Steel Notes Magazine February 2017 | Page 17

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hit with the radio on and ‘ American Woman ’ would jump right out of that dashboard speaker , we would say “ We need that guy ! [ Laughter ]. We need that guy to produce us .” Well , we didn ’ t get Jack Richardson , we got Bob Ezrin . Warner Brothers said , “ Well , Bob Ezrin never recorded anything so we ’ re not going to do that . But Jack Richardson has plenty of hits so we ’ ll sign you providing Jack Richardson is in the studio to oversee it and make sure you get a hit .” And that ’ s what happened with ‘ Love It To Death ’ and ‘ Killer , everybody thinks that it was just Bob Ezrin well no , it was Jack Richardson . He was letting his young apprentice that had never produced an album , make an album with him overseeing it and make sure that it got done under budget and with a hit . So that ’ s what happened . ‘ Love It To Death ’ and ‘ Killer ’ Jack Richardson was in the studio at all times and Bob Ezrin was learning the ropes and by the time we got to ‘ Schools Out ’ Jack Richardson wasn ’ t there . Bob Ezrin had learned the ropes but Bob admitted that he would go back to the hotel at night and call Jack , “ Hello Jack . How do I do the bass sound again ?” [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : [ Laughter ] ‘ Schools Out .. That wound up being the biggest selling single for history of Warner Brothers Records and then it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015 right ?
Dennis : That ’ s right . Yeah .
Alexxis : They are still using ‘ Schools Out ’ on commercials all the time .
Dennis : Right , they just used it on a Walgreens commercial which was weird because school was back in !
Alexxis : I know , right ! [ Laughter ] I can see them doing it in the summer time like May , June or whatever when schools getting out , you know ?
Dennis : We had targeted the “ I ’ m 18 ” age group on “ Killer ” “ Be My Lover ” and “ Under My Wheels .” “ Under My Wheels ’” did pretty good , it did really well in certain parts of the country like Texas and whatever but it wasn ’ t as big as ‘ I ’ m 18 .’ So we thought , “ We got to get back to targeting that age group again .” So we ’ re thinking “ OK , what can we all relate to when we were that age ?” Well that final bell of school . [ Laughter ] That was the most exciting thing . So that song was one of those , you hear songwriters talk about you know this creative God sort of dropping a gift in your lap .
Alexxis : Right , now I ’ m going back in time to the album that had the paper underpants in it . [ Laughter ]
Dennis : Yeah , that was “ School ’ s Out .”
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Alexxis : Yeah , that was “ School ’ s Out ” [ Laughter ] What was the correlation between the school desk and the underwear ?
Dennis : You know album covers were getting more and more elaborate . We were one of the few bands that Jeff Gordon and Joe Greenburg were negotiating our Warner Brothers contract so we would have artistic control to avoid what happened to John Mellencamp . It ’ s like how the first time he sees his album he ' s called John Cougar . [ Laughter ] Nobody told him that .
Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : They couldn ' t put out an album without us all seeing it and us saying OK , and then we got this idea , well , we ’ re going to make the album cover be a school desk , we ’ ll have it perforated , so it ’ ll have legs that bend out and it ’ ll stand up and you can open it and you got a slingshot , a bad report card , and everything inside . Then the panties , I don ’ t remember the band having that idea . I think that was a specific engineer where the artist made the school desk happen for us . It was all that thing of what appeals to a kid in school that is kind of rebellious and whatever . Well the panties were perfect ! [ Laughter ], we don ' t have a desk cover we have panties .
Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : And uh , you know . [ Laughter ] Oh brother !
Alexxis : I actually think that same year is when I went to see you guys at a show , in New Jersey at the Wildwood Convention Hall , and I was dressed up in a black outfit with a cape , makeup , top hat and cane , flashlight the whole nine yards and I actually made Alice a pair of black velvet bikini underpants with “ Alice ” written in silver sequins .
Dennis : It seems so that I would remember that .
Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : Well , yeah so that was the other thing that was great . You know it took us a long time to get audiences on our side . But when we did all of a sudden the whole audience was dressing up to come to the concerts . That wasn ’ t that common back then really . It ’ s common now .
Alexxis : Yes , that ’ s true !
Dennis : But back then it was kind of a new thing . A lot of things were new then in the early 70 ’ s . The Beatles had set the bar so
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