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TITO & TARANTULA INTERVIEW |
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1 2 Faerie Fee: So tell us how did the Tito & Tarantula got its name? Tito: Well I had a band for maybe a year or more, and I didn’t have a name so we just played for fun, work too, I used the band for movies. But we would just play as Tito & friends, and then one day my friends said “you should call it something, like anything, like Tito & Tarantula, and I said “Oh, that sounds good, I like that” (laughs), and that’s really the truth, that’s why. But then later, I liked it for many other reasons, because of it’s hairy legs, eight legs, and there’s a book that Bob Dylan wrote, called “Tarantula”, it was the only book he wrote, and then my father made a funny joke about tarantulas in Mexico, they say ‘tarantula’ for a woman’s… thing, you know, so every time I met somebody, it was more perfect… (laughs) Darkness 69: It became more suitable. Tito: Yes, as it grows, it becomes better. Darkness 69: Actually, now that you mentioned Bob Dylan, he sort of participated in an album of yours… Tito: Oh yes, he did… Darkness 69: In 2001 I think. Tito: Yeah well, my band played with him for almost a year. And then we asked him to play on our record, and he played harmonica. So, we’re known him since… ’84, and we’re very lucky. Darkness 69: When people describe Tito & Tarantula as a “cult band”, what are your thoughts on such a description of your band? Tito: I like it, I’ve always been associated with a cult band because of the Plugz. Me and Stevie… Stevie was in the Plugz later, it was one of the first LA punk bands and we were one of the first bands to produce our own record. I think our album the Plugz – “Electrify Me”, that album was first album from the LA punk scene. Then we made many other records, I produced records too in the punk era. And this cult status started then. Then when I worked with Stevie, he joined the Plugz later, and we did a movie together called “Repo Man”, this made it even more cult cause this movie was very… I think in the beginning it’s one of the first like cult kind of punk films ever, and the same director who did “Sid and Nancy”, Alex Cox - this was his first movie. And he was a big the Plugz fan, so he would come to all our shows and then we did this movie. At the same time we did another movie with the director named Jonathan Demme, this was in like ’81, and for this movie we used this guy named David Campbell to do the strings arrangement. His son was Beck, he grew up to be Beck. He played accordian, he was a little 10-year old boy… and the movie was directed by Jonathan Demme, it starred Rosanna Arquette, who was in Pulp Fiction, and also David Byrne, who was the singer of Talking Heads. And this was a really small movie, cult movie too, but what was interesting from that movie, David Byrne made another movie that I was in, as an actor, called Ramone, and that was called “True Stories”, and this was another cult movie, that was very popular in the late ‘80s, and it started that many stories, John Goodman starred in it… Darkness 69: Very connected with the cult scene. Tito: The cult thing has been a part of my life for a long time, yeah.
Darkness 69: How do you usually like to qualify your music? Or you tend to avoid such branding? Tito: What’s funny is I don’t… there’s not a real specific thing that I could call it… but a lot of different people call it different things, depending on what they’re listening to. And because we’ve been around for so many years, and we’re done so many different things, that the more, if you like… you were at the show, some of it is kinda bluesy, some of it is very spaghetti western, some of it is really punk, and there are all the different thing that we have done for movies. But also it’s things that are part of us in being a Mexican, and being from the desserts, being from the border, this is our influences, so we love all these influences, Mexican, ZZ Top, punk, well the punk thing came from LA, and that’s why it’s so different. So I think I used to think that is a bad thing, and then I realised later “No this isn’t a bad thing”. It’s ok”. Darkness 69: Yeah, different influences, various sources… Tito: Yeah, I think a lot of bands do have these influences and they stay away from them sometimes, because they want to be a certain thing. And that’s good too, but I think they’re missing something. For me, it frees me from being “Oh, I can’t do that, because I can’t sing in Spanish, I can’t sing notes, Spanish love songs”. But I can sing Spanish love songs, so why not, who cares. But the audience seems to like it. Darkness 69: What are some of the positive and negative aspects of performing live, tour life and everything? You’ve been on the road for quite some time during all these years. Tito: I guess the most negative thing about touring is family and home. Everybody after maybe 3 months starts to miss their family. So this is the hardest part, I think, for everybody. But if the family was with us, then we could probably tour for a year, and no problem. So that’s why Willie Nelson tours with his family, cause it doesn’t matter. But I think that’s the hardest part. The negatives are very small. There’s very few things that are bad about touring, ‘cause you are in a different city every night, you meet new people every night, you enjoy life, the response like today, we played in a city that we would never have played before, probably if we would’ve stayed in the US. And I think this is a very special thing for a band to experience. And I, when I go back, I tell my friends: “ You don’t know what you’re missing.” I tell them :”Try to go to Eastern bloc countries, try to go to”, you know, “all these countries that you would never think of going”, ‘cause these are very special times. There’s a lot fo information on the Internet, and I think people are understanding quicker, what’s going on, and I feel I notice it, like tonight, maybe 5, maybe 10 years ago we would have played and people would have been very confused. “What is that?” or they would’ve liked it a lot. (laughs) Darkness 69: That’s for sure! Ttito: Yeah, there would be two kinds of responses, but I think now with the Internet, it’s opened up a very different youth. There’s a new movement of understanding, and communication, in music, in art, and everything. So it makes it great for us. I’m a lot older than you, so or me, to see this happen, it’s real clear for me. For you it’s normal. For me it’s real clear that it’s a very important time for you guys. It’s nice to see, ‘cause everything’s changing so fast, really fast. It’s gonna be good (laughs) It’s gonna get better I think. Faerie Fee: What song you like to perform most live? Especially from the new album? Tito: Oh, from the new album, I like a lot of the songs, I like, tonight I think we only did five… or four… “In My Car”, “Monsters”, “Murder”… “Machete” and “Come Out Clean”… but I think my favourite is… I like “Monsters”, I like the story, I like the lyrics. I like “Come Out Clean” because it’s so simple, but it has a really strong point. And then the other songs, I like “In My Car”, ‘cause it’s kind of crazy, it’s like ‘going to the edge’ (laughs). And the old songs, I like playing ‘After Dark” even though you would think I’d be sick of it by now (all laughing). But I’m not and I’ll tell you why, because I get to be with the audience, and this is the most fun that we have on the whole show. Fearie Fee: Yeah, I just love the song. Tito: Yeah, ‘cause, we can bring everybody, and that’s why we’re here, they like the song and… the more we like it, because the audience gets to be a part of us, and we get to be a part of them. I started doing this many yeas ago, and at first it was just for fun. Then I realised “this is the time we connect the most with everybody, because everybody gets unafraid. They go “Ok, I can have fun without worrying about, you know, whatever, being poor”, and then we’re more relaxed too. We used to do this song “After Dark” at the end of the show, but now we do it in the middle ‘cause then everybody relaxes and it’s more fun. Darkness 69: And from then on it’s smooth sailing…
Tito: Yeah, it’s like after that, everything goes! (laughs)
Darkness 69: Ok good. You visited Bosnia before. What were your impressions then? Tito: It was different things, like I said they’ve changed. Six years, I think it was six years, right? Like five or six years ago, something like that, yeah. When we came here, the audience was amazing too, they were really into it, but what I noticed was, there’s more young people now, and that the cities have changed quickly. There’s more construction, the roads are better… so things physically are changing. So when they change physically, they change inside too. I think the people are more relaxed because back then they seemed a little more… not afraid, but… they didn’t want to express too much. Today it was different. They were screaming when we were playing, 5 years ago they weren’t screaming. They were excited, but not screaming. That boy who got up there, he was like the Bosnian Flea from the ‘Chilli Peppers, you know Flea? (laughs) Darkness 69 & Faerie Fee: Yeah, yeah! Tito: He was amazing. I just thought:” Wow! Things are really changing…” Faerie Fee: He got really crazy. Tito: Yeah, but it was good. And I think this is important for the young people to see this, that it’s ok to explode… Darkness 69: Every once in a while… Tito: Yeah! Darkness 69: It was such a good show! Tito: Yeah, and it was a good thing for him! (laughs) Faerie Fee: It was excellent. Darkness 69: So let’s talk about the new album… Tito: Well, we wrote about 48 ideas, and then we started to sort them out, And as we did that, I wasn’t sure where I was going yet. But then I saw this little drawing of the guy on a bicycle, and a title came into my head “Back into The Darkness” and once I got the title in my head, I called Stevie and said “I think I know what direction I wanna go to”. I wanna go back and listen to the old records and find out what it is that is inspiring me at the time. It’s like going back to basics. And you find out ‘Oh, that’s why I did this, that’s why I was so titled” and I remember a boxer, who was a famous Mexican boxer, and he was losing his fights towards the end of his career. And then he went back and looked at his films, of his early fights, and he noticed that he had more fire, and he was now more lazier, he did things, like stupid mistakes and I compared it to myself, I was like “My old record was not very focused, I did a bit of mistakes, I did things I didn’t want to do”, and so when I went back to “Tarantism”, I thought “I see I did that”. And then I picked the songs. And I knew “Ok, now I have something I really want to nurture and make it good”. Not for the fans, or for anything, but for the songs themselves. To respect the material. And this is something that I had forgotten, You have to have respect for the song. And then everything else comes. So it helps to go back and that’s a good title. Darkness 69: He’s driving back… Tito: Yes! (laughs) he’s going back into the darkness. Darkness 69: Describe that process of going to the studio, how do you make the album there?
Tito: Well, after we did the writing, and we did the writing at
Troublemaker studios in Austin, where Robert [Rodriguez]
has all his monsters and
everything, and he has the big stage that he let us use, so me and Stevie made
the final things there, and then we flew to Germany because I wanted to be away
from, I wanted the time to be away from the families and friends, so we could
only focus on music. And we went to this really small German village and we had
a really good studio there, we were there for a month and a half, actually three
and a half months, but we also did some touring. But we lived there, and it was
very exciting, because we haven’t made a record in six years. I haven’t felt
that good about a material in a long time, and the band was ready. So, when we
started, it was pretty much this recording, recording, recording, till we
couldn’t record anymore, and then sorting out what was good and what was not.
Then after we finished that process, I went back home and did all the singing by
myself, in my house, in my closet… I have a little closet and I put
everything inside, and was eating and getting fat for three months (all
laughing) and then, that was it. And then we mixed it. And I didn’t want to be
at the mix. This is the first record that I wasn’t a part of the mix, because I
felt I had to let it go, so that I wouldn’t control everything, and like in the
writing process, was me and Stevie, and then the vocals, I controlled the
vocals. Then I didn’t want to do anything else. So then the mixing I left to
Marcus, and Marcus was really great. And they would just send me their mixes,
and I was surprised and it was just great, more than I expected, so I was just
very happy with the results. |
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