Steve Wynn is a solo artist as well as a founding member of the Dream Syndicate, Gutterball and the Baseball Project. Read/listen more at www.stevewynn.net and his Facebook page.
Steve Wynn fronts The Dream Syndicate, performs solo and with The Baseball Project, and is the author of the forthcoming memoir I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True; Vicki Peterson plays lead guitar in The Bangles, and performs with the Continental Drifters and in a duo with her husband, John Cowsill. Vicki contributed to Steve’s new solo record, Make It Right — out tomorrow on Fire Records — so to celebrate it all, the longtime friends got on a Zoom call to catch up.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Steve Wynn: Are you are you in Brooklyn right now?
Vicki Peterson: I am, yep.
Steve: So we’re close to each other. And yet—
Vicki: And yet, hours and hours by subway.
Steve: [Laughs.] Exactly. We now find ourselves both living in New York City, and a long ways from West LA.
Vicki: Aw, yeah. Crescent Heights.
Steve: So, this interview is partially because I have a book out about how we met and all the things that happened back then. You have three different Continental Drifters releases coming up — a retrospective, a tribute record, and a book — is that right?
Vicki: That’s correct. All of the above landing in September.
Steve: And landing just before September, I have a book and a new album. So my question is: did we see this all coming 43 years ago? Did we imagine, when I first met you early ‘82, that we’d be here talking on a thing called Zoom?
Vicki: [Laughs.] Like those magical video phone calls they had at Disneyland in 1968.
Steve: What would you have thought about that? If you could have looked ahead and seen all this stuff, would it have blown your mind? Or would you say, that’s the way things were meant to be?
Vicki: No. I was so hyper focused on the one band that was in front of me, and getting the flyers up for our next show and doing whatever we had to do to get our first 45 out into the world. Which you helped me with, thank you very much. Now, looking down the road — I mean, can you even imagine that you have written so many songs, so much music, in so many different configurations and with different collaborators? It’s phenomenal, and it speaks to who you are as an artist as well, that you just continue to create in a voluminous fashion. Which I find very irritating, but I’m very admiring of.
Steve: Well, I always say when I get tagged as “prolific,” I don’t see it that way, because when we grew up, people like David Bowie and Neil Young and Bob Dylan or Creedence Clearwater Revival — they’d make three records a year. The Beatles made their entire catalog in seven years. That’s prolific.
Vicki: You’re absolutely right. I remember I actually had a chance to ask George Martin about that. At the time, The Bangles were coming off of our second album and we were at the BPI Awards in London — which is like the British Grammys — and I had a chance to ask him, “How did you do that? How did you put out two albums a year?” Because my brain was exploding just with the idea that we managed to get a second album out after three years. It just takes up so much of your time, energy, love, life, everything. But he explained that going into the studio wasn’t something they did every six months or 18 months; they were in the studio all the time and cutting sides, cutting a track, cutting another track, and then all of a sudden — “Lo and behold, we have an album. Put it out.” So it was just a continual thing for them. Kind of like, I think, how you work. It’s just a daily thing.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, for me, they say that being busy is the best way to get things done, and I believe that if I have 10 things to do, I’ll get them all done. If I have one thing to do, I’ll fret and sweat over it and procrastinate. In my life right now, for example, having the Dream Syndicate and the Baseball Project and the book and a solo record and my one man solo tours and tours like we did together in England last year — all these different things fits into what you’re saying right now about how you were back then, just one foot in front of the other. You don’t even think about a master plan or even, “Is this good?” You just do what you do and move on. Of course, you want to put some kind of quality control on what you’re doing, and you’ll chisel away and say, “I have a better way of saying that line,” or a better way of recording the track. But if you’re really busy, you’re just making those snap judgments. I think that you and I, having done this for as long as we have, we’re better at snap judgments now than we might have been 40 years ago. Because it’s what we do. We’ve been doing this for a long time. Anything you do for 40 years—
Vicki: You eventually you get pretty good at it. I think I walk both sides of that because, yeah, there is that feeling of, “We need to be instinctive about this. Just get it done, don’t fret over it, don’t get too wrapped up in the details.” But then on the other hand, it did take my husband, John Cowsill, and I two years almost to finish a record. Partially because he was on the road with the Beach Boys at the time, and I was living in Brooklyn and our studio was in California, so there was some logistical reasons for that. But we really did sweat over that record, that we hopefully we’ll have coming out next year. Yet another project separate from the Continental Drifters and the Bangles.
Steve: That’s great. For our reading audience, I saw you and John play a show a few weeks back, and it was incredible. That’s meant to be; that’s a great combination.
You were kind enough to help me with the book, with reading it through and catching things I might have missed, and you also wrote a lovely blurb for the cover. And you said something about [how] you were amazed that I remembered all this stuff.
Vicki: Yes.
Steve: So far, I don’t think I’ve found anything that was wrong. I’m sure at some point, someone’s going to say, “No, no, no, it didn’t go down that way.” But I feel like it did. And I do very clearly remember the first time we met. I believe we met at the record store.
Vicki: That makes sense.
Steve: I worked at Rhino Records and in ‘81, ‘82, and if I’m not mistaken, you came in with the first Bangs single to give it to us on consignment.
Vicki: Yes.
Steve: Obviously I hadn’t heard it ‘til you brought it in, but I fell in love with the record. And I showed you my 15 Minutes single, and I think you said, “Where did you get those plastic bags?” I said, “Well, let me tell you about plastic bags.” We went out to Tom’s Number 5 burger place on Pico and Sawtelle, and I talked to you and Susanna [Hoffs] about plastic bags and putting out records. I had an unfair advantage by working at Rhino, because I knew how independent records were made, how they got to distributors. And I was glad to share that knowledge with all my friends. I was excited about it.
Vicki: Yeah, it was an unknown world to me, for sure. Because this was a very DIY era. We produced our own 45s. We made our own covers — we literally went to the copy shop and xeroxed them, folded them, cut and pasted the design. This was so homemade. And I’ve heard the original “Getting Out of Hand” single in its original package goes for over $350 now. I don’t think I even have one anymore.
Steve: I mean, yeah, same thing. I remember the first EP, we actually did rub-on letters.
Vicki: There you go — Letraset.
Steve: I sat there with the coin on the rub on letters, and that was the cover. That’s what you did. And at that time, obviously there had been independent singles; in fact, my job at the record store was to take them all on consignment. And two people that came into the store with records on consignment: you and Peter Buck, in that same little period of time. “I have five singles. Can you take them?” “Sure!”
Vicki: “Why not!”
Steve: Why not. But at that time, it was still kind of a new thing, to do your own records. Even in the punk rock days, even when the whole 1977 thing happened, bands were still signing to major labels. The Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, the Jam — they were all on big labels. So there still wasn’t an idea of, how do you do this yourself, what roadmap is there for doing it? We all learned at the same time.
Vicki: Yeah. We all figured it out, and thankfully shared some information. We’d find a cool studio like Radio Tokyo in Venice, and find out, “Oh, so and so recorded there? We can record there for $20 an hour. We can make this work, we can record this record for 200 bucks.” Whatever it took. But yeah, there was a nice community of shared information at that time.
Steve: Thank god we all tried to help each other out. We read about scenes — Liverpool in the early ‘60s or New York City in the ‘70s and Manchester in the ‘90s — and you hear a lot about bands being competitive. Our scene, there was no sense of competition. We were all helping each other. We were all bonding together because we felt like such outsiders in LA. Do you see it that way?
Vicki: Yeah, absolutely. We were a subset in LA, and thank god we all found each other right around the same time. It’s sort of existential and supernatural in so many ways. But we found each other, and I was a big fan of all these bands. I just wanted to go see them play. “Oh, I get to play the same night? Great. Let’s do a show together. We’ll open!” [Laughs.]
Steve: In the book, I’m very straightforward to say that you guys were the best band of the bunch and that you were the most professional, most accomplished. You had your shit together more than any of the bands. I would see you guys and you had the harmonies down, you had the arrangements down, and you were still rocking out with full abandon. And that wasn’t the same for our band. We were just a gigantic mess that somehow landed on our feet more often than not. And the Salvation Army, for example — who would always blow my mind because they would start a song fast and end three times as fast — but it wasn’t what you would call ready made for the charts. But it was a cool scene. You guys were so accomplished, and it leads me to say — why were you always opening?
Vicki: You know, just very amenable. I don’t know. We were professional, but none of us were trying to be competitive in that sense. It wasn’t important, to be honest. We definitely wanted to get paid equally with with our pals — and we did, as far as I know. As long as that was there, I don’t think any of us really minded. And, you know, you play your set, you have a good time, you pack up, and you get to watch everybody else for the rest of the night without having to think about, “Oh, we’re going on in 40 minutes.” That’s part of the fun too, because like I said, we’re just fans.
Steve: I like that. I’ve always enjoyed opening because I like being done with the set, grabbing a beer, and just watching other bands play. I’d like to think that all of our bands would have reached their audience and had success without each other, but I think having that scene made it a lot easier for people to digest what we were doing.
Vicki: I think so, too. And there was a lot of crossover, because there were a lot of fans of the Three O’Clock who became hardcore Dream Syndicate fans. You know, I found out about the Dream Syndicate not through the LA Weekly, but through Carmel Moran at Faulty Products [Records], where I was bringing our little 45. She said, “Oh, yeah, well, the Dream Syndicate are playing.” I said, “I don’t think I know them.” She goes, “You don’t know the Dream Syndicate?!” Her mind exploded like, “You’ve got to check out this band.” Which I did immediately, and fell in love, of course. But in some cases, I think the people who were coming to our shows, maybe because they heard about the Bangs, they’d hang out, watch the Dream Syndicate, and their minds get blown.
Steve: You’re right, because even though we had, at that time especially, more in common with each other’s bands than we did with the rest of the scene, we were still very different with very different kinds of fans.
Vicki: Yeah.
Steve: The thing I always talk about with every band — you guys did quite well for yourselves, the Salvation Army became a kind of slick pop band, and we became kind of more Americana, classic rock, whatever it was — but in that first year, we were all pretty punk rock. I think something people don’t realize about that scene and those bands is we were all getting a lot from what happened in the late ‘70s, from punk rock.
Vicki: Absolutely.
Steve: We weren’t polishing it up. We were getting wild, all three of those bands.
Vicki: Yeah, we were all kind of a mess in different ways. [Laughs.] But a beautiful mess. But yeah, some of the aesthetics, the attitude, the energy, the sort of psychological approach to making music and to performing — that was definitely from punk rock. It was so liberating. Because like you, I had a band in high school and through college, but there was the little sheen of perfection that you were supposed to have that we never had. But all of a sudden coming to LA and starting to meet bands like you guys and getting a sense of who was around and what was happening, it was like, None of that matters! It just matters that you are in the moment, that you are singing with everything you’ve got, and who cares if you made a mistake or if everyone started in a different key? There were a lot less attention on perfection. Like, no attention on perfection. [It was] really just about attitude, and I think that did come from punk rock.
Steve: I think you’re right. One thing I think defines that scene — and I should fact check on this because I’m not sure — but I believe almost all the members of our bands and Salvation Army Three O’Clock were all or mostly LA natives. Is that correct?
Vicki: Yeah. Well, Long Ryders were were out of towners.
Steve: They’re not true Paisley Underground. [Laughs.]
Vicki: They’re adjacent. [Laughs.] Paisley Adjacent.
Steve: I bring this up because I feel like back in those days, probably most musicians in LA were from somewhere else, and they’d come to LA to make it, which always was such a funny thing. I’m looking at Green on Red, Long Ryders. They came to LA — they would tell you this — because that’s where you had to go. And I wonder sometimes if a lot of our approach was because as LA natives, we didn’t really think as much about the music business. We weren’t necessarily trying to make it. It was a byproduct, but we had no relationship to that. Would you agree with that?
Vicki: Well, if you read my high school journals, the words “rich and famous” appear many times — often as one word, “richandfamous” — because my girlfriends and I definitely had visions of grandeur. When I first met Susanna Hoffs, I was trying to get a read on what her level of commitment was going to be, so I said, “What are you looking for?” And she said, “The Top-permost of the Pop-permost.” I said, “World domination?” “Yes.” I said, “We’re in. Let’s go.” So we did have that sense of, we’re doing this and we are going to take it as far as it can go, for sure. But yes, that sense of coming to another place, maybe reinventing yourself so that you can be a rock star — that wasn’t really a part of the equation.
Steve: Yeah. It all came later on for all of us. We had to grapple with it in our own ways after a while. But at the beginning, it wasn’t part of what was going on there. And I know you’ve told me before that you had that kind of Beatles, “Top-permost of the Pop-permost,” because that was a main touchstone for you guys. I think that, among many other things, would explain why you did so well. You were going for it. You had the talent and the savvy and the good record collection, but plus that drive. We were the opposite, and we would do all we could to shoot ourselves in the foot, because we saw that as a badge of honor at the time.
Vicki: Of course.
Steve: One thing I regret when I look back: I think we tried so hard to be contrary. Which suited us well at first. Like, “Oh, this is a band doing things on stage that people don’t do.” But after a while, that determination to be contrary and challenge people was not a badge of honor. It wasn’t a good thing. I often envy you guys. Once you saw early flashes of success, you said, “We’re going to make the most out of this. What a great opportunity we have. We’re playing the music we love and people like it. Let’s make it happen.” I admire that about you guys.
Vicki: Well, thank you. But we also acquired a machine behind us, and you can’t discount that. We did end up on a major label — we signed to Columbia. Initially they had no idea what to do with us and had no idea how they were going to market us, because of course, you are now a product. But there was money put behind us, there was support put behind us. And I have to say, the reality of the business is that you need that to get to the next spot or to give you those next opportunities. They’re going to get you on the morning TV shows, and then the late night TV shows if you’re lucky, and then you can build your career from there. But you’re right. And I always did admire that about you guys in the beginning, that you didn’t give a fuck about how you were going to be perceived. “Yeah, we’re going to play this one song for 45 minutes and you’re just going to like it, or not. And if you don’t like it, whatever. We’re going to have fun.”
Steve: And we did that because we cared. It wasn’t self-sabotaging just for the sake of doing it. It was actually this idea of, “We need to make sure every time we go out there, it’s something different and brand new, something people have never seen before.”
Vicki: Totally.
Steve: I remember the first time we played the Roxy, right after Days of Wine and Roses came out, we went on and — something that was very rare for us — played a straight set. We played the songs like they were on the album and we played them straight forward. I didn’t say anything obnoxious. Or, I probably did anyway.
Vicki: [Laughs.]
Steve: But I remember walking off stage and talking to Dennis [Duck] and being miserable. I felt like we had just sold out. I couldn’t believe we had taken this chance to be in this hallowed club and not turn it upside down. I was really upset about that. Looking back, it’s ridiculous. But that’s how I felt every show. “What can we do tonight?”
Vicki: I got that. And to be honest, that’s what made Dream Syndicate shows in those days a do-not-miss situation, because you just didn’t know what you were going to get. But I understand. That was an interesting gamble you had to take that night. Like, “OK, are we now going to be the pseudo-mainstream band and just play our songs the way people like them? Or are we going to do what we normally do and blow it up?” To be honest, I don’t remember if I was there that night, but as a fan, I would have frickin’ loved to hear the record played back-to-front. Color me happy.
Steve: One of the main reasons I wanted to reunite the band as a touring and recording band is to have a second chance and make up for all the mistakes that I perceived we made back then. And we have. We’ve done things the way we would have liked to have maybe done it back then. That leads me to the question: our bands have both reunited various times. Well, you guys never really actually broke up.
Vicki: We never broke up. We still haven’t broken up.
Steve: You go away for a while and then come back. But having seen four or five Bangles shows in the last, say, 10 years or so — they’re great, and they’re not only physically the band that I saw, the same four people, but it’s almost like you homed in on the band I saw back when we started. Was that a conscious thing to say, “Let’s be the band we started out as being?”
Vicki: We did, and it probably started right around when we were promoting the 3 x 4 record that we did together with the Dream Syndicate and the Rain Parade. We did our first concert together, and we all decided, “Let’s keep the set list pre-1986,” or whatever year we decided on. Which I absolutely loved. And we realized that we were having more fun playing the older songs, because to me, it still felt like that was the essence of the Bangles, that garage band that you would see where maybe they didn’t hit every harmony, but boy, they sure tried. And there were loud, messy guitars, a really good rhythm section and really nice harmony vocals.That was, to me, the essence of the Bangs and the Bangles. So going back to that and actually bringing Annette Zilinskas back in as our bass player — she was willing to step in — that also brought that essence back to us. It was really fun. I mean, we dabble in all the eras, but that’s still my favorite era of the band.
Steve: I’m a fan of all eras, but I do like that. And of course, it’s very nostalgic for me to hear when you guys play a show that reminds me of being in 1982. I remember when we did the Paisley Underground shows back in 2013 — we did the two shows in California with your band, our band, Three O’Clock, and Rain Parade — and I think there wasn’t any song newer than 1983. That was great. I think about the fact that and, again, you couldn’t imagine this when we were starting out, but at this moment, more or less, all these bands are still active. It’s a nice time. None of us want to be seen as museum pieces or trading on the past, but we have a lot of past out there to curate as we want
Vicki: To honor it.
Steve: I’m very excited because we’re going to have a box set reissue of Medicine Show coming out next spring or summer. And as you know, that’s a record that kind of was our bloated whale. But it was a record that that I really care about a lot and I’m excited to be able to take it back in a way, to remaster it, to write about it in the liner notes, to position it for what it is — which is, I think, a very good record. I guess what I’m saying is: it’s nice having the hindsight of our past to be able to make it right.
Vicki: Absolutely. You have the right to to comment on your own past. And yeah, I mean, there is that sense of, “No, I only want to look forward, I don’t want to look back.” But to be honest, I mean, who better to curate these things and to talk about them than we?
Steve: I’ll go back to Peter Buck as an example. He’s often said, “All I want at the end of this is to have a giant stack of records I made and say, ‘I did that.’” And I kind of feel like, here we are doing what we do still. You and John doing new songs and playing shows and reinventing what it is like to be a husband or a wife duo on the road. The Continental Drifters are active. All these things, and we get to do them. We’re always going to make missteps. We’re always going to have a song we wish had been mixed better. But we have the hindsight of all the things we’ve learned. And I guess from where I started the interview — I think we would have been pretty excited to see ourselves at the age we are now. Don’t do the math.
Vicki: [Laughs.] Yeah, no kidding. We’d be surprised to find ourselves alive.
Steve: [Laughs.] Me more than you.
Vicki: You win. But yeah, cheers to our 20 year old selves.
