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from:
The Big Takeover #26
July
JOE NOLTE (and some
MIKE NOLTE) INTERVIEW
It was great to interview Joe
Nolte and his brother Mike of The Last. Brief history.
Formed sometime in 1975 or sometime before that, The Last predated
the punk movement but fit it in well when it came to their native
Los Angeles in late '76. Effectively, they were the only band
of that era out there whose main inspiration was the 60's rather
than the current punk stuff. Listening to early Last records,
one notes a certain fondness for The Beach Boys as if they had
been a garage band! Other brother Mike Nolte also joined up.
After three incredibly obscure and unknown singles on their own
Backlash label in '77-'78 (the second of which, "Every Summer
Day," notes that there are only 150 copies! We assume there's
as little of the first "She Don't Know Why I'm Here,"
and the third "L.A. Explosion"), The Last signed up
to the Bomp label, Greg Shaw's 60's oriented company, and released
their first LP in 1979 L. A. Explosion. The mix is an
abomination. The guitars and drums are mixed so low they're almost
not there sometimes. The original of "She Don't Know Why,"
which was fortunately reissued by Bomp so you can still hear
one of the greatest pop garage singles of all time, renders the
LP version an embarrassment in comparison! Likewise the rerecording
of "Every Summer Day." Yet it's still a well loved,
classic LP, mostly because of the great songs and three part
harmonies of the Nolte brothers.
A second LP was recorded in
1980, but for some reason was not released by the Bomp label,
who chose to release but 4 songs of it instead on a 12"EP!
Tapes that circulate reveal that it was a much better recorded
LP, and in many cases more exciting record, it's too bad it's
been lost all these years. In the midst of these difficulties,
the original lineup split, the 3 brothers separating, leaving
singer / guitarist / songwriter Joe to carry on the group himself.
The next Last released a number of super compilation cuts on
The Radio Tokyo Tapes, The Rebel Kind, and Warfrat
Tales, and some of these tracks plus some outtakes were packaged
as a French LP called Painting Smiles on a Dead Man, including
two rerecordings of second LP tracks that didn't make it to the
12" EP. The band played rarely, and quit in '85, ostensibly
for good. Brother Dave showed up in New York several times as
a member of Wednesday Week, but nothing was heard of Mike or
Joe, who were said by David to have given up music.
Fortunately, they reemerged
(with brother Mike back in the fold) on the LA scene in '88,
signing to SST (Black Flag and The Last were always good friends,
living down the street from each other), and releasing a new
LP Confession. The album was produced by the biggest Last
fan of all, the Descendents / All drummer / songwriter
Bill Stevenson who also wrote the liner notes acknowledging
his band's debts to The Last. This release also produced their
first ever US tour, which made this interview possible, prior
to their Maxwell's gig in Hoboken, exactly a year ago this time
during the New Music Seminar (The Bats and Bailterspace supported).
Since then, we've received word that they've finished recording
their fifth LP, and perhaps another tour in support is in the
works. Conversation opens with why the three Nolte brothers split
in the first place, since bands with brothers rarely split, and
why Mike is back now, and why The Last themselves are back. Joe
was especially entertaining, which made this an enjoyable read
when I read the transcript for the first time a year later. A
real likeable, talented guy, who's an original and has been around,
with such an impressive, well written body of work to his name!
JOE: We went through this thing where no one wanted
to put out our second LP Look Again . . .
JR: Major labels?
JOE: Yeah. We thought "this is terrible." So
it got to a matter of who would break first. We got into this
whole personality thing which ended up with Mike and myself sort
of divorcing each other. Mike and I started the band a year before
David, a year before Vitus, and by the time we did L.A. Explosion
Mike and I were the only originals. We conceived the whole
thing. We decided to work together as the base, we had it totally
conceptualized what The Last was going to be. Around 1980, The
Last ceased to be that thing so we ended up splitting up. Mike
left the band and it wasn't the same. Whatever people think of
Painting Smiles on a Dead Man, it was a generic record.
Not that anything was necessarily wrong with the material, but,
I don't know — something was wrong there, something wasn't
working. We went through the motions — didn't want to be
too hardcore, didn't want to be too 60's, couldn't do the shit
that was fun 'cause we wanted to be totally accessible to the
masses as possible. The whole point for The Last was to fight
that whole thing — the reason we came into existence was
the mid 70's and the whole total pudding that passed for pop
music, you know? To become the enemy — man . . . So it had
to end. It had to die. Mike and Dave briefly rejoined in '84,
but realized it was stupid, and in '85 we called it a day. No
more, goodbye. Dave joined Wednesday Week and Mike and I swore
never to do anything in music ever again. Lasted about a year
and realized gotta be in a band. So we decided to do it right.
First it was just gonna be acoustic, just me and Mike, Nolte
Brothers, you know — fake Everly Brothers or something.
And then we thought, nah — has to be electric. I said, OK,
we've got to come up with a name for the group. So Mike calls
me on the phone — like, very clever — he comes up with
the worst name for a band ever. I forgot the name — what
was it? "Banana" something. He said think about it
and gave me five minutes and called back and said, "Just
kidding — it has to be The Last."
MIKE: I mean, we started the band, and after I left they
continued to call it The Last, when really The Last is really
a concept of Joe and I.
JR: You needn't justify it so, it's really OK.
MIKE: Yes, but some people in L.A. resent it.
JR: Tough luck. Everybody else does it and it's OK —
look at how many lineup changes Black Flag had, they got down
to one original member pretty fast! So long as the guy who's
the constant is really the driving force in the band, or the
songwriter . . .
JOE: The situation now is essentially the same as it was
in the mid 70's. What passes for pop music is the most inane
watered down version of fake funk. The good bands are for the
most part buried under the ground. There is more of a scene than
there was then, but it still needs — like, originally we
formed this group back then 'cause there wasn't really a group
we were interested in following.
JR: That was most people's motivation back then.
JOE: I suppose. That was interesting. When we started
it was all pre-Sex Pistols records. What you would hear about
them in the press was just a bad take off. Then "Anarchy
in the UK" came out — one of the 5 or 6 best rock 'n'
roll records to ever exist. They turned everything around. They
turned the entire L.A. scene into English wannabe's. Everyone
had that look. Before that, everyone looked New York like the
Ramones. At the time we started the idea was to get just enough
money to move to New York, 'cause we figured that scene would
never make it out to the west coast!
JR: I wish you had!
JOE: Actually, we started playing a bar. We figured maybe
we could do that Television thing here, convince some bar guy
(like Hilly at CBGBs - ed) to let us play, but it just didn't
work.
JR: Where?
JOE: God, they changed it. It was called the Flame Pit.
They turned it into a cowboy bar shortly thereafter. We would
do the standard bar stuff, wait for people to get drunk and then
start doing Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges.
And it worked. People were digging it, but - naaahhh! You need
a total inner city environment, so you get enough people feeding
off each other to make it a scene. You can't do it 80 miles from
the rest of L.A.
JR: So tell me about the unreleased second album. Did
you pay for it yourself, and if not, if it was paid for by Bomp
owner Greg Shaw, why did he oppose it?
JOE: That was recorded on a "spec" deal. The
studio said if we used their producer they would front us the
money in exchange for a percentage of the royalties when we signed
to a major label.
JR: Well if that was the case, how did you get the rights
to release those 4 songs off it on that 12"?
JOE: I don't know. That EP was our farewell agreement
with Bomp.
JR: Do you agree that the production on L.A. Explosion
was badly muted, like no guitars?
JOE: Drums, anyone? (laughs) Well, the problem was that
up to now, excluding our new album Confession, we were
at the mercy of a producer who probably never saw us live. Usually
a part of the recording deal — fools that we were!
JR: Was it the engineering or the mix that was at fault?
Were the actual raw takes better, have you ever considered remixing
an rereleasing it?
JOE: Better, but not good enough. Fools that we were!!
JR: Why did you never tour, never play outside of L.A.?
JOE: It just never happened. Not that we didn't want to.
This isn't to get too specific, but this is the first lineup
that hasn't had clouds of doom. We always had rational people
in the band before, also lack of motivation and togetherness.
Can't worry about money or anything — gotta just go!
JR: Do you have a lot of unrecorded tracks lying around?
JOE: Oh yeah!
JR: Do you accept bribes?
JOE: We can work something out.
JR: How many tracks are we talking here?
JOE: Vitus originally wanted to be a producer, so we were
the band. We have demos going back to '76.
JR: How many albums would it take to fill up your entire
unreleased catalog?
JOE: Geez, don't let me calculate that! (laughter)
JR: Did Dave want to get back in the band when you and
Mike reformed it this time?
JOE: Well yeah, but there wasn't enough elbow room. We
still get drunk and jam together, but you know . . .
JR: Any 3 Nolte Brothers reunions on stage?
JOE: Nah. Well, we did a supergroup once, the three of
us with Bill Stevenson (of Descendents / All) on drums, he's
the one who produced our new LP. We did that whole second album
that never came out until he broke his drums. That's the only
reason why I use the electric 12 string guitar live, 'cause I
break strings all the time (the way he flails at his guitar,
that's no surprise — ed).
JR: So here you are finally out of LA. Where else would
you like to go?
JOE: Just last week we were talking with (SST heads) CHUCK
(DUKOWSKI) AND GREG (GINN) about Europe.
JR: You were always more popular there, right?
JOE: We were sold everywhere so it's hard to tell.
JR: Who do you feel an affinity with in LA?
JOE: We will just miss All by a week or so. We still see
the Bangles and (now split) 3 O'Clock. We share
studio space with All, Redd Kross and the Pandoras.
We all go back and we're all friendly with SST. It's kinda
cool that we're all still around.
JR: Ever wonder what happened to other bands of your era
like Skulls, Controllers, Eyes, Bags?
JOE: Yeah, what did happen to them? Every once
in a while you run into someone you thought was dead.
JR: For instance, when was the last time you ran into
the old Controllers' drummer Carla Mad Dog?
JOE: Shit! Not since their final show at the Hong Kong Café
when Rik L Rik (from F-Word and Negative Trend)
did an encore with them and they trashed all their instruments.
JR: Good way to go out! We won't be needing these anymore!
JOE: I'm kinda proud of the whole scene that came out
of Black Flag's Church home. They all did pretty well
for a short time.
JR: What do you think of all these bands who are now so
inspired by the 60's, when you were practically the only punk
band of the late 70's to be so rooted in that sound, way before
that whole "Paisley Underground" thing in the early
80's? Did you ever feel resentment that they made it and you
didn't, when you were doing it 6 years before?
JOE: We did a little bit, but if you worry about what
other people are doing to the point of just cashing in on something
we did for them, I think it's more indicative of a problem that
you have of what are they doing that you didn't do!
JR: That's the basic loaded question. Does it not bug
you to see these people selling zillions of LP's while none of
the labels would sign you years before them? You weren't considered
commercial?
JOE: No. First of all, we are living up to our name! (laughs)
Second of all these are bands that are friends of ours. Third
of all we need to figure out what we need to do. I think
we can be the band we want to be, not compromise, not sell out
to make it.
JR: By the same token, do you resent that these people
made such a fashion out of it, a revivalist clothing trip and
attitude trip / sound trip, when you were basically fashionless
and modernizing the old rather than just glorifying it?
JOE: The first 25 were all right then it got dull!
JR: Anything else to say?
JOE: Yeah, yeah. Figure 2 or 3 hours a year since '76
if you took all the outtakes and stuff, there's a lot of stuff
that is basically releasable. As far as all that Paisley stuff,
I take it as a compliment of sorts, as a vindication of what
we were doing when it wasn't cool to do it. We're still us. I
think this version is going to kick ass over all our other versions
eventually. We don't have to force the sound on anyone. The best
thing about this band is that we never play the same song the
same way. And that's what rock 'n' roll is all about. We were
doing that before the punk stuff, there was so much stuff in
the mid 60's that was real exciting, things just went down a
different road. We're not a revival band. I knew Michael (Quercio)
and Susannah Hoffs and the Roebacks and Steve
Wynn before they started their bands and they just went to
see us. We just happened to be the first band doing it
there. But just looking at the sales of L.A. Explosion,
we couldn't have had that influence around the world.
MIKE: Would you believe that Susannah Hoffs wanted to
fill in for me when I left the band? Joe didn't want it!
JOE: No girls! I wanted harmonies and she couldn't imitate
his voice.
JR: Before tonight's show, what was the farthest you got
out of LA? San Francisco?
JOE: Not that far! San Diego!
JR: San Diego!!! An hour away!!! Well, welcome to New
York and Congratulations!!!
JOE: It's about time!
—Jack Rabid
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