands are doing that kind thing. We sort of fit into that groove.” I’m not implying that they’re ancient or ything, but as they brought the subject , would they rather all this success had ppened to them when they started out Hhe early 70s, so that they could have jne on the road and been wild and en^ed the whole fantasy of being rock ’n’

I stars—instead of sitting quietly in a lr checking the time-zones so they can ill home and see how their wives and nilies are getting along without them? I'Yeah,” says Richard after some |ught. "I fantasize about that every now I then. But I think back then I would /e drunk myself into oblivion or done ch worse, just gone to the absolute exis in every way. So personally I’d say a bit more equipped to handle it now, ng on my feet as a family-type peri”—there’s another little Page on the 1 this summer. “And we kind of did t anyway,” he smiles, “on a smaller partying ourselves into bed each ht!”

^ut back to the story. On the Pages’ urns they were using lots of different bio musicians. And at one point they | decided, enough; they wanted a real nd.

“One of the big things about Mr. iter,” says Richard, “was when we hd Steve Ferris. He came in with a real bh, raw, immediate edge to his guitar j^ing, which we liked. He’s a sophistipd, learned player, but he had that real bh edge that offset the lilting kind of poard things that Steve does so well, of course Pat is a dynamo on the ns.’’ So with that nice balance of Jness and power, they launched the and started playing showcases in Jfor all the major record companies.

I was going to just sing in the begin” says Richard. “But the bass player | to get some dental work done and dn't make it, he was stuffed full of bcaine. I’d been writing some songs he bass, just fiddling around with it, [there was a bass there at the rehearI just put it on to fill in the holes. |e end of rehearsal we just looked at | other and said, ‘Let’s make it a fourI it sounds pretty good, and we don’t * to pay a fifth guy or worry about a pttitude...’ ” Steve never fought with pver who got to sing lead—“I’ve got huch stuff to do playing keyboards,”

laughs—and everything just work-

(Supertramp even lent them sound and light systems for their case!) They soon got a record act.

The only thing they didn’t have was a name. “The record company’s going, ‘If you’re going to make a record you have to have a name,”’ says Steve, so they came up with Mr. Mister, “just a name. We had a list about a mile long and this one just stuck.”

So they put out their first album, / Wear The Face, and it didn’t do badly for a debut. A lot of people thought they were one of those new wave English bands; “they were surprised that we were American,” Richard grins. But they didn’t mind the confusion much as none of them likes labels. “That’s a big problem with life in general—too many labels. We don’t leave our minds open enough to appreciate all kinds of things,” says Richard.

Mr. Mister like all kinds of music—from Stevie Wonder to Mozart via the Beatles (for Richard), Kool & The Gang, Parliament/Funkadelic and jazz for Steve—and Mr. Mister want to keep on making any kind of music they darn well choose. “I’d like to—maybe next album—try to do something that’s never been done,” says Richard. “The most off-the-wall thing you could think of. I’d rather this band be known as one that’s been able to make new big steps in music, not just try and create the same music over and over again. And not say, ‘Well, Mr. Mister is going to come out with a new ballad that sounds just like the old ballad!’

“When I was a kid I used to go into my room, put on the headphones and listen to the lyrics on the Beatles’ White Album and Stevie Wonder’s Inner Visions and I’d feel like I had a great relationship with the music, that it was saying something to me. And I hope somehow there’s some kid sitting there with headphones on with our music, thinking the same thing.”