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Everybody was trying stuff out – trying sounds out, trying identities out. And here were these four guys from 10 miles away who might as well have been 10 solar systems away. Playing this fully realized music, largely self-composed, with all this great flavor and stuff like that.
-Steve Berlin on first hearing Los Lobos |
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Wow. You're kidding me?
Clue... less about what he was doing. He knew what he wanted to do, but it was not in any way like, "Here's my idea. Here's this great vision I have for this record, come with me."
Los Lobos |
About two hours into it, the guys are like, "You gotta call Lenny right now. You gotta get us out of this. We can't do this. This is a joke. This is a waste of time." And this was like two hours into the session that they wanted me to call Lenny. What am I going to tell Lenny? It was a favor to him. What am I going to say, "Paul's a fucking idiot?"
Somehow or other, we got through the day with nothing. I mean, literally, nothing. We would do stuff like try an idea out and run it around for 45 minutes, and Paul would go "Eh... I don't like it. Let's do something else." And it was so frustrating. Even when we'd catch a glimpse of something that might turn into something, he would just lose interest. A kitten-and-the-string kinda thing.
So that's day one. We leave there and it's like, "Ok, we're done. We're never coming back." I called Lenny and said it really wasn't very good. We really didn't get anything you could call a song or even close to a song. I don't think Paul likes us very much. And frankly, I don't think we like him very much. Can we just say, 'Thanks for the memories' and split?" And he was like, "Man, you gotta hang in there. Paul really does respect you. It's just the way he is. I'll talk to him." And we were like, "Oh man, please Lenny. It's not working." Meanwhile, we're not getting paid for this. There was no discussion like we're gonna cash in or anything like that. It was very labor-of-love.
Really...?
Yeah. Don't ask me why. God knows it would have made it a lot easier to be there.
And Lenny put you guys together thinking it would be a good match?
Los Lobos |
Well, "It would be good for the family." That was it. So we go back in the second day wondering why we're there. It was ridiculous. I think David starts playing "The Myth of the Fingerprints," or whatever he ended up calling it. That was one of our songs. That year, that was a song we started working on By Light of the Moon. So that was like an existing Lobos sketch of an idea that we had already started doing. I don't think there were any recordings of it, but we had messed around with it. We knew we were gonna do it. It was gonna turn into a song. Paul goes, "Hey, what's that?" We start playing what we have of it, and it is exactly what you hear on the record. So we're like, "Oh, ok. We'll share this song."
Good way to get out of the studio, though...
Yeah. But it was very clear to us, at the moment, we're thinking he's doing one of our songs. It would be like if he did "Will the Wolf Survive?" Literally. A few months later, the record comes out and says "Words and Music by Paul Simon." We were like, "What the fuck is this?"
We tried calling him, and we can't find him. Weeks go by and our managers can't find him. We finally track him down and ask him about our song, and he goes, "Sue me. See what happens."
What?! Come on...
That's what he said. He said, "You don't like it? Sue me. You'll see what happens." We were floored. We had no idea. The record comes out, and he's a big hit. Retroactively, he had to give songwriting credit to all the African guys he stole from that were working on it and everyone seemed to forget. But that's the kind of person he is. He's the world's biggest prick, basically.
Los Lobos |
So we go back to Lenny and say, "Hey listen, you stuck us in the studio with this fucking idiot for two days. We tried to get out of it, you made us stay in there, and then he steals our song?! What the hell?!" And Lenny's always a politician. He made us forget about it long enough that it went away. But to this day, I do not believe we have gotten paid for it. We certainly didn't get songwriting credit for it. And it remains an enormous bone that sticks in our craw. Had he even given us a millionth of what the song and the record became, I think we would have been – if nothing else - much richer, but much happier about the whole thing.
Have you guys seen him since then?
No. Never run into him. I'll tell you, if the guys ever did run into him, I wouldn't want to be him, that's for sure.
That's an amazing story. I can't believe I never heard it before.
We had every right and reason to sue him, and Lenny goes, "It's bad for the family." When we told the story in that era, when this was going down, we were doing interviews and telling the truth. And Lenny goes, "Hey guys, I really need you to stop talking about it. It's bad for the family."
Amazing. Talk about bad for the family.
I know. Again, it's just so incredible how naïve we were back then. You can't even imagine that era of music when you'd actually listen to your record company president who told you to shut up because "it's bad for the family." Now, I'd tell him to go fuck himself.
That's our version of it. I'd love to hear Paul's version of it.
But he's much richer now and could probably give a fuck about it. It's still one of those things where I've not forgiven anyone involved in it. It still remains. I haven't let it go, as you can tell. It was just so wrong and so rude, and so unnecessary. It is an amazing moment in our history.
Well, maybe we can turn to some brighter times – working with the litany of stars like Sheryl Crow, but also making really interesting records, like Faith No More. If I can pump your ego for a second, you really draw something completely different out of each artist and band that you work with.
Los Lobos |
You're very kind. I just feel that my job is to be as opaque as possible and elevate, in any way possible, what it is I'm working on. I certainly try hard not to stamp the work I do with me. I mean, certainly it's my sensibility and a lot of my choices. But I'm like a painter. Or, my game is just other people's imaginations. I'm just painting with their colors to create something.
When it works. I mean, it's something exponentially larger than what I, or the artist, anticipated. I've been lucky enough to have been in that situation a couple times. We start out with a cool idea, and it kind of blew up into a ridiculously cool idea.
Like what...
Like Faith No More. [Berlin produced the group's major-label debut, 1987's Introduce Yourself for Slash records, Los Lobos's label at the time.] I saw them and heard their demos and thought "Oh my GOD! This is the coolest shit imaginable." And I learned a lot from them. As you can tell, they really had their sound down. My role in that production was a lot of just letting them express it. And also, Matt Wallace, who came with them, was obviously so good at what he did, I just let that all happen.
You know, when I had finally been through The Town and the City, I started that futile process of trying to find its cousin in your canon. And I guess from a fan's perspective, if it had any equal, it could be closest to Kiko.
Los Lobos |
Well, it was by design, but not because we wanted to make it again. We really loved the way Tchad mixes sound and wanted him to be involved. We've done two records without him. Nothing against those two records, I think we're very proud of Good Morning Aztlán and The Ride. Tchad has a unique thing.
He was not involved in the recording process. And to get back to much earlier in this conversation, had he been there from the beginning and engineered, I think it would have been a much different record. And it certainly would have been a much more fun record. That's no dig at Robert Carrazza, who I think is an incredible engineer. I've done lots and lots and lots of records with him. But Tchad's personality and his view and just the way that he approaches it. It wasn't anything that Robert did or didn't do that made it hard to make. Robert and I will be the first to tell you, he killed himself to get this record sounding great. But how Tchad approaches his art, and just his personality, just this wonderful sense of "Let's go exploring today." And that's just really it. He has this great thing of going on an adventure to see where it goes.
Well, he's good for you guys. You've made a really patient-sounding record. If I can end with the whole La Bamba thing, I've heard stories about you guys playing it whenever someone requests it – even sometimes more than once in the course of a show.
Put it this way – it's not very often in the set anymore. It's never in the set, honestly. But if there are kids there or someone who really wants to see it, and that's what they're there for, then we'll play it. So we play it a lot. But as you can imagine, it's not our favorite song to play.
And because of that, I think it's a very cool thing that you will do it. I mean, music history is littered with guys who won't touch the song that made them famous in the first place.
What can I say? It's not our favorite song, but we don't mind playing it and it sure makes people happy. I mean, what is our job, really? It's to make people happy, so it's not that big a deal for us.
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