If you ever get a chance to talk to guitarist Larry Parypa about the recent return of his legendary Tacoma, WA, garage rock band The Sonics, it quickly becomes evident how awestruck he is getting to play with his bandmates after all these years. The band, which broke up in 1969, inexplicitly made a return to the stage about seven years ago with plenty of energy and swagger to spare.
Best known for introducing a sense of danger and chaos to rock and roll in the ’60s, The Sonics have picked up where they left off, energized by new generations of fans, some even extending into punk and grunge rock. On March 31, their improvable return came full circle when they release their first studio album since 1967, This is The Sonics.
This is The Sonics was recorded at Soundhouse Studios in Seattle with producer Jim Diamond of Ghetto Recorders Diamond and released on their own Tacoma-based label Revox Records. Diamond, who previously worked with the similar-minded bands like The White Stripes and Electric Six, helped the band recapture their fiery energy and quick fire rock and roll attack. So much so that the finished product doesn’t feel out of place when placed with 1965’s Here Are the Sonics and 1966’s Boom.
The album also marks the in studio reunion of original members Jerry Roslie (keyboards, vocals), Parypa (guitar, vocals) and Rob Lind (sax, harmonica, vocals). Bassist Freddie Dennis (the Kingsmen, the Liverpool Five) and drummer Dusty Watson (Dick Dale, Agent Orange) round out the lineup and add a hard-charging rhythm section. We caught up with Parypa to talk about what the release means and the influence his band continues to have.
What finally got the band back in the studio to record a new album?
It’s because everyone kept asking for it, especially promoters. And we just didn’t do it. We kept saying for the last seven years, we kept telling people, “Yeah we’re going to go to the studio” and put out some more songs but we actually never did it. And finally we decided that if we’re going to keep telling people we’re going to do this we really should try to do it. And we did. So we spent four days in the studio recording 14 songs. They sound like the old stuff did, with the same intensity and recorded it in mono instead of stereo. Now we’re just waiting to see how people feel about the stuff.
Was there any nervousness about how you’d sound after all this time?
No, not really, because the guys from the original Sonics, we hadn’t really talked much in 40 years and none of us really played music. When we got done playing with The Sonics, we thought we were done. We were not great instrumentalists back in the ’60s and we didn’t play from that point onward, so when we got back together again it was like we took off on where we were before. We didn’t get to be great jazz musicians or something so the songs sound and feel like they did then and that was comfortable for us.
How do you feel about playing shows with new material now?
I like it. I like the mix and blend of playing our newer songs that we’ve written or covered in our own way with some of the old stuff. When we play live we play most of our songs that seem to be most popular. So probably what we’re going to do now is extend our set now so we can put in some of the new ones.
Why do you think the core of this band has been able to come back successfully after all these years?
We ask ourselves that. I was talking to Jerry, our vocalist, a couple weeks ago, and we were both saying, “How would we have ever guessed that we’d be playing music again and not only playing music again, not just locally but worldwide.” There’s way I could have forecasted that. It’s still hard to believe that that’s the case. Fifty years later you put out an album, I don’t know if anybody waited 50 years to put an album out. That’s just really hard to contemplate and that we play places and generally fill out the rooms. And the audience…we thought the audience would be old, older people from the ’60s. But it’s not. It’s mostly people in their 20s and 30s. Didn’t expect that either.
I would imagine a lot of the bands that the younger people like have been influenced by The Sonics in some way.
Apparently so. That’s what we’re always told. And we play the same way now. When you say that there’s a band coming to town and they have an influence on different styles of music but they’re close to 70 years old, my first thought would be, “Yeah I gotta see this. Maybe they can stand up but can they play with any energy?” And we think we do. We think it’s just as energetic as it used to be and the bands that perform with us tell us that. So again, I never would have thought I’d be that age and still be out there playing rock and roll.
What’s it like having Freddie and Dusty with the band? How have they affected the existing chemistry?
They’re both just great players and have a feel for the same thing that we do. If we’re going to play something, we want to play it with as much power as we can. And Freddie is just a screamer in terms of his vocals so it’s really nice to have somebody next to you that can attack the music the way he does.
The band recorded at Soundhouse Studios in Seattle. How did that venue affect things?
Jack Endino, he’s an engineer there. He’s the one that did Nirvana’s stuff early on. The way we did it, we probably could have done it in somebody’s bathroom. But we didn’t utilize all the digitalization effects and overdubbing and all that stuff. We all as a band tracked simultaneously and went back and if we decided to do a solo or fill or something and we would put that in there. But very simple, pretty much like we did in the ’60s. It was just back in the ’60s there were only two tracks for awhile and they had to do a lot of ping-ponging with that stuff I think.
The album was record in mono. Why do you think that’s better?
I’m guessing to some extent but that was determined by Jim Diamond, who was the producer. I think as we were going along he thought it would sound more authentic in mono. But I think he was thinking too that if you’re listening to it on a iPod or cell phone or something, stereo just doesn’t sound as good as mono coming through. And I think that played into it.
The band’s early recordings are very raw and live sounding. Can you about deciding to go in that direction as opposed to updating the sound?
It was “Do we want to venture out and play songs in a way that’s more current, by using more tracks and more effects and different songs?,” or “Do we want to try to go back and replicate where we were before?,” where we left off, a little simple and basic. And I think we made the right decision. Let’s just go in there and play the way we feel it, like we’d play the old stuff versus trying to sound updated or trying to sound like we’re better at our craft individually than we actually are. So I think it sounds like it did back then and feels that way.
But I think the songs are a little more up-tempo. Back in the ’60s when people would go to a show they went there to dance. There were dance halls and so people came there to dance. So you’d want to produce a beat that they could dance to. Now, of course, people don’t dance. They just stand there so you can actually move it faster and not be concerned if they can dance to it or not.
You decided to release the album on your own label.
Yeah, we ended up doing the indie approach, where we did our recordings out of pocket without having to go through a label. So we could do it the way we really want to do it. And then we could use the label later for merchandising after we’ve done the recording.
It was a tradeoff. If you go to an established label you lose some control and they take a much larger percentage of the income in order to reimburse them back for their cost. We went back and forth on that and decided it probably makes more sense for us to go ahead and record the way that we want on our own expense and then shop that among different labels to see who wanted to participate in it.
How did the band pick Jim Diamond to produce the record?
It was recommended by, I’m not sure, but it could have been our business manager. Maybe not. Somebody was mentioning to The Sonics that this guy he would be exceptionally good at recording our style of music. And we followed that advice. We listened to some of the things he’s done in the past and talked to him, and it seemed like we had a good meeting of the minds as for how the recording should take place. But now after we’ve made it, I think we made the right decision.
How involved was he in the recording?
Actually very involved. He would express his opinion on how we would approach a song as much as we did. We would say “Should we make it faster or slower? Should we add this or not add that? Is this solo true to the song or is it stretching too much?” There was a lot of conversation. He was heavily involved.
What’s your favorite song on the album?
A song that [Jerry] wrote that we put on the album, “Save the Planet,” is my favorite song on the album. To me that’s the best song on the album, but that’s just personal choice.
How do you think [Jerry] compares now as songwriter with when you first met him?
I think pretty much the same. Even back then he wrote the lyrics himself but the instrumentation everyone kind of chipped in their opinion of the song, the musical part of the song. And that’s what we did this time. Jerry did the lyrics of the song that he contributed and everyone had a little say-so on the band part of it including him.
What’s the biggest difference and similarity between the band in the studio and live now compared with back in the 60s?
Well, in the recording part of it, even though we didn’t utilize it very much, we have a lot more possibilities because of the number of tracks and the way things are recorded now. So in that sense it’s easier than it used to be because you don’t have to do as many ping-ponging of tracks to build up the sound like you had to in the ’60s. Live, if it’s anything, I think the songs we play are not really written for people to dance to but now it’s played for energy without concern if people can get into a groove and dance to it. The big difference live is that when we played before there weren’t stage monitors and there wasn’t lighting. The lighting consisted of a floodlight above your head. You didn’t mix sound off-stage. And that was also different. When we started playing again, when we played in New York for the first time in 2007, that was probably the single thing that made a huge difference to us on stage that scared us, is having monitors because we weren’t used to having monitors like that. The music was raw back then and raw now.
From what I’ve read it sounds like the single “Bad Betty” helped get things rolling towards the band making an album.
Yeah. The whole album is similar with the way “Bad Betty” sounds, simple and in-your-face.
The Muddy Roots label originally released “Bad Betty” on a seven 7 inch record.
Yeah, “Bad Betty” on one side and Mudhoney had their song on the other side.
Any other songs in particular that were very special or influential in the direction of the album?
Yeah. A song called “I Don’t Need No Doctor” is a song that we used to play back in the ’60s and I think most people think is the best song on the album. Taking that song and we drastically changed it so it represented a Sonics song. One song that a lot of bands in the Northwest did that I think comes across really well…there’s a song called “Leaving Here” that a lot of local groups did in the ’60s. We went back and did that one for the album.
What memory since the band reunited has affected you most?
Primarily just the fright. I mean, we were scared to get back together and play and not knowing what to expect. There was a lot of apprehension about “Can we do this?” and “Are you good enough that people are going to want to hear us after all this time?” and, “How many people are going to want to hear us?” Is it just going to be one and that’s it do we have the opportunity to go and play more often than that? Still hard to believe that after all those years, I never thought we’d be doing this again.
How do you think you’ve progressed as a guitarist?
Not much. None of us. I don’t think any of us think our musicianship is that great. I don’t think any of us are great musicians. Over the past 40 years we weren’t playing so we didn’t progressively get better and I didn’t try to be a great jazz guitar player or anything like that. I barely played it at all. It’s not that we’re good musicians, it’s just the combination of the guys in the band all seem to feel things the same way. We want a lot of energy. So the energy is more important to us than how fluent we are on our instruments.
*What was it like having your song “Have Love Will Travel” in Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown series? *
I didn’t expect that but it was really cool and I’m glad they did that. That seems to be the most popular song that we ever did that’s associated with television ads. It started off, I think, when Land Rover used that song. That really got us to a point where people heard the song and would ask the question “Who’s the band?” And I think that really led to us reforming again. That same song was used by BMW and a toothpaste commercial in Sweden and a beer commercial in Germany and a beer commercial in Mexico. And just on and on. That one particular song seems to capture people.
You recently were part of the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl’s Sonic Highways documentary. What was that experience like?
Yeah, that was neat. Dave Grohl found eight identifiable regions in the country that had a lot to do with rock and roll music, Seattle being one of them. It was actually a big honor to be the representative for Seattle.
How do you think Seattle and that area in general compares now with how it was in the ’60s?
I think there’s a lot more bands now than there were in the ’60s. So there’s a lot more competition. And in the ’60s, Seattle and probably other places too, we played big dance halls that held 800 to 1000 people and you could make a living doing it. Now Seattle and other areas of the country, it’s tough to find big rooms like that to play in. It’s much more difficult today competitively and in terms of just supporting yourself with just music without having to play in three or four bands at the same time. But there’s still a lot of creativity up here. It’s always been just a little different.
Do you think the band will try to release more music in the future?
Yeah. That’s one thing we’ll have to start thinking about, other songs to record. Hopefully we’ll do it faster than…hopefully we won’t wait as long before we do it again. But some of it has to do with how people respond to this album. If people like it, it would encourage us to do it again. If nobody wants to hear it then there’s no point in recording, I suppose.
What do you ultimately hope the Sonics are remembered for?
I guess just bringing a different perspective to rock and roll. Back in the ’60s, everyone played the standard 1-4-5 chord progression. Chuck Berry and Little Richard. And I don’t know if anybody tried to play songs with screaming all the time and loud drums and the guitar is distorted. Or even taking a song like “Louie Louie” which is a 1-4-5 major chord progression and changing it to a minor progression of 1-3-4. Nobody was doing that. Nobody was screaming and singing about taking strychnine. Whether that’s good or bad, apparently that’s had an influence on where rock and roll is today. And I feel good about that.
