I wanted to talk about the Candy Butchers, not only as your launching point, but also what studios were like back then versus now.
Oh, yeah; let's get into it. I grew up outside of Boston, in the ‘80s. There was an incredible punk rock scene in Boston then. I was a kid playing music and I knew the three chords, I knew how to ape the rock stars that I loved, and I pulled it off. I got gigs around town. And then the press started calling me a rock 'n' roll prodigy – which was absurd, because it's three chords and some kid singing about skipping school and about his girlfriends. But there was something about the androgynous nature of my age and my size. Things happened quickly. I was 13, I was playing in rock 'n' roll clubs like The Rat, The Channel, and Jack’s. I was playing with my friends who were also 13, and we [The Bottom Line] started getting a following. We didn't listen to punk rock. We listened to Foreigner, Rush, and Ozzy [Osbourne]. But when we tried to play that music, we sounded like The Buzzcocks! We went door-to-door in our neighborhood and gathered money to go into a recording studio. We got enough money to buy three hours. And the name of the studio was Euphoria Sound Studios, in Revere, Massachusetts, right on the beach.
Awesome!
It was the ‘80s, but this was built in the ‘70s. It was carpeted everywhere and smelled like stale cigarette smoke. We set up, we had three hours, and we're thinking, “Okay, we're going to record every song Mike has ever written.” [laughter] We set up and the guy gets sounds. His name was Gordon [Hookailo], and he was a very good engineer. He was laughing the whole time because we were just ready for it. My mom was in the lounge, and my dad was there chain-smoking and putting out cigarette butts in our Coca-Cola cans. I remember this so vividly. We're recording, and we're burning. We're killing it. We asked, “Can we do another song?” So, we did 12 songs. We took a break for lunch, and we listened to the songs. The first time I heard the playback, I said, “This doesn't sound good.” It didn't sound like [Rush's] 2112 or Moving Pictures. [laughter] Gordon said, “Well, you’ve got to do overdubs.” I asked, “What's that?” He told me, and I said, “Oh, yeah. Let's do overdubs.” We did overdubs and we finished three complete songs. While we're doing that, my mom picked up a Musician magazine – not the nationwide Musician magazine, it was a local New England magazine called Musician – and Kim Fowley, a notorious L.A. impresario, was on the cover. In the magazine, he says, “I'm looking for the next superstar, so send me your cassettes. I will listen to them, and I will reply to every single one.” My mom, unbeknownst to us, steals the magazine! We finished this recording, and it was good. We ended up liking it. My voice was so high, and we had [Remo] Rototoms – let's leave it at that. [laughter] My mom sent a tape to Kim Fowley. The beige kitchen wall phone rang during dinner one night and Kim says, “I'm looking for Mike Viola. This is Kim Fowley calling from Hollywood, California. I want you to come out and make a record with me.” I was 13!
That’s insane!
I know. My mom got on the phone and they arranged for me to go out for winter break in February. I wanted to bring my whole band, and he said, “No, I'm just interested in you coming out. We will write the songs and then we'll talk about the band.” He flies me out, puts me up at The Tropicana, and there was The Pretenders' tour bus right out in front.
Did your mom go with you?
I was with my mom and my brother. I wrote a record with Kim Fowley, and he got me a record deal. He taught me how to write songs the way I do now. It was a master class in songwriting, freedom, and being a freak. He saw me and said, “You're a superstar.” Like an Andy Warhol superstar.
He saw the art in you.
He said, “It's okay to blurt whatever you're feeling. The odds are that it’s probably better than what you're thinking.” He taught me that the songs are in your body. We wrote these songs, I got home, and I played the songs for my band. My band said, “These songs suck.” [laughter] "This guy sucks, he's a creep, and we need to get back to what we were doing." So, I bailed on Kim Fowley and ignored him. He would call the kitchen phone at dinnertime and start swearing and calling me all sorts of shit. But anyhow, that was my first experience in the recording studio. I learned at a young age how to do it – what an overdub was, don't get too close to the mic, what a pop screen is for, how to get rid of a ground buzz on your guitar, and what an echo chamber is. The recordings are so beautiful, and I love them so much. I tracked down George on Facebook and asked, “Is there any chance there's a closet somewhere in Revere with all the master tapes?” He's like, “No.” That would be so fun to get my hands on that.
Do you only have a cassette?
