Gary James' Interview With Art Alexakis Of
Everclear



Since forming in 1992, they've recorded eleven studio albums, four of which have been certified either Gold or Platinum, selling over six million records in the process. They've enjoyed twelve Top 40 hit singles on Mainstream Rock, Alternative and Adult Top 40 radio, including "Santa Monica", "Father Of Mine", "I Will Buy You A New Life", "Wonderful!" and "Everything To Everyone". They've performed thousands of shows and received a Grammy nomination in 1998. On June 10^th, 2022 the band will re-release their 1993 debut album, "World Of Noise: 30^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition". During the summer of 2022 the group will be touring North America, with a return to the U.K. in the fall of 2022. In early 2023 they'll be off to Australia. Clearly, this group has a lot going on! We spoke with vocalist, guitarist and founder Art Alexakis from Everclear.

Q - Art, I know you had a rough start in life and there's been some pretty big obstacles in your career that you've had to overcome. So, when you say, "I'm blessed that I get to do this for a living and am truly grateful for my life," what if Everclear had not been successful? Did you have a backup plan?

A - Yeah. I wanted to be in music. I wanted to be in Rock 'n' Roll. I was 30 years old when I started Everclear. It was gonna be my last band. I had a brand new baby at home. If that didn't work, the plan was to move back to L.A. with my family, get a job at a record label, write songs for other people and just take over the world. Conquer the world that way. Become a label president. Do that. Create music. Be of service in that way. But that didn't happen.

Q - Something else happened. You became a Rock star.

A - Well, I've never used that word. That, for a kid who grew up like me with Punk Rock and New Wave, wasn't a good word. Even my daughters don't use that word. All of the Rock stars I've met have been kind of jerks.

Q - What Rock stars have you met?

A - Name one.

Q - Let's see, how about Rod Stewart?

A - Never met Rod Stewart.

Q - Paul McCartney?

A - Yes, but very briefly. But I'm talking about the guys I grew up with. You're talking from a different era. You're talking from more late '70s, '80s. Those kind of guys. And some of 'em are very nice actually, but most of them aren't. People who buy into the myth of themselves being entitled or being some sort of star and call themselves that, is a little arrogant. It's a little self-defeating I think.

Q - I should have said you got to be a working singer, a working musician.

A - Or a multi-Platinum Rock artist. (laughs) That's another way of saying it.

Q - You could almost say that your success and Everclear's success was due in large part to your determination. You went all out to publicize the band. You put posters on telephone poles. You were sending out demo cassettes to newspapers. Back then that's what a band had to do, didn't they?

A - Absolutely. Send out packets. Send out cassette tapes to people who you knew were just going to throw 'em in the trash, but you sent 'em out anyway 'cause there was that one chance that someone was going to listen to it. We did that. Our first record, "World Of Noise", we made for $400 in a basement studio in Portland (Oregon) and sent it out to a bunch of people in the Northwest and they all kind of just started playing it. We started getting offers to play at venues that previously wouldn't have anything to do with us. So, I think that was a testament to that. This being the 30^th anniversary of the band, we're putting out "World Of Noise" with bonus tracks, re-mastered. It's one of those things that the record industry has changed so much, but how you access and what it sounds like, you go with the feeling in terms of success. But the one thing that hasn't changed is what you're talking about, determination and tenacity and wanting it and not giving up. I think that a lot of bands, even when we were coming up, were like if it wasn't easy, they didn't want it. And we didn't care. We did the work.

Q - You just mentioned you're putting out "World Of Noise". I read that vinyl is now out-selling CDs. And you will be doing a vinyl pressing for "World Of Noise, 30^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition". Does it surprise you that vinyl has made a comeback?

A - Yes and no. Like you, I remember when vinyl basically went the way of the dodo. It was just for super collectors. Very kitsch things. I mean, vinyl sounds great. I bought my daughter, my 14-year-old, when she was 12, for Christmas, she wanted a stereo system with a turntable. And I got her one. A nice one. I've been buying her albums. She's been buying albums. I'll go into her room sometimes when she's in school and just crank up my old Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin records and they sound pretty great. So, we're doing that and I'm in the process of approving artwork and changing the artwork around for the album to come out on vinyl. Like you said, vinyl outsells CDs, I think four to one.

Q - What label is this 30^th Anniversary Edition coming out on?

A - It's my old label. It's going to Tune Core. They're like a record label for digital stuff. But it's on Shindig. Shindig Records was my label in San Francisco in the late '80s, early '90s. So, this is Shindig Retro is what I'm calling it. And that's what we're putting this out on.

Q - When you started Shindig Records were you doing all the things a major label would do? Were you doing the publicity, promotion and distribution?

A - Well, yes and no. As a small Indie label I had a gal that I paid who was a publicist in San Francisco. I had a couple of interns that would help me reach out to bands and venues. But for distribution I would go to Indie distributors at the time, Rough Trade, Dutch East, Schwartz Bros. There were all these regional people that I would send them the records and then they'd call me back and then I'd get 'em to take twenty or fifty. Or, if they took a hundred I'd take a buck off. I don't want to say we were successful, but for three years we did pretty well. Then two of my big Indies went down. They went Chapter 7, Chapter 8, I forget, but bankrupt, owing me collectively between them and another small one about seventy grand, which in 1991 was a lot of money. It's still a lot of money, but for the time it was everything. I had to close my doors and at the same time I found out my fiance was expecting our daughter. So, we moved to Portland because my sister lived up there and she had family. We had a network to help take care of the baby. I started my last band in Portland.

Q - What I don't understand is when you moved from San Francisco to Portland, you'd be driving down the street in Portland and people were giving you the finger. even old ladies! Why would that be?

A - I basically, at the time... you could buy a house in Portland for a fraction of what a similar house would cost in California. And so people would sell their house in California, go up to Oregon and outbid everybody and basically drive up the cost of houses and just living. The cost of houses are going up. That's how the economy works. So, people up there resented Californians. Once I changed the plates on my car it was fine. A couple of bands in town liked us, but all three of us were from different places. Our bass player was from Spokane. My drummer at the time was from a different part of Washington. I was from L.A., later San Francisco. So, people looked at us as being invaders. It's typical small town, big fish in a small fish bowl type of mentality. It is what it is. We just kept playing and trying to get gigs, until "World Of Noise" came out. Then we started getting a lot of gigs that a lot of bands wanted but couldn't get. It just became this animosity between some bands and some people that were friends of the band. But the overwhelming majority of people, and I'm talking 70, 80, 90 percent of people in Portland, loved Everclear. So, it's still a very important place for us to play. It's kind of home for the band.

Q - Were you signed to Capitol Records by Gary Gersh?

A - We weren't signed by Gary Gersh. We were signed by a guy he hired. He was a senior V.P. of A&R, still a good friend of mine to this day, and who was very instrumental in the band's success. His name was Perry Watts-Russell. Great guy. An English guy. Just a big fan of my demo tape, of my voice, of my songs. Gary was the President (of Capitol Records) at the time. So, he'd okayed it, but he didn't sign us.

Q - Did Gary Gersh sign Nirvana?

A - Yeah, he did sign Nirvana. That's what got him the gig at Capitol. He was an A&R guy at Geffen. With that success he kind of got the gig as President of Capitol. Gary's a great guy.

Q - Did you ever cross paths with Kurt Cobain? Did Everclear ever open for Nirvana?

A - No. We were coming up right as he was ascending into his addictions. Someone told me, I never read it, several people told me that there was a fanzine in Canada, right before he died they asked him what new band he liked and he said, "I've got this demo tape, a friend of mine, a band out of Portland called Everclear. I think it's really great." Later, Dave Grohl was a fan of the band when we were coming up as well. So that's as close as we got to Nirvana.

Q - You worked as an A&R rep for some major labels. that seems like a good job. Who'd you work for and who did you sign?

A - I never worked as an A&R rep. After I had success at Capitol, I mean I worked in the mail room at Chrysalis and a couple of other places, but that didn't last very long 'cause I was still a raging alcoholic. After I got sober in '89 and then I moved to Portland in '91 and after the success of Everclear, I mean I had my own label in the late '80s in San Francisco. When Everclear was successful on Capitol I started getting offers. I was looking to be an A&R guy at the same time and ultimately I'm on a label while being in a band still. I went to Gary Gersh and said, "I'm just giving you the respect. These other labels want me." He said, "I'll increase the money and give you more money." And there you go. I was Senior V.P. of A&R, or V.P. of A&R for Capitol and they wouldn't let me sign anything. I kept submitting bands to them and they wouldn't let me sign anything. At least four of the bands, maybe five went on to become Platinum bands on another label 'cause I couldn't sign. He just didn't want me to do it for anyone else. It was just typical. I understand that. I wish he'd just let me do the job. But that's the closest I ever came to being an A&R guy.

Q - You had your own radio show on the Grunge and Alternative music channel Lithium on SiriusXM from 2017 to 2019. That sounds like a good gig. Why'd you give that up?

A - Well, 'cause it was only once a week. They wouldn't let me have a phone line to talk to people. All I could talk about was '90s Alternative music and that gets old after awhile and it $150 a show. It was fun to do and people liked it. It was on Sunday evenings, but it was like, "Do you want to Re-up?" I'm like, "No." But I had been a college DJ. I had a radio show in Portland, Oregon on a major Alternative radio station there from 2001 to 2004. That was fun. Again, it was a Sunday night thing, but they let me play different types of music. It was called Blackjack Radio. It was politics, talk and music. It was really fun.

Q - How important is radio, whether we're talking FM radio or Internet radio, to a group's success today? When you release "World Of Noise", will you be sending that out to radio stations?

A - No. Radio is not going to play that. I don't think radio plays much of a role in breaking a band anymore. I think bands get broke online, on digital platforms like Tik-Tok and YouTube and Instagram. That's where most people are finding new music. I think bigger acts will still get on radio. I think it depends on the genre, but there really is no outlet for Rock music for them I don't think. I don't think terrestrial radio is breaking new acts and I know satellite radio isn't. I'm not gonna work radio. It's just publicity. We're mainly doing marketing and digital publicity and so far it's doing well. Pre-sales are doing really well.

Official Website: www.EverclearMusic.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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