Roy Loney

Teenage Monster —
California Born and Bred

Interview by John Battles

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     “I always played a lot of Rockabilly. I was a big fan of Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, and Elvis was huge for me, so, I loved that stuff. That was always part of what I played. If I’d sit around with the guitar, that’s the kind of stuff I would play. Cyril’s music library pretty much started with The Beatles, Danny’s started with Muddy Waters, and mine started pretty much with Elvis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, that’s the stuff I grew up with, that’s my roots. Timmy and I shared a lot of the same roots, having known each other for so long. We went through The Kingston Trio thing for a while. You know, everybody’s accused me all throughout my career of being a Rockabilly guy, basically. (laughs) It’s my main influence, I guess it’s sort of there, Rockabilly and basic Rock’n’Roll... Back then, I was sort of an outsider with my Rockabilly thing. Except for Elvis, nobody listened to that kind of stuff. I was the guy who had the little Carl Perkins 45s and Eddie Cochran 45s, and everyone went, ‘Wow! What’s that?’ It’s amazing to me now how easy it is for the kids to just pick up the entire recorded history of Eddie Cochran on two CDs or something. Back then, you’d collect them a single at a time, and they were hard to find! It was great, I just collected everything I could get my hands on. I was picking up a lot of great things on labels like Sun and Ace. A friend of mine would go down there to the warehouses (in Memphis), pick ‘em up, and I’d buy ‘em here in the city by the dozen or so, or a box , whatever. You could sell ‘em off here for pretty high prices.

     “That first album, Supersnazz, is pretty amazing to me, cos we were like kids in a candy shop! It’s like, ‘Okay, guys, we’re taking you down to Studio One, CBS in Hollywood. We’re gonna put you up in this mansion...’ Elvis lived there when he was making his movies. It was big, it had a pool, it had lots of rooms. So here we are, in Hollywood, going, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make the greatest album EVER!’ You know, we’re gonna be THE BEATLES, we’re gonna cover all of our influences and just blow everybody’s minds! We had a first-time producer, Steve Goldman, who was also out to prove himself, so we just recorded and recorded. We wanted to make it perfect, and also cover a lot of bases, and just show how versatile we were. We were scrambling to show everything we knew. It was a little over-ambitious. We had all the time in the world and a huge budget, so we just got into it. Steve did, too, it was his first shot producing, and he was out to make a masterpiece, but I think it needed just a few more rough edges. I still like parts of it, but, on the whole, it sounds a little sterile. It wasn’t much of what we sounded like live. Still, I think a lot of people like that album, but for different reasons than Flamingo or Teenage Head.” Note: Supersnazz is now the name of a cult Japanese all girl rock band.

     In ’69, The Groovies toured around America, playing in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other cities.

“We were on tour, and we did this show with The Stooges, this place called Ludlow’s Garage (in Cincinnati). The bill was Golden Earring, Flamin’ Groovies and The Stooges. The Stooges were just amazing. Our minds were absolutely blown. We just couldn’t believe it, ‘My God! This is so amazing!’ That changed everything. I actually think Detroit had a big effect on us Groovies in general. On the first tour, out in support of Supersnazz, we played at a place called The Palladium with Dave Edmunds and Love Sculpture, then we played The Grande with The MC5, and we played The East Town with.... it might’ve been The Stooges, but, the first time we saw The MC5, none of us could believe what we were seeing at all. It was just the most amazing show, and it totally changed things for us. We just went, ‘God, this is so heavy! It’s so fuckin’ heavy!’ They were doing a lot of schtick, lotta showbiz goin’ on, there, which is what we were already into, so we felt kindred, we really did, right away. The Five and The Stooges were coming from a lot of the same places we were. I think they were very similar in a lot of ways.” There’s an MC5 bootleg, recorded right after (lead singer) Robin Tyner left, which is basically a Flamin’ Groovies set (“Empty Heart,” “Let it Rock,” “Bo Diddley,” “Gloria,” “Louie, Louie”).

     “We were never dropped by Epic. The thing was, Epic wasn’t sure what they wanted to do with us, and we met Richard Robinson in New York while we were touring, and he interviewed us for Hit Parader. He was the editor at the time, and he was also just starting to work for Buddha as a producer and kind of A & R guy.” The Flamin’ Groovies – Flamingo, produced by Robinson, was released by Kama Sutra in 1970. It has four Loney originals, five Loney/Jordan originals and a cover of Little Richard’s “Keep A Knockin’,” Commander Cody played piano on three tracks. “Flamingo is a lot harder edged than Supersnazz, and I think it’s Detroit - influenced in a big way. Detroit AND New York. We got harder, it wasn’t as jolly and good-timey, it had a little more edge to it, a little more bite. We took it a little more seriously, I think. We were trying to sound like a live band as much as possible. I don’t think it sounds polished at all. I think it sounds pretty raw. I was just talking to George the other night, and he said, ‘I don’t know how I ever played ‘Roadhouse’ that fast, I could never play it that fast! What were we doing?! It’s so out of control!’ It’s true, the version of ‘Roadhouse’ we went with on the album is the one that was most out of control, not the tightest by any means, but we liked the fact that it’s just sort of veering out of control...At any minute, you thought it was gonna blow up!