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In conversation with Richard LaPlante ...

You may remember in our recent interview with Kevin Godley that he mentioned a project he’d been working on called “Hog Fever”. Based on an original memoir by writer Richard La Plante - “Hog Fever” has found itself cleverly transported into the realm of an ‘Ear Movie’. There isn’t yet a dictionary term to describe an ‘Ear Movie’ - it’s the first of it’s kind ; it’s innovative, it’s quirky, and it’s really VERY funny. It certainly isn’t your standard talking book, No - it’s much bigger than that! Imagine yourself watching a movie on TV, with your eyes closed ... that experience comes close to “Hog Fever” - it’s a movie without pictures ... and it intrigued us from the moment we heard about it. With an all star supporting cast which includes Oscar nominated actor Terence Stamp, Daniel Ash [Bahaus] , Kevin Godley [10cc], and Richard La Plante ; plus a soundtrack written especially for the story that includes new works by Godley, and La Plante. We hope this is the first of many crazy instalments, and whilst we don’t want to give too much away - we were curious to find out more about the man behind it all. If we could add sound effects to this article, it would mainly be laughter ...

HR: I have to begin by asking how one manages to go from being the front man in a rock and roll band, to becoming a best selling author?

RLP: Who me? [laughs]

Well ... I’ll tell you. We were a rock band called “Revenge”, based on the east coast of the United States . We had radio play; we were scheduled to go on tour, and it looked like we could become successful ... I was living in London, England, at the time. I went to New York to meet up with the band, and I got into a fight with the guitar players brother, because he wanted the guitar player to form his own band, and that would have got in the way of things ... so I broke his nose. At which point, I was hustled off to the police station in cuffs, and he was ambulanced away, and that subsequently ended the band! It cost me a considerable amount of money and 3 months of court appearances. It was just one of those things that happened, you know? I didn’t premeditate it - I just smacked him! The case was eventually dismissed, but I ended up going back to London without any kind of a job, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I still liked the idea of music, but thought that maybe I could just be an MTV video star, and never have to go on the road, never have to have another band! So I wrote a little thing for myself to star in. It was going to be a martial arts adventure song - at the time I did quite a bit of martial arts. I wrote the synopsis, but then couldn’t figure out how I could get it financed to turn it into a video ; and by coincidence or luck or something, I ran into a Los Angeles film producer who had been involved with the movie “Jaws”. He was in London producing a film called “White Nights”, which starred Mikhail Baryshnikov, the dancer. I met him at a party, and he asked me what I did, and sort of out of embarrassment - because at the time I did nothing! - I said “Well I’ve written this video ...” so he asked about it and whilst I was selling it to him he said “you know, that would make a feature for a film”. I then went with him to Gold Crest films (it was post “Chariots Of Fire”, and in the days of “Absolute Beginners”, and “Mission” with Jeremy Irons , that era) and they bought it! With me as the star!! I was going to do the music too, and I thought “MY GOD! Who needs a rock band, now I’m going to be really major?!” We wrote the screen play, we had a whole floor at Goldcrest, and we went off to Spain to recce all the filming locations ; and whilst we were away they released “Absolute Beginners” which flopped, and “Mission” which won a golden palm at Cannes, but didn’t do anything commercially, and in the space of a month ... Goldcrest toppled. So I was left once again, with nothing to do!

BUT - in the interim, a literary agent had sent my screen play to a book company and because they thought it was connected to a major film - I even had the posters announcing it at the film festival! - they paid me a ton of money to write the book. I was never going to write a book in my life! I wrote the thing with a pencil sat at a desk, all longhand! I thought I was going to be a movie star, or a rock star, and I would hire ghost writers! Then I thought, “well what the hell, I don’t even have a job” - so that became my job. After that I wrote books, and they worked. I never really thought as myself as a successful novelist, but now that I look back and see other people trying I see that I did have a really successful career as a novelist, and memoirist ... so that is how I got started. A writer by default! A writer who wanted to be a rock star, and a rock star who wanted to be a movie star - with no apparent credentials for any of them, other than having a big mouth!!

HR : [laughs] So Where do bikes fit in?

RLP: Oh - I had a bike when I was 16, a Norton. An English bike! I got arrested on the Norton for drunk driving it along the sidewalk in Atlanta Georgia. I was always in trouble, period, but motorcycles were part of my image. When I got to London, and Harleys started to be popular, I had always wanted a Harley. They were so beautiful to me, like metal sculptures. I think it was 1987 I got my first, and then I just wanted to customise them. I probably had well over $100000 invested in the one in “Hog Fever” - that bike was built between Fred Ward and the Hells Angels. The president of the Hells Angels had an accident and wrecked it right in front of me! So he rebuilt it, and then I rebuilt it over and over again until it was bought by a guy in Texas who put it in a museum ; when he died I bought it back. Bikes have always been a big part of my life ... and I’ve done my share of pilgrimages ...

HR : “Hog Fever” was a memoir you wrote, about the biker lifestyle, which you’ve now turned into an ‘Ear Movie’ - a film without images - what gave you the inspiration to do that?

RLP: The ‘ear movie’ started as a screen play ... Kevin Godley and I were introduced by a British film producer and that guy for some reason thought that my memoir “Hog Fever” - which was a big cult hit - would make a great movie. It had really great reviews, and I had travelled all over the USA, the UK and Ireland promoting it - It was sort of a send up of myself, as this mid-life urban biker who knew NOTHING about bikes, but who knew everything about how to look good on one! It was about me spending all my money on customising this motorcycle, and I hardly knew how to take a corner on it. It was more “memoir of a poser”! I eventually learned to ride the bike ... So Kevin had got his hands on it and had thought of an angle to do the screen play. Of course I had heard of 10CC, and every time I turned on the TV in the 80s there they were on Top Of The Pops, so I felt pretty honoured that this rock god would be interested in something I had written. So we hadn’t met in person at first, only talked on the phone, when he sent me some pages which were very funny. He has a brilliant wit - he’s very quirky with his humour. I’m generally the funny man, but I’m like the straight man to Kevin! I write the straight stuff and Kevin makes it go crazy.

So we started writing the screen play together, and this producer was going to produce it, and everybody and their uncle was going to direct it - it was very impressive, but the money never came along.

Kevin and I had a couple of meetings but it was the same old story - everybody is going to do it, and then it never gets done, and after a considerable amount of time it really just vanished. Kevin and I spoke sporadically but we stopped working on it.

Then about 4 years ago I started a publishing company [Escargot Books] because I was getting all my old copyrights; knew I could make some money on my old books, and I decided to do some audio books. So I decided that I would record “Hog Fever”. I hired a little studio in this tiny little town that I live in, and I got three days in to it and I thought “this is boring the hell out of me!”, and I just didn’t want to read any more. I didn’t want to do it, but I thought that there had to be some way of making it more entertaining, and I thought of the screenplay. I got home that very night and called Kevin and said “how about doing “Hog Fever”, as like an audio play - like an old radio play?” and he said “You mean an Ear Movie?”. I said “Exactly! An ear movie! We can do sound effects, we can do rock n roll, and a full soundtrack - like a movie without any pictures!” And we were off! Kevin wrote it really quickly - he took the old screen play and adapted it so fast - I was getting an episode every other day ... My friend Terence Stamp was here at the time, and he introduced me to this record producer that he was working with. We went in to him with a couple of pages of what Kevin had written, and fooled around playing all the parts that were written on the pages and this guy said “this is the funniest thing I have ever heard - I’d love to be involved” But that’s a whole other story, his involvement, because he ended up stealing the tapes and it cost us a lot of money to get them back! So that is the origin of how I became a writer not a rock star and then a maker of ear movies! HR : How difficult was it to produce?

RLP: Well we kind of made it up as we went along, and Kevin did a wonderful job in the studio. As you get into episodes 3, 4 and 5, when it starts to layer with sounds and music - I would be so excited when he’d send me an episode, I would put the head phones on and listen - and it was mixed like a rock and roll album. Sometimes I wonder if we could ever do it again, but I think we could ... HR : Kevin Godley says that people thought the screen play was “a bit f***in weird” - but it’s essentially part of your life story they’re talking about ...

RLP: [laughs] It is essentially based on my life, yes - the “Hog Fever” memoir. Some of the episodes are absolutely true ... however ... some of them have been reinterpreted and exaggerated. It’s reality based, but Kevin put a surreal paintbrush to it. But I think that’s the best art anyway. The best lie is always based on a bit of truth, isn’t it? That’s how Kevin and I work together - I tell the truth, and Kevin turns it into a surreal truth ... he takes my reality and elaborates upon it, and that’s where we really become a two headed monster in a way. I’m the research arm, and Kevin is the guy who takes the research to extremes!

HR : Are you contemplating something new?

RLP: Well ... Robert Lords may well emerge from a 20 year coma! I’m on another research mission.

HR : I don’t want to give too much away to potential listeners, but if you hadn’t have bumped into Billy Idol - who would have been your ideal riding companion?

RLP: It HAD to be Billy Idol! When I was in the rock band, I was pretty and blonde haired, and I loved his stuff. I wouldn’t say that he was my alter ego, but I would look at him and wished that’s how we could sound. Billy has that rock and roll fantasy quality, he wasn’t quite real was he, you know? with the lip and the chains ...

HR : You still play guitar, and compose songs -

RLP: I do, I do, I play every day ...

HR : How much of the music did you write for Hog Fever?

RLP: 5 songs are mine -2 are songs that my band recorded that were never released, and 3 that I wrote just for “Hog Fever”. Kevin wrote 4 or 5, Terence Stamp sings one, and then Daniel Ash [ex Bauhaus] has one on there too called “Flame On” - he plays two of the character parts too. Daniel is a good friend of mine that lives nearby - he’s a real rocker, and a real biker, although I’ve never known anyone like him - he has about 40 bikes! To have him be a part of this, with Kevin - it’s special ... The sound track is available with the ‘Ear Movie’ actually. I don’t know what to tell you to expect, you know? There’s really only one way to find out, and that’s give it a go!

Hog Fever is available from Amazon and Blackstone Audio - the soundtrack is available at CD Baby, and all the usual digital stores.

Richard LaPlante can currently be found here at https://www.richardlaplante.com/ He’s giving away his latest book “Real Strength” - it includes a guide to the lost art of breathing, amongst other things.

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