How to Rock n Roll

How to Rock and Roll

A lot of people take interest in being a rock musician/star. The term "rock star" does not mean to be a good musician, it just means that you are popular and you want to get wasted and all of the other cliches involved in rock. To rock you do not need drugs. It's just a passion and love for rock 'n roll that makes you rock!

Steps

1. Find your uniqueness. If you like something don't let anyone tell you otherwise about what you like.
2. Find the type of rock you like.
3. Find a store to get some clothes from, like Hot Topic, for example.
4. Head down to guitar center and pick up an instrument. Pick out the instrument that appeals to you.
5. Read up on your rock history, get some biographies and study up!!
6. Learn your instrument, and combine styles. Expand to as many bands as you can to influence your playing.Be serious about your instrument. Don't think you rock because you own an expensive guitar but can't play it.
7. Start a band. Hopefully you have some friends that are into rock music and are musicians themselves so you can start a band with them. When your band has a great bond, you are sure to make great music. If you guys don't like each other, you are not going to make good music.
8. Jam a bit. Find a garage or a recreation center, or even the band room at school.
9. Finally get your ass out there on the stage and ROCK!! Show the crowd your intensity. Forget about everything and let the rock sink in then everything will fall into place.

• Be original.
• Use your musical flaws as advantages!
• Find heroes, admire them and learn from them but don't copy them.
• If stage fright is an issue, just take a deep breath, throw your head back and just let it flow out.

• Don't forget, "It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n roll"-AC/DC
• YOU DON'T NEED DRUGS TO ROCK. PEOPLE WILL TRY TO GET YOU TO USE THEM. JUST SAY NO. How do you think so many great rock musicians died so young.

It's In The Limo

For my birthday I got a slew of Rock & Roll books. One of which is What You Want Is In The Limo by Michael Walker. It focuses on the year 1973 and on three particular rock tours of that year, The Who's Quadrophenia, Led Zeppelin's House Of The Holy and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies.

I'm enjoying this book because it's a real trip down memory lane. First of all on the back cover is a photo of Robert Plant posing with Vanessa Gilbert a girl with whom I went to high school.

Then there was the fact that I attended the Who concert and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies show at the Hollywood Bowl. That was the third and last Alice Cooper show I attended as the audience was full of kids and their grandparents. When Alice got chased around the stage by a giant tooth trying to hit him with a giant toothbrush as part of his dentist visit induced drug dream I figured he was now aiming to become a Saturday morning cartoon character and no longer for me. That didn't stop my friend and I going after the show to the Continental Hyatt House hotel on Sunset Blvd. where we figured the band would be having their after show party / orgy.

We got into the elevator and planned to stop at each floor until we saw what seemed to be a party going on but a burly roadie type came up and stopped the elevator door from closing. Then Alice Cooper himself stepped into the elevator with us and we rode up  knowing we wouldn't have to guess which floor we'd get off on (pun intended). Unfortunately, after Alice exited the elevator the burly bodyguard once again extended his arm, this time to prevent me and my friend from getting off (more ways than one). We really weren't disappointed as although we didn't get to go to his party we did get to ride in the elevator with him.

It's interesting to see the sort of things that were going on around you now being written about in books.

Easier Than It Sounds

In a recent blog post I commented on how much I like the guitar arrangement of Joan Baez's song Diamonds & Rust and I included a Youtube video of her playing it live. It always sounded rather complex to me and I was impressed that Joan played it solo. After watching her do it in the video it didn't look too difficult so I Googled a tutorial on how to play it.

Hmm... this looks strangely familiar.

It's always funny when you learn a guitar part from a rock record that you assumed was tricky to play and then turns out to be quite simple. Obviously, this young girl can play Diamonds & Rust and it's very simple yet elegant and what's even more surprising to me is that it's very similar to the intro to The Tooners' song I'm Growing Away From You. No wonder I like it.

Another example is when The Tooners were performing the Rock & Roll Rehab Show at the Hayworth Theater a friend of the band who was friends with Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees was coming to see the show and I suggested she bring Mickey to a performance. In the event he actually showed up the band rehearsed playing Last Train To Clarksville on the off chance we could get him on stage during the encore to sing it with us. That would have been a dream come true.  It didn't happen, but when I told the plan to our friend the singer-songwriter (and The Tooners' guest lead guitarist on our Rocktasia CD) Jerry Strull, he said that song would be too difficult for us (me) to play. I was insulted and thought maybe I was playing it wrong since Jerry is the guitar expert, not me, but when he showed me how he played the picking intro I realized he was playing it in the wrong key. In the right key it is a very simple riff. This was another example of overestimating the difficulty of playing rock guitar parts that sound intricate and complex but are really quite simple.

Now I am not saying these parts are simple as a way to belittle or disparage them, quite the opposite. I've even had musicians ask me to show them some of my tunes and had them comment that they assumed the songs were much more difficult than they are. The really great songs are simple. The best thing you can do as a songwriter is write a very simple part that's easy to play but that sounds impressive. Sometimes when you learn how to play these parts you get a little disappointed as when a magician shows you how a magic trick is done and you're a little embarrassed that you were fooled by such a simple trick but after you get over feeling tricked and stupid you began to appreciate the genius of the simplicity. So it is with music.

 

ZZ Top Pass Up A Hit

Michael Montrose was the bass player for our New Wave band Womanizer back in the Eighties and his distinctive sounding fretless bass adds an eerie atmosphere to The Tooners' Seance single. He also played in The Bottles with Jerry Strull and the band BOOG (Band Of Old Guys). Recently he sent me a photo of him with ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. I think he was pitching his motorcycle tune Mr. Glide to him for ZZ Top's next CD.

Maybe Mike should have kept his beard?

Mike's a biker and has one of the giant monstrosities that is really a car without doors or a roof. Mr. Glide's a cool bike tune but I think ZZ Top are into Hot Rods rather than Choppers. Mike's got some great stories of playing back in the days of Love-Ins in L.A.'s Griffith Park and the psychedelic Sunset Strip. I should get him to write down some of them for you to read here. 

Paradise Lost

On the 20th Anniversary of The Tooners' Rocktasia CD I'm writing about the three co-writers of three of the CD's tracks. The third one is Gary Gladstone AKA The Mix Doctor and writer of the song Paradise.

Gary owned a small eight track recording studio in the early 80s when my band Womanizer came in to record a demo tape to use to get some club gigs. After recording our demo he offered to record and press a 45 RMP single for free if we'd arrange and record one of his songs as one of the sides. Unlike CDs, 45 RPM, 7 inch records had one song on each side. I chose his song Paradise which had already been recorded and pressed onto a record by the hard rock band Attitude. Theirs was a very different take on the song.

We recorded a version of Paradise but Gary went on the road with the band The Busboys who had a hit on the soundtrack album to an Eddie Murphy movie and we never did get our single finished. Years later I used the basic guitar tracks to rerecord Paradise for inclusion on The Tooners' Rocktasia CD.

Gary and I kept in touch over the years and I attended a few of his birthday parties which included comedian friends like Bob Zany and Judy Tenuta and he came to Womanizer and then The Tooners shows over the past twenty years. Gary came to our Rock & Roll Rehab Shows and shot some video which we now use for our online version (click here) and when I saw him last year he complained about a chronic shoulder pain which my wife was also going through. He told me if he didn't get some relief soon, the VA weren't helping him, he was going to kill himself. I thought that was just a figure of speech as my wife was saying the same thing. This Frozen Shoulder Syndrome is extremely painful and lasts for months. But he wasn't kidding and he owned a gun.

Gary was around from the beginning and was always a part of our scene. We all miss him.

Paid To Die

Being the 20th anniversary of The Tooners' Rocktasia CD I'm writing about the three co-writers of songs included on the CD. The last article was about Don Coorough, writer of They Died Young and this one is about my brother, Dwayne Warner, listed as co-writer of Paid To Die.

Dwayne was a bodyguard for the English Punk rock band The Sex Pistols on their 1978 American tour and titled his autobiography (since novelized to protect, well, him), Paid To Die. Since I wrote the song about his stories about being on the road with a band as their head of security and since I took his autobiography title for the song title I credited him as co-writer.

Seven years ago last month, on Labor Day of 2006, Dwayne died of a Cerebral Aneurysm. I find it very coincidental that Dwayne, who was born on Memorial Day would die on Labor Day, two holidays I always mixed up. He also lived as long as his hero, actor Errol Flynn, fifty years.

 The late Dwayne Warner with the late Sid Vicious.

Contact Unsigned Records Multimedia

Fabricated Fab Four

Back in the 1970s during David Bowie's heyday he recorded an album of old hits and called his album "Pinups". This actually helped his career by helping to define him at a time when a lot of people were having a hard time understanding just what it was he was all about. The songs on Pinups were songs that sounded like they could have originally been David Bowie songs and he played them in his style but real close to the original arrangements.

If The Beatles had lasted a bit longer I wonder if they might have recorded an album of non-Beatles Beatles songs. I mean hit songs written and recorded by other bands but that were clearly inspired by the music of the Fab Four.

Here is my song list for such an album;

Go All The Way by The Raspberries

Mr. Blue Sky by ELO

Lies by The Knickerbochers

No Matter What by Badfinger

Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying by Gerry and the Pacemakers

Oh You Pretty Things by David Bowie

Sowing The Seeds Of Love by Tears For Fears

Last Train To Clarksville by The Monkees

Tell Her No by The Zombies

Somebody Made For Me by Emitt Rhodes

Because by The Dave Clark Five

Such A Night by Tim Piper

I would LOVE to hear a really good Beatles tribute band record a CD like this doing their very best Beatles impression. Think of the payback; a Beatles band playing a bunch of songs by bands trying to sound like The Beatles.