INTERVIEW:GENERATION X AND EMPIRE 'S DERWOOD ANDREWS

Bob Derwood Andrews is the legendary guitar player on the explosive Generation X debut from 1978 and its polarizing follow-up, Valley of the Dolls. Required listening is Andrew’s amazing band Empire and the “Expensive Sound” LP, which influenced many bands to come in the following decades. His latest solo outings in the Tone Poet Volumes are worthy listens of a master guitar player in his prime. Enjoy…

I wanted to let you know that since I bought my first Generation X album in 1986 during grade school, your guitar style and solos to this day get my adrenaline rushing. In my opinion, it was Hendrix and Townshend for a new generation of disenfranchised youth. When did you start playing and what were the early influences that helped shaped your style?

Well thanks, my elder Cousin first showed me some chords when I was about nine. His elder Brother was in the Canterbury scene as a bass player with bands like Caravan ect. As a kid it was cool to hang out with players and then when I saw Chuck Berry on TV it blew me away, also a band called The Nice was on TV and seeing them smash their shit up stuck with me…
At that young age I began to discover that raucous playing along with racing motorcycles was a simi-lar rush. At the age of sixteen I was faced with a choice of professional Speedway or jamming in my room with my mates. I chose music, but will never forget the feeling of seeing my motorcycle, leath-ers, helmet and trailer leaving my house forever and walking back into the house to look at my young decision, a Japanese Tele and Orange combo. My personal guitar influences are (in no or-der), Jimi Hendrix, Bo Diddley, Ritchie Black-more, Rory Gallagher, Robin Trower, Wilko Johnson, Mick Ronson, Buddy Guy, and many more but top of the list is Paul Kossoff, why? Passion and minimal...

The guitar solo at the end of “Youth, Youth, Youth” was listed as one of the greatest all time rock solos, I used to lift the needle off of the vinyl to repeat the ending part and air guitar to it over and over again. What was that track like to record in the studio, was it done in one take?

We used to jump on my mates bed with tennis rackets to the Who's 'Young Man Blues' and trash his pillows in suburban Streatham too. 'Youth Youth Youth' is certainly not a great technical solo but, it WAS done in one take with a couple of pints of beer and a magic attitude of youthful angst.

“Running with the Boss Sound” was a track you penned for the Valley of the Dolls LP, I’ve heard so many punk bands try to emulate the opening guitar intro, the album itself was a perfect mixture of glam and raw punk. How had your style changed in the band by the time you were doing album number two?

I no more 'penned' that track than any other, but for some reason I got a writing credit. The style changed in as much as we had a famous 'rock-star' producer in Ian Hunter, a bigger budget, more time and a wider gap between the two older guys and me and Laff. It was actually heartbreaking for Mark Laff to be told by Ian, Billy and Tony that he was not going to play on this album and for him to choose a replacement drummer. He chose Clive Bunker from Jethro Tull and whilst teaching him the parts with two kits set up it was decided it sounded great with two drummers. If I took to long tuning up for an overdub I could see Tony James through the studio glass calling Chris Spedding! It wasn't the same camaraderie as the first album.

What were the best and worst memories of Generation X’s quick rise to the top during those days? How did your leaving of the band morph into the beginnings of the now legendary Empire?

The best memories were delivering the musical goods against violence and pure hatred from our peers and competition. And the worst memories were to watch what happened to people I considered good friends. I believed something way different from the actual situation, and was pretty much stunted and ignored. My job was to play great guitar, but the gap became so great between Billy, who after three years I couldn't stand the desperate sadness of, and Tony who was losing his position of visionary. When I was told it's NOT your band it's ours and don't play such good guitar and we don't want to hear your songs, I had to leave for my own sanity…

I love EMPIRE”S “Expensive Sound”, the track “Hot Seat” has the coolest guitar riff, were the compositions for EMPIRE intended for Gen X or originally written as a solo outing?

I actually think Expensive Sound was Generation X's fourth album after we fired Billy and Tony.

With your take on lead vocals for the LP, was it a new experience and do you prefer taking vocals or guitar on a project?

I get very little pleasure singing, but it's a case of would you rather teach someone else to sing your songs and be disappointed, or be disappointed with yourself…I'd take the latter.

I always thought Mark Laff was the new Keith Moon, do the two of you collaborate anymore?

I love Mark Laff dearly, we will always be in the same boat…with a leak!

Do you play out in California ever and are you working on any new projects?

I just re-released my first solo CD called 'Tone Poet V1'. It was made some 7 years ago from loose ends. But I am working on Volume 2 at the moment, it's all done on Lapsteel guitar on my own with me singing. I play at bars and churches and it's the loudest thing I've ever played...

Any plans in the future to reunite with any of the bands you’ve been in?

Not really, what's done is done and then move on somewhere else musically.

Looking back over your career, how do you think it changed you as an individual in your view of the world.

I think growing into being a unique individual, as we all are, is way more important than a career, and being proud of your past work is a bonus.

What made you decide on calling California home?

The love of a good woman and the weather…

Any last comments or thoughts?

I love Long Beach, I've been shot at through the restaurant window eating sushi, I spread a good friend’s ashes on the beach, seen a good few bands at Alex's and of course Gawd bless The Queen Mary. Thanks for the interest.

Kevin P McGovern, 2013
Fear and Loathing in Long Beach
F&L LB Facebook

random thoughts...

Music is a seductive creature, capable of arousing, angering, and inducing various states of consciousness. It always attacks me the same way a vivid memory does. The perfect song seems to place itself in the perfect memory, that one night you were looking for where the action was at, and you finally found it. You spend the rest of your life trying to reconstruct this thing but you’re never quite there, because the people, spaces, and dramatics cannot be duplicated. At best, you find something similar, maybe somewhere else, far away in an unknown time zone. Then just for a moment, you get to touch it and it runs away from you at a speed so fast you realize you’re just talking to yourself. Life twists its residents into a constant flux of fucking the past, attempting to fuck the present, and inducing fear of what will be fucking us over in the future.

So let us give thanks for being fucked-up strangers in a fucked-up new world crashing into each other. Blasphemy breeds independence and noncompliance gives premature birth to pretty creatures. The gift of rummaging through the dumpster makes us consume the failure of superficiality while collecting the remnants of unused genius. Treat yourself to a brisk walk afterwards, take a left at the next corner, and stroll down memory lane. Maybe you’ll see a new face there, one you’ve never seen before. You might find an unknown someone to help you chase “that thing” and realize it never left you.


Kevin P McGovern, November 2013

Fear and Loathing in Long Beach

REVIEW: CULTURES "TOURETTES" EP

Never hit on a dreadlocked blonde girl in a Sushi bar with a Nazi skinhead boyfriend, especially after consuming an impractical amount of LSD. An acid soaked rock n roll show I almost played. Seconds before I had the chance to ramble my mouth at the mic, the boyfriend came in brandishing a guitar that was death marked with “this is for that guy, the one up there at the front of the stage”. Was I about to stick around to get my head smashed while in the middle of an acid fantasia girl-bomb crush? No fucking way…. Time to get in the van and split ASAP! Check one, check two, and another fleeting chance to engage in destructive lust, damn. Well, on that sad note I welcome the super fucking cool CULTURES of Phoenix, Arizona and their incredible video for the soon to be underground smash hit, “1987”.


This omniscient production takes my loathsome brainwaves back to the days of those endless night punk house parties, where the music booms and the inhibitions let loose. Primal rock rhythms lead the way to unexpected conversations and outbursts of pure adrenaline. The band’s current EP release entitled “Tourettes” contains a noxious mix of Pistolian surf rhythms with Jesus and Mary Chain swagger, while shedding its own skin. The tracks are solid and this stands out from other bands doing lame renditions of these cool influences. The lead track “Tourettes” is distinctive with its subtle homage to New Order’s “Age of Consent”, the pounding tom-tom beats and spidery guitar lines drive this one all the way into the beautiful abyss. Check it out now, dig…

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-Kevin McGovern, 2013

NOVEMBER ISSUE ONLINE...read now if you'd like right here

The Newest Issue of F&L LB is online now. CLICK HERE to begin reading. Interviews with The Adicts, SFTRI, Henry Rollins, Honey Bane, Nina Antonia, ANTI, Helios Creed, Piñata Protest, Bob Derwood Andrews, Generation X, Exopolitics, The Urinals, Ava Adore, Teddie Dahlin, and more...

REVIEW: MAN HANDS, a Hot Mess of Prime Sonic Swill

What the Fuck is Going On? …The Phoenix band begs the question in the opening track “Misadventures”. This 7-track gathering of hot and scattered thoughts permeating through the Arizona heat blends “A Different Kind of Tension” and “Confusion Is Sex” into a hastily duct taped ransom package that contains an unstable libido. Led by digital airwave troublemakers Jackie Cruz and Marcus Berry, this album rawks incessantly in experimental noise variables with an emphasis on song and hook through the blurry emotions laid out for your ears. The combination of major and minor scales in the chording blares through with megaphone urgency. The vocals start coursing through your veins to remedy that itch you just can’t cure.

“Fatal Flaws” shakes up your lifeless soul with its spastic swing of dissonance and addictive chorus. I have seriously listened to this track like 50 times. This one is my new favorite as a prerequisite personal anthem to include in all of my questionable activities. Seriously fucking good folks. Choice cuts from this lethal and conniving affair of the poison heart include: “Misadventures”, “Fatal Flaws”, “Teenagers”, and the introspective jagged jangle of “Nothing Left For Me”.

I remember the last time I was in the Phoenix area. I was living with a girl at the time, she was obsessed with my past girlfriend named “Jen”. Drenched in delusional jealousy, everywhere she went, she saw the letter “J”, and kept picturing Jen with me. I went insane having to downplay my relationship with Ms. J to the girl I was dating and living with. It hit a boiling point and May Cause Dizziness Records from Phoenix offered to fly me out. I forgot to mention I was intoxicated for 48 hours straight before arriving at LAX. I’m not sure how I got to LAX or even how they let me board the plane, which I think I missed twice getting sidetracked in the airport bar. I made it to somewhere in Phoenix, I don’t recall how I handled myself after I emergency landed from the 45 minute flight. Wes of Erratic! Radio was my tour guide after Nate of MCD Recs turned in for the night. I was shipwrecked at Wes’s place for a few days, fucked up and thoroughly enjoying the contentment of numbness and pure irresponsibility. I jammed on a Prostitutes track or two with Wes, my girl ended up flying me back to LB. I think Nate and Wes were the only two guys to ever give me a “record release” party for “Kill Them Before They Eat” in 2008. That girl that flew me back, her name begins with a “J” too. That’s the best metaphor I can give for this must-have release. As always, I never review things that I do not like.

–Kevin McGovern


Fear & Loathing in Long Beach Magazine

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THE ANXIETIES: Richard Hell does a line with Stiv...

WARNING: THIS RECORD WILL KICK YOUR ASS

Rule Number 1: Most live recording full-lengths suck… Why? Most of the time all you can hear is a paper-thin drum sound, way too loud trebly bass and the guitar is almost nowhere to be found. On the worst live albums, the vocals are cranked up beyond what is necessary and it sounds like some dude singing over a sound check of a drum kit. I used to get so pissed, when I would buy one of my favorite band's live CDs in the used section and then be subjected to 45 minutes worth of sub-par renditions and crappy re-writings of classic songs with unnecessary “recently added” dumb ass "spoken word" parts. The garbage in the middle of the song where the singer is going on and on about something really stupid.

When I listened to the Anxieties Live at Centaur Guitar, I was fucking stunned by the energy, snot driven fury, and sharp musical attack of Scott Von Rocket and his droogs from Portland, Oregon. Portland has been cranking out some serious punk rock and new wave damage for years with record collector staples such as Sado-Nation, The Neo Boys ( a must), and The Wipers. The Anxieties subliminally carry on this tradition of garage rock that punches hard with punk rock viciousness. In fact if you took the chord stylings of the Neo Boys and combined them with Richard Hell’s best 5 songs, did a line of the pure white stuff for good measure, you’d come out sounding like this. Von Rocket has a distinct vocal style that bashes your skull in while soaking the fragments in neurotic rhythmic melody. I’ve been diggin’ on these guys since their “Black Hole” 7” a few years back, when I really sunk my teeth into what this band was about. Desolate themes of Sci-Fi experimentation, psycho girls, and wild noise rule the land in an “anything goes” nightclub, where no one paid to get in tonight.

The guitar is fuzzed, crisp, and cranked like a motherfucker on this live album, and it’s all here without charge, but donate to this worthwhile band! Fuck man, if we do not support our punk community, we’ll be left with nothing, seriously, these bands put their hearts and energy into this process and it’s never for money. It’s for the human need to rock like fuck, exorcise displeasure, and allow self-expression while keeping the sounds of sonic freedom alive. Download it, blast it, and send them some scratch for a 12 pack… “Panic Room”, “ Lab Rats”, and the nail biting spastic rock blast of “Blank Stares” are the future soundtrack to your next downward spiral. You know, the one with that fishnet and garter girl you met at the show, who promised you that there would be No Tomorrow and No Future. When you wake up in your own vomit with a new girlfriend and a smirk on your face, don’t blame me. I’d go get a refill and play this album again and again.

-Kevin McGovern


HEY PUNKER, ROCK OUT NOW WITH OUR OCTOBER ISSUE ONLINE…

HORROR SHORT + Q&A: "MANNEQUIN" AWAITS, WATCH NOW

I am really getting into the new craze of horror shorts on YouTube, given my short attention span and the lack of “new” horror with actual terrifying appeal. The big studios miss the mark every time and we get watered down PG-13 style garbage instead. Just type in “horror shorts” in your search browser and you’ll be exposed to a whole new world of indie filmmakers and actors/actresses that I feel have more to offer than the prevalent nepotism in commercial Hollywood film. -k.m

What was the inspiration for “Mannequin” in its creepy, surreal, twilight zone, meets sheer terror approach?

( Deric Nunez) You pretty much hit the nail on the head! The surreal nature of the Twilight Zone was a constant source of inspiration when producing Mannequin. There was also a show I would watch as a kid called “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” which too had that blend of surreal meets terror. Throughout production, I kept saying that I wanted Mannequin to feel like an adult version of that show.
I should also credit my overactive imagination. The idea for Mannequin actually came from when I was taking the trash out to that exact dumpster featured in the movie, and wondered to myself what I would do if when I turned the corner to toss the trash, something out of place was standing there.

How long did the writing and filming process take?

Mannequin took about a month to write, a 15 hour day to film, and approximately two weeks to edit before it was released on the Cowmaster Studios YouTube Channel on May 3rd, 2013.
The writing process was definitely the most stressing due to the sheer number of rewrites and edits.

Amelia Gotham provides a very convincing and compelling performance, did you discover her or is there a set group of creative individuals you prefer to work with?

A bit of both… I have a crew comprised of friends that I have worked with and known for years. Once Mannequin was written up, I had my crew in place, but just needed that perfect actress to bring it to life.
I discovered Amelia through an online casting service called LA Casting, which has been tremendously helpful when trying to lock down great talent. Amelia submitted a video audition for the role and just hit it out of the park, she was perfect. The crew and I were so pleased and grateful to have been able to work with such an amazing talent.

I love the horror-short format, do you plan on full-length features in the future, or to continue the eerie succinctness of the short film, which mimics the fast happening terrors of everyday life?

I would love to do a horror feature in the near future, but right now I feel the best course of action is to continue with the horror-shorts in order to build a fan-base that enjoys my work.
The horror-shorts are a lot of fun because they allow me to explore new ideas and techniques at a quicker pace than a feature-film.

What films inspired you to write and create in the world of horror.

It was less a single film that inspired me, and more the genre as a whole. I just love being scared, so when it came time to come up with my next film concept, horror just made sense. My first horror film was called Knock. The crew and I had so much fun working on it that I figured the horror genre required further exploration. The great reception it received was tremendously inspiring as well.
I am constantly drawing inspiration from the techniques other horror movies utilize to get reactions from their audience. I’m really big on studying techniques.

What advice could you give to aspiring independent filmmakers and writers to realize their nightmares on the digital screen, the way you have skillfully done?

I’ll rattle off a few:
- Study the techniques that other horror films utilize to create tension. Absorb the horror genre because you can’t successfully make a film in a genre you know nothing about.
- Make a film that you believe in, based around a technique or challenge you want to explore.
- K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid) Make something that is within a reasonable scope based on your budget, team size, and skill level.
- Stop thinking about it and just go for it. You will make mistakes, but that’s part of the process.
How necessary is adequate backing in the making of a quality and terrifying horror short film?
The great thing about horror films is you don’t need much in terms of budget to create a terrifying experience. Horror is about the pacing and setup, both of which are free.
Take the Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity for example. Both of those films are inspiring to me due to how successful they were at building that sense of terror, while staying on a shoestring budget.

There’s a nice flow of isolation, relationship strains, bloodshed, and poetic conclusion to your past films, A New Day and Last Hand, was your writing process in Mannequin deliberately different in the use of minimalism?

For Mannequin I just wanted it to be a very simple story about a girl and a random encounter she experiences. The hardest part about writing Mannequin was actually trimming the script down until it both told the story I wanted to tell, and contained no extra fluff weighing it down. Thankfully I had my co-writer, Erika Kotero, to help keep the integrity of the script on track.
I should also point out that Last Hand was my film partners work, his name is Michael Papilla. Though I did lend some consultation work on the set, I was more there to act and help edit. I would really recommend checking out his film, Forgiven Faith. It’s not horror, and it’s a bit low budget, but has really terrific pacing and is entertaining to watch.

What locations do you primarily film in and is it easier to do it local?

I stick to local spots or locations that have been thoroughly scouted. I like being able to just set up at a location with no worries of pedestrians or "the law" intervening and ruining a shoot. Plus, it is very important to have a location you are comfortable working in.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my family, friends, and fans that have contributed to and supported to the continuing growth of Cowmaster Studios.

SEE FULL ARTICLE AT Fear & Loathing LB:OCTOBER

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