Vitus Mataré talks Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Last and DIY Production
Vitus Mataré is a Los Angeles-based musician, producer and architect.
Mataré was a founding member of The Last, Danny and the Doorknobs and Trotsky Icepick. As a producer, he recorded some of the earliest and most coveted Los Angeles DIY punk records, including The Urinals’ first three 7”s and the Keats Rides a Harley compilation. Mataré would later produce The Leaving Trains and Savage Republic.
The focus of this interview was Mataré’s brief tenure in Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s pre-Gun Club band, The Red Lights. Short-lived and with a revolving membership, Mataré played The Red Lights’ summer 1978 debut show. Two years later, he became the Gun Club’s first producer—recording the band on his portable Dokorder 4-track reel-to-reel.
Recently, Mataré released a new Trotsky Icepick record, I Haunted Myself (2019). The Last’s ill-fated and obscenely expensive sophomore LP, Look Again (1980), will finally get a proper release in 2020.
Ryan: Do you recall where you first met Jeffrey Lee Pierce?
Vitus: I met Jeffrey Lee Pierce at the Capitol Records Swap Meet. Jeff was there selling records and hanging out.
Ryan: That’s where Larry (Hardy) first spotted him.
Vitus: Right. Jeff was always roaming around the Capitol Records Swap Meet in his typical style. Over the top, excited about this and that. When Jeff found something that he was interested in, he got into it one-hundred percent.
Ryan: Did you meet him in 1978?
Vitus: Yes. I met Jeffrey in 1978.
Ryan: Being a big fan of power-pop and ‘60s groups, it makes sense that Jeffrey was a Last fan. How did he enter The Last’s orbit?
Vitus: There was a gig (September 18, 1979) at Gazzarri’s and The Last played with Jeffrey’s band, The Cyclones. Pleasant Gehman was the singer. We put it on. The show was a disaster. It was hard to get a draw. It was The Go-Go’s first real show and the first time The Urinals played in Hollywood. We put our favorite people in bands together for the bill: Jeff with The Cyclones, The Last, The Urinals and The Go-Go’s.
Kjehl Johansen (The Urinals) punched me in the nose while we were dancing to The Go-Go’s set, so I had a bloody nose for the rest of the night. But before I got punched, I sat down with Jeff at soundcheck. He showed me the chords to “Jungle Book,” a song he had done with The Red Lights. “Jungle Book” is one of the first songs I learned to play on guitar. Jeffrey was teaching me the song and guitar at the same time. That was really cool. We were just killing time. (The Last’s) Joe (Nolte) was there and had already suggested that we start incorporating “Jungle Book” into The Last’s set.
Shortly after the Gazzarri’s gig, we played a show with The Plugz and Jeff came up and sang “Jungle Book” with us. Phast Phreddie also came up that night and sang The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard.” There were several other gigs where Jeff sang with The Last.
Ryan: How did you and the late Jack Reynolds (drummer of The Last) end up playing with Jeff and Anna Statman in The Red Lights?
Vitus: Jack Reynolds was a whole different story. Jack passed away (in December 2009). I liked Jack a lot—he was great—but he was a tough guy. He enjoyed getting into fights and drinking and perhaps taking drugs to excess. Jack didn’t drive, so I was his driver. We’d be cruising in my beat-up sedan, his drums thrown in the back with no cases, and we’d go by a construction site at 7:30 p.m. on our way to a show at the Starwood. He’d say in his British accent, “Woah, woah, pull over!” He’d find a chunk of concrete with rebar sticking out of it at a jobsite, throw it in my backseat—there goes that bit of upholstery—and he’d walk into the club with it. It’s 8:00 p.m. at the Whisky or the Starwood, so there’s no one there but the bouncers. They’d say, “Hey, fella, where are you going with that?” Jack would respond, “Have I got to stick it up your arse? Out of my way.” Even the bouncers would leave him alone. He’d use the concrete to weigh down his kick drum. After the set, he’d abandon the 200-pound concrete chunk up on the stage. I remember we played a show with 20/20 and the guys in the band were getting their guitar cables snagged on the rebar sticking out of Jack’s concrete block. The three of them couldn’t lift it whereas Jack brought it up there himself.
Greg Shaw brings in a band from New York called The Boyfriends. I don’t know what they ever did—apparently they were really good—but I never got a chance to find out. The Last was opening up for them at the Whisky. It was a night Greg Shaw put together and promoted. We’re late; Jack’s in my car and he had forgotten his cymbals. The Boyfriends had done their soundcheck and they’re gone. We get to the Whisky and someone walks past us. Jack says (affects British accent), “Hey, can I borrow your drummer’s cymbals there?” The guy responds, “Sure. Help yourself.” Well, he had nothing to do with The Boyfriends or their equipment. Jack breaks his drums sticks as usual, so he’s out there playing with beer bottles on the guy’s cymbals. The Boyfriends’ drummer is not pleased about it.
We got an encore. We’re in that little black corridor that’s up the stairs at the Whisky, towards the backstage. The Boyfriends’ drummer grabs Jack as we’re headed back to the stage. I guess the message he was trying to convey was, “Hey, who said you could use my cymbals?” Jack responds by pummeling this guy’s head into the wall. That’s all we heard: “Thud, thud, thud.” The Boyfriends’ drummer went to the hospital that night and they never played. I can give you ten other similar Jack Reynolds stories. So, when Jeff (Pierce) asked, “Hey, would you be willing to play Farfisa with me and do you know someone who can play drums?” I just figured, “Well, Jack’s drums live in my car, so why don’t I bring him too?”
I only played one show with The Red Lights (July 14, 1978, at the Whisky benefit for Lobotomy fanzine). The lineup was me on Farfisa, Jack Reynolds on drums, Jeff on guitar and vocals and Anna Statman on bass. It was rather unrehearsed. We had one practice at a place called The Jungle. Jeff was really fun, but he was unsure of himself. He could get cranky and difficult.
We played The Red Lights show and Jeff did great but he was embarrassed about it for no reason. There were only a few people there and most of them didn’t get it. Nevertheless, it was awesome.
Ryan: The Red Lights only played a handful of shows. Was Jack Reynolds their permanent drummer?
Vitus: Jack wasn’t. Jeff had to use other people. Jack may have played two or three gigs with The Red Lights. I only played that one and I do not know how many more gigs followed.
Ryan: There’s a photo and review of your Red Lights show at the Whisky in issue #9 of Flipside.
Vitus: I remember Al (Kowalewski, founder of Flipside) asking us our names for the show write-up. He asked Jack Reynolds his name. Jack was drunk, possibly stoned and angry so he said, “I’m Jeff Fucking Beck.” Al’s like, “Okay, dude.” And then Jack points to me and yells, “The keyboard player, his name is Keyboard Player!” That’s why Al’s review credits me as Keyboard Player and Jack as Jeff Beck. I remember a lot of nights like that with Jack.
On the other hand, Jeff (Pierce) was never belligerent or impossible when he was drunk. I know other people will tell you totally different stories. I only had great experiences with Jeff.
Later on, I did some preproduction with The Gun Club. I arranged with this guy Patrick (Burnette) over at Quad Teck—it was Hank Waring’s studio—to record The Gun Club. I had everything lined up but then I accidentally drank some gasoline. I got very, very sick and I had to go to the hospital and wasn’t available for that session. They went with Tito (Larriva), which was a great choice. Of course, that later became Fire of Love. But I was originally scheduled to engineer and produce that at Quad Teck.
Ryan: So, you were going to record the Gun Club tracks for the 12” split release that was supposed to come out on Fatima Recordz? The Gun Club was going to get one side of the LP; no one seems to recall the band who’d get the other side. When Fatima went belly-up, those tracks later appeared on Fire of Love (1981).
Vitus: Right. It all worked out for the best and I fully recovered. There were so many incidents back then where something took a wild left turn because of some issue or emergency.
Ryan: Do you remember recording The Gun Club tracks for the Keats Rides a Harley (1981) compilation? Obviously, those recordings predated Fire of Love.
Vitus: Of course. We recorded those tracks at a horrible rehearsal space next to Hollywood High School. I can’t recall the name of the place, but I do remember it was named after the street it was on. I recorded The Gun Club on my cheap, 4-track Dokorder. It was a pretty low-budget, multitrack recorder.
Ryan: Digressing back a bit, to my knowledge the first releases you produced were the Urinals 7”s.
Vitus: I did stuff way earlier when I was a little kid. There were two guys who got kicked out of The Seeds. I recorded them when I was 13 years old. I was using my parent’s reel-to-reel and two fabulous electrostatic mics. They were amazed I could do sound-on-sound recording.
But coming back later, The Urinals Self-titled EP (1978) was the first vinyl record I had recorded by a band other than The Last. The Last was recording (L.A. Explosion!) at Village Recorder in West Los Angeles. There are four studios at Village Recorder. At the time, Fleetwood Mac is in there doing Tusk (1979). They’re tucked away with their cocaine and other vapors. Frank Zappa is in another studio where the air is clean and he’s doing parts of Joe’s Garage (1979) and Sheik Yerbouti (1979). The other studio has a high turnover rate; the Stranglers used it while we were there. And we’re in this dingy little room known as The Royal Scam. All of the equipment in there belonged to Steely Dan. John Harrison, the first bass player of Hawkwind, got us in there. Harrison was the engineering guru for what was happening in the Zappa sessions.
When I got a test pressing of the first Urinals single I was so proud to have it that I gave my copy to John Harrison. Harrison ended up passing it on to Frank Zappa. The next night when I came in—we’d start at around midnight—John Harrison says to Zappa, “Hey, Frank, this is the guy who produced that record I gave you last night.” Zappa is lying down in this little step-down conversation pit on the couch. He can’t see me; I can barely see his shoes sticking out. He doesn’t get up but says, “That’s the worst damn record I’ve ever heard. But with a name like that (The Urinals), they should go far.”
Ryan: Considering Zappa was a big fan of The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World (1969), that’s saying something. John (Talley-Jones), Kjehl (Johansen) and Kevin (Barrett) really outdid themselves.
Vitus: (Laughs). Yeah. The Urinals singles predated The Gun Club stuff.
Ryan: I was under the impression that you were more interested in producing bands than playing in them. And that those early recordings you made with your 4-track were out of necessity—for groups just starting out or that were too left of the dial to get a recording contract.
Vitus: That’s right. And I never thought about major releases. For example, I never thought of recording The Go-Go’s. I would be hampering their progress. Same thing when The Bangles asked me to record them, back when they were called The Bangs. That’s not really what I did. I wanted to make records that sound like you’re in the shower and the water is beating on your eardrum. I would record bands so they’d have tapes to bring to clubs to get bookings. The recordings didn’t need to be overly clean.
Ryan: It easy to forget nowadays, but back in the 1970s you had different-tiered studios. Places where people would cut demos to pitch to Club 88 on one end and 24-track studios on the other end.
Vitus: Exactly. I was helping bands get their songs recorded. I wasn’t working under some delusion that I’d be in a 24-track studio, cutting tracks with these bands a week later.
Ryan: How did the Keats Rides a Harley compilation come together?
Vitus: There are two different versions of that story. John Talley-Jones has one version and I probably have another. The compilation was sort of my idea. Initially, The Urinals’ record was going to come out on Backlash. And there were two issues that came up at the same time. The Last’s manager, Randall Wixen, had started a publishing company called Backlash. He just took the name and then asked us to stop putting out records under the name Backlash. The other issue was that I played the first Urinals single for Joe Nolte when he wasn’t in a good mood. Joe ended up loving The Urinals, but at the time he said, “Hey, don’t put that crap out on our label, please.” That kind of jettisoned everything. I remember The Urinals were a bit disappointed when I told them, “Dudes, it’s not going to come out on Backlash, so let’s make up another record label name.” They came up with Happy Squid and put it out themselves.
Joe and I always had our differences. I was drafted into The Last to play keyboards, but what I wanted was to be the Magic Alex—the guy who did sound effects and produced stuff. I wanted to record bands. I didn’t want to be on stage. I hated that. I didn’t get to do that with The Last, but I got to do it with The Gun Club and The Urinals which was great.
I wasn’t doing whole records, just demo tapes, but I thought the sampler concept was a good idea. I wanted to put together a record that was a snapshot of what was happening in that particular garage on that street at that point in time. We just pulled all these bands together. The Urinals came up with the title of the record and actually put it together and got it out.
Ryan: It’s an exceptional comp. Living in Arizona, The Meat Puppets mailed their recordings in. But you recorded the rest of the album and the bands are exceptional. Human Hands, Gun Club, Leaving Trains, 100 Flowers…
Vitus: All of those groups had people in them who were interesting to hang out with. They weren’t idiots or burnouts. To this day, the ones who are still alive remain great people to chat with.
Ryan: For Gun Club fans, Keats is a must have. As you mentioned, the recording is raw, but everything is mixed well. You can hear Rob Ritter’s bass and he remains the unsung hero of the early Gun Club. Fire of Love (1981) and Miami (1982) are great records, but their mixes aren’t the best.
Vitus: The tracks on Keats have poor frequency response, but great atmosphere.
Ryan: There’s another Last connection to Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Red Lights. “Jungle Book” appears on The Last’s ill-fated sophomore record, Look Again (1980). Only test presses were made of that record, correct?
Vitus: I’ll tell you the whole story if you have ten minutes.
Ryan: Absolutely. I remember around 2004 seeing a copy of Look Again at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles selling for several hundred dollars.
Vitus: It’s not a good investment. It’s about to be reissued. I think it’s coming out on a label I’m not allowed to mention. Jonny Bell is doing the remixes right now. We baked and transferred those reels. But what needs to be told about that record is that we were not to produce it ourselves. Joe (Nolte) was to stay out of Jo Julian’s way. He was from the band Berlin. Julian co-engineered and produced the record even though he apparently had zero interest in doing so. There was a studio called Audio Arts. I believe Julian needed to get some sessions in and out and collect some money, so that’s what we were about.
Ryan: That’s a horrible situation to be in.
Vitus: Yeah. We were totally unimportant. Joe (Nolte) quickly realized that there was a bad vibe. Joe had a lot of input into L.A. Explosion! That was Joe’s record. It’s about Joe as a songwriter. I had one song (“A Fool Like You”) in there that made fun of A&R people. The second record was supposed to be a closer split between me and Joe. I would write one-third of the songs, and I would have more say about the production because it was supposed to be more pop. So I get locked out of the control room when it was time to mix. Jo Julian does direct injection on a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, a Rickenbacker bass and a Farfisa. So, you have all this lovely 4,000-cycle signal with no life to it. John Frank, The Last’s new drummer, couldn’t hear us as we were playing. The mixes were terrible even though Joe’s songs are great. At the very least, it should’ve been interesting, but it wasn’t. Today we’re going back and re-amping the signals. Not adding anything, but getting a clean mix. The record should be out in late spring (2020). And “Jungle Book” is on there. It’s also on the new Trotsky Icepick record that is called I Haunted Myself (2019).
Ryan: Listening to you describe the Look Again situation, I’m able to put the pieces together. At least locally, The Last were really popular around the time of L.A. Explosion!
Vitus: The Look Again debacle killed it.
Ryan: You guys even had a billboard on the Sunset Strip, right?
Ryan: That’s a real shame.
Vitus: All of that is fine. We got to play some great shows and events. There were wonderful experiences. And we never got dragged on the road and stiffed by some bar owner in Arkansas.
We played a Gronk and Jerry Dreva art exhibit Downtown with The Screamers and The Bags in an art gallery. What an experience. Ray Manzarek autographed my keyboard. David Bowie was in the audience, wanting to produce The Screamers. There was a whole energy to that night. It was better than having a number-one record.
