Josefus: Interview [Side B]

  • [Interview Transcript from the book "Psychedelic Psounds". First part of interview is available at http://av.cah.utexas.edu/index.php/Vorda:Da_00112]
  • AV: "Dead Man" is a 17:30 existentialistic excursion into death. How was this song composed and wasn't it risky to put such a long song on the LP?PB: We were playing it live for fifty minutes. This was during the time when the Grateful Dead would play "Turn On Your Love Light" for an hour. We could pull it off, mainly because there was something exciting to look at. I've seen the Allman Brothers and other groups who would stand up there and play for hours and not peak but once or twice. Josefus would peak every song.AV: What about the sounds on "Dead Man" before the vocals start, especially that hidden guitar intro?RR: That faint guitar sound was me on bass. It was a tassle I had hanging off my bass and I just played the tassles across the strings.PB: It was a great effect. Then Dave would come in with his guitar, and start feeding signals into his Echoplex which was one of those old loop-to-loop reversible top Echoplexes which you could maneuver the hell out of the sound. You could put one sound in there and search it out for the longest time. I had first heard an Echoplex when I was in Denver watching a band (featuring Tommy Bolin) called Zephyr. While Dave was doing this Ray was free-forming and I had doubled up with about six maracas. Then Dave would hit the foot switch. So before the lyrics had even started, we had already taken the audience or listener and dumped their ass! It was all dynamics.[This section of transcript moved to match audio]Tull was so magnetic he could set down a plate of dog shit in front of you and tell you it was chocolate ice cream and almost make you believe it. That's how mentally powerful he was. If he had had his head together and had been a good business manager, during the times he was able to manage his magnetism, then we would have been in like Flint.But he kept shutting off the magnetism with some very heavy drugs. He was severely into mood alterations because he had burned out all of his brain cells ahead of us. He knew a lot of things about drugs that we didn't know. He was the first guy that shot me up. He was the first guy that shot Ray up. So that turned us into needle freaks. This isn't to say it wouldn't have happened sooner or later. I'm of the theory that if Josefus had made it big, then I would have been bust as dead as Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix. Of course, I'd be a dead hero and sometimes I throw that around as to what I'd rather have.AV: What about the end of the song where Dave hits the guitar for twenty-five consecutive riffs?PB: It's twenty-five times on the album, but we never knew how many of those we would play in concert. The live delivery of that was so visually powerful that it doesn't totally come over on the album. The reason the record sold was due to the people who saw Josefus.
  • AV: What kind of success did you have with Dead Man as far as sales and money?RT: The album was Number One in Houston for four weeks and outsold the Beatles' Let It Be.PB: I imagine we sold 3,000 at cost and gave away 500 for promotion. We also started hearing reports record stores selling out thirty albums when we only sent ten albums. The distribution was handled by our management who was a shoe salesman who Lord knows how many shoes he had stolen, but hopefully it was less than the records we had. We went out of town essentially to say we had an out-of-town product. Then we came back and had it pressed and distributed locally. Apparently, there were thousands of copies being pressed and sold without our knowledge.
  • AV: Who were some of the groups you played with?RT: Grand Funk, Pacific Gas & Electric, Quicksilver, Dead, Ten Years After, Procol Harum, Robin Trower, Guess Who, John Mayall, and It's a Beautiful Day. ZZ Top used to open for us. The Top had tried to recruit me as their bass player, but I was with Josefus and thought we were going to make it.
  • AV: Your second LP was a fiasco. What happened?PB: Mainstream Records had signed us and sent us to their studio in Miami. We wanted to re-cut and execute most of the stuff off our first album so it would go nationally. By the time Mainstream had signed us we had another six months under our belts and "Dead Man" was a work of art. We were kick ass. Unfortunately, Mainstream wanted all new material and we wrote all the songs in three days, spent three days in the studio, and never had a chance to mix it.All the songs were terrible. The drums and musical coordination were terrible. The vocals were terrible. The themes were terrible. The cover was terrible. The album should have been called Terrible.
  • AV: How and when did the group break up?PB: There were several reasons for the break up in 1970. Drugs were a definite factor. Doug Tull, however, was probably the biggest factor. I had Doug fired three times to help my band survive even if he had married the manager's daughter---which he had---because I had enough mojo, but all three times he talked his way back in. We couldn't kick Tull out because the manager had negotiated the contract for Josefus. Since Tull was married to the manager's daughter, he was also married to the name Josefus. To get a divorce, we had to walk away from Josefus while David went his way because of the problems with his wife.
  • AV: Then you started up a new group called Stone Axe.PB: Stone Axe evolved from Josefus. We took a guitarist named Mike "Wolf" Long from a group called Wolfgang and a drummer named Jerry Ontiverez. We recorded a single for Rampart Street Records locally called "Snakebite" which was really hot and heavily requested on KLOL for for several weeks. The group lasted about two years and Warner Brothers took a look at us. The group fell apart when our equipment was ripped off and I had become a pain in the ass. Ray took off and played funk music and later country. Wolf died a few years ago when he was runned over.
  • AV: Did you know there was a bootleg LP of Dead Man out recently?PB: I bought a copy. It's being distributed by Jem for a French label called Eva Records. They airbrushed out Hookah Records on the front and misspelled my name. I'm referred to as Peter Barley. Nevertheless, I guess it's better to have the record out than not at all.
  • AV: Any regrets about not making it?PB: I have a lot of regrets because the group was so good. There were times when we were taking our equipment down and you could hear a few stragglers saying, "Better than Led Fucking Zeppelin." Every time we played I could grasp people, who I couldn't even see face to face, and bring them to the edge. I felt like I had them in this kind of grip and they had me in this kind of grip. It was a complete, super-emotionally charged electrical experience. I miss it to the max! I guess I've got a little Hitler syndrome.RT: The regret I have is ZZ Top. They had asked me to play with them, but I said no because I had an album out and they didn't. I said we're going to make it and they're not. Now I hear them on the radio all the time.PB: ZZ Top wanted to buy a song from us for one of their albums. refused to sell it. It's a mental block I have against Top because they went up and we went down.
  • NOTE: An album by Josefus called Son of Dead Man is available from Paradise Lost Records/P.O. Box 71026/Houston, TX. 77271. The album was recorded in 1990 with original members except for a female drummer. This album is not recommended except for the most avid collectors of Josefus.NOTE: Get Off My Case, the original unreleased l969 recording which was produced by Jim Musil, was finally released in 1992 through the magnificent effort of Neal Skok. It is available through: Epilogue Records/l2865 N.E. 85, #24l/ Kirkland, WA. 98O33. It is almost as great as the Dead Man LP.NOTE: Douglas Tull, the original drummer for Josefus, died 9/14/1970 in an Austin, Texas jail cell after being arrested for speeding. The initial report was that he committed suicide by hanging himself. He died the day before his forty-fifth birthday and was buried (9/18) the same day Jimi Hendrix died.