Clap For The Wolfmen Moonlighting with Los Lobos

Clap For The Wolfmen Moonlighting with Los Lobos

Bill Holdship

There was this band from Detroit called White Lines. It was right at the height of the punk/“new wave” thing, and White Lines got a chance to play Bookie’s, the club that’s kinda legendary in Detroit for being the place where all the hip bands of that era played. The guys in White Lines had real long hair. One of them was named Killer Whale. Some of them worked in the car industry. They wore blue jeans onstage. Fact is when Dennis Loren, who now works in CREEM’s art department, designed the cover of the band’s sole independent single, he found a hot young model to pose rather than using a photo of the band. In other words, they weren’t the most stylish band to ever take a stage. And they worshipped the Beatles.

The crowd at Bookie’s—even the ones who usually spit and threw things at the stage because it was the “hip” thing to do—reportedly loved the band that night, even if they did look like a country rock or metal band. White Lines played their own material interspersed with nothing but Beatles’ covers. And at least some of the audience wondered if the band’s originals were really Beatles songs they’d never heard before. The crowd wanted White Lines back for an encore. And it’s said that the little bimbo in charge of the club wouldn’t let them go back onstage. Had they been rude or done something to offend her? No. They weren’t permitted to do an encore because “they didn’t look the part. They don’t look like they sound.”

Of course, there wasn’t a Slash Records in Detroit to sign White Lines. But I guess the point of all this is that the way a band looks has always counted for a lot in rock ’n’ roll. Which is one of the reasons the Psychedelic Furs are on the cover of this magazine and Los Lobos aren’t. It’s got little to do with which band is producing the “better” records these days. But let’s face it: Los Lobos look about as average as you can get for a group of Mexican-American guys from L.A. I don’t know what “Eleganza” thinks of them, but they certainly don’t look like rock stars. Factory workers, maybe. And they’re such regular type people, they almost approach the mundane in terms of rock ’n’ roll hipness. They’re married. They obviously enjoy home cooking. They dig their kids. Drummer Louie Perez was an altar boy. They all insist that they’re not “rock stars” when it’s suggested, and co-lead singer/string-picking virtuoso Dave Hidalgo says “You can see it in our hairstyles” when a connection between the band’s “wolf” imagery and Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like A Wolf” is jokingly drawn. Hidalgo adds that “I’d like to hear some of that stuff,” but the whole band admits that they haven’t had much time to hear any of the new “trends” or new music from Britain, other than what they’ve caught on MTV.

Nonetheless, Los Lobos can really cook with their blend of hard blues, classic rock ’n’ roll and traditional Mexican folk music (which to these untrained ears can sound reminiscent of anything from a spaghetti western to a polka to an Italian love scene). They haven’t heard the Smiths or Robyn Hitchcock, but they could probably sit and talk about the music they do know all night long. They sure do enjoy talking—over much beer and terrific tacos—about the Stooges, the MC5, Blue Cheer, Edgar Winter’s White Trash and (especially) Motown music with two old dudes from Michigan. “We’re old dudes, too,” says Lobos bassist Conrad Lozana, excitedly adding that “Motown was such a major influence here. In East L.A., so many kids were just totally into Motown and actually got into playing music because of that. I was in a band called the Royal Checkmates, and all we did was soul music. It was so much fun, you know. Nine-piece bands with horn sections, and all comprised of 16-year-old kids. And it wasn’t just us. There were tons and tons of bands.”

To hear co-vocalist/string picker (and unofficial band founder) Cesar Rosas tell it, Los Lobos has been about fun from day one, and it’s this simple love of music that’s kept the band together over 13 years.

“All these kids were playing rock ’n’ roll,” he says in his slow near-whisper that sometimes approaches the mystical. “Somehow, the musicians all managed to stick together. It was like a family. I had a Motown band. Dave and Louie had another band that was heavier. At different times we were all going to Garfield High in East L.A. ...”

The media’s always portrayed East L.A. as this terrible, dangerous slum.

“It is. It’s terrible. You don’t want to go in there, man. They’ll kill you.” He breaks out laughing. “No, no. East L.A. has always had this terrible reputation for having gangs and all that. It’s unfortunate because it may happen in only one or two blocks, you know, and it’s not all like that. There’s some really clean beautiful communities in East L.A. that make Hollywood look like a dump.

“At one point, we were like all in garage bands, playing parties for beer and stuff. We’d all grown up on the radio with Motown and the British stuff. Then we toned it down a little bit, and if you wanted to keep playing, you had to start playing Top 40 stuff in the clubs. We were all uncomfortable with it, coming from playing heavy stuff like Blue Cheer to having to play ‘Tin Man’ by America or something like that. And then we had to go through that whole disco thing, and, Jesus, we had to play Donna Summers songs! It was the ’70s, and the music scene was dead. Tasteless stuff. So out of that boredom, this guy who lived next door to me—he’d been to college and was into bluegrass and stuff like that—he was really getting into Mexican folk music. I had a guitar, he had a mandolin, so we learned a few songs, and it was great. After awhile, it was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have another mandolin? Wouldn’t it be great to have a bass?’ And before long, we had all five of us who are in the band now. So it was like a rock ’n’ roll band playing bluegrass—except it was real, authentic Mexican folk music. This wasn’t like the mariachi stuff. This was like jungle music.

“1973 was the beginning of Los Lobos. So from ’73 to ’79, we played the hell out of this folk music, and we did a lot with it. We played a lot of weddings and a lot of social and political benefits. We also were on a big university and college circuit, and we never had to go out of the state. Then a couple of us got married and stuff, and things got complicated. A few of us didn’t have other jobs, so we got gigs playing the Americanized Mexican restaurant circuit in L.A. We were like the house band, and we got paid. We made (the independent) Just Another Band From East L.A. in 1978, and we were hoping for a record contract and stuff, but we were just really dreaming. Then around 1980, we were still playing Mexican restaurants, and after the dinner crowd would leave, some of the drinkers would yell, ‘Hey, you guys know any blues?’ So we started playing blues songs on these folk instruments, and it just blew everything out of proportion. Soon, we were bringing little amps to the gigs, and we started playing this Tex-Mex music, and the end result was we got too loud and we got fired from the Mexican restaurant.

“So it was time for something different. We were having the best time of our lives, so I said, ‘Let’s go back to the garage and write a few songs.’ Then we did a gig opening for the Blasters at the Whiskey. Before we knew it, we had offers to play other clubs. But as a result, we went from playing for a couple hundred apiece a weekend—maybe eight or nine hundred dollars a month—to making nothing. And we had to rethink everything. It was like starting all over again. We were lucky to get $15 or $20 and some beer. We did this for a year and a half. In other words, we starved.

“But by that point, we’d decided that something was definitely happening here. There were times when we’d have an offer to do a university or a wedding for a thousand dollars and we’d say, ‘Hey, we can go play with the Circle Jerks at a club. People from the L.A. Weekly will be there. Or someone from the Herald might want to talk to us.’ So, in a sense, we got more of a reward from it. Before long, the offers from EMI, RCA, CBS, the major companies, started coming in.”

Of course, Los Lobos ended up forsaking the majors (“We knew they’d have their Michael Jackson or something, and Los Lobos would end up on a shelf”) for Slash, the home of the Blasters, X and some of the best grassroots rock of the 1980s. And the rest of the story has been a steady, progressive climb. The debut EP made them an instant critic’s darling, and the band tied with Bruce Springsteen (another former factory type of guy) for “Artist Of The Year” in Rolling Stone’s ’84 critic’s poll. T. Bone Burnett is their producer. Elvis Costello has covered their songs. So has Waylon Jennings, who was given the title track of their debut Slash LP, How Will The Wolf Survive, by Tony Joe White of “Polk Salad Annie” fame. Cesar is proud to say that he played with Bob Dylan on some tracks that have yet to be released. There’s Paul Simon’s Graceland LP. There’s mass acceptance by all the “hip” bands. And there’s La Bamba, Taylor Hackford’s forthcoming film biography of the late Ritchie Valens, whose “Come On, Let’s Go” Los Lobos have covered on vinyl. Brian Setzer is playing Eddie Cochran. Marshall Crenshaw is playing Buddy Holly. “La Bamba” is the song Lester Bangs once proclaimed the very birth of punk rock. And the screenplay is by noted playwright Luis Valdez. It just could be the best rock ’n’ roll movie to come along since the glory year of American Hot Wax and The Buddy Holly Story. And Los Lobos are doing the soundtrack.

“It’s a good little film, a killer,’’ says Cesar. “We all saw the roughs, and it’s a tearjerker, man. It’s great. To make a long story short, we cloned Ritchie’s material in the studio. At first, we wanted to do it like us—but they wanted it as close to the original as possible. In the end, we even had to speed up Dave’s voice to make it higher pitched. But we did all the great songs—and we take a lot of pride in Ritchie Valens.”

The Lobos guys were doing the Valens stuff at the same time as they were recording By The Light Of The Moon, nearly a year in the making and the LP that has the band finally poised for the bigtime. It has the same eclectic material that’s always been the band’s trademark; you can definitely hear the Motown in “Set Me Free (Rosa Lee),” the blues on “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes,” while “Prenda Del Alma” is about as south of the border as you can get. But on the new LP, Los Lobos seem to address social concerns unlike ever before, perhaps best exemplified on the death of the American dream romanticism of “One Time One Night.” Louie Perez feels that the LP isn’t depressing, though. It’s just good old-fashioned social observation.

"Why hasn't (Paul Simon given us credit? I mean, hasn’ he looked at it and said, "Hey, these are the guys that I askec to come and play on my album. They wrote the song. Why haven’t I given them credit?’ ”

—Cesar Rosas

“People don’t understand that,” he says. “All that stuff is just how you’re affected by things. There’s that One verse— some people interpret it different—but it’s about the missing children where the father steals the kids. You go down to the market and buy a half gallon of milk, and you got these poor kids on the damn milk every time you pour it. Those images are really strong, so you end up writing about those sort of things.”

The verse about the girl who “gave her life to become somebody’s wife” almost sounds like something from Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away.”

“That’s OK,” laughs Louie. “He stole from us. I guess we can steal from him.”

How did Los Lobos get hooked up with Paul Simon for the Graceland LP in the first place?

CESAR: “He was like a Los Lobos fan ...”

CONRAD: “Was.” (Much laughter)

CESAR: “And he just got ahold of us, and asked if we wanted to do some songs. And that was it. And we said, ‘Well, OK ... ’ (pause) We might as well put him in all the magazines.”

CONRAD: “Yeah, we might as well.”

LOUIE: “I guess he will be, anyway. It’s not enough that he’s sold three and a half million records.”

CESAR: “You know we didn’t get any credit on that?”

You didn’t get any credit on the record?

CESAR: “Well, he mentioned us and stuff. But we wrote the song. That’s our song. He took our tracks, he took them home, added a melody, and put his vocals over them.”

Has he talked to you since?

CONRAD: “Fuck, no.”

CESAR: “He should’ve given us credit. He’s a nice guy, though. I just don’t know what the hell went wrong. Every time they ask us about him, we try to figure out what went wrong. Why hasn’t he given us credit? I mean, hasn’t he looked at it and said, ‘Hey, these are the guys that I asked to come and play on my album. They wrote the song. Why haven’t I given them credit?’ ”

The band’s management say that the situation is being dealt with, so we’ll just leave it by saying that Los Lobos probably won’t be joining Paul Simon for any dates on his current tour. However, the band will be touring on their own throughout thjs summer. In fact, they were leaving for Europe only days after this interview took place, hitting 10 countries, including their first time in Spain. (Ironically, the band has yet to perform in Mexico, although their LPs were recently licensed for release down there.)

Do these guys feel at all overwhelmed by their success?

“Yeah,” says Dave. “We went out and bought new clothes and stuff.” Again, there is much laughter all around.

Well, it must seem strange after being at it for 13 years.

“It’s a different situation, though,” says Cesar, “because it’s not like we were knocking on doors begging for a break. We always managed to have a good time with it. And it just happened.”

The final words belong to Conrad. “We’ve just taken things as they’ve come. We’ve never expected anything. We’ve just tried to earn a living.”