Steel Notes Magazine February 2017 | Page 11

www . steelnotesmagazine . com
that either Cindy coordinated or she bought the fabric and made the outfits because we had no money .
Alexxis : She designed most of the costumes during the course of the band being together ?
Dennis : Yes , every album cover except “ Muscle of Love ” because we had the sailor suits on . Even though she did the sailor suits for the live performances and she did the white satin sailor suits . All of the album covers have stuff that she made and all of the stage shows had outfits that she made and not only that but she kind of kept all of our street clothes together which when we were walking down the street in L . A . we dressed crazier than most bands dressed on stage .
Alexxis : But it got attention !
Dennis : But that was that era , you know . We were just pushing the boundaries and that ’ s what artists do . You have Jimi Hendrix who dressed very flamboyant with colorful outfits . We would run into him in L . A . and the running joke between us is that we ’ d be dressed all crazy and we ’ d kind of like surround him and make fun of what he was wearing , which he thought was really funny . We ’ d say “ Hey , what the heck are you wearing man ?” [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : Yeah , that was the beginning of Glam Rock right ?
Dennis : Yeah , I mean if you don ’ t count Little Richard and Liberace or whatever but we did it a little bit differently because we did it with this androgynous look and with this name you know . So that took an end , and also if we had performed and kind of made a joke out of it , it would have came off completely different . But when we were on stage we had this very serious delivery .
Alexxis : Absolutely !
Dennis : Even though there were a lot of things that would be comical , it didn ’ t come off that way . They came off more like this Salvador Dali picture I was telling you about where the cats were flying through the air and everything . That ’ s what we were going for . It was a Dali art happening . It was an assault on your senses and we wanted people to walk out trying to figure out what they had seen . We wanted people to tell their friends “ Oh you got to come and see this band , you got to see what they do .” And then when they bring their friend , we ’ re doing something completely different so it kept evolving very fast . And most of the stuff — -
Alexxis : Kept them guessing . What are you going to do next , to top what you did before .
Dennis : Exactly . And so if there was some kind of a weird thing sitting back stage or even out in the alley we ’ d grab the garbage cans or we ’ d grab a couple of tires and we ’ d just bring them on stage . It was very spontaneous and then you know we decided because people didn ’ t like us in L . A . a lot of people would walk out
Steel Notes Magazine
and they ’ d yell insults and line up at the exits and so we decided we were going to incorporate the audience into the performance . So that ’ s where putting mirrors on my bass shining spotlight on it and this reflection would go out into the audience and we ’ d rip open feather pillows and spray the feathers all over the audience and we ’ d throw these giant weather balloons into the audience . And all that stuff was suddenly breaking down the barrier , we were not a separate entity in the room that everyone can target . They were part of this thing that ’ s happening you know if you don ’ t like us and here comes this giant balloon and all of a sudden you have fun you ’ re bouncing it around or whatever , we would win people over that way . How can they criticize us if they ’ re in the show ? [ Laughter ] That was our philosophy behind it anyway . It eventually worked , but we had a lot of years where there was a lot of convincing because people thought bands had to be doing a particular thing . And also because they thought if you do theatrics , it ’ s a crutch and you ’ re trying to hide the fact that you can ’ t play .
Alexxis : Right , but that was not really true in the case of your band !
Dennis : Well you know , we did two albums before we actually learned how to play . [ Laughter ] Even though we weren ' t bad when we were a cover band in Phoenix but when we started writing new material , it was very abstract and it was more of an artistic statement than we were proving that we could play like other people . On the ‘ Love It to Death ’ album , we had learned how to play and we had learned how to write songs , but mostly Michael Bruce learned how to write relatable hit songs and it was a whole different ball game . All of a sudden we wrote “ Halo of Flies ” specifically to prove to people that we could play .
Alexxis : So originally , Glen Buxton was teaching you wasn ’ t he ? In the early days back in high school he was teaching you guitar and kind of by default you had to play bass because all the other instruments were already taken .
Dennis : [ Laughter ] That ’ s right . Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : Yeah Glen was the only guy who knew how to play . We started a band even before we knew what instruments we were going to play .
Dennis : I would go over to Glen ’ s house we ’ d drop the needle on a record and he ’ d help me sort out bass notes and he taught me the names of notes and where they fell on the neck and we ’ d spend afternoons just learning songs . We learned a lot of songs because when we were at the V . I . P . we ’ d do four sets a weekend and we not only wanted the show to be visually different , every weekend we wanted to introduce new songs that we had learned . So we wanted to keep evolving really fast .
Alexxis : Now where or when did the GTO ’ s come into play ?
Steel Notes Magazine www . steelnotesmagazine . com

11