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I mixed and produced eight years earlier.
As many of our listeners may not know, Stacy played guitar for David Bowie/Iggy Pop for 2 years back the mid 70's. Stacy can you briefly describe that experience for us?
Stacy: Yeah, that was interesting. I was playing in bar bands, most notably with Shawne Jackson who ended up marrying Domenic Troiano, one of Canada's guitar icons. We were a live band so we did some shows.
We played the CNE, opened for Guess Who and some big bands and so forth. I just kinda lucked into the Bowie thing through that. I was just doing some local commercials and a friend of mine was a roadie on a Bowie tour and I hooked up with them on The Young Americans tour. I was in Detroit. I brought a little red wing shoe commercial on a cassette and I handed it to my roadie buddy who was with Bowie at the time and about two years later they gave me a call and said 'we'd like to have you in Ocho, Rios tomorrow afternoon. We are auditioning you at Keith Richards house, can you make it?' I thought it was a crank call for gosh sakes. It was three'o'clock in the morning.
I ended up calling Air Canada. I had my reservation set. I was like, bam, I've never been south of Detroit really, before then and ended up going to Jamaica and there I was. Got the offer for the gig the same day and I was off with David Bowie. Just some starving guitar player living check to check out of Toronto.
Okay - let' set the scenario . . .
Big Al, back in '87 (and I mean way back...lol), the Left Wing Fascists were doing open Mic nights in Norfolk, Virginia AT a place called 'The Corner' - kind of a Beatles at The Cavern thing going on there . . .was 'The Corner' the bands YOUR 1st official gig?
Big Al: Yeah, it was a hardcore place, a hardcore club, you know. A lot of bands like Gwar were coming in. They were starting because they were out of Richmond. Bunch of VCU guys. We were getting some really cool punk bands that were sliding through.
I didn't know much about the scene but I knew they had, like, dollar beers on Tuesdays and so we popped up there and had this strange 6'10" guitar player. We were going to college so everyone would always ask him if he played basketball. He just did not. He was more of a mathametician type of dude.
He came up with the guitars and went up there and the first song was 'I Married a Douche Bag'. After that, I still remember it to this day, it was seven straight open mic nights we actually worked out where, Bob had left the band and Eric had come in and we actually wrote the first album pretty much improv all on the stage.
We went in and did a studio demo and next thing you know we had gotten signed and they were flying this big time producer in. And his name was Stacy. So right off the bat there was a million dollar studio they had built in Virginia Beach called Winmark. We were the first band to go in and they were bringing in a heavy hitter and so that's I got the whole thing kind of started.
Okay, you induce a large following, release a six-song cassette called'All You Can Eat' and sign a record deal with Cellular records.You enter the studio with Stacy and 3 days later, you come out with your first full length release'A Mother's Nightmare'
Big Al: Yes. The thing was like, released locally in '89, '90 and then right around '90,'91 it got picked up on Rhino Records. So, we had the national release and things were going real well for us.
Stacy, I have a quote here from a person whom shall go nameless. “Your producer is not your friend. He is brought in to whip the recording into shape and so the words "Get it done, you slackers" came out of his mouth a lot back in 1990." Were you the rude over bearing tyrant you've been made out to be?
Stacy: Well, you know I learned to be professional pretty young. I got the Bowie gig, gosh, I was maybe 21. I learned real fast that if I couldn't turn on the professional faster than not I'd be fired. I saw many people in that Bowie organization just go a whim.
So, I learned early some disclipline and I guess I did carry that through with my recordings because in the beginning when I started producing, I think my biggest Canadian production at the time was a band called Teenage Head. 'Frantic City'? You may remember them. These guys were pretty unruly, if you remember.