Interview with PRAIRIE PRINCE

Monday 19.07.2004 @01.57

Room 220, the Lowry Hotel, Salford

Having first met Prairie in 1977 and first worked for The Tubes in 1978 a lot of catching up and general chatting started in the hotel bar following Todd Rundgren’s final UK show.  Prairie had to pack for a 06.60 flight to London so the “interview” actually started in his room with this gem, up to the minute and exclusive as all the best tabloids say.  Read on and remember, this is NOT meant to be Pulitzer Prize journalism, just a way of getting information to fellow Tubes fans.

PP: Kenny & Michael went to see The Tubes with my replacement Lou Molino at BB Kings in New York City recently.  Michael had seen the band a few times over the years since he left, but Kenny hadn’t seen us in over 20 years.  So after the BB King’s show they were so buzzed, they immediately went back to Michael’s apartment to start writing a synopsis for The Tubes, “The Broadway Production”.

What would the title be Par Can?  What Do You Want From Live? What Did You Want From Life?

PC:  What Did You GET From Life? (Laughs)

PP:  What Did You Get From Live? (More laughs)

PC:  Re?  Shirley Marie McLeod?

PP:  Re, the first subject? Yep

PC:  Born where?

PP:  Fort Campbell, KY.

PC:  Bob MacIntosh?

PP:  I don’t remember, what I do know is Roger is definitely born 1949, not ‘51.  Much as he would like to think he is younger than me, he is not, he’s Bill’s age.  Rick is the oldest and Vince was the youngest.

PC:  Next time you see the guys, gently coerce them to mail me to help out with this project

PP:  I will do my best, you know I will.  I will help all I can, that’s all I can promise.

PC:  Elisha Ohri?  Who she?

PP:  I do know who she was.  She was supposed to be one of our singers.  She auditioned for us, she got the job and at the last minute her sister got sick so we hired Lesley Paton.  So Elisha never actually performed with us live.  There was another girl who did perform with us on the 1993 tour of Europe with Jenni McPhee, it was Trey Sabbatelli’s now wife.

By the way, that poster you showed me (Genius Of America tour) with women boxing is a fake poster that Mick Anger and I designed and never got paid for, so it was never produced.

That tour in ’93, we went to Portugal, to Germany, Holland and I’m sure we played in London.  Don’t quote me on the dates etc, you’re right to show doubt.  I just remember it was the first time Fee came back.

PC:  What brought him back?

PP:  That tour.

PC:  Pure and simple.

PP:  Yeah.

PC:  No bad blood?

PP:  There was no bad blood.  A promoter rang us, said I’ve got some money for a tour of Europe and Fee just did it.

PC:  1991.  I have some “boots” from places like the Catalyst, who was in the band then?  Mingo is so obviously there as he is banging timbales almost to the point of distraction....

PP:  Might have been !! (laughs).

PC:  It sounds like Fee singing on things like “Up From The Deep”.....

PP:  Fee never sang “Up From The Deep”.

PC:  I knew that, BUT, it sounds so much like him.  I take it then that is Gary?

PP:  Yeah, Gary has always sung that since joining the band in ’89 after Vince left.

PC:  Vince is often quoted as saying when asked “why don’t you go back to The Tubes” that he trained up a guy on keyboards and he’s doing a pretty good job, so.....

PP:  He is doing a good job.  Gary keeps saying “I keep getting called the new guy, yet I’ve been in the band 15 years.”  Gary is amazing, a really, truly  great musician, a wonderful guy, he’s just amazing and is more like Bill Spooner and Vince Welnick than anyone I  ever met.  He has his own personality, a complicated personality and has had an awful past few months, but is coming through and I’m glad to have him in the band.

PC:  Going backwards again, Bob died in ‘73 or as it’s sometimes quoted ’75?

PP:  Early, ’73.  He died from Lymphoma.  It was early you know.  They didn’t know how to treat it in those days; he died very quickly, within a year of diagnosis.  He did go to Germany to try some kind of therapy, but.....

He did a gig wearing a wig, I wore a wig also.  It was the Kezar Stadium gig with Led Zeppelin; we were “Siamese Twins”.  He just looked like himself and I made myself look like him, a long blonde wig, Chinese robes and attached at the waist.  We waved to the crowd, then someone separated us and we walked to own drum sets.  That was an amazing show and SOMEWHERE somebody has a super8 movie of our performance.

Par Can, you need to go online and hunt that movie down.  Somebody came up to me around 10 years ago and said “I have a super8 movie of that show”.  I said “send it to me please” but, obviously not.  This was just before email and internet that makes things happen these days.

PC:  We will find it, or pass out trying!!

PP:  The Tubes at Kezar Stadium was so killer.  That was the first Quay Lewd performance.  The first song “White Punks On Dope”.  We started the tune, Quay walked out and through pills and bags of flour at the crowd, some of whom had been waiting days to get the front row.  So there they were, front row around 10 in the morning, we went on at 10am as the show was supposed to be done by 6pm.  Of course, there were a few hold ups, Led Zeppelin went on around 3 hours late because they didn’t show up.  There we were, done and hanging around for Led Zeppelin all day long and finally the played and it was an incredible show.

PC:  I have a downloaded image of a ticket for the show and there is an advert, but, it has been compressed so much that when you try to enlarge the thumbnail it is useless as the image just tears apart.  I’ve heard there are adverts and posters available to buy but I haven’t found any yet.

PP:  I haven’t seen any for years.

PC:  Hoping forward a little, Journey?

PP:  I did the first two shows with them, Winterland on New Years Eve ’73 with Santana, which I gave you a tape of and the following day at the “Crater Festival” in Hawaii.

PC:  I have read on various sites, mostly Journey sites, that they headlined the show in front of 100,000.

PP:  They did?  No, you know who did headline? it was Delaney and Bonnie with a few others, two I think, sorry I don’t remember who but we did a great job, that I do remember.....(laughs).

PC:  Backwards again, how did you end up in Arizona?

PP:  My father got a job selling cotton in 1950, right after they had me.  They had me in a baby basket and in August we drove to Washington State from North Carolina, to my grandma’s home where we stayed for a couple of months.  I was four months old when we arrived in Phoenix, stayed there ‘til 69 when I moved to San Francisco after gaining a scholarship to the art institute.  The band and I all moved up to San Francisco.

PC:  Did you have any contacts in San Francisco at that time?

PP:  Yeah, my sister Helen lived there.

PC:  So, just to confirm.  You were in the “Red White & Blues” with Roger and David Killingsworth?

PP:  Yeah and Fee who was our roadie then and John Speer our manager.

PC:  The Beans, who were Bill Spooner, Rick Anderson, Vince Welnick and Bob MacIntosh stayed in Phoenix?

PP:  We moved in the fall of ’69 so I could attend the art institute and The Beans moved up in the winter of ’70 after we had done the World’s Fair trip to Japan.  Actually, they may have moved up in the summer of ’70, right after we got back from Japan.

They all lived in a house “The Bean House” with Mike Carpenter (their roadie “Mama Mike”), Dave Mellott (future Tubes stage manager) and Matt Leach (long-time Tubes associate).  You were asking who lived in the house, that’s who.

So then, the Red White & Blues Band lived in the house on Noriega Street, near 46^th Av which was just torn down.  I have the front door from the house in my garage.....(laughs).....The landlords’ son called me up and said “I hear you used to live here, we have a door which says “Tubes” on it.  Do you want it?”  So I said “yeah I want it”.  I drove over there, got my screwdriver out and took it off the frame.  It’s got a spray painted Tubes logo on it in great shape.  I did the design and the guys sprayed it on all our equipment.

By now we were all in this one house on Noriega, Mike Carpenter, Dave Mellott, Matt Leach and Gig Schaeffer all lived downstairs and the rest of us all lived on the upper floors.  Kinda like a giant commune, this whole house that just got torn down.

PC:  This would have been the “brown rice” survival days?  Fee going to the farmer’s market with food stamps?

PP:  He used to cook all this rice.....(laughs).....we used to rehearse in the basement and you know, it’s history.  Now sadly all gone.

PC:  OK, clarify a Tubes myth.  Fee got his name from reading a magazine about holidays in Fiji and him saying “I want to go to Fiji”.....(Prairie laughs loud!!).  Initially he was called “Fiji” which was eventually cut down to “Fi” or “Fee”.

PP:  No, that’s not why he was called Fiji.  I named him “Fiji” because he looked like a Fijian islander.  His hair was so big and growing outwards all sunburnt, bleached out and unkempt.  He looked like “a crazed Fijian island native from Wongo!!”.

PC:  Well, there’s another Tubes myth shot down in flames as the magazine story is now “fact” on the web.

PP:  We called him Fiji for about 6 months, then Fij (Feej) then eventually Fi (Fee).  this brings us to a whole other world which is Fee Waybill.

PC:  Another Tubes “myth”, Fee Cranson.  Where did Cranson come from?

PP:  (Laughs) I don’t know, probably too much pot (more laughs).

PC:  Baby Husky Dog or Baby Husky Sandwich?

PP:  No no no, that was Husky Baby Sandwich.  That was my dog named after a band that Mike McFadden from Miles End and Superfine Dandelion had put together.  That band lasted like 6 months and MAY have included Rick Anderson, but you’ll have to check with Rick.  I just thought it was the greatest name, so I named this puppy, a half Doberman pincher half ridgeback after Mike’s band.

PC:  So when the time came to rename the band?

PP:  It did come from Sandwich.  He loved mayonnaise and somebody put a drop of mayo on a piece of paper that had Tubes written on it.  We put all the names in a bag and of course, Sandwich picked the piece with the mayo on it.

PC:  Any idea who the culprit was?  Fee claims he did it, Vince says John Speer did it.

PP:  Well John Speer was really the caretaker of the dog.  I bought the dog, but John really looked after it.  He took the dog with him after he left The Tubes, moved up to Alaska took Sandwich him and he lived out the rest of his doggy life there.  After he died, John brought his ashes back to San Francisco, to the beach near to our old house and spread his ashes on the beach which was right as Sandwich was a real beach dog.

PC:  Have you seen John recently?

PP:  The last time I saw John and you’ll find this interesting.....I have a band called “Pollo Enfermo”.  They are my local neighbourhood surfer guys, they met me and they are all Tubes fans, great musicians and I started playing with them.  The same old thing happened.  We needed somewhere to rehearse and this old house was getting torn down.  I saw his number on the board outside the house, called him asking what was happening with the house, maybe I could rent it, maybe I could buy it, but he said no as he had big plans for it.  But I’m interested that you called and if you’d like to come and see the house come on over.  So I went over and it turns out that this guy is the son of our landlord from back in the 60s who is now dead.  The guy said “Hey I’m interested.  You got a band?  Why don’t you come on over and rehearse”  So we went over there to rehearse and all of a sudden in walks John Speer.  He breaks down the door, there he is.  He says “This is amazing. I’m just passing through, showing my friend our old house and I hear music coming from this house and here YOU are playing drums.  Unbelievable!!”

PC:  When was this?

PP:  This was just two years ago.  Of course, the house is gone now and a new giant bleugh!!!!!

PC:  Gary and Daniel were Brewer & Shipley’s management; you played on their ’73 album.  Is that all there was to them becoming Tubes management?

PP:  I think they were already interested as they had seen us a couple of times, once at the art institute which was one our very first gigs.  We performed “Ascension Of The Motherlode” there.

PC:  What was “Ascension Of The Motherlode?”

PP:  It was a space rock opera that Bill Spooner wrote; I can’t tell you how much Vince, Rick and Bob contributed as I wasn’t there.  It was a Beans original which they had performed a few times in Phoenix before moving to San Francisco.  We performed it at the art institute, its San Francisco debut and a couple of other times as “The Radar Men From Uranus”.  The institute show was the gig the Red White & Blues had booked before David left.  So we offered it to The Beans but only if we could play as well.  We were not part of The Beans at this point.  It was the only time we played the institute.  Actually, that’s wrong.  We also did a show there called “Womens Lip”.  All my art institute girlfriends were part of the show.  They polished all our amplifiers and instruments, swept the floor as an anti women’s lib statement.  It was their idea, not ours.

PC:  Just to clarify, did you go back to being the Red White & Blues Band or were you still Arizona at this stage?

PP:  Me, Roger and Fee were “The Radar Men From Uranus”.  We also performed “Ascension” at The Filmore.  The Beans with The Radar Men From Uranus where we did some of the songs from Ascension Of The Motherlode, just as a side thing away from the regular Beans set.  It’s all a little hazy, but essentially Red White & Blues was gone when David left.  We were just the Radar Men From Uranus and we were looking for a vehicle to make something happen.

PC:  What was the premise for “Ascension?”

PP:  Essentially it was about a planet ruled by women and which ultimately provided us with “Wild Women Of Wongo” all those years later.  The women’s call to arms was “Our lord of the hotdog”  You gotta hear that, that whole Spooner thing was just brilliant, you’d love it.  It would still make a great play today.  It never really saw the light, we did a rock’n’roll abbreviation of the whole idea.

One of the greatest experiences, I gotta tell you this, one of the times we performed it was in Phoenix Arizona, right after we got back from Mexico at a nightclub called “the Aquarius” in the “Odyssey Theatre.  There was a trapdoor in the stage and someone had opened it and left it open.  There was this “All seeing eye” that came up during parts of the show and Spooner fell through the trapdoor up to his armpits, just a head and a guitar!!  So funny.....(much laughing).

PC:  That was 71?

PP:  Yeah.

PC:  OK, so I suppose the question, why The Beans and not Red White & Blues is redundant now?

PP:  Kinda, but we weren’t The Beans very long, because there already was a band called The Beans and they released an album with a great cover.  Did you see that?  A guy standing with beans blowing out of his ears!!

PC:  I’ve seen an advert for a recently re-issued album from 1972 by a Philadelphia based blues band called “The Beans” but haven’t seen the cover.

PP:  We were like “shit” because they came out with an album before we did.

PC:  Probably as well, as The Tubes is a way better name don’t you think?  Can you clarify what exactly happened when The Radar Men tried to enter Mexico?  Did you actually perform there, were you turned back at the border or were you deported?

PP:  No, we actually played there.  We took all of the costumes, took a train down there to play at a so called festival.  Can’t quite remember the name of the festival, but it was a group of shyster hippy types who’d gotten us all the way down to Mazatalan, quite a ways down, 10 or 12 hours on the train with all of our props, paintings, costumes and equipment only to find there was no gig.

So we ended up playing, had to find our own gigs and were then deported for not having work permits.

PC:  Going back again, Michael?  When did he join the institute?  Same time as you?

PP:  I think so, might have been one semester later.  We all moved up to San Francisco together but I think Michael moved up one semester later.  You need to call him to check.

PC:  How was Michael known to you back in Arizona?  What was his part in the band as he wasn’t performing at this point was he?

PP:  We were all living in a house in Tucson.  Michael had a lighting show called “The Colourful Baby”.  You should see some of the films, we still have them all, really cool light shows.

PC:  Send them over, I’ll convert them and transfer them to DVD.

PP:  Call Michael, he’ll send them to you.

PC:  He’s never home.  Every time I call he’s usually in Vegas.

PP:  You’ll catch him.  Hell, I have trouble keeping up with him.

PC:  Jumping back again, how did you get the expo gig in Osaka?

PP:  John Speer answered an ad in the paper which said “Looking for a San Francisco psychedelic rock band.  Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane type band wanted”.  John answered the ad, said” I have a psychedelic trio; we auditioned, got the job and sailed to Japan.  John Speer our manager, Fee Waybill our roadie, David Killingsworth, Roger and myself.  We sailed on an American President Lines cruise liner, everything taken care of as Osaka and San Francisco are “sister cities in trade”.  We arrived in Osaka, played 4 one hour shows per day, seven days a week for six weeks with an hour in between each show for MASSIVE audiences of Japanese people who had no idea who we were, but it didn’t matter.  We were playing this psychedelic music, we were having this amazing experience, everyone was happy.  We stayed at this apartment complex housing all these performers from all over the world all of whom were working at the expo and was just an enlightening experience.

PC:  You guys were all 19, 20?

PP:  20.  1970.  We were there for three months.

PC:  Was this free jam type stuff?

PP:  No, we had a lot of original material, Red White & Blues Band material.  We were called Arizon for this trip.  We had changed our name to Arizona when we moved to San Francisco because we loved Arizona and wanted to support it.  Just like Chicago or Alabama.

So for the trip to Japan we changed the name slightly as the Japanese didn’t get Arizona.  Plus Arizon sounded all “spacey and foreign”.....ARIZON and that’s the beginning of the first Tubes album.  That’s the introduction just before we started playing, the guy saying “San Francisco, here we go”.  They didn’t know who we were, who Arizon were.  They just knew we were from San Francisco, so, “San Francisco, here we go” was actually Arizon’s introduction at the world’s fair in Osaka.

PC:  So it’s a guy and a girl talking to each other as the introduction to......

PP:  Talking about us (Arizon) as the introduction on TV as the whole event was shown on TV.

PC:  I know there is footage of you performing, but nobody has ever claimed to have seen it, never mind own it, but I know it’s there.

PP:  Footage?

PC:  Yeah, it must be out there somewhere.  The likelihood is that SOMEONE has it.

PP:  I’ve seen it, when I was there, but not since.  Also, Malaguena came from watching the Mariachi band from Mexico performing at expo.  We just thought it was the coolest thing and decided that we had to learn that when we got back.

PC:  I’ve always thought you say “Is that alright” at the end of White Punks on the first album.....

PP:  That’s my dad, that’s Charlie.

PC:  I know David left after the Japan trip, what happened?

PP:  Well, mutual agreement.  Lots of things happened on that trip and after the trip.  It was decided he would leave.  We didn’t know what we were gonna do next.  It was then that we hooked up with The Beans who had just moved up from Phoenix and were old friends.  They were having a hard time getting things moving in San Francisco, the theatrical thing had really caught on for us with “The Terrorists From Tantros”.  So we decided to hook up and make things happen.

PC:  What happened to David after the split?

PP:  He moved to Hawaii immediately, raised a family, had two children and lost contact totally until 1980?????

PC:  1983, because I remember you introducing him to me by the pool of the hotel in Redding CA after the gig there on the September leg of the Outside Inside tour.

PP:  That’s right, I remember that.  I also remember The Tubes played in Hawaii right after Alaska in 1984.  Right after that, he came back to San Francisco.  Contact was re-established and that’s all he was waiting for.  He came back to the city and said “I’ll help you build the studio” (Cavum Soni).  Then everything started to fall apart, Fee left, David was still there, so we said “We need a singer” so he did it.  He wanted to do it, but he really had a hard time doing it, a really hard time.  I watched that Jane Dornacker DVD you gave me, I am so glad I have that; I don’t have any of that.  But even then, David.....

PC:  Going back to Mikey.  When did he first get onstage and perform?

PP:  Ehm, let me think.  Re first performed at the “Mondo Bondage” show at “the Village”, which then became “Dance Your Ass Off” in the late 70’s before being renamed “Wolfgang’s” in the mid 80’s.  We did the “Streakers Ball” there, right after the Mondo show.  That’s where everyone got in free if they turned up naked.  Fee dropped his trousers and sang “Town Without Pity”, I have a picture of that, you should see it.  Full on, naked Fee singing his heart out, he would drop his trousers at the drop of a hat!!.....(much laughing).

PC:  Well he is rather proud of that thing of his.  When my mother saw The Tubes video see exclaimed “Oh good grief” and my dad just rolled his eyes!!.....(laughs).

PP:  It’s like a cartoon ain’t it?

PC:  Going back to Bob.  He died late ’73.  Do you know where he is buried?

PP:  I suppose Phoenix.  I should know that.  His sister Helen still lives in Phoenix and has seen us a few times over the years.  You should get in touch with her.

PC:  I’d love to, as Bob needs his own page on the Tubes Museum website.  Chopper told me recently, that Lenny and Pelican had both died.  Those guys NEED to be given a “fallen warriors” page.

PP:  Yes, they do.

PC:  Lenny and Pelican were just the greatest double act I’ve ever seen.  I met Lenny when I was 20 on my first US Tubes tour in ’81, but the double act in ’83 was just unbelievable, the pair of them taking the piss out of my accent, calling me “FOTOS”.  That laugh of Lenny’s and Pelican looking all confused calling “gee Lenny I don’t know”.  When I see Lenny from The Simpson’s cartoon saying “I’m Lenny” I immediately think of Pelican.  That same nasal whine.  Both of them gone?  Sad.

PP:  They were a great act.  They kept us amused on many occasions.

PC:  Who came up with “Rod Planet?”

PP:  That must have been me, because I came up with everything.....(laughs).  It was, who knows.  We all wanted to come up with something all of the time.  We were looking for something that was the epitome of that whole early 70’s English “glam rock” scene, Marc Bolan, Sweet, Slade, Elton John.  Rod Stewart I suppose would be the nearest comparison, Rod Stewart with a bit of Robert Plant.....geddit?  Rod Plant, Rod Planet.....mixed, but with all the Johnny Thunders, New York Dolls mixed in with the Quaaludes.  Tottering around on platform shoes wearing tight glitter pants and the big tousled hair.

PC:  White Punks hadn’t been written when Rod came along, so what did Rod perform on any given night?

PP:  I’m not sure if Punks was written at this point, probably in a very basic stage.  But Rod would perform, “Never Amount To Nothing, Dinosaur, Bitch”.  Bitch, that was his entrance song.  Spooner revived that a little later on as the intro to “Waiting For My Man” which was by then Quay Lewd’s entrance.

Michael and I had gone to New York to see the New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Centre and just said “this is it”.  We saw these guys all tottering around, huge hair, wasted, that was it, QUAY LEWD.

PC:  So, bearing in mind what you said about the Kezar show, Rod immediately morphed into Quay after seeing the Dolls.

PP:  I think so.  The first Quay shoes were made out of tomato cans.  Wrapped in gaffer tape and paper mache, sprayed black and covered in glitter.

PC:  Changing again, what was Re’s background and how did she get involved with The Tubes?

PP:  She was a waitress at the Palms Café when I first met her.  She’d just got back from doing a movie called “Holy Mountain” with Alexander Jodorowski.  She was starring in it with the guy who did all of Todd’s costumes at that time, funnily enough.

I met her first, nobody had seen her perform anything and her first show was the Mondo show at the village.

PC:  Was she the only dancer at this point?

PP:  Oh yeah.

PC:  Where did Cindi, Jane, Helene and Mary come from and become involved with The Tubes?

PP:  They were all in a group called “Leila And The Snakes” and performed at the Palms Café.  Michael and I had painted some murals there and seen the troupe perform.  Jane was Leila and the girls were the Snakes.

PC:  Getting back to Re.  How, where and when?  You spotted her?

PP:  I spotted her, because this friend of mine, Baba, who she was living with at the time said “you got to meet this friend of mine”.  I went over to his house, met Re, she was so anti men right then.  She had just come back from Mexico after making the crazy Jodorowski movie, had had a bad time, but eventually we fell in love.  I told her about the band I was in and that she should check us out.  She came over to the house on Noriega Street and the rest as they say.....

PC:  Was she Shirley Marie at this time?

PP:  No, she was Re, from Marie and the Styles came from Alan Styles, an English guy she had married to keep him in the country.  She got the green card wedding.  She was waitressing at the “Triton Restaurant” in Sausilito then and she lived on a house boat before moving in with Baba.  She already had quite a reputation as the crazy, wild woman of Sausilito.

PC:  Was Kenny involved with the band at this stage?

PP:  No, Kenny came along a little bit later, maybe a year later.  I don’t remember exactly, but I know he met Michael at a disco and started talking about performance and music.  Michael invited Kenny to come and see us and get involved.  It was real quick from Michael meeting him to his being involved, sometime early ‘74 I think.  It was definitely after the Kezar show.  He was definitely with us for our first tour in ’75.

PC:  Leroi Jones?

PP:  Leroi Jones, we met him way early.  He grew up in Tucson, the “Sadistic” came from the Japanese band “Sadistic Mika Band”.  He loved that band and turned us on to that whole “Thin White Duke” and “Japanese techno pop” thing.  So, we just called him “Sadistic”.  He so wanted to be the lead singer, but didn’t quite make it, so settled for second best which was to be a “Lewdette”.  He and Kenny just “kicked ass”.  They stormed over Fee on a few occasions, just totally crazy, sexy lewdettes.

When Starship played in Paris a couple of years ago he came and picked us up from the airport.  We had dinner with him and his family and spent some time doing the tourist thing together.  What a guy, Sadistic Leroi.

PC:  Thanks Prairie, that’s the first part.  I’ll email another 100 questions for you and you can send a cassette of replies.

PP:  Well that was painless and far easier than me writing it all down.  Keep ‘em coming and I will try to get the others involved.

 Copyright - Par Can Warehouse /Tubes Museum 2004