The Tapes Archive

Vince Welnick: Hello?

Marc Allan – Hi, is this Vince?

Vince Welnick: Yeah.

Marc Allan – Hi, it’s Marc Allan.

Vince Welnick: All right I’m gonna kill the music here. Bob Marley up way too loud. Let me shut this window too.

Marc Allan: Okay.

Marc Allan – Do you think the Four Seasons get many people who play Bob Marley up real loud?

Vince Welnick: Maybe. At least on this floor. I don’t know. They asked for it, they put the CD player in.

Marc Allan – Oh, that’s nice.

Vince Welnick: Yeah.

Marc Allan – Are you a big Marley fan?

Vince Welnick: Yeah, I like him a lot. In fact, I’m trying to introduce “Waiting in Vain” to the band.

Marc Allan – Any takers so far?

Vince Welnick: Yeah, they said you learn at first and we’ll whip it out. It seems pretty easy enough. You know, normally we would have to have a rehearsal or something, but we could maybe work it up in sound check, ’cause it’s not a difficult song.

Marc Allan – Yeah, I would think Mickey would be into that, pretty much.

Vince Welnick: Yeah well it feels like a good summery kind of thing to play outdoors. And it would fit with a couple of songs, you know, it’s got lots of room for vocals. It’s got a lot of vocal potential for everybody to join in. I kind of like the way everybody’s singing lately. Yeah we have our new ear monitors and I think it’s improved everybody’s vocal a lot.

Marc Allan – Because everybody’s able to hear each other?

Vince Welnick: Yeah, when you sing, especially when you’re singing, it’s just like singing in your own ear. And if you have your vocal turned up enough in your own monitor, you can hear the slightest little whisper and you could sing in key, and you’re not trying to get over the top of the music. Which, you know, if you have to sing above the volume of the music, that limits you to your range quite a bit, and sometimes it pulls you off key. Now it’s not a problem at all. If you concentrate you could sing perfectly at any level, especially really delicately. It’s great. I love it for like falsetto too.

Marc Allan – Was this something that the band had been having problems with, or discovered that would work better?

Vince Welnick: Well we tried ’em out. Bobby and Jerry, I think, tried ’em out first and they loved them. ‘Cause the sound’s right up there in your head and you can actually hear everybody. You know, depending on where you’re on stage. It was difficult to hear everybody all the time, and you could put ’em in your monitors, but then you have to put them in pretty loud, and then you got other priorities. Oh, shucks, could you hold on a sec?

Marc Allan – Sure. Anyway, you were telling me about the ear monitors and what I’m wondering is does that mean that you don’t use any stage monitors at all?

Vince Welnick: No speakers whatsoever.

Marc Allan – That’s gotta be great.

Vince Welnick: It works good for the PA. Then you’re not listening to the decibels that you would normally listen to. So you don’t suffer ear death.

Marc Allan – Let me get into the scheduled material here. What I wanted to ask you. Is being in the Dead anything like you imagined it would be?

Vince Welnick: Actually I never imagined being in the Dead. I imagined being friends with them as kind of a vision I had when I first heard their album. I just felt like I was there. But actually being in the Dead didn’t occur to me until all of a sudden, you know, suddenly Brent died. My wife, Lorie inquired with Bobby’s secretary at the time, who used to be The Tubes‘ secretary. As you know, I played with The Tubes.

Marc Allan – Yes, I do know that.

Vince Welnick: And Mimi told my wife that they were auditioning people and I wanted to audition to see what’s going on. I didn’t know if there’d be any chemistry there, but I wanted to see if maybe they wanted me to be in the band. And then as soon as I met Jerry and Bob, I decided right away, I really wanted to be in the band. And I started checking out the music, which they sent me. So I could learn some songs for the audition and it was getting more fabulous, the thought of it.

Marc Allan – They sent you sheet music?

Vince Welnick: No, they sent me tapes.

Marc Allan – Oh, tapes.

Vince Welnick: Mostly live tapes, but they also sent CDs, which was a laugh ’cause I didn’t own a CD player. I didn’t tell him that, but I learned stuff off the tapes. And then they auditioned a bunch of guys. I went in there and we played about eight songs. And then I sat around by the phone for about a week, wondering how I did. Actually I didn’t know if I was going to get it, ’cause some of the other people in there were pretty hot. In fact, when I started hearing the names, I got kind of bummed out, but no, they picked me.

Marc Allan – Do people know who you competed against? ‘Cause I don’t think I know.

Vince Welnick: Well there was some of the guys, T Lavitz.

Marc Allan – Oh really?

Vince Welnick: Pete Sears. And a guy who for some reason I thought might get it ’cause he was playin’ with The Tubes. He had his own band and his own name, Tim Gorman. He played with The Who, lots of people.

Marc Allan – It’s some heavy duty competition there.

Vince Welnick: Yeah, but you know, I had this dream when I was a kid. I’m meetin’ up with these guys and, but you know, you can never be cocky, like say, well I got the audition and every day that went by seemed longer and longer. And then Bobby called me up and said, “Is your insurance paid up?” And then I knew I landed the gig. Hey what paper is this?

Marc Allan – The Indianapolis Star.

Vince Welnick: Indianapolis Star?

Marc Allan – You’ll be here next Friday, I think it is.

Vince Welnick: We’re going to be in Indianapolis?

Marc Allan – Next Sunday and Monday. A week from Sunday and a week from Monday.

Vince Welnick: Where, Deer Creek?

Marc Allan – Yeah.

Vince Welnick: And your name?

Marc Allan – Marc Allan.

Vince Welnick: Marc Allan.

Marc Allan – Dennis told you that this was going to happen, right?

Vince Welnick: Yeah I’m just trying to get my facts straight.

Marc Allan – Okay, good.

Vince Welnick: Sorry to interrupt you, go ahead.

Marc Allan – No, that’s all right. I guess you probably go through enough of these where you know, it’s hard to keep track of all this stuff.

Vince Welnick: Well you know, they don’t give me too many. Mostly want to talk to Jerry and the other guys. I’m pretty new at this, new in the band, so, only got two years worth of experience.

Marc Allan – Yeah, but it’s pretty interesting. I mean, you get a perspective that the other guys don’t have just because they’ve been in it all the time. You had talked about the first time that you heard ’em when you were a kid, how old a guy are you?

Vince Welnick: I’m 41.

Marc Allan – You’re 41.

Vince Welnick: When did their album come out?

Marc Allan – What, the first album?

Vince Welnick: Yeah .

Marc Allan – I don’t know. It’s gotta be something like that.

Vince Welnick: Then that would’ve made me 14.

Marc Allan – But I mean, when you’re a kid, you probably wouldn’t even think that bands would be around as long as a band like the Dead has been around.

Vince Welnick:  Right, but I was already starting to play in bands back then. I did my first gig when I was about 11 in church. I used to do my seven o’clock Sunday gig. I was playing in bands when I was 14. So I was into all this new stuff. Particularly what was coming from San Francisco.

Marc Allan – Did you grow up in the San Francisco area?

Vince Welnick: Pardon me?

Marc Allan – Did you grow up in the San Francisco area?

Vince Welnick: No, I grew up in Phoenix.

Marc Allan – Oh, Phoenix.

Vince Welnick: It was a rock and roll desert. At the time country was the big thing, but, Phoenix was pretty hip as far as picking up on all the music from everywhere. So we did catch, I had the Grateful Dead album.

Marc Allan – Compare being in The Tubes with being in the Dead. I would imagine it’s an incredibly different experience.

Vince Welnick: Well yeah, big difference. The Tubes were like a traveling circus. Three-ring circus that set up in a different town every night, which was kind of crazy unto itself. We weren’t as spontaneous. Although we had a great time in The Tubes, you know, it was fun, and doing all of that stuff and playing every place we played was fabulous. But the tours were long and hard and 200 or more a year. And even did the most interesting music can get boring. One thing we did have in common was a big selection of songs to choose from. It’s just that when The Tubes went out on a tour because we had a show, we had to set up choreography and everything. So there wasn’t many places where we could change songs once we got the tour together. We could change all the songs once we did another tour and we would do that. But we had hundreds of songs to pick from because The Tubes were together 17 years and then the Grateful Dead they played 133 different ones last year. So that’s one thing we have in common. And then everything else was different. Musically it’s very fulfilling playing with the Grateful Dead, because of the diversity and the fact that there’s more emphasis on the music. A lot of times I was dancing, instead of playing with The Tubes. But no, we had some great songs. The Tubes have great songs and the Dead have great songs, but the Dead change up every night, and that makes it ultimately more interesting. And it’s a little easier going from my 41 year old bones to to do under a hundred gigs instead of 200 and travel by bus, all of that kind of stuff. If Fee had not left The Tubes, and if the things had not happened with The Tubes, I’d still be in that band because I’d have been loyal to them, to the bitter end.

Marc Allan – But what did happen?

Vince Welnick: Well, Fee left and we went on for years without him. And then we couldn’t afford to do the show, bad breaks, setbacks, management, all of the above, and then more people left the band and just wasn’t The Tubes anymore. So I went with Todd Rundgren for a couple albums and a couple tours. I played on “Nearly Human” and “Second Wind,” his last two albums.

Marc Allan – The Tubes show was a pretty amazing show to watch. I imagine, like you said, three-ring circus. That’s sorta what it was like.

Vince Welnick: Yeah people would have to come to the show. That’s another thing we have in common with the band. A lot of people would come multiple times to the show. In the Grateful Dead version it’s just because it’s so wonderful to be there. And also you got to come many times to hear the songs that you want to hear. But with The Tubes, they’d come sometimes just to watch the dancers, sometimes just to listen to the music, sometimes they watch the props go up and down, watch the crew try to be on stage and act and move the , how quick we could change the set in the dark out. So yeah, we have people comin’ for multitudes of reasons and a lot of people would come and wanna be in The Tubes and wound up performing with us.

Marc Allan – Really?

Vince Welnick: Oh yeah. Jane Dornacker, Pearl Harbor. We even had Robin Williams try out for our talent contest, where we picked eight winners to appear with the band for a two week run at Bimbo’s and Robin Williams tried out and failed. Oh no, we became friends later.

Marc Allan – Yeah. He was unknown at the time, right?

Vince Welnick: Uh huh.

Marc Allan – Yeah.

Vince Welnick: Jane Dornacker was with us and Re Styles. Doing “Don’t Touch Me There” and other stuff.

Marc Allan – Yeah on a motorcycle drove them on stage.

Vince Welnick: Kenny, our choreographer went on to be a movie director. He does all those dance movies. Michelle wound up with Todd Rundgren, one of our dancers. They just had a baby named Rebop. Couple of them became actresses.

Marc Allan – Do you think The Tubes would have done better commercially if they hadn’t become known first for like, “White Punks On Dope” and “Don’t Touch Me There?”

Vince Welnick: Well, White Punks was the anthem of the FM radio, you know, top 10 most requested for a long time.

Marc Allan – It almost makes you a novelty.

Vince Welnick: Well, some people thought of it that way. I think I’d prefer to think we were just ahead of our time. I mean, look what they’re doing now. It’s not a novelty. They take it seriously. But a lot of the new stuff around is saying the same things we were saying.

Marc Allan – Yeah, I don’t know if bands do quite as involved and elaborate a show as The Tubes.

Vince Welnick: No, that was at a time when the economics were a little bit more conducive to that. I don’t think anybody could do that show like The Tubes on the level we did it, in a small place with so little overhead. ‘Cause it costs us money to do that show every time we put it on. So what band’s gonna do that for 17 years?

Marc Allan – But it must be amazing to work in a band like the Dead and know that everywhere you go, the show is sold out. So there’s no worry about selling tickets.

Vince Welnick: Oh yeah. It’s really first rate, first class. Yeah it’s great. The audience is so cool too. I love the audience.

Marc Allan – Did you find it tough, and do you still find it tough, to work without a set list?

Vince Welnick: Not so much now. I’m gettin’ a feel for it. Yeah, I like it. It’s kind of interesting. Hold on, I bet that’s my wife again.

Marc Allan – Sure.

Vince Welnick: How much more we got?

Marc Allan – Another 10 minutes, okay? Did you happen to read the interview that Jerry gave the Rolling Stone last October?

Vince Welnick: Yeah, I believe I did. He was on the cover.

Marc Allan – Right, yeah. He talked about a couple of things I wanted to ask you about. He had talked about how he felt that there had been some inertia in the band that they didn’t see the band moving forward or progressing at all. Did you see that as a new member?

Vince Welnick: I didn’t see it because how could I compare it?

Marc Allan – Yeah.

Vince Welnick: At the time. I didn’t know where it was coming from in the first place, so I couldn’t it. But now in retrospect, I did take time out of their evolution. You know, it took some serious time out. They had to fall back, spend what normally would have been their whole year’s budget on rehearsal and working out new songs and writing and composing. They had to spend going into the past with Welnick. You know, we try to knock off about 10 songs a day and we made great progress and everything, and we got to review some songs. I think in some cases, the songs, especially the vocals after they had to analyze them with me, got a little more polished a bit, but there were no new songs to learn. And there was no time to do them and they had to go out on the road almost immediately, and we had very little time. And so, yeah, that’s because of me, but you know, that was the way it had to be. I mean, you don’t give a guy 140 songs and say, “Okay, you’re on.” But I think I learned it pretty quick. I’ve worked on it at home. I spent more time at home working on it before we rehearsed. And then we actually rehearsed. So I gave him a break here and there. It was probably the pits for those guys.

Marc Allan – But I don’t think they were talking about having to teach you the songs. I think they were probably.

Vince Welnick: Well, it’s just the transition. I ate up all their time for a whole year. I figured we had a whole year working a new keyboard player in instead of what would have happened. And all I can do to make up for that is evolve quicker. Bring something into the party, myself, which I wrote a song with a couple of the guys in the band. Now I’m trying to make up for lost time.

Marc Allan – Yeah. That was my next question actually was new material. And there there’s no new Dead album at this time, particularly, which I guess doesn’t really matter when you’re touring.

Vince Welnick: No, we have new songs though, that will eventually be on an album. But when I do not know. I doubt if it would be this year.

Marc Allan – Yeah. Is it likely we’ll hear any of them? You playin’ ’em a couple of nights?

Vince Welnick: I have some names.

Marc Allan – Okay.

Vince Welnick: “Corrina.”

Marc Allan – Spelled C-O-R-R-I-N-A? Okay.

Vince Welnick: And that’s Mickey Hart and Bobby sings it. Bobby, I believe co-wrote it too. Oh, and Hunter. Robert Hunter, you know? And then Phil did “Wave to the Wind” with Robert. Jerry’s got “So Many Roads” which I believe is with Hunter too. Then I’ve got “Way To Go Home” which was with Hunter and Bob Bralove? And there’s a weird, I’ve got another demo I’m working on with Barlow and Bob Bralove. And there were other songs coming in, but those were the only ones we got to nail down before we took off. Then we also do a couple of new covers, but those are the originals. There are more close, Phil has another one already done, but we just haven’t learned it yet. And I think Jerry’s got a few. And Bobby says we’re probably gettin’ close to havin’ an album’s worth, except that the band wants to learn ’em and take ’em on the road first and get acquainted with them before they go down to the record. They don’t like to write in the studio like The Tubes used to do. We’d have a deadline, we go in there. Well, let’s do that record. Then we’d learn the songs off the record after we finished it. We figured out what the hell he did. I like the way it’s moving now. And it’s coming right along and there’s no hurry. You know, there’s nobody that’s gonna light a fire up our butt or push us to do something before it’s time. That’s really the luxury. I see this band as the freedom to be able to develop freely and not be under any kind of pressure from anybody.

Marc Allan – Yeah. That’s a real unique experience in the music.

Vince Welnick: That’s the American way, I thought. I always dreamed it’d be like this.

Marc Allan – And then in this interview he said, “If you’re looking for comfort, join a club or something. The Grateful Dead is not where you’re going to find comfort.” And the question was about is it difficult for a newcomer to deal with being in the Dead. He said, “In fact, if anything, you’ll catch a lot of shit. And if you don’t get it from the band, you’ll get it from the roadies.” And so, has it has been tough to fit in?

Vince Welnick: No. It was mighty comfortable. I don’t think he realized where I was coming from. Like, I don’t have to share a room with anyone anymore. I don’t ride on a bus after the gig for 10 hours anymore. I don’t play 200 shows a year, and sometimes two shows a night for two weeks on end. Now when The Tubes were on top, with “She’s a Beauty” in the top 10, it wasn’t like that. But the last few years of my life before the Grateful Dead were tossed between The Tubes and Todd Rundgren. You know, you gotta deal with folks there too. And there was challenging things, working with Todd, that were really difficult. Like doing a live album, and not only you’re playing and singing, which usually you’re just doing one or the other, you’re also following a conductor who was Todd, and playing in front of an audience. You know, that was a bitch. But they’re a very forgiving audience. And so is the band, you know, if I screw up, they’re going to call me on it and it won’t happen again as long as I can help it. But they’re not gonna label me an imbecile because of it. And that’s certainly the audience isn’t gonna hold anything against me. Like if, when I get up and walk away from the song thinkin’ it’s over and it’s not. You know, in the beginning I did that. But I try to, you know, I try and work real hard at this. I don’t want to screw up in front of those many people. I hate making mistakes. But no, these guys have made me totally comfortable. The crew and everybody, it’s just fabulous. They couldn’t have stayed together this long. If they didn’t have just a wonderful relationship with everybody.

Marc Allan – Yeah. I wondered if he was being sarcastic, and maybe he was being sarcastic.

Vince Welnick: I thought he sounded like he was on a bit of a bum bum with that interview, but they weren’t hard on me at all. They were very gentle, most generous and compassionate. And I feel fabulous. I feel like I’m in a big, old, wonderful family.

Marc Allan – You mentioned they’re doing 133 songs last year. A typical year for The Tubes, what would you do about 20, 25?

Vince Welnick: No, we do around, we do more than that in the night.

Marc Allan – Oh, okay.

Vince Welnick: No, in a gig. No, we go, we tossed around maybe 60, but we had 200 or more songs in our repertoire. We’d usually change maybe 80. We would change almost all the songs for every tour. And we do about four a year, so. But not nearly as many as the Grateful Dead.

Marc Allan – That’s still a lot of songs, though. Like when you did the Todd tours, I can’t imagine that you had to learn nearly that many, did you?

Vince Welnick: Oh no, no. We would play the same exact thing. Like, you know, 20 songs. The same ones for the whole tour. That was easy. But also The Tubes was easy too, because that was 17 years in the making. Acquiring that set list. There were some really complicated songs, but we worked on it diligently and after a year or so, you know, they became second nature to you. So to do that many in that short of time with The Grateful Dead, that’s the biggest mouthful I have ever taken.

Marc Allan – Is Bruce Hornsby going to be with you this time around?

Vince Welnick: No, he handed the baton off to me on the spring tour. He felt things were going well and he was going to have his life. But he is coming out, I think he’s coming out tomorrow and gonna sit in. And he’s always welcome any time. Yeah, we miss him and we love to play with him.

Marc Allan – Yeah. And of course you must be comfortable with dual keyboards because all the bands you’ve played with have more than one keyboard.

Vince Welnick: Yeah, Todd’s band had two, The Tubes had two. So yeah, I can hang with that. And the likes of Bruce on piano is, what can you say? I mean, that’s the most fabulous guy I could think of to have on piano playing with me. He’s happy and we’re happy. And he’s coming out tomorrow.

Marc Allan – It sounds like you couldn’t be in a much better position. I mean, it seems like you got your dream job right now.

Vince Welnick: It’s pretty wonderful thing. This is kind of a vision I had when I was a kid. When I was about 11. I saw a sea of people with their arms stretched out and now I’m looking at it every night.

Marc Allan – Anyway, is there anything else you want me to tell people about you, the tour, the Dead?

Vince Welnick: Anything you think you think’d be interesting. You seem to cover it pretty well.

Marc Allan – Yeah. Okay. And I should ask you this, and it’s just kind of meant as a goofy question, but I’m sure you’ve heard your share of “Spinal Tap” jokes about dead keyboard players?

Vince Welnick: Oh sure, yeah. Blowin’ up.

Marc Allan – Yeah . No fear of that, huh?

Vince Welnick: No, what a way to go. I’ll try to see that it doesn’t happen.

Marc Allan – Good.

Vince Welnick: For a while at least.

Marc Allan – Great, well, I appreciate your time Vince, and we’ll see you next Sunday.

Vince Welnick: Okay, Marc.

Marc Allan – Thanks a lot.

Vince Welnick: Hey come looking for me backstage.

Marc Allan – Okay, will do.

Vince Welnick: Bye.