BYE BYE BYRDIE

BYE BYE BYRDIE

NEW BEATS

Long Ryders•Run Westy Run-Washington Squares•Kim Wilde•Jane’s Addiction•Hugh Masakela

Let’s just get this part out of the way, since it’s gonna come up anyway and maybe you’re one of the ones who got pissed off at ’em for doing it: the Long Ryders did that Miller Beer commercial because they needed the money. And they ain’t sorry they did. So there.

“There’s no argument over whether we did it for the money because we did," says guitarist/songwriter Sid Griffin, who’s as close to being head honcho as anyone in this band gets. “You’ve gotta remember that we’re guys who have families and we’re in a business and need a certain amount of dollars and it’s a cruel world out there. There’s another reason, and it’s cynical, but the Long Ryders aren’t played on the radio because people are so damned anxious to hear ‘Free Bird’ or ‘Layla’ or ‘Stairway To Heaven’ one more time. So if you can’t get into the home of someone who’s 19 or 23 by being on his radio, what do you do? You get on his TV!”

So if you’re one of those people who cried sell-out when the all-American guitar band took to the tube to pitch the all-American beverage, there’s your answer.

But beyond that, points out Griffin, the Long Ryders are in good company by making their names and likenesses available to the big guys on Madison Ave. “I’ve got a bootleg tape of Little Richard in ’57 advertising a woman’s hair cream,” says Griffin proudly. “I’ve got the Everly Brothers for Pontiac GTO from about ‘63. I’ve got the Moody Blues, Bee Gees, Nashville Teens and Easybeats all doing Coca Cola commercials, and I’ve even got the great Jefferson Airplane for Levi’s at the same time the FBI was investigating them. And who can forget Pete Townshend and Keith Moon doing recruiting ads for the Air Force at the height of Vietnam? This has gone on since day one in rock ’n’ roll.”

Adds Tom Stevens, bass playing Long Ryder, “The only thing I don’t like about having done the commercial is that if there’s gonna be a backlash against us I’d rather that it was over a hit album than a hit commercial. But anyway, it’s not like we did a commercial for a product we don’t use. Miller long necks are really good,” though, he adds, maybe to placate his critics, “but Miller in cans is pretty bad."

Anyway, so much for beer. The point being that these here Long Ryders—the other half being guitarist and other main songwriter Stephen McCarthy and drummer Greg Sowders—are honest sorts, realistic, practical, and, when they’re not talking rock ’n’ roll or baseball, sorta serious. The only reason the beer conversation came up in the first place was ’cause Griffin was telling about how he came to realize one day that even a band like the Long Ryders, who play to live and live to play, are nothing more than product themselves in the eyes of those who seal their fate.

“You gotta remember," says Griffin, “that radio is not in the music business but in the advertising business. Once you realize that the music fits between the ads you can work with radio folks a lot easier. You can get your feelings hurt and walk around saying”—he puts on a French accent—‘I am an artiste, I cannot work under zese conditions.’ Unfortunately, we're selling soap. It’s a brutal thing to realize when you go onstage that you’re not Washington Irving with a 4/4 beat, you’re another media tool.”

For the most recent LP, Two Fisted Tales, the band enlisted Ed Stasium (Ramones, Peter Wolf) to produce. Island chief Chris Blackwell gave them a near carte blanche (“He just told us to give him two songs that AOR could play and we could live out our Hank Williams fantasies for the rest,” Griffin recalls) and the Long Ryders recorded what is arguably their strongest set to date.

There are some fans who might think otherwise, of course, as the group moves further away from its country-rock origins. When the Long Ryders first hit the L.A. club scene, the word was that they were the updated version of the Byrds or Flying Burrito Brothers. Griffin was undisputedly a major disciple of the music of the late Gram Parsons, who flitted through both of those ’60s bands during his brief career; Griffin even authored the only existing book about Parsons (Sierra Books, 1985). But now, he just deflects questions about his Parsons fixation by referring to him as “the dead guy.” The Long Ryders are nobody’s clone band.

“We had this one fan in England,” remembers Stevens with a laugh, “who came knocking on our door after a gig, demanding his money back. ‘I want my money back! I want my money back! You guys don’t sound anything like the Byrds!’ The guy was like 38 years old, had a pony tail and a gut.”

Griffin picks up the story. "I told him that I never said we sounded like the Byrds. But he insisted. He said, ‘Well, I read it somewhere.’ I told him that I wasn’t the one that wrote it, if he wanted to hear the Byrds he should go see (Roger) McGuinn.”

Besides, says Griffin, quoting one-time Parsons collaborator Emmylou Harris, “If Gram was around now and was a young man, he wouldn’t be playing country-rock. He’d probably be playing punk. People have to remember that a Gram Parsons or a John Lydon, or anyone on the cutting edge of any music movement, don’t stand still. What makes these people so rewarding is that they’re adventurous; they take steps and stumble and make bad records but they don’t make the same records over and over again. Look at Paul McCartney. He’s been disappointing for about 15 years now because he doesn’t have to tiy.”

The Long Ryders are still in their hungry stage. They may be signed to a major, but unlike, say, labelmates U2, you won’t even find the last Long Ryders album at the bottom of the charts, let alone hogging the top. But, they figure, their time will come. “American radio is coming around to us,” says Griffin. “And the crowds that come to see us are always enthusiastic. We play in a lot of off-beat towns. Playing to 3,000 people in Keene, New Hampshire is just as valid as playing to 3,000 people in Manhattan. And we have a big following in Europe. American guitar bands are pretty common in America, but in England, it’s foreign and exotic, kind of like Club Nouveau is over here. God forbid.”

Jeff Tamarkin