Bachelor #2: Bob Pfeifer

Bachelor #2: Bob Pfeifer

Bill Holdship

by

There’s a new scientific report out that suggests a broken heart can actually lead to a fatal heart attack. Whatever the case, it’s true that heartbreak is a real drag, but it’s also true that art—both the creation and experience of it—can be real cathartic and helpful when it comes to dealing with (sigh) the end of a relationship. This has been true from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, and be it “Since I Don’t Have You” or “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell,” it’s often been true in rock ’n’ roll. Bob Pfeifer— former leader of the Human Switchboard, one of the best of those numerous bands that fall under the category of Great Bands Very Few People Ever Heard— has a wonderful new solo LP out called After Words, and it’s all about what happens after you hear those famous words: “Let’s just be friends.”

“People I know in New York wanted me to name the album Kim,” says Pfeifer with a sad grin. “It’s still going op, the break-up. I broke up with her last summer, and then we got back together, you know. We just talked on Valentine’s Day, and I said, ‘Well, I guess that’s it.’ She had to go to Florida to get a tan, so she’s been gone for the last two weeks. I’m in love with her, she’s in love with me. It’s very painful, but it’s all on the album.

“I was going to call the record Aftermath, but the Stones came out with their CDs, so I figured everyone would remember that. I was out of a title there. I was going to name it Knock-Knock for awhile, as in ‘I’m looking for someone new.’ When you write, you write—but I’m not looking at this as a letter to her or anything. It’s just that powerful emotions occur, I think.”

Some people may think the record is about Myrna Marcarian, who played keyboards with the Human Switchboard and sings backing vocals on two tracks of After Words. Their relationship was well documented by the rock press during the band’s “heyday.”

“I guess the album’s about composites of people I’ve had relationships with,” says Pfeifer. “It’s about break-ups, but it’s also about being together in relationships. And I think there’s some social commenf tary there as well, like on (the song) ‘Anything New’—‘There’s no white picket I fences, there’s no children out to play.’

I guess that song’s about the old values i being gone—and the new ones... I think I I feel pretty moralistic about life. I do a lot j of fucked-up things, but I think I’d love to have, let’s say, monogamy in a relationship. I also think that people run away from anything new, and what would be ‘new’ today would be anything that’s not like Reagan at all. I think my stance is much more left wing than it is conservative. Yet, it talks about virtue and morals. I’m interested in people not lying. That’s why people’s dreams are shattered.”

Anyone who’s heard “Anything New” has probably already marveled at Pfeifer’s blend of various rock archetypes (a craft he perfected with the Switchboard), this particular case being Neil Young meets ’50s ballads with a garage/ “bubblegum” keyboard thrown in for the emotional punch. You can spot these devices all over After Words. Thg intro to “Maybe I’m Stupid” sounds almost identical to Marmalade’s great “Reflections Of My Life” (“That’s funny,” says Pfeifer. “Someone asked me if it was ‘Lay Lady ° Lay’ just two hours ago”), while a line in the same song sounds a lot like one from the Stones’ “Ride On, Baby,” perhaps the greatest “fuck off” break-up song of all time. Yet, Pfeifer says all these musical borrowings never'seem intentional to him.

“I don’t really do it consciously. There’s a few musical references there that I thought were funny on the record, but I don’t really. . .for the most part, I just write the song, and then we work out the parts. That’s the way it is. I think it comes from all this stuff being in your head somewhere. ‘Ride On, Baby’ is one of my favorite songs, but I haven’t heard it in like 10 years. I’m Sure that Mitch Ryder is in my head somewhere. I haven’t heard Mitch Ryder records in years, but I’m sure it’s there. But I don’t sit there and say, ‘Let’s copy this thing here.’ I think I’d be more apt to do that if f was making disco or dance records.”

Ironically, when everyone was doing “dance” records during the early ’80s, Pfeifer was making brilliant rock music with the Switchboard, some of which can be found on the band’s one studio LP, as well as a hard-to-find live album and ROIR cassette, plus some independent singles. When the band left their native Cleveland for the hallowed clubs of New York, many expected them to be one of the “next big things” in rock ’n’ roll. Unfortunately, theii legacy seems to be solely as a major influence on the current crop of hot-shot bands.

“When we moved to New York, at least three major labels put u&on demo budgets, paid us money and stuff,” he explains. “Then, every time something was about to happen, a vice-president would get canned or something like that. And then it would be like ‘What? The whole thing’s over?’ It wasn’t even like being rejected. It was horrible stuff.

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“The problem was we were pretty much alone. The first wave happened, and it failed—except for Talking Heads and Blondie, and I don’t think they were even the best ones, musically. Television didn’t make it, and even the Ramones didn’t really make it. Then we came out, and we were kind of alone. Two years later, R.E.M., the Replacements and all these bands seemed to come out together, and we were kind of stranded in the in-between. From conversations I’ve had with other people, I’m sure that we were an influence—or at least listened to by that group of bands. But I don’t really determine who influenced who. I mean, c’mon, Lou Reed’s supposed to have influenced me, and I had to go out and buy the Velvets’ albums to hear what they were talking about when this things started in ’79.1 mean, of course, I’d heard the Velvets, but it wasn’t something I played every day. I grew up with the Stones, Motown and Mitch Ryder. The same things everyone in the Midwest grew up with. I didn’t try to imitate the Velvet Undergound.”

And yet “Knock-Knock,” the new LP’s most raucous rocker sounds a lot like Lou Reed. On the other hand, the LP touches on country & western with “Always Lonely For You,” a song Pfeifer recently sent to Waylon Jennings. Does he feel any resentment that a band as good as the Switchboard never really “made it”?

“I don’t think it’s resentment. It’s more of a sadness because I think it was a great band. There was like magic between certain people, and it got better. And it grew after the album, as far as writing songs and everything was concerned. It’s just too bad.”

After Words—which was produced by Pfeifer and his roommate Fred Brockman (though lots of praise goes to engineer Joe Blaney of Clash, Stones and Def Jam fame: "I have to credit him because he liked the music, so he worked at way below his rates and did a lot for me based on the low budget I had”)—features at least 12 musicians, including keyboardists Bernie Worrell (Funkadelic, Talking Heads) and Dimitri Shostakovich, Jr. (grandson of the famed composer), guitarist Ivan Julian (Richard Hell’s Voidoids) and even CREEM’s own Billy Altman on harmonica. Pfeifer hopes to take a handful of these players on the road with him this summer, and begin a second LP around the same time.

After that, who knows?

“I’d hope that my career could eventually justify reissuing some of the Switchboard’s stuff. There’s a whole backlog of material that could come out, and I’d like to see that happen. I’m not even opposed to a new Switchboard LP. I think this solo thing could renew interest in that. Either way it goes, I’m probably going to be associated with those people forever.”

This time, let’s hope that the general listening public won’t be as apt to run away from “anything new.” ®