Interview: Boz Scaggs
The first stop on Boz Scaggs‘ October–through–November key-market concert sweep of the US and Canada is a chill, dilapidated university ice hockey arena on the outskirts of mile-high Denver. The five-piece Scaggs road band has a sound-check session scheduled there for late afternoon, and arriving at the hall just before dusk with the other members of the group in a Hertz station wagon that’s freighted to the headliner with bulky black instrument cases, Scaggs points with a pleased grin to a hand-lettered sign posted outside the stage entrance announcing “Tickets Sold Out.”
“Hey, nice, huh?” he murmurs to Larry Garrett, the band’s road manager. “First gig out, we’re home free, looks like.”
“Looks purty good,” Garrett agrees, maneuvering the car into a parking stall and getting out to unlock the tailgate. Like Scaggs, Garrett is lanky and boyish-looking and has a Southern-fried Dallas accent that’s smoother than the $1.10 spread.
One by one, the musicians get out of the car, gather up their instruments, and straggle into the dank, echoing arena, where a sound crew is laying out snake-like skeins of electrical conduits across the stained planking that’s been laid down across the ice rink. Standing on the apron of the three-foot-high stage, Scaggs surveys the far reaches of the hall for a minute, then kneels down to uncase his gleaming Les Paul-model Gibson.
“How many people’s this place hold?” he calls out to Garrett. “Um, lessee–6,300, I b’lieve it was,” Garrett estimates. “Right on,” Joachim Young drawls.
The group’s keyboard man, Young takes a seat at the clavinet and presses down a lingering cobra-charmer chord that sounds eerily like a woman’s voice. From the rear of the stage, Jack Shroer, the horn player, responds by honking the scales in accelerating tempo on electric tenor. Ear bent to an amp, his below-the-shoulder blond hair obscuring his face, David Brown thumbs a thunk-thunk-thunk riff on bass that calls forth a breakneck brace of para-diddles from the drummer, Rick Shlosser. Swaying back and forth in time with the free-form cacophony, Young, who wears his hair “corn-rolled” (aka French-plaited), grins and winks at a magazine writer who’s traveling with the group: “This is the kind of gig, man, acoustically speaking, that prepares you for the really good gigs. You know, like Carnegie Hall, man.”
“One-two, one-two,” a soundman drones from the console adjacent to the bandstand. “Uh, listen, I’m sorry, fellows, but this may take a few minutes–Boz’ mike is the only one I’ve got rigged through a monitor so far.” Larry Garrett smiles and shrugs philosophically: “First time these particular sound cats have worked a gig with us, so we’ve got to show ’em where everything plugs in.” Adjusting the shoulder strap of his guitar, Boz cocks his head at a monitor check on the piano.
“Sounds a little thin to me,” he mutters, frowning and tugging at the mini-goatee under his lower lip. “Right, yeah, right,” the soundman agrees nervously, twiddling his dials.
While the connection’s being adjusted, Joachim Young offers around a box of gold-banded European cigarettes and describes a movie he’s just seen called The Doberman Gang. “You mean some cat trains these Doberman dogs to hold up banks?” Scaggs asks, intrigued. “Yeah, man,” Young nods emphatically. “Those dogs trained to kill, man. That’s their whole trip.”
At a signal from the soundman, the band launches into “We Were Always Sweethearts,” with Scaggs shuffling blithely around the mike like a derby roller as he sings. Next up comes a frenetic instrumental jump number, hot and crisp and punctuated with lots of wah-wah-Donald-Duck-quacking exchanges between Scaggs and Jack Shroer’s tenor horn and Joachim Young’s Arp synthesizer.
Young, along with the bassist, David Brown, has played with Scaggs off and on for almost three years, but Shroer and the drummer, Rick Shlosser, both veterans of the Van Morrison band, have only recently joined the group. Looking flushed and pleased with the pounding ensemble sound, Scaggs calls a temporary halt to the music and motions to the soundman: “Uh, listen, let’s try the clavinet over the monitors again, okay? It’s just comin’ through this little bitty amp back here right now.”
By this time, the music has drawn a throng of students and passers-by into a hand-clapping semicircle in front of the stage. Standing among them, a good head taller than most, is a handsome, nattily dressed black man from San Francisco named Lester.
The Steve Miller Band is the headline act on the evening’s bill, and Lester is Miller’s road manager and all-around main man, which gives him more than a passing acquaintance with the Scaggs group. When the band kicks off again with “I’m Easy,” Lester flashes a sunburst smile at the young girl in lemon-tinted granny glasses beside him in the crush who’s squealing her delight at the top of her lungs. “You think those dudes sound good up there, girl?” he asks her teasingly. “Sheeit, lemme tell you all about it, sister–they sound ready.”
***
David Blue, an L.A.-based folkie-minstrel, is scheduled to open the program at eight o’clock sharp, but since the concert’s promoters aren’t certain just before curtain time whether Blue has arrived in town or not, Scaggs and his group are summoned back to the arena early after a hurried snack at their hotel watching Sonny and Cher on color TV.
Backstage a few minutes before eight, Scaggs, wearing black bellbottoms and a blue velour jacket-waist, unsheaths his Gibson and looks eager to get it on. “Cat like whatzisname.” he muses to Larry Garrett, “Blue–he might show up ten seconds before the gig, get his bread, and play his ass off. Then again, he might not. You never can tell.” Garrett nods and glances at his watch: “Well, we’ll soon find out, I guess. Time is gonna be a hassle tonight anyway you slice it. Those stage cats forgot to set the overhead lights for you, so we’ll have to give ’em five minutes between sets. And the show’s gotta be over no later than 11:30–University of Denver rules.”
Kenny Greenberg, an advance promo man for Stoneground, has been listening to the conversation, and he laughs shortly: “Well, you can’t exactly confuse this kind of deal with a Bill Graham production, can you?”
Out front, the bleachers are filled to the far walls, and the floor is solidly packed with seated spectators. Under the Home-Visitors Scoreboard, in what would be the goal area if this were an ice hockey match, a couple of freaks wing a frisbee back and forth. On the bandstand, a stagehand steps up to the mike and stammers: “Can a maintenance man come up here right away? Somebody just vomited, and it’s getting our cables wet.”
David Blue shows to tepid applause at 8:15. In the Scaggs group’s dressing room, there’s a garbage can filled with iced beer and pop, and just outside the door, a table is loaded with sandwich makings. A frizzy-haired groupie helps herself to a lukewarm can of beer. “Ooo, it foamed at me,” she trills for the benefit of a roadie she’s mistaken for one of the musicians. “Well, foam right back at it, honey,” the roadie growls, lighting up a corncob pipe which he offers around to the members of the band. Politely, they all decline it.
Sipping from a soft-drink can, Rick Shlosser beats out a tricky one-handed tattoo on a drum practice pad while Jack Shroer tootles comical little runs on his alto.
After his set is finished, David Blue wanders into the dressing room, humming nasally and whanging away at his guitar, but Scaggs is in the process of tuning up, and no one pays him any particular notice. Scratching his feathery beard and sniffling as if he has a chronic cold, Blue flops into a chair next to his gaudily painted solid-state guitar case, which resembles a psychedelic baby coffin.
Upstairs in his own dressing room, Steve Miller is thumbing idle chords on his 12-string Martin and grinning ruefully: “Yesterday was my 29th birthday, man, and you know what happened? I woke up this mornin’ in the fuckin’ Dallas County jail, that’s what happened. What went down, see, was I went over to this doctor friend’s house for a visit, and I ended up drinkin’ two whole bottles of wine. A birthday celebration, right? Any cat’s entitled to that. Then I got into some scotch at a place called Mother Blues. Then the cops picked me up in Highland Park and charged me with bein’ drunk in a public place and prowlin’. Prowlin‘, man. So I woke up at 4 a.m. today in the drunk tank in a jazzy Italian rock & roll suit with all these droolin’, swishy creeps lookin’ me over and sayin’ things like, ‘Bruth will fixth your wagon, thweetie.’ Jesus, thank god for lawyers.”
Interview: Boz Scaggs, Page 1 of 4