Green On Red:

Downwardly Mobile Ambitions

by Fred Mills, on "What were we Thinking?"

“I thought that we would play together like the Dead - at the height of it, I thought we’d play together forever.” (Jack Waterson)

“I believe bands have a certain amount of life. But I’m Grateful to those guys. They got in the van. They suspended whatever was going on in their lives for about five years. They didn’t get much out of it.” (Dan Stuart)

Still, they were, for sure, some of the best musical years of my life. It was a pretty amazing slice of musical history to be part of. (Chris Cacavas)

Green On Red formed inauspiciously enough as The Serfers in Tucson, Arizona, around 1979, when Dan Stuart (guitar, vocals), Van Christian (drums) and Jack Waterson (bass) initially hooked up at a party. Organist Sean Nagore also signed up, only to be replaced after a few gigs by Chris Cacavas, who was a veteran of a local combo, “The Pedestrians”.

As Cacavas describes the Serfers, “It was primitive, punkish, but not merely three chord rock. What I did was bring a melodic sense; Dan would gofor a wall of noise on his guitar; and Jack up with really creative basslines. I guess we were making quirky music, sort of ‘art punk’, perhaps?”

Tucson’s punk scene was just kicking into high gear at the time. It had initially centered at a local dive, Pearl’s Hurricane, then shifted into a bar called Tumbleweed’s. Bands with names like the “Pills”, “Suspect”, “7-9”, “Useless Pieces Of Shit” and “Giant Sandworms” were the featured attractions.

“During the day it would have bikers and Vietnam Vets on disability,” explains Stuart, “then the punks would come in at night and one of us would have to draw straws to see who would go around to the regulars and get them to pay the cover. Some of ‘em really got it: ‘Oh, this is just like the Seeds!’ And others were more, ‘You know what a punk is? A punk is someone in prison who gets buttfucked!’ I remember one night this other bar up the street was closing, all these people in the middle of the street, and suddenly there was this huge brawl like something out of Quadrophenia: rockers versus punks!’”

Gene Armstrong, music critic for the Arizona Daily Star, was a punk-smitten 16-year old at the time. “I saw the Serfers one night, and the last couple of songs they all changed instruments. Somebody started blowing on a clarinet. Just this great cacaphony. That was memorable!”

Jennifer Murphy, longtime Tucson scenester and Music Editor for the Tucson Weekly, agrees that the Serfers were special: “It was punk, thrashing around onstage, alot of energy and really raw - but edgier and darker than any other Tucson band. They weren’t just imitating the Sex Pistols or the Ramones.”

The summer of ’80 found the Serfers headlining packed shows as well as opening for Black Flag, Human Hands, Fear, the Subhumans, D.O.A., and X, whose sellout show at Tumbleweed’s was, by critic Armstrong’s reckoning, “the media-acknowledged emergence of punk culture in Tucson.” That night the Serfers slammed through a set that included Waterson’s sci-fi-goes-new-wave “Insect Breakfast”, Cacavas’ morbid meditation on a motorcycle fatality, “Death In A Family”, and Stuart’s angst-desperation garage rocker “Green On Red”.

At summer’s end the Serfers relocated to Los Angeles in hopes of fame, gigs, and a record deal.

According to Cacavas, “Danny went first and moved in with a girl friend. Then we toddled out there. We moved into this sleazy, flea-and-drug-ridden hotel called the Villa Elaine. One room, a bathroom, and a kitchen; three slovenly, out-of-work musicians hanging out in this room. There were times we were so broke that we’d go out and steal hamburger and beans.”

Shortly after the four musicians convened in L.A., Stuart changed the band’s name, owing to an influx onto the Hollywood scene of violent suburban hardcore bands dubbed “surf-punks”; the secretary of a booking agent Stuart knew suggested that arriving at that time with the name “Serfers” might be poorly timed. The name Green On Red was available.

The band lined quickly lined up some gigs, and when drummer Christian opted to return home to Tucson, Alex MacNicol, then playing with Lydia Lunch and living in the same house as Stuart, got the nod. “Danny goes ‘Whenever you’re not playing with Lydia, you wanna play with us?’ - ‘Sure!’ So that’s was basically it,” is how MacNicol sums up the audition.

The next step was to make a record. With a $1200 from a friend, Rich Hopkins (later of the Sidewinders and Sand Rubies), the band booked time at a funky studio, “Mystic”. The five resulting songs became Green On Red’s untitled (sometimes known as Two Bibles, on Green On Red Records) debut. 500 red vinyl 12-inch EPs - now highly collectible - were pressed.

Says Cacavas, “I remember when we first got it. We were sitting on the front porch and putting the records into the sleeves, just sort of glowing in the freshness of this vinyl. I thought it was pretty cool - ‘We exist, finally!’ - even though in retrospect it’s (laughs) a rather quirky little record.”

Around this time Steve Wynn entered the accelerating Green On Red orbit.

“We had played a gig with the “Dream Syndicate” at the Cathay DeGrande,” recalls Stuart. “Steve had seen us, and he showed up at one of those barbeques we used to have. I played him a tape we’d recorded for less than $200 at this rehearsal space we used that had an eight-track upstairs, and he said, ‘I got a label, let me put it out!’ So that whole tape became the Down There record [Green On Red, 1982]. We owe a lot to Steve! He helped us get the Slash deal; the Dream Syndicate did one for Slash and was leaving for A&M, so he suggested that they sign Green On Red.”

Other labels had come sniffing around after Wynn put out Green On Red. MacNicol, laughing, suggests that Miles Copeland of IRS would have signed the band “except we dressed like a bunch of slobs - if we could just dress like the Three O’Clock!, Danny just told him to fuck off!”

Slash offered a deal not long after the band cut three songs in late ’82 with Wynn producing; they were originally slated for a Radio Tokyo compilation. Presented here for the very first time is the pre-Slash version “Gravity Talks” and is actually a more forceful take than the one that would appear on the album of the same name; Stuart hastens to point out that the masterband could not be located or he would have remixed the tune for this CD.

Gravity Talks appeared in the fall of 1983 and the band immediately hit the road. Cacavas remembers the tour as “furthering our feeling of legitimacy. I loved being on the road, meeting new people, seeing the States. And getting to Europe the first time was cool. It had seemed impossible at the time - ‘These people got the wrong band!’” As early as 1982 Green On Red had experimented adding a fifth member; the Rain Parade’s Matt Piucci sat in for a few gigs and a bootleg album, Eight Miles High (Bandido Records), even documented a radio live broadcast from L.A.’s Studio ZZZ on Nov. 6, 1982. Enter San Francisco guitarist Chuck “Billy The Kid” Prophet.

“I was in a band that got thrown on the bill with these ‘Paisley dudes’ at a place in Oakland called Ruthies Inn,” recounts Prophet of his initial encounter with Green On Red. “My first impression was that they looked like guys who should be operating the rides at a carnival. They played and it blew my mind. It was chaotic as hell but really entertaining and musical. And the songs were there! All that narrative stuff like ‘Old Chief’. It was funny and sad, and I dug the shit out of it. It’s hard to imagine how unique it seemed at the time... Later, I was in L.A. and I asked Jack to put me on the guest list. When I showed up he just put a guitar in my hands. I started living on his couch.

In addition to obvious fretboard talents (Keith Richard economy meets Neil Young excess), Prophet demonstrated a natural flair for songwriting and arranging and could bring a measure of musical discipline to a band shedding its punk skin.

Prophet suggests that he was not exactly “the accomplished musician,” having played in his share of ragtag bands but not much else to show for himself at that point: “Still, there didn’t seem to be a lot of communication going on, musically or otherwise - at least not to the naked eye. I remember the first time we got together to play. Dan presented ‘Hair Of The Dog’ and we just fell in and it came right to life. When we were done I said I thought it seemed to run out of steam after awhile and asked Dan if he had a bridge for it. Everyone just looked at their shoes and it got real quiet. Dan said, ‘Okay, Kid. What would you do?!?’”

Prophet’s arrival also signalled a shift in the group dynamics. He and Stuart were soon writing together and Cacavas increasingly had to assume the role as a sideman. Says Cacavas, “At first I felt territorial. But we were redefining what Green On Red was, and what our roles were. Chuck had a lot to do with schooling us. And I really enjoyed the new blood; he certainly brought up the level of musicianship and made us all play better.”

1985 was a hectic year for Green On Red. First the band recorded Gas Food Lodging for Enigma Records and toured behind it for months. Upon signing with Phonogram in Europe (Mercury in the U.S.) they went to London and recorded the No Free Lunch mini-album. More touring. From this touring come the next two cuts, recorded live for a Euro radio session. The otherwise unreleased “Mighty Fine Day” is straightforward country rock with a sweet vocal by Stuart. “Down To The Bone” (originally on the ’85 Stuart-Steve Wynn album Danny & Dusty: The Lost Weekend) is a darkly murderous masterpiece, and a live staple for the band.

Drummer McNicol had quit on the eve of the fall ’85 tour. He now claims that the Phonogram deal simply involved too much “lawyers-managers-money” business for his taste. Adds Stuart, “That album was when things were getting, ‘Oh, Chuck and Dan are pushing too hard, they’re not happy where we’re at. Alex bailed, and God bless him. We must have been driving him crazy!”

After breaking in new drummer Keith Mitchell, Green On Red planned what was to be its make-or-break next album, The Killer Inside Me, this time hiring a name producer, maverick Memphian Jim Dickinson.

Green On Red entered Ardent Studios in Memphis to record Killer. Guitarist Prophet recalls the sessions being a mixture of chaos and hard work.

“We had all this manic energy but we just couldn’t seem to articulate it. Jim Dickinson just set the mikes up around us and let us at it. In retrospect, I now see he wasn’t interested in meddling around for mild short-term results. He was looking to capture more than that. Something bigger. We thought we were so untamed and offensive and brave. But in the end, he taught us that we had to be willing to offend ourselves. Suddenly, all that anti-establishment rhetoric went out of the window! We tried our damndest to choke the monkey, believe me. But first, I guess we had to face off with our own limitations. It was a struggle, and in a way that’s when it stopped being as much ‘fun’ and somehow started to get ‘real’. The sessions just seemed to go on and on, Dickinson rolling the tapes every inch of the way. What eventually wound up on the record was some of that raw madness and, underneath the abrasive surface, more than a few fairly luckluster performances.

“It came down to, ‘Go ahead boys, get it out of your system. I’m not going to tell you to stop.’ Up until that point, we thought we could fly under the radar... It is a tough record in a lot of ways. But that’s where we were at.”

“It was a strange session,” admits Cacavas, addingb that for his part, he enjoyed working with these crazed character from the South; he had some great ideas and I was glad that we weren’t making the same record again. It was definitely different sounding, and to be honest, I really like that record.”

Stuart is more critical of Killer, stating flatly that a lot of money was spent “on a bad record. It does have this kind of manic-depressive energy, but nothing’s in time. It’s that old Duke Ellington line: if it don’t swing it don’t mean a thing.”

The subsequent tour for killer would be the group’s last. Waterson: “It was the biggest and the worst. It was the best treatment we had and the most money, and certainly the highest profile, but the soul was gone, man, and I was just doing a job.”

Cacavas: “Dan and Chuck had definitely formed an alliance and I felt more on the sidelines. Still, it was meant to be a big deal, and I was having a blast. But you could see that Dan wasn’t enjoying himself.”

Stuart: “I was living through a walking blackout existence. I think I went through a nervous breakdown.”

After the tour’s conclusion the members of Green On Red all scattered. Stuart disappeared, and when it came time to reconvene the band for the next album, only Prophet was invited along. 1989 saw the release of Here Come The Snakes. But that’s another story.

Postscript:

“Now, I can say that Snakes was going to be my solo album, and that when the contract showed up in the studio it said the label was gonna call it what they wanted,” says Stuart upon reflection. “But the truth is, nobody called these three guys to tell them what we were doing. I never said, ‘Look, it’s been nice working with you.’ Those guys deserved more than a phonecall, and they never got even that. I had tremendous guilt, and shame, for years. I still do! But that band had done all it could. We went for the big masterpiece and failed miserably.”

For his part, Cacavashas mixed feelings. “I hear from somebody, ‘Yeah, they’re making a Green On Red record.’ ‘Well... why wasn’t I called?’ It was, in a way, devastating. I didn’t go into a deep depression, but still... I was pretty bummed out! And the hardest part, too, was losing Danny’s friendship for all that time. I’ve compared our relationship to that of brothers. A lot of love and respect, but times where we drove each other nuts... Still we had a lot of fun. We easily rode the crest of the mid ’80s wave.”

Prophet is succinct in his assessment. “We broke a lot of rules and never looked back. And I’ll tell you, I sure learned how to drink and how to sleep sitting up! It was a good run!”

Waterson weathered his period of shock and anger. “I’m proud that everybody’s still doing something and is alive and can treat each other with a civil attitude. I’m amazed we did what we did, with what we had to work with and where we started from. It just shows that the nerve to do something is enough to compel it to happen. It was a great band.”

Concludes Stuart, “The one thing I want to say is how thankful I am for those guys. You know, things got ugly. But I had a lot of fun. I’d have to say we got away with murder. The music was almost secondary - it was a punk rock thing of not copping out. ‘Let’s stick together and be against the world. Then go get some beer!’”