You got the freeway there.
You got a main street here, a main street there.
This is what I grew up with.
Why... Probably why I like music
loud and noisy and crazy
is because I'm just used to loud, noisy and cra...
I mean, I live in a quiet neighborhood now,
and I didn't think I'd be able to sleep
'cause I needed that... This sound, you know.
Would you ever live anywhere else?
- Than Los Angeles? - Yeah.
- Oh, no. - Why not?
Well, I've been everywhere else
and every time I go somewhere
it's just more evidence that Los Angeles
is the best place to live.
So... We have everything here.
We're good.
So this is where I used to live,
where it just used to be a little two-bedroom house.
You were born and raised in Los Angeles.
Yeah.
I was born in UCLA and raised in west L.A.
A few different spots.
- Your episode now. - Yeah.
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com
_
This whole place is like eye candy, you know.
You think of...
glitter and glamour and fame and fortune.
It's unlike any other city in America.
I think it used to be a lot
grittier, you know, now it's cleaned up.
People were saying, "Where is 'it'?
Where's the Hotel California?"
A lot of places say they're the one.
There is no one.
It was L.A.
- The music in L.A. - is more connected to the lifestyle.
It's all sort of one thing till you feel that...
In New York, your drummer just got mugged in the subway.
In L.A., he just got here from the beach
and smoked a doob on the way.
I came in 1973. It was December.
And the weather was like this, it was beautiful.
"How did my parents get it this wrong?"
Los Angeles was always the place that I came to get into trouble.
Living out here,
you almost always feel like you're on holiday.
It's got a different air to it.
The end of western civilization.
That's why there's so many loonies.
L.A. is a great city.
It's got everything you want and everything you need,
but it's a transient town.
To this day, I can count the people I know
who are from L.A.
There's, like, six people.
People come here for something.
All kinds of people went to L.A. to make it.
Some of 'em did with the great movie studios.
There were some really good musicians
who came out of studios.
There was a big shift, obviously,
and that was the beginning of rock and roll as we know it.
The Mamas And The Papas!
Bookings up and down the strip.
Every freaking night
was just a gridlock of cars and hippies.
We really thought that we were gonna take over the world.
If you went to the Whisky
or the Troubadour,
there was a whole community of musicians
and everybody was playing together.
It was a crazy time in Los Angeles.
It gave me a taste...
of what we could be.
Mid, late '80s...
It was a culture where rock and roll thrived.
You go out on Friday and Saturday night
and there's a million kids on Sunset.
Rockers...
had never seen anything like that before.
It's that electricity
of something that's happening.
It was fucking insanity.
For a kid from Seattle, it was the wild west.
There was a certain kind
of business glitz and glamour in Los Angeles.
All the record companies were stationed there.
L.A. seemed to be the place to go.
All you have to do
is wipe away one layer
of the glamour or the fame
and you're already in the dirt.
I find myself getting outside of this city
to get inside of myself.
There is something about the desert that drew artists.
The lifestyle allowed you to breathe...
Be creative, without the constant pressure.
When you get on the fringe of the desert,
I don't know when... It's everything.
Paint jobs on your car last a few years,
your window ends up kind of pitted up.
It does it to people, too.
A lot of people go there for the weekend
and they're like, "Whoa."
You know how they go, "I love it so much."
And then they move out there
and then six weeks later, the U-Haul company's
sending 'em back out, you know.
It takes a certain somebody.
You know, the desert's kind of got to already be in you.
For me, there's a space between things.
It gives me room to think.
Like a musical thing... Like the space between notes
is as important as the notes themselves.
We made the second Foo Fighters record
in 1997 in Los Angeles.
We worked every day for months and months
to try to make it right.
I had one day off,
and on that one day off
I drove out to the desert
to Rancho de la Luna.
Everything I'd heard about that place
made it seem like a temple.
It's just an old house.
We're out in the middle of the desert,
but there's something really special and magical
about this place.
I know guys from all over the world
that have recorded here
or want to record here.
We all thought we were driving out there
to go to like, a studio in the desert
rather than a portal to another dimension.
If you were to take a book...
A home studio book of the do's and don'ts,
Rancho literally has all the don'ts.
Don't do this, don't do that
and you're looking around and you're like, "Oh, Jesus."
This is the amazing giant tracking room.
I mean, obviously, there hasn't been
very much acoustic treatment.
No, there hasn't been anything.
The gear there, it's all kind of old and cool.
You can use whatever you want.
What's this, Dave?
That is my bedpan guitar.
There's a lot of interesting things in that room.
You can just spend days just staring around.
This is the bedroom, which has more amps
and stuff in here.
That place, it's a crusty, old bastard
and recording there is somehow effortless and simple.
You know, two wrongs don't make a right,
but 40 wrongs do, you know.
You might have to use that for your vocals.
See that? Is it a vocal mic?
You know what it is after a few Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Fucking PBR, ba-by!
Well, Dave started the studio with Fred just 20 years ago.
Him and Fred became friends in L.A.
before the studio was opened.
Catching knew Fred Drake
who had moved out of Los Angeles
to kind of get away.
Fred ran a studio called Dominion Way.
It was in Hollywood... He was the engineer,
and we all became really good friends with him
'cause he was such a great guy
and he was an amazing engineer and musician.
And he really wanted to come out here
and just have a little studio
that he could write his own music
and enjoy life a little more than he was enjoying it in L.A.
Really quick sort of off the topic question.
How the fuck are the Foo Fighters
gonna fit in that room?
I knew that we were all gonna be squeezed
into that tiny house.
There's nowhere else to go.
- Yeah. - T.-- U.
Come on in, everybody. It's, uh, you know,
it's just a little, tiny room.
We need more bodies in here,
- please. - Yeah.
Can we get some more body heat and smell in here?
It put the B.O. in "HBO."
But there's something about the energy
of all the people and all the sound in one room
that makes for something special.
All right, let's go for another take.
All right, we're rolling.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
I think that the studio can inspire anyone.
Everybody just kind of let it flow, you know.
We didn't really think twice.
We just made decisions really quickly.
What if I just wanged that, just the A?
- No! - Not the chord.
- Instead of the big chord? - Yeah!
Okay, let's try this really quick.
There is something about this place
that forces you to relax.
Out here there's not a lot to distract you.
I really fell in love with it the first time I came out here.
I'd come out a lot to hang out with Fred.
Fred kind of embodied
all the cool, creative elements
about rock and roll
and about folk and about country
and about the blues
and combined them all in this weird, colorful mix.
Fred was looking for an escape
from the noise and the chaos of Los Angeles.
Basically, that same scene that Pat grew up in.
Just as shitty as it always was.
When I heard we were doing an episode about my hometown,
I insisted that we get Rodney.
KROQ-AM in Burbank
and KROQ-FM in Pasadena.
He's a deejay.
- Rodney On The ROQ. - A lover of music.
Rodney's a legend.
He's the guy you hoped would play your song
if you were young and in a band
and trying to make it playing music.
He was the first person to ever play me on the radio.
- What's happening? - How are you?
Look at you, good to see you.
My God, long time no see.
Oh, give me some love, Rodney. The tables have turned today.
- Yeah. - I'm interviewing your ass.
Oh, my God.
Damn, how long have you lived here?
Mm, almost 20 years.
There's a lot of Elvis pictures.
Yeah, I remember.
There's one up there,
and there's one over by the coffee table.
Ah, those were the days.
There's Runaways and David Lee.
That's a good combo.
I've always been into music
since I was, you know, five and six,
collector of records.
And my biggest thrill was in the Bay area
on the transistor radio... Or little radio,
you could actually get L.A. radio stations.
So then I got it in my blood to go to Hollywood.
Rodney became known as the "Mayor of the Sunset Strip."
He literally knew everybody.
And he had the hottest club in town,
Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco.
This was the place where you could hear
all the British bands.
Like Slade, David Bowie,
T. Rex, Suzi Quatro.
I would deejay most of the time,
but every now and then we would have bands play.
Iggy Pop played there.
That's when he slit himself all up.
What was Joan like
when she first started coming to clubs?
You know, she didn't go there to dance,
she's there to listen.
So I started hearing all these bands
we never heard of,
but it seemed sort of, you know, edgy and different
than what was going on.
It's funny, when I think about that time,
it was like Ronstadt and the Eagles,
and it was like this peaceful, easy feeling.
We knew about that scene,
but we didn't feel connected to that scene.
I used to have all these glitter kids walk into my club.
Boys and girls
wearing high platforms, boas...
- Glitter Critters. - Glitter Critters.
It was just so, so magical because it was ours.
It was a very small clique of people
that were into the glitter scene in L.A.
So, you know, I'd go to school
dressed up in my glitter garb and the kids would all go,
"Ah-ooo, Diamond Dogs." And I'd be like, "Yeah!"
It was such a weird scene.
Boys are girls, girls are boys.
I guess girls can play rock and roll.
If I want to do this
there's got to be other girls in Hollywood
that want to do this.
That's kind of how The Runaways started.
People thought it was cute, you know,
until they realized we were serious
and wanted to do this for a career.
And then people would start getting nasty
and call you names
and call you whores and sluts and dykes
for no reason, just for playing music.
Then you realize you're doing something right
because you're getting people upset.
The Runaways was the first band I saw,
like, up close in the club,
go to all the shows we could.
And their first album they had all their pictures
and it listed all their ages.
And we're like, "Fuck, they're our age."
Hey, we should do that.
Dave, 46.
How did you meet Darby?
We were just kind of, uh,
two loser outcasts in junior high.
Our mutual speed dealer said to us one day,
"You... I think you guys should be friends."
We met Joan just being groupies basically,
just going to all The Runaways gigs
and sneaking backstage.
I didn't really know who they were,
but I started talking to them then and they said
that they were forming a band.
It was the Germs.
It's just noise and screaming.
I heard that phrase my whole childhood.
Oh, they hated it.
"It's just noise and screaming!"
You know, when we started our first band I said,
"You know what we should do?
We should, like, actually do a band
that's just noise and screaming."
And we did.
Ah, I just ran out of gas!
Everybody settled and ready to go?
Josh, where were you born?
I was born in the Palm Springs Hospital
because it was the only hospital that you could be born in
in the desert.
There was one hospital.
What was it like growing up there?
Um, boring.
Coachella Valley is kind of separated, like,
there's Palm Springs here
and then Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage,
there's Indian Wells, and then there's La Quinta
and then there's Indio.
You're right on the edge of civilization all the way around.
It's almost like being on an island.
We moved to Palm Springs in '69.
That was the heyday
of the Hollywood escape, you know.
Bob Hope, Sinatra, Liberace...
you could have like this kind of palatial estate
for a tenth of the price.
I think they just wanted
to get out of the cold and have a place that was nice
so they could do business year round.
Indio was like really working class and still is.
Tons of money, no money and then
that spectrum across the board.
When we growing up
Palm Springs was, like, you know, creative types,
arty types.
Palm Desert was more like...
Like longer hair, cut-off shirts and, like,
a little more stonery.
Indio.
That's where all the gnarly, hardcore,
don't-fuck-with-these-guys, punk rockers were.
I kind of fell in the middle somewhere,
but I was motivated
to get all those people together all the time.
His parents owned a restaurant in Rancho Mirage called
Mario's Italian Restaurant.
It's where they sing while you dine.
You'd go to eat
and all of a sudden the waiter would go...
...and you'd just be like spaghetti,
you'd be like, "Ah..." like this, you know.
He was one of the first guitar players
that I ever played with.
We were kind of learning our instruments at the same time.
Mario had a house on Chihuahua Street,
and I played there when I was 14.
He was like 18 or 19
letting 14-year-olds play at your house
in sort of supporting this thing.
Not everyone would do that.
Making music down here
and having a place to go hear music,
we really had to do it ourselves.
We had to find our place.
And then we got the bright idea to get a generator,
get away from the cops,
get away from the neighbors,
come out in the middle of nowhere,
raise hell and blow shit up,
get drunk, you know, have fun.
They would take a generator out
to a pre-designated area of the desert,
tell a few friends who would tell a few friends,
turn some trucks in with headlights.
There was an abandoned road
that crumbled off the edge of this wash.
The people were down in the wash
and the band set up on the asphalt.
And it was a perfect natural stage.
In these canyons, you'd play and there's fires lit
and some people dancing around.
It was fun for me
to play on mushrooms whenever possible.
And we'd go out in the desert and jam,
not because there was nowhere to play,
but there was nowhere to play
where you could get that fucked up.
You know, the way a scene starts,
but some catalyst kicks it into motion.
A lot has been made out of generator parties,
but there was only one generator and it was Mario's.
He was the catalyst
that you really need to do something extra.
You can't just be in a band.
You need to be in a band that can occupy this space.
Woohoo!
What I had thought of as music
growing up on punk rock,
once we got outside it didn't fit.
We're outside in this incredible expanse
overlooking the 10 freeway,
overlooking old mesas and...
And we're out there playing all this, you know...
It felt weird.
The environment started to impact
how we thought about our music.
It was really lawless and free
and I think that music got that way really quick.
That was the beginning of Kyuss.
1990 was an era of perfect metal.
It was very staccato.
Typing... Heavy metal typing.
Kyuss was not that at all.
Kyuss was like getting the typewriter
and stepping on it with your boot in slow motion.
That sound developed,
yeah, like the oversized cymbals and oversized drums,
just trying to make as much presence
in a wide-open space as you could.
They were tuned down lower than anybody.
Josh used to do it by ear, not with tuners.
It was really weird.
And they were tuned down so low
that when they'd hit their strings,
everything would go out of tune.
And the sound frequency in front of the stage
would create this, like, lava bubble of frequency.
Just like...
It was our first time recording. We were 15 years old.
But the guy that was there, he was, like, you know,
"You can't tune down like that
and you can't use bass cabinets.
So switch that."
Seeing these kids my first thought was, like,
"No one can ruin this."
How did I get to be a producer?
Making sure that no one ruined Kyuss.
I saw Kyuss play
in a small club in Seattle in 1992
and they were unlike any band I've ever seen.
They blew my fucking mind.
This was around the time of their record
"Blues for the Red Sun."
And I was going to the record stores
and buying that album just to give it to people.
"Have you heard Kyuss? Hold on.
Let me buy you this record. Here, listen to this."
The future of grunge music
is now evolving from Palm Springs, California.
A band named Kyuss, K-Y-U-S-S.
I mean, that went around like, holy shit, you know.
Wow.
The word started spreading.
Then we went from playing these crappy gigs
to we got a phone call,
"Metallica wants you to tour in Australia."
Fuck, yeah, motherfuckers!
Holy shit.
Hi, mom!
We were always in the dirtier part of Hollywood.
That was my playground when I was a teenager.
So it wasn't just me. It was crawling with kids.
Rodney's English Disco is happening,
it's the hippest club in Hollywood.
And then it's gone. What happened?
Well, disco.
Because the English disco I had was a rock disco.
I wasn't playing disco music.
Disco took out
- Rodney's English Disco? - Yeah.
So if you just called it something else
it might still be there today
- is what you're saying. - Maybe.
And these two guys came in the club
and they said, "We're starting a new radio station
called KROQ.
Would you like to do a show there?"
KROQ here.
Yes, I have a request for you.
Yeah.
- We were relentless. - We called you,
and we bugged the fuck out of you on your show.
Every day, just, "Play this."
And you were so annoyed by that
until finally, one time we called you up again
and you said, "Look, if you stop calling me
I'll play your record."
- And you did. - I did.
Yeah.
Okay, well, let's hear the Germs...
We started out being the worst band in L.A.
"The Germs are a food fight," was one review I remember.
It's a joke. We were a joke then.
You guys, you're not having fun. Do damage.
Darby would smear peanut butter all over him,
he'd dive through broken glass,
we'd break glasses on his head.
Hey, listen.
They're throwing us out.
Hey, listen.
Listen. Shut up!
- - Slash Magazine was the...
The big punk rock fanzine in L.A. at that time.
They said, "Hey, we wanna make a record."
"Darby said, 'Okay, if you can get David Bowie to produce.'"
And they laughed at us and said, "No."
Eventually, they asked me to produce their first album.
They figured we had made a few albums
and I knew what I was doing,
but I didn't really know what I was doing.
With Joan it was just like having
a fifth member in the band and a friend.
What was the record
that made you want to be a rock musician?
It was probably the Germs record.
It was brutal, it was poetic,
and all those things that spoke to me
as a 14-year-old kid.
I thought we made a really great record anyway.
Fuck yeah, you did!
Darby, he wanted to be the ruler of the world, you know?
There was a cult around him
and he was kind of king of the scene.
Before we went out to Rancho
I went to see Daniel Lanois,
one of the greatest producers of the last 30 years.
I'd heard he knew Fred Drake,
but I had no idea how instrumental he was
in putting Rancho de la Luna together.
So that's what it's like
to make a record with Daniel Lanois.
It's that easy.
You just sit down and play.
I started making records in houses and libraries
all kind of different buildings,
including a castle in Ireland.
And we just set up the control room any old spot.
It's about where you get to chemically
- with your mates, you know. - Chemically?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not talking...
We've got the other stuff, though.
Yeah, I'm sure you do.
It... It disintegrated, and...
Oh, I've just really done it now.
Yeah, that's album of the year in 19 what?
- 19... - Uh, 87.
- There you go. - '87.
Daniel, he's like made of music.
He has that turbulent rhythm
with those amazing sounds that just evokes an emotion.
From the very first song that we cut
I just knew something was going on.
And we set up real close, let's say you're Emmy, I'm here,
and then Steve Earl stopped by and Larry Mullen from U2.
We just set up in this tight little circle.
And what happens when you set up in a tight circle
is you listen because you have to balance yourself.
We have that in us as musicians.
We are capable of self-balancing,
and it doesn't have to be left up to someone else
to do it after the fact, you know?
That open space,
laid back, anything goes communal vibe,
Daniel Lanois' method of recording
is really similar to the way
people record at Rancho de la Luna.
This girl that was working with me at the time,
she said, "I know a place
in Joshua Tree that you would like."
So I met the guy, Desert Fred, Fred Drake,
and I said, "Listen, man,
I will bring my entire studio up here
and we'll put it in your house
and you can use it when I'm not using it
and we'll just do an exchange."
So he said okay, and we did that.
So I was out there in Joshua Tree for almost a year.
Did all kind of great recordings out there.
I think when you're out there in the desert
it has an effect on you.
It makes you feel small
and I think that's good,
especially if you've been around and, you know,
people tell you you're great all the time in cities
and then you go out there and you say,
"Wait a minute, I'm just a little critter here
running around like the other critters."
I had heard so much about Fred.
I was nervous to meet him.
He had such a reputation.
Everything I'd heard about that place
made it seem like a temple
and Fred was the monk.
He was beautiful person, man. I love that guy.
I think about him a lot, especially when I'm out here.
He's everywhere.
Rancho is him.
And when I met Fred and Dave
we started creating music.
Kind of space rock, I guess.
I just came up with the name Earthlings
'cause it didn't seem to mean anything
so it meant that we could do whatever we wanted.
- I'd be driving from L.A. - to here and...
And it was the music that was in my head
watching the scenery go by
and the long straight road, the 100 degree temperature.
Fred had a horse named Cashmere.
You'd be recording and here he would come,
he would ride right up onto the patio
on the back of Cashmere.
He was like the Marlboro Man, you know?
He always had a cigarette in his mouth,
cowboy hat on, you know?
And he'd go take his hat off and go like this, turn,
and then ride off into the desert for a while.
Brought the horse inside the Rancho one time.
We thought it'd be cool.
And it just started to unload its bowels all over the floor.
I didn't even know he was sick
for the first, you know, eight years I knew him.
He was HIV positive since the late '80s.
Fred was always sick
and he was always having things cut out of him,
and he was like fighting for his life at all times.
At one point, uh,
he had his IV walking...
He was engineering for Lanois with his IV
just walking around, you know, like.
Lanois thought it was the coolest thing ever
that Fred was like, "Yeah, come on over,
I'll just IV around the house," you know.
Never gloomy or... Or,
there was never an excuse for anything.
He participated in his life for sure, man.
That's what we want.
I had a few moments in my life
where I've gotten to play with people who I think
are just so fucking important.
I'm sorry, but how awesome does it sound
to have Joe Walsh and the Foo Fighters?
I mean, it's fucking rad!
Yeah, it's like, right now. It's amazing.
He's kind of had a lot of musical lives, really.
It started out with James Gang,
and then he went on a solo trip for awhile.
His third act would be the Eagles.
He is classic rock guitar playing.
Could we get a little bit of "Funk #49" just quickly?
- Oh, come on! - What part?
- Yeah, come on! - What part?
I already got one, bro.
I already got a text
from some of the guys working on tour.
He goes, "Can he please play 'Country Fair' for us?"
- Joe! Come on, man! - Yeah, man.
Thanks for that. You just made my life.
To have him in there playing
and watch his creative process
and his total fucking absorption
into how to make this song better...
Not how to like, show off 'cause I'm Joe Walsh,
how to make this song better...
All right, let's try a couple.
I mean, he doesn't even fucking play a note
for the first eight bars of his guitar solo.
I changed it.
And then he hits two notes.
And those two notes are more important
than any fucking note anybody's played
on that song yet, man.
He knows how to create space...
and make small movements huge.
Damn, that was so fuckin' rad!
It's so good.
- It's... - I'd say it's done.
Fuck! Fuck!
- Fuck! - Oh, my God!
That was... So good, Joe.
Let James get a little mix going here.
Um, let's clean up. There's a little bit of a...
Everything you played was perfect.
Perfect.
Because much of what we term "accepted rock and roll"
is a product of the street.
It is only fair that we begin here
with the new wave in music.
We have with us tonight the Germs
performing at the Whisky.
What are you guys gonna do tonight?
The same stuff we always do.
And what is that specifically?
He gets cut up a lot.
By around 1979,
nobody wanted to have anything to do with punk rock anymore.
Everybody finally knew there's gonna be trouble,
you're gonna lose money on shit being broken.
Hong Kong Café was a Chinese restaurant
that for some crazy reason
allowed punk rock bands to do shows.
So we had free reign of this for a while.
And did you...
Did you imagine having a career in music?
Like, what did you think you were gonna do?
Well he went to England.
Adam and the Ants were starting there.
He became obsessed with that whole thing.
And he basically called me from England and said,
"Punk rock's dead.
It's all about this now."
And Darby came back from England with his giant Mohawk
and his war paint and his feathers
and no band.
At this point he's also into heroin.
He's just blowing it left and right.
So he said that he wanted to do one last Germs show.
During rehearsals he says to me,
"You know, I'm only... Really only doing this show
so I can get enough money to buy enough heroin to kill myself."
I'm like, "Oh, this again."
'Cause he always had this theme of, you know,
"I'm going to kill myself. We're gonna be legends."
It was one of our best shows.
And a week later he does it.
This was 1980.
And then pulled out a gun and pumped five shots
at point blank range into John Lennon...
And the next day John Lennon was killed.
John Lennon of the Beatles is dead.
He thought this was gonna take him to the mainstream.
But, um, it didn't work out.
And that was the Germs.
Look at all these people.
Come here, duck.
In Kyuss we had created something special.
And to preserve it was to destroy it.
We couldn't jam with anyone else,
and it was threatening to even suggest it.
We rehearsed for eight hours a day, six days a week.
I mean, it was gnarly.
We had so many rules.
I just had gotten to a place in my life where I was, like,
"It should be about the opposite of that.
It should be the same work ethic, no rules."
It's not flattering, but...
Okay, people.
The desert sessions was
Josh's idea of putting together a series of recording sessions
collaborating with all these musicians
that he was friends with, respected,
identified musically with.
Can you list all the people
that have done the desert sessions?
I could, but it would take awhile.
It's about 40-something people.
Yeah.
It was just a lot of people
just coming to the Rancho for a weekend
of drinking and debauchery with the tape rolling.
There's no preconceived notion
of what should be going on
or what is gonna happen.
The concept was,
"Do you remember why you started playing music?"
Just to ask that simple question.
So everyone was fucked up the whole time
when you did those things, right?
No, no, not really. No.
- Come on, Dave. - A little bit. You know, maybe.
That project was inspired
by what this place means
to the musicians that discovered it.
- Where is he? - He's coming over.
Where is my client?
Oh, I see him.
Look at him.
- Get over here. - Ha ha.
Come on.
Meep meep! No.
Meep meep meep meep!
The desert reclaims everything,
just beats everything down.
But the Rancho is this altar.
What was important to Fred was living in a...
In the creative moment
and making that atmosphere happen
and living in the atmosphere, and I really respect that.
He fought pretty hard.
He was a tough guy.
The toughest guy I've ever met in my life.
Man, he battled with that disease
for a long time.
You could see how painful it was for him.
When someone finally lets go like that,
I think it's a relief.
He died at home in the Rancho.
He was surrounded by a lot of people that loved him
and if you're gonna pass like that,
it's the best way to go.
I didn't find out for a while that he had died,
and everybody was on the road.
Queens and the Stone Age were out
and, ugh, I was so upset when I had heard
that he'd passed.
I don't have many regrets in my life except for
not being able to go back there when it was time.
There's, like, a little shrine to Fred
and where Cashmere used to be,
and I love going out there.
I hope to God there's ghosts,
'cause it would be great knowing he was always there.
He willed the Rancho kind of loosely
to the community at first, you know.
He wanted everyone to be able to use it as a place
to come and make music.
There wasn't anyone really taking charge for a while there
and the Rancho was starting to deteriorate a little bit.
Here's the deal,
nobody wants to do this, but I do.
I can move into the studio
and I can get business there
and I can take care of it, I can fix things.
You know, I didn't do it for, like,
financial gain or whatever,
I'm just keeping it going because I love it here
and people love coming here, you know?
It's a song every time.
You just turn it on...
Dave was always his partner in crime, you know.
And so Dave is a wonderful ambassador
and the man that should have carried that on.
It was always Dave's to do.
And now more than ever
people want to come here.
It really is one of our favorite places
on the planet.
That was the first place I've ever been
where I felt completely free
to just be whoever I wanted to be musically
or do whatever I wanted to do musically.
When you're at the epicenter of something that's really beautiful,
in a way you want to protect it
and in a way you know that it needs to flourish.
So I always wanted that to grow,
but just as slow as possible, like a cactus, you know?
There's guys that use that gate
as their little picture on their Facebook
or whatever, you know,
and they're from fucking Argentina.
Yeah, kids travel from all over the planet
to come see the Rancho.
It's a pilgrimage.
We see them walking up the dirt road
and spotting the sign
and some mornings Dave's coming out in his underpants
and there's three Italian kids going, "Dave Catching."
The Rancho is a good example
of how music reaches a lot farther
than you would imagine it to.
Music carries from person to person
in these weird channels.
It just happens.
This is something that continues
to evolve and grow and inspire
and excite people.
That's badass, you know?
- Hearing all these records... - All these bands,
it wasn't just about rock and roll...
it was about something bigger.
Everything changes...
but thank God it was what it was when it was.
I mean, at least it happened.
It was so cathartic.
It just seemed like we were on a deeper level.
I like playing with people that I like playing with.
It's never really gone beyond that.
I think that young musicians
can't imagine someone on the other side of the world
hearing their song.
It just seems impossible...
but it's not.
_
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com