THE OUTFIELD: WE'RE AN... UH...AMERICAN BAND?

THE OUTFIELD: WE'RE AN... UH...AMERICAN BAND?

Billy Cioffi

The first time I heard the Outfield on the radio I recall thinking that the band had a refreshing pop sheen that was like a breath of fresh air compared to the usual Top 40 diet of synthosludge mannerisms. “Here,” says I, “is another one of these promising American upstarts, like the Hooters, who are giving us some good jangelling AM radio music.” Well, I guess you could’ve knocked me over with a light gauge guitar string when I found out that the Outfield were not from the good ole U.S.A., but were a bunch of bloody blokes from you know where! To make matters worse, these guys had actually named themselves after a term (or rather, a location) from the Great American Pastime. Have the English no shame, I wondered?

I arrived at CBS Records in Los Angeles to get the answers from their leader and principle songwriter, John Spinks.

When introduced to Spinks I couldn’t help but notice that the guy looked like he just jumped out of a wet suit and drove his woody down the Pacific Coast Highway. He hardly looked liked the palemoussed popster I had expected. “Hey,” I thought, “this guy even looks American.” Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eyes and ears.

“I don’t think it’s really American,” Spinks mumbled through the thickest East End accent I ever heard. "I think that America adopted the Beatles and that classic kind of...songwriting mode that was polished off by bands like Journey and Foreigner. They made that stylized kind of music in the ’70s. It was very much songs with choruses, like the Beatles, but much more polished in sound. I think people just assumed that this was an American sound, but really it’s just back to the Beatles thing—rock music with hooky choruses and poppy songs that have melodies.”

I commented that the Outfield’s sound reminded me of the Hooters—developed, yet uncalculated.

“I think most record companies are looking for bands that are not just going to make one album. Bands like the Hooters and ourselves are a new kind of band. We’re not just young kids, we’re all sort of in our late 20s or early 30s and there is kind of a stability in our outlook on life. If we were 19 and influenced by drugs and all that stuff, the girls, it might be different. We’ve got an attitude of wanting to do it for the right reasons: because we want to play music. It’s not ‘let’s do it for the record deal,’ it’s more like ‘let’s do it and have a great time.’ We do have a great time playing and I think the record company likes that about us. It seems to me most record companies are looking for bands with a healthy attitude both musically and physically.”

The name of the band seemed curious to me. Baseball, after all, could hardly be called popular in the U.K.

“About three years ago we were doing demos in London and I had just seen the movie The Warriors. I loved the name of one of the film’s street gangs, the Baseball Boys, so I just started labeling the tapes I was sending out ‘Baseball Boys.’ All of a sudden we got response from record companies and publishers saying ‘We want to see the Baseball Boys.’ At that point there was hardly a band, so we got it together. We did a few early shows as the Baseball Boys, and there was some press and the name stuck. When we started getting reviewed in the press they said ‘This band is very together: they sound very American.’ Our manager is American; we took his guidance and decided that the Baseball Boys sounded too tongue-in cheek. Our manager is a baseball fanatic, like the guy from CBS who signed us—he’s a baseball freak—and our lawyer is a baseball nut. So we listened to these guys and they were right, so we changed our name to the Outfield.”

It’s evident that the songwriter/guitarist was no overnight pop star, but a canny professional who has worked long and hard to get to where he is.

“It all started about 1976. The three of us formed a little band and rehearsed for about four or five months and got to the point where we started doing a gig or two. Then the punk thing exploded and all I know is for the next couple of years there weren’t many gigs. There was this guy at the studio I used to work at in London— he knew I was a writer—and he said ‘just come in and do some writing in the studio.’ And he said ‘don’t worry if something comes—we’ll take it from there.’ So that’s what I did.”

In America the punk movement never took over the music scene quite as it did in England. In the U.S.A., punk was a quick movement that rapidly evolved to the more commercially-accepted new wave.

“The trouble was it wasn’t melodic, but there were good parts. I’m a bit of a sponge musically. People will ask, ‘Who do you think you sound like?,’ and try to categorize the band. If anyone says they’re not influenced by what they listen to, they’re hypocrites. All the influences these last years have come from' listening to everything from punk bands to the major bands like the Beatles. These styles subconsciously go in to what you are as a person and come out in your playing.”

You don’t get the impression Spinks was ever the kind of character who lived on the infamous dole and bemoaned the corruption of the corroading Empire. He comes off as, dare I say it, an English Yuppie.

‘‘I was working; we all worked day jobs until two years ago. I was an inspector for the gas company. Tony (lead singer/bassist) Lewis was a printer with IBM. The year before we started traveling we worked intensely. We cut about 30 demos plus we did session work to finance the band. So we worked twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week...it was a really intense period for us. We don’t do drugs and we don’t even smoke. If we finished work on a Friday night to get three demos ready for the record company, we’d go straight into the studio for two days without sleep.

When the record label expressed intrest in the group, the company thought it would be a good idea for Spinks to come to New York to get some idea of the U.S.

‘‘They said ‘You’re writing about this anyway, so why don’t you come here and see what you’re writing about.’ I’m really influenced by things that are larger than life. When you think about it, it is show business that we’re in—so if you want to see a show, America is the most showbiz country in the world. Everything’s larger than life!

‘‘I just remember being in awe of the size of New York City. In London we have two lane traffic most of the time, and there are speed traps everywhere. In the middle of New York there are six lanes of traffic all going 50 or 60 miles an hour and all going in the wrong direction than I’m used to. I got into this cab and this old guy was driving. Now I’m used to these sedate English cabbies, and this geezer’s got a cup between his legs and he’s pouring steaming hot coffee with one hand, driving with the other and about to hit somebody. So I said him, ‘Excuse me could you please slow down?’ And he said, ‘You wanna get out and walk or what?’ I was really frightened, so I got out of the car and walked. It’s like four in the afternoon and I’m walking on Fifth Avenue and all the traffic is stopped and I see these two guys who’d been on bikes fighting. Just literally pounding each other in broad daylight. I’m thinking, ‘Why doesn’t somebody do something,’ and people are walking by like nothing is happening.”

Trauma of the human tide notwithstanding, Spinks and company have been barnstorming America. Is it how he imagined it would be during the years of cutting demos and playing the scattered club dates in London?

‘‘Uh...honestly, no. It’s become easier because then we were lugging our own equipment around in cars and vans and stuff. Now we’ve got road crews doing that for us. You are your own industry, providing you’re smart and you look good. The stations will help you if you do all the promotion and station ID’s and interviews. If you didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t be in the industry. I love doing that stuff. If you’re not doing it for the right reasons and you go in with the attitude that the industry owes you a favor, well..."

It’s been a long haul for Spinks and the Outfield, but patience has paid off. It took CBS five months to break their second single “Your Love.”

‘‘Because it was slow we’ve been able to grow with the success and we’ve been able to accept more pressure. We’ve been in this country 96 days with just four days off for traveling. We’ve been doing radio, TV and promotion.

‘‘It’s been a tense period in our lives. Everybody asks how I feel about being a success—I don't think of it that way; I’m just lucky to be in the industry doing something I want to do and getting paid for it. Over and beyond, anything I feel working for the next few years is a bonus. We’re not doing it for the money, ’cause we’d be doing it anyway in London. Luckily, we’ve had a little success at it and the band just enjoys being together!”