The journey continues: New Gregg Rolie Interview

[Don]

http://www.classicrockrevisited.com/int ... gRolie.htm

By Ryan Sparks

Vocalist and keyboardist Gregg Rolie has the unique distinction of being a founding member of two of the biggest bands on the planet with Santana and Journey. He is also an esteemed member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having been inducted with Santana in 1998.

Santana’s history has of course been well documented. It all began in the late 60’s in San Francisco when Gregg first teamed up with guitarist Carlos Santana to sow the seeds of what would eventually go to become one of the most successful rock bands ever. The band’s fusion of Latin and blues rock was simply groundbreaking, not to mention their appearance at the Woodstock Music & Arts Fair in the summer of 1969 sealed their place in history, before their first album had even been released. Gregg’s sizzling Hammond organ playing and signature sounding vocals are immortalized on some of Santana’s biggest hits such as “Black Magic Woman”, “Hope You’re Feeling Better” and “Evil Ways” to name just a few.

After leaving Santana in 1972 Gregg’s next project was Journey, which he co-founded with guitarist Neal Schon the following year. With Gregg once again handing vocals and keyboards Journey’s first three albums for Columbia Records were an interesting mix of rock, progressive rock and jazz fusion. With the arrival of lead vocalist Steve Perry in time for the bands fourth album Infinity in 1978, the sound of the band was already beginning to move in a more commercial direction. Gregg continued to be an integral part of the group until decided to leave in 1980 to start a family.

Over the years he has continued to be involved in various different projects. His kicked off his solo career in the mid 80’s, which continues to this day. He formed The Storm in 1991 with Steve Smith and Ross Valory from Journey, and he even returned to his Santana roots in the 90’s with Abraxas Pool, a band that consisted of former members of Santana and reunited him with Schon. From there Gregg formed his own band, The Gregg Rolie Band, which still tours around the country playing original material, in addition to keeping the spirit of Santana’s music alive and well.

Now well into his sixth decade in the music business Gregg is still finding ways to reinvent himself. His latest musical offering, an EP entitled Five Days, is a back to basics set that features him performing his own compositions, as well as reworking Santana and Journey material, using just voice and piano. The result is an intimate recording unlike anything he has ever done.


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Ryan: You’re of course known as someone who likes to rip it up on the Hammond organ, but on your new EP Five Days it’s just you signing and playing piano, which is a first for you.

Gregg: Yeah, very much so.

Ryan: So who came up with the idea of presenting these songs in this kind of format?

Gregg: Actually it was my son Sean Rolie, who recorded this. He’s an engineer, he was pretty much one of the main characters that got me into doing this. Also a friend of mine here in Austin who does a lot of T.V. work, Mark Murray. Sean told me that “Every time you start playing the piano when there’s people here at the house, they stop what they’re doing and listen” and I said “They do?” He told me that I ought to record these songs, so it was him who prompted me to do this. We borrowed a couple of really great microphones and we set it up in the house. The interesting point was doing the piano and the vocals at the same time. There’s no room for error and it’s truly the way people recorded years ago. It is what it is, as simple as it is. The piano leaks into the vocal mike and the vocal mike picks up everything, so it was a little unnerving because I’d never done that. It’s always been do the music first and once you get that right, you can take as many tracks as you like and overdub things. So this was brand new for me. When I first started in Santana, the way you did it was you would record the music first, but prior to that people like Muddy Waters, they did it all at once. Frank Sinatra did it with his whole band and you didn’t want to be that band member that made a mistake [laughs]. So it was an interesting way to go about it and I’m really glad that I did. It has little flaws here and there that I hear because I’m used to doing it the other way, but the overall feel of what we did was really good and I’ve been getting some really good reviews.

Ryan: What’s the significance of the title; did you knock these out in five days?

Gregg: Yeah, exactly. It was recorded, mixed and mastered in five days.

Ryan: Looking at those fabulous pictures of your living room that you have on your website I think you should have just called it From My House To Yours. That looks like a great place to just hang out and get creative.

Gregg: It’s pretty good [laughs].

Ryan: You dusted off a couple of your tried and true classics with “Black Magic Woman” and “Anytime”. The familiar melodies are there, but these are definitely jazzier interpretations. It almost felt like I was sitting in a smoky jazz bar.

Gregg: Where this really started from, just the way of going about this, was off of the song “Cool Little Mama” of all things. I really got that from Lyle Lovett and his approach, because his music is so personal. His vocals are just amazing, it’s like he’s talking right to you. That was kind of the idea, to go with a softer approach, and we lowered the keys. I just tried to go this other way. So on “Black Magic Woman” I dropped that from a D minor to an A minor and it’s way lower. We didn’t really approach it that way, it just kind of came out. Same thing with “Anytime”, it’s now in G instead of E and this was done strictly for the vocal performances, so I could sing it and approach it in this new way. So that’s kind of where it all came from. Lyle Lovett was a big inspiration for the closeness and the personal feel that this CD has. I got a comment from one person who said it was “like having a concert in my living room”, which is really what I was going for.

Ryan: You can feel that intimacy, it really comes through in this recording.

Gregg: Yeah it does, and that’s exactly what I wanted.

Ryan: Not to mention, when you strip down a song like “Black Magic Woman”, you tend to get the true essence of the song, because when you can strip it all away and the song still holds up, to me that’s the true mark of a great song.

Gregg: Yeah exactly, make it totally different. Although, when my vocal comes in you know who it is. It’s obvious, because that’s how my voice is.

Ryan: I love your bluesy playing on “Trouble In Mind”, a song that has been done by artists such as BB King and Janis Joplin over the years. Was there a particular version that you were using as a template?

Gregg: Actually, the way that came about was I had played for the American Music Masters series, which is done by the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, where they have various artists come in and play. This was going to be for Janis Joplin to honor her accomplishments. People like Ray Benson and Susan Tedeschi were doing it along with others and I wanted to do that song. They said “Pick a tune” and I picked that one, but they gave it to someone else. I didn’t get to do it, but I had learned it and I really liked it, so I decided to do it in this fashion.

Ryan: I think it fits in nicely alongside the other songs.

Gregg: Thank you. My music has always been blues based no matter what it is. It’s got that color to it here and there.

Ryan: Don’t take this wrong way, but can we get more original songs from you? By that I mean it’s been too long between albums. As a classic rock artist, do you find it more difficult to put across new songs, and that most of the fans that come to see you play are mostly there just to hear you belt out the hits?

Gregg: Yeah, if you don’t play them then they’ll be disappointed and I’m not there to disappoint. We try to do new music all the time and in my band we play about three new songs. I do have more new material; I just haven’t gotten around to recording it. Recording just isn’t the same thing that it used to be, getting the songs out to people and all that. I’ve really been going after playing live, which is what this material is all about. I’m doing it in a different fashion. I thought I’d go out and do a show here in Austin at The Four Seasons, where I’m playing alongside guitarist Alan Haynes. We’re going over the material today and tomorrow for the show on Saturday (March 5th). It’s just going to be him and I in that setting, just guitar and piano. It’s a free show and it’s kind of like a little payback for my career, because without the people liking what you do, you don’t have one [laughs].

Ryan: Tell me about Bitvibe and how you partnered up with them, because you’ve got some pretty cool creations happening, everything from hand painted guitars to custom made roasted coffee. Not to mention, that 1956 Chevy Street Rod looks like a sweet ride.

Gregg: Yeah that’s my car, it’s awesome. It’s got a Corvette suspension and it would give a Porsche a run for its money in a road race. Imagine the face on the guy who owns the Porsche when he sees this old clunker keeping up with him. It takes turns like a Porsche, which is amazing for a big car like that.

Bitvibe was put together by a couple of guys; one of them is my drummer Ron Wikso. It’s his company and he’s starting it with fan made products. The girl who does the guitars Linda Jacque, she has done some gorgeous looking guitars. We’ve sold about four of them, so it’s doing quite well. The idea is you get the fans to be interested in making something. They get a portion, I get a portion and Bitvibe gets a portion, but they get connected to who they want to make them for. Its fan made products and I think it’s a brilliant idea.

Ryan: Before Santana came around I can’t think of anyone else who was fusing Latin and Blues based rock together like you were. I’ve always been a big fan of Jimmy Smith, I understand he was a pretty big influence on you as a musician when you were starting out.

Gregg: Yeah, that’s true. I heard “Hoochie Coochie Man” and the record he did with Wes Montgomery and it was all blues based stuff, so that’s what kicked me off playing the B3. Past that a lot of my influences come from guitar players and where to hold the note. It’ll never sound the same, but where to pause it and the energy of it kind of comes from that. I’m like a frustrated guitarist. So that was kind of my approach to playing the B3 as it developed. When I started out it was more the standard issue kind of runs that a keyboard player would play. I somehow developed it through listening to other instruments, horn runs and all kinds of stuff. But, yeah it started with Jimmy Smith.

Ryan: When I hear your playing I can tell you’re going for the less is more approach. For example, there are lots of guitar players who can play a million miles an hour and there are others who can say the same thing using half as many notes. Your playing on the organ reminds me of that.

Gregg: Thanks. That’s exactly right. Playing really fast doesn’t interest me. I’ll throw in a couple of licks in here and there, I guess just to let people know that I can [laughs], but that’s not the main focus. The main focus is how it feels. Steve Ray Vaughn did not play quick runs or Jimi Hendrix for that matter. They weren’t playing anything like what it’s become, with all that hammering and stuff. Without space for the notes, it’s constant. So it’s kind of the same aspect.

Ryan: I remember reading that when Herbie Hancock joined Miles Davis’ band, Miles kind of chewed him out about playing all the time. Herbie was so worried about filling up the spaces.

Gregg: [laughing] That’s true. You can fill it all up, but you might not get anybody that wants to listen to it, because people breathe. In between a sentence there’s a breath, there’s a pause and when you talk there’s commas. It’s pretty normal.

Ryan: Bill Graham was very instrumental in helping the band in the early days. Did he play a role in getting Santana onto the bill at Woodstock? I mean at that point your first album was just on the verge of being released and you hadn’t yet developed much of a following outside of the west coast had you?

Gregg: Yeah, except the band was known everywhere, because San Francisco was like this melting pot and any band that was getting any kind of recognition out there on the west coast, people kind of heard about it. They might not have heard them, but they had heard of them. We were at that stage and yeah we played Woodstock right before the release of our album. We didn’t have anything out and yet Bill Graham got us on there. He told Michael Lang (adopts Bill’s voice) ‘You must have Santana play at your concert’. Michael Lang told me this story. Bill sent him a tape of what we had done and Michael said ‘Ok sure’. That’s how we got on there [laughs]. The rest is history. There were no videos like there are today. There was only Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson and a couple of lame television shows. However, if you were at Woodstock, you had a career.

Ryan: I once read a quote from Carlos where he talked about dropping acid before the band went on and he apparently said a prayer to god asking him ‘to just keep him in tune and in time’. How do you think the rest of the band fared that day?

Gregg: Well, it all came together in “Soul Sacrifice”. Carlos did have tuning problems and that was kind of the nature of the beast back then, because the tuning pegs weren’t as good as they are now. We had to tune up a lot. He did have a tough time though, because he said his guitar was like a snake and he was just trying to hold on to it [laughs]. He said it was moving all over the place. I didn’t know that he had done that, so I was kind of oblivious to it. I noticed it was a little different and his energy was different [laughs]. It really came together during “Soul Sacrifice” and that really became the calling card for Santana.

Ryan: Listening to the bands complete performance, which came out on Legacy to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the festival, you could tell the performance wasn’t perfect that day, but it was the spirit of the performance that transcended any technical difficulties.

Gregg: Yeah, and that’s usually true of all performances. Only critics and other musicians get into the technical aspects of how to like music. The people who just like what they like, like it because they do. They don’t know or they don’t care, they just like it and that’s it. Those are the people I’m playing for. I don’t play for other musicians or critics, I never have.

Ryan: When I had a chance to speak with Herbie Herbert a few years ago I have to say that of all the people he spoke about, you were probably the only guy who escaped unscathed.

Gregg: That’s true [laughing]. I felt honored by that.

Ryan: When I asked him how he felt when you told him you were going to leave Journey, he said he was ‘Devastated, because he was the best client I ever had, a very solid citizen’ and that it was ‘no accident that he was the founding member of two multi-platinum acts, and he was just a solid citizen by comparison to anybody else that I’d ever managed.’

Gregg: Wow, what a compliment! I mean, he’s high in my book as well. Herbie is one of the finest men I’ve ever met. He’s really smart. We were fortunate to be able to hook up together is the way I’ve always looked at it. He taught us an awful lot about the music business and all you had to do was listen. Some of us did and some of didn’t. I listened to him a lot and I applied a lot of his attitude towards my own life. He was a great manager and if you listened to him you’d come out pretty good. As a human being, he was a personal manager and he cared, that’s a rare quality in the music industry, because most people don’t give a shit. They really don’t, they’re just watching their own backs and he wasn’t like that. The music industry is the worst, it’s full of thieves, and the record companies are nothing but thieves. They’d like to pretend they’re not, but that’s a quote from Elton John and he’s dead on, they are absolute thieves. I met someone from a record company and he says ‘I’m with Columbia’ and I said ‘And you admit it, are you kidding me?’ [laughs]

Ryan: How did you capture lightning in a bottle twice? Most people are lucky if they get to taste success once, and yet you did it twice with two different bands.

Gregg: I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned I’ve hit four or five times, it’s just that a couple of them were massively successful. As far as playing and music goes, the people that I connect with and why I like it is because of that same theory. I like it because I do and it seems to crossover to the public and they like it as well. I’m fortunate that I like the same things they do and I can actually portray it. That’s the closest thing I can say about how I believe it happened, other than the fact there’s so much luck involved. It’s who you meet, when you meet them, are they on top of the list or are they on the bottom? Are they driving to be on the top of the list? Who are your partners? I’ve been with people that wanted to be on the top and who had that same drive.

Santana wanted to be the biggest international act and we knew that at age twenty one because we discussed it. We didn’t want to be a San Francisco act, we wanted to be huge. We figured that if we thought that way, then at least we’d nail San Francisco. The outlook was always to be that. We wanted everybody to hear this music and that’s where we went. Santana was a phenomenon that just happened so quick, whereas Journey was a well built machine. I knew Herbie through Santana. He was the stage manager and he became manager after I left. He and Neal started Journey, they called me and in two weeks we were a band. With that band the times had changed, the mid 70’s were not the late 60’s. The industry had grown quite a bit. We were able to sell more tickets than records early on. We were a live band. In today’s market early Journey would have been the best jam band out there, because that’s what it was. We’d be playing with Phish.

Ryan: You also had a keen sense of when to get off as well.

Gregg: Well there were a couple of reasons for that. Santana kind of imploded. The short of it was too much, too soon. It kind of just got carried away. When we began to disagree on the music and the style of music, then there just wasn’t a prayer for it [laughs]. It got into this jazz thing and I just wasn’t interested. There were also personal problems. When I left Journey I had been on the road for fourteen years or whatever it was. I wanted to change my life and start a family and I couldn’t do that while I was touring. I had seen other people do that and I thought it was unfair for the children.

Ryan: Looking back on it that was probably one of the best decisions you could have made, because you already knew how difficult it could be as a musician travelling all over the world. You might not have gotten a second chance.

Gregg: Well that’s true. It weighed heavily on me, but I was just unhappy. It was nobody’s fault but mine. So I made that decision and I’m glad that I did. I left the band and started a family and now that I’m back doing this, the kids are kicking me out of the house now [laughs]. They’re grown up, they’re healthy and the family’s really solid. So that’s something that I set out to do and I accomplished that as well. It’s probably the greatest accomplishment of my life.

Ryan: What does being accepted by The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame mean to you? You were inducted as a member of Santana and there’s a possibility you could go in again with Journey someday.

Gregg: I think they’re running out of bands and people that have really changed music. When it started out it was Elvis and Chuck Berry and people who really changed music. I think Santana was a band that definitely changed music, because we were playing music that really hadn’t been done before and I understand that. It’s gotten to be a bit different now though, it’s like is it popularity or who sold the most? I vote for a lot of these artists and the ones I vote for don’t get in. They’re older artists whose music influenced me as a kid, so I’m still kind of holding on to that. I think a band like Aerosmith getting in was a good call. I think they were quoted as being the ‘American Rolling Stones’. They did things differently and they did hard rock a different way when no one was really doing that. So there’s validity to it. I’m quoting my drummer Ron Wikso here ‘A lot of people get Grammy’s, not everyone gets into The Hall of Fame’. How they go about it is probably political, the same way it is with the Grammy’s, but there’s definitely some validity to it.

Ryan: You’ve appeared with Santana at various times over the years. What was it like to be onstage with the band and having Peter Green appear with you the night the band was inducted?

Gregg: It was a cool evening. I almost didn’t go though because I was building a hot rod out in California. I was right in the middle of building a ’32 Ford and that’s when Ron called me and said ‘You might want to reconsider this Gregg because a lot of people get Grammy’s, but not everyone gets into The Hall of Fame’. I told him ‘Yeah you’re probably right’ so I went and I’m glad I did. It was a cool evening and it was good to see all those guys again.

Ryan: Have you ruled out ever playing with Santana again?

Gregg: No not really, I just doubt it will ever happen. Carlos and I have gone over that a couple of times, but it’s just never come to fruition. He’s a hard guy to pin down and we’ve kind of just gone our separate ways over the years. It’s the same thing with Journey, there’s always a possibility, but the likelihood is it probably won’t happen because we’ve just moved on. That’s just the way it is. It’s kind of like Clapton and Cream. You can go back and do it for a second, but he’s another guy now. He’s done something else, everybody’s done something else.

[Ftloperry]

Nice interview.

[JohnH]

cool, thanks.

[RobbieG]

Thanks for posting. Great interview.