Sleeping in Sausalito

We first met Jerry Harrison at a club on the lower east side of Manhattan. He showed up at one of our gigs with his wife Carol in tow. Jerry wore a top hat that was far too small for him, while Carol wore a baby doll shirt; again, too small for her. They looked a bit ridiculous, as I reflect on it now. However at the time, I’m sure I thought that they fit in perfectly with the hip crowd. Hell, I was still wearing stone washed jeans and a baseball cap (backwards) at that point.

Steven Van Zandt was at the show as well - I remember being more impressed with that fact. I watched him as he watched us on the stage. He stood alone, hunched over his drink in the middle of the dance floor, bandana and all. I was a huge Springsteen fan, and found it very difficult to approach him. It was intimidating to me to have him watch us. He was clearly a fan; this was the third time I had spotted him at a show.

Meanwhile, Jerry was to produce the first major release by The Verve Pipe. I remember having a conversation with him after that first show in NYC, and feeling confident that he was the right man for the job. He had produced two very successful records with the band Live and one by Crash Test Dummies. We fit in the same mold as them.

A few more conversations, and we were set to record in San Francisco. I was excited with the opportunity, and decided to re-record all of my demos in a fashion that would be very simple for Jerry to understand. I wanted the band to sound like we did live. 2 guitars, bass, drums, keys and vocals. A few harmonies here and there as well. Not too much ear candy. Not a lot of reverb or effects on the guitars. Raw, muscular pop music.

Once we made it out to Sausalito, we were split up into two groups. Brad and I were in one group, and shared a houseboat, docked in the San Francisco bay. Donny, A.J. and Dougie shared the other. This configuration set the tone for the future of The Verve Pipe. Brad and I sided with each other on most days, while the three of them stood firm on their end. The problem was, and would always be: 3 vs. 2. “Democracy” would send me off into my living quarters for hours, stewing about how the vote always seemed to go.

Over the course of the next three months, we recorded Villains. Our midwestern work ethic was not welcomed by Jerry Harrison, it was soon apparent. He believed in recording at a slow pace. Let the album feel its way, and become what the universe intended. It was frustrating for all of us. We didn’t want to take the day off to go sailing in the bay, and yet, we had to. Many days, Jerry took long naps on the couch in the studio, or spent a few hours at his kid’s soccer games. It was infuriating. I remember the first time we played him “The Freshmen” in pre-production, he actually fell asleep. We all politely walked out of the rehearsal studio and played a game of hacky sack.

Having the opportunity to work with an icon was worth the inconvenience of forking over petty cash for him to get across the bridge (he never carried any), and occasionally watching his kids for him. I felt like a child, myself, in his presence. Like he was the father that I needed to please. I sacrificed much of the relationship with my band mates in an effort to keep Jerry happy.

There were moments where he was great, mostly with arrangement suggestions, but those moments were offset with negative experiences, like profanity-laced rants at family restaurants, with toddlers within earshot.

RCA had asked the band to make a promo video, introducing ourselves to the label. It was supposed to be standard stuff: “Hi, we’re The Verve Pipe. We’re grateful that you have signed us, and we can’t wait to get out there and work our butts off for you.” But we NEVER did anything the easy way. We made the video our way. Each band member was given about 10 seconds of screen time. Donny was shown missing a drum fill in the studio and going on a profanity-laced rant of his own. Brad was shown saying that I had a pussy. A.J. Was shown playing guitar and smoking at the same time, with edits from various films- Woody Allen trying to inhale smoke, etc. Gerry was given 10 seconds of his own and of course, the 10 seconds that Jerry had were of him sleeping on the couch in the studio, as we were listening to a mix of “Photograph.” It was intended to be funny, and it was to us. But when RCA got the video, and also heard of some problems in the studio (unrelated to Jerry), they flipped out and nearly fired him for sleeping while we were working.

I was invited to Jerry’s beautiful home in the hills, overlooking the ocean. We were going to have a Sunday brunch. I arrived with a friend at 11 a.m. as instructed, and I saw him in the house reading a book. He was a bit disheveled, and for a moment I thought that I may have had the date wrong. He answered the door and immediately lit into me.

“What the hell are you thinking sending a tape of me sleeping in the studio? ” This was the first time I had heard that RCA had seen it, and that they were upset.

“I…ah…it was a joke…” I replied, sheepishly.
“Really funny. They are talking about firing my ass.” He walked away, and left my date and standing in the doorway. “Do we go in? Do we just leave?”

I decided to stay, and try to make things right. I apologized. He dismissed it, and we ate an uncomfortable brunch.

To this day, I regret not calling him out. It was clear that he wanted to record the album close to his home to spend more time with his family. Admirable, yes. But the lack of sleep he was getting at home kept him napping in the studio. Thank god for Karl Derfler, the engineer on the project, who, in my opinion, did the real producing of the record. He and the mixer, Tom Lord-Alge, made that record happen.

A few years later, and I was sitting at the Whiskey Bar in New York with a group of friends. Someone came up and said that Jerry was there, and asked me to come over. I ignored the invitation. That was my lame attempt to make a statement.

As much as I wanted to tell him off all of those times, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It would be the beginning of a long line of working with producers that would be distracted from our project, and me gutless to speak in defense of the band. I was enamored with the “genius” of these big time record producers.

Turns out, the Jerry Harrison experience was a finger prick compared to the hemorrhage of an experience that we had with the producer of our follow-up album. Michael Beinhorn would soon bring us all to our knees, begging him to stop the bleeding.

The U.S. on $10 a Day

It was an entirely different world now that The Verve Pipe was signed to RCA. We went from the top of the local ladder to the bottom rung on the national. Big fish in the little pond to minnows in the ocean.

The first step was to get in the van and start to create a buzz on the national scene. We jammed the 5 band members into a 15 passenger van, along with a tour manager (Bill Theis), an assistant tour manager (Jason Rio) and our sound engineer (Boo).


Bill Theis was a large man at 6 foot 2 inches and a couple hundred pounds. He smoked cigars and name-dropped. His self-importance seemed more important then actually getting the job done. I imagined that he saw himself as Colonel Parker, Elvis’s puppet master, though he lacked business skills and work ethic.

Jason Rio was fresh out of college, aggressive, had a dark sense of humor, and good taste in music. We took an instant liking to him, mostly because he got the job done, and remained the voice of reason on the tour.

Boo had been our sound man for a few years. He was a teddy bear of a man. When you see the cliche-ridden rock and roll movies where there was one person that knew everything, from how to fix your headphones to how to re-wire the club’s sound system, he was the guy. He lacked coolness, was not particularly popular with the ladies, and had a simple vocabulary outside of tech-speak. He was the best sound man, truck driver, band supporter and promoter that the band could have had. After a long drive on the way to California and a hook up with another touring band called The Imposters, Boo had unloaded the bags, parked the trailer on a slight hill near the hotel and unhitched the van from it, so that we could tool around town, unencumbered. For some reason, the brake on the trailer failed, and it started rolling down that slight hill, straight toward the traffic of the busy street. As it gained speed, full of our guitars, amps and drums, he jumped on to the front of the trailer hitch, riding it like Slim Pickens rode that atom bomb to the ground in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. With all of his might and weight, he steered hitch wheel of that trailer just enough to send it up onto the curb, safe from the busy street. It threw him off. He got up, smiled a bit and said “That was a close one.” We cheered him, and he acted like it was just part of his job. (Years later, after Boo had left the band to do sound for bigger acts, he had another heroic moment. He was 40 feet up in the catwalk of a theater when a 500 lb. cable broke loose, and was going to crash onto the stage. Boo tried to stop it, grabbing on. It pulled him off the catwalk and sent him down with it. Fortunately, a stagehand was below to help break his fall. He was sent to the hospital for a few weeks with a major break to his pelvic bone. After months and months of rehabilitation, he’s back doing sound. Last I heard, he was out with none other than Bruce Springsteen.)

The Imposters were an L.A. based act. They were to join us for a tour of the U.S., sponsored by Insider Magazine. I remember that they had decent enough songs, but the guys were whiners. They complained constantly, it seemed. Or they were sick, or just tired. I’m not sure what they expected from this tour. We crossed the country with them, playing shows, trying to steal each other’s spotlight. I was confident that most people walked away from the night remembering our show instead of theirs.

Not many people showed up for these shows, outside of the midwest. One promoter refused to put the name of the bands on the marquee. he insisted that there was no point. It would be better to just put up “Tonight: National Act” because no one would recognize our name anyway, he thought. “I should punch this guy in the face” was mine.

By the time we played in Michigan with The Imposters at the end of the tour, we were at our best as performers. We ended the tour on a high note- a show at the State Theater in Kalamazoo. The Imposters got a lukewarm response. Morty, their lead singer, insulted our crowd by telling them that after the show, they (the Imposters) got to leave Kalamazoo, but the crowd was stuck here. We heard the boos all the way in the basement.

We rocked them that night. We played new songs, most of which we would record in San Francisco in the next few months. The crowd ate up “Penny Is Poison”, “Ominous Man” and “Veneer”. We were at our best as performers and songwriters. The question was, would any of this translate onto a recording for a major record label? The answer would be known soon enough.