Gary James' Interview With John Bisaha Of
The Babys



It's hard to believe, but true. The Babys are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year (2025). The band was formed in London in 1975 and gained fame with hit songs such as "Isn't It Time", "Every Time I Think Of You", "Back On My Feet Again", "Midnight Rendezvous" and "Head First". Having just completed an appearance on the Rock and Romance Cruise, bassist John Bisaha spoke with us about that and a whole lot more.

Q - John, you've just returned from this Rock and Romance Cruise that featured so many well-known acts. How does that work for a group like The Babys? Do you perform once a night for the duration of the cruise? Do you perform more than once?

A - Yeah, they had basically a seven day or eight day cruise that went out. What they end up doing is they have two sets of groups that came. So, one group will start out and do the first three or four days and then half way through the trip they'll leave and disembark the boat and go home and another set of bands will come in. We were on the second group of bands that came in. We came on with Air Supply, Danny Seraphine and Chicago the California Transit Authority. We came on with John Lodge of The Moody Blues and a bunch of other bands that had come on, which is really fun for us. One set of groups does the first half. The other set of groups does the second half. Really it's two shows that you do and then you'll do like a Q&A and an autograph session. So, it's really three appearances over the three or four days you're on. You get to mingle with the guests and have a good time, and they're really appreciative and we're really appreciative to be able to do it. It really doesn't suck doing a jam out on a cruise line. We did two shows on the pool deck, so we got to see us moving as everything was going, got to see everything we were sailing across. It was really fun.

Q - For the fans it's a real treat, I'm sure. At an arena gig they just couldn't get that close, much less talk to the performers up close.

A - Not at all. You get a really good shot if you get a Meet And Greet or maybe a picture session afterwards. You're captive. We're going to see you and you're going to see us. You get to talk to a lot people. It was great.

Q - The Rock and Romance Cruise ended on March 25th, 2025. I see your next gig is not until July 24th, 2025. So, what do you do in between that time?

A - Actually, we're going to do a local show. We haven't put it up on the website. It's in Nashville. I think it's June 13th. Everybody is in other little projects too. I'm in another band that goes out. I'm in Firefall. Tony (Brock) is in a band called Close Enemies with Tom Hamilton and Peter Straub from Sheryl Crow and Tom Hamilton from Aerosmith. So, they're out doing stuff. We just kind of keep ourselves busy just so we keep the chops moving. We've got a few things in the works for October. Probably about ten more shows going throughout the year. Then we'll see what we're doing for next (year).

Q - 2025 marks the 50th year The Babys have been together. That's a long time for a Rock group to be around. Are Rock groups meant to be around that long? I wonder what Buddy Holly would say.

A - (laughs)

Q - He didn't think Rock 'n' Roll would last. And he said that in the late 1950s.

A - You know what? I'm a child of the '60s. I totally get where he was coming from. Music changed, right? The change in music started in the '90s when it stopped being Pop. It stopped being Punk. It stopped being Rock. Then you started going into the Rap and Grunge era and it kind of put a stamp on music. I think at that point most people like me and others that were around from the '70s and '80s, we're like, "We're kind of done." Then lo and behold you had the Run DMC and Aerosmith thing that started happening. Then in the late '90s it started turning. It gets really cyclical, right? Now we're getting that new phase. My children are 31 and 35 this year. My son goes back into the King Crimson days. He's a big Prog guy. He indoctrinates me into his music, which is really kind of funny, but we start seeing groups and kids at our shows now where you've got three different generations of people that are attending. You've got the grandparents that are in their 60s and 70s. You have the parents that are in their 30s and 40s, and the kids that are in their 10s and 20s. And they're all at the shows now. Parents are doing it right and really it's fifty years for The Babys. The Babys had five, six really good, quick years from '75 to '81. And when John (Waite) went his way and Jonathan (Cain) went his way, and Tony and Wally went to Rod Stewart, it was a signal of almost the end. But when you start thinking about it, in those six years the catalog of music still lasts the test of time fifty years later. I mean, "Isn't It Time", "Every Time I Think Of You", "Back On My Feet Again", "Head First" and "Midnight Rendezvous" are the top five. They're still played all over the world. I mean, I can still turn on Sirius on '70s and '80s and I can still see it, hear it at least twice a week. We have friends from all over the world who say it's in the Top Ten in the Netherlands. It's just amazing that the test of time is really about the music. So, fifty years to be able to do this is very, very cool. In today's day and age we do this just to the record. Strings, horns where it needs to be. All that good stuff. Background vocals. And a bit of a show. So, it's still bringing it. Tony Brock is 71, 72 years old and still hits those drums as hard as he ever did, which to me is absolutely amazing. So, it's a blessing to be able to do it as long as we have. And we're fifteen years almost back. That's another cool little testament to having a good time and having fun with each other and having great songs to play.

Q - That's great to hear! Such positivity.

A - You know, it's always a glass half-full. You gotta be that way. You gotta keep moving. I was talking to someone earlier today. When you're in your 70s or 80s, we're all sharks now. You gotta keep moving forward. When you stop swimming you just don't go anywhere. So, you gotta keep moving.

Q - You told this interviewer, Chris Akin, that you'd come close to getting a couple of independent record deals back in the day. You say, "But at the end of the day I really wanted to front a Rock band that had a catalog of hits and The Babys were perfect for me." Did you come to that realization because you saw how hard it was to not only put and keep a Rock band together, but get the co-operation of the people in the music business to promote the band?

A - You've hit on every avenue for that. It is all of that and then some. When you're in a band, everybody's got their own idiosyncrasies. A band truly is a marriage. If you're not able to communicate and get through to everybody and get your point across as well as listen to other people's point of views and establish that as a baseline; there's give and take. There's a trust value. If you don't have that, bands don't last that long. So, there is that. You come across that a lot. But for me, absolutely. When I found out about The Babys, I knew The Babys back in '76 when "Broken Heart" came out. John Waite is one of my favorite voices. It all stands up within there. We would do a few tunes in the cover bands we would do. When I was building my catalog of songs, I loved horns. I had a friend who created all our horn parts. I was a big fan of Chicago. For me, Chicago and ELO were my big bands growing up and then I found The Babys, 'cause here's this band with horns and they've got strings and oh, they've got girls. They really hit on all cylinders for me, so that later in life I was kind of tired of the independent deals. We were very close to a real deal. Two independent deals really didn't pan out for us. It was like, "I got to find somebody who needs somebody." It just started in the '90s where bands were starting to come back. Then in the 2000s bands in the '60s and '70s and '80s sometimes don't have the lead vocalists to be able to do that any longer. Either they're unable to or they're no longer here or they're in other bands or doing solo stuff like John. When this whole deal came out I was fronting my own band and trying to get back into the whole deal. We had a couple of little people on the nibble. Then I got a phone call from a friend I played with in the '90s and he said, "Hey, there's an audition for this band." I said, "It's gotta be a '70s and '80s band with a lot of money." He said "Yeah, it's one of those." "Okay. Which one is it?" He goes, "Well, do you know who Ricky Phillips is?" I'm like, "Yeah. Ricky is in Styx right now. They don't need a singer. So, who else?" He goes, "Well, Jonathan Cain." "Are we talking about a Bad English reunion?" He said, "You're talking about '70s and '80s." I said, "You are not talking about The Babys?" He said, "Absolutely." I'm like, "I gotta get that gig." So, for me coming full circle to one of my favorite bands, singing some of my favorite songs, you can't beat that.

Q - Is Holly Bisaha your wife or sister?

A - Holly is my wife.

Q - What a resume she's got!

A - She's got a great resume too. She actually sang with John (Waite) back in the day. She did some shows with John. She did some shows with Stevie Wonder. She actually carried us through from a performance perspective when Grunge and Rap knocked us out. She was touring and doing her own corporate stuff. Really good stuff with that and acting. I just had to play Jesus (Note: John Basaha was in the Jesus Christ Superstar production) for awhile. (laughs) That's all I could do in the '90s.

Q - The Babys had an album released on NEMS Records back in 1978. That was Brian Epstein's trademark name. I know he used that name for his management company and booking agency. But, as a record company? I never heard that before.

A - The Babys were signed to Chrysalis. They had a five record deal. They got a million dollars. Part of the struggles with them is that there was not a lot of good accounting going on in those days. They had a manager who bankrolled a lot of stuff and who knows where that went. They had people within the band trying to find out. "What's the accounting like? Where's the money going? We're not getting anything." To this day, especially the initial four, say "We never really got paid. We got stipends." When you talk about an Epstein piece and things like that happening, The Babys had bootleg albums out preceding them. Somebody knew. They already knew where the tours were and they had bootleg records like "Here Come The Babys". There are three or four bootlegs that are out there and that might probably be one of them. That really kind of, in my opinion, being an outsider looking in, added to the frustration of it all because people are making money off of them and they weren't seeing much of anything. They were just performing their butts off, singing and being on tour and trying to create a band and I think management and others kind of took that away from them.

Q - Did anyone from the original four ever tell you how much money they believe they were cheated out of?

A - Everyone of them. (laughs)

Q - What kind of figure did they give you?

A - I'll just give you this figure. It was a million dollar deal that Chrysalis signed them to. Chrysalis went out of business, what, twenty, thirty years ago. Five years ago we were given a sync opportunity with Qualcomm to be connected with a company called Blue Raincoat, which is not a division of Chrysalis. Chrysalis came back and immediately gave us an invoice that we still owe them $500,000 out of that million dollars that was given. How does this happen? How do you as a record company go bankrupt where you were forgiven debts, so you should be forgiving your debtors in your opinion and you come back like Phoenix and now you're hitting us up saying we owe you? So, they started taking any of our sync deals. Pfizer just did a "Back On My Feet Again" commercial. So, we negotiated at least a split. You've got to at least take some of this off our debt. We need to eat a little bit. You can't just keep everything for a debt that was incurred that you were forgiven of a long time ago and we were forgiven of. I don't see how that works, but those record companies still stick it to you.

Q - It's called creative accounting.

A - You've got it. You can sit back and argue that "Broken Heart" is a Platinum record, but you'll never get the accounting that shows it's a Platinum record. You can show millions upon millions of streams nowadays, but you'll never get a Platinum record capability out of it. But the thing sold a million copies. (laughs) The "Anthology" record and the "Greatest Hits" record should be a Platinum record, but it's not because there's creative accounting. It's strange. They really didn't have anybody to fight for them as far as that all went, in my opinion. I get to see it being a third person coming in and being a fan that looks in and understands. I've got a business savvy. I can see exactly where all this kind of went. It's just a shame that it kind of all went that way.

Q - Different members of The Babys felt the group never achieved the success they deserved. Would that be because the record label wanted the band to concentrate on either Rock or ballad songs? Why couldn't they have done both?

A - You're hitting on all these great questions. Your insight is pretty spot on. The commercial success of The Babys was "Isn't It Time" and "Every Time I Think Of You". Those were written by Ray Kennedy and Jack Conrad, and The Babys completely reformed the songs and re-imagined them and put their own stamp on it. Very, very good writers. Everybody in the band was awesome that way and they could take a good song and re-craft it, which is great. But when the record company is seeing these go to number eleven, these two songs going to number eleven and they're writing other songs that really have a Free or a Bad Company vibe, or even a Zep hook, those songs that are B-sides, which are fan favorites, never really saw the light of day unless you were a fan of the band. Those guys were a Rock band, not a Power Pop band, but a Rock band that unfortunately had two really good Pop songs that were their figureheads for them. They're not the only band that ever had anything like that, a really good song that comes out and it's this beautiful ballad and they've got fifty rockers behind it that will never get through. It's just the main component of everything. You can write your own and see what sticks to you. Okay, that's where they started to fall into that category.

Q - You travel all over the world. Where is the best marketplace for The Babys' music?

A - I haven't been with The Babys in Japan, but I know for a fact that we have a lot of fans in the Japan area. We just came back from Australia and there's a lot of fans in Australia. The Babys never played UK. There's just a big area of fans in The Netherlands. If we could get the touring companies to get a routing that would go through there we'd probably do very well. It would be awesome. But out in the States, the mid-West and the East Coast, they know The Babys. Any time we say we're going to be there, they come out in droves, which is great. So, we have really good pockets of people in areas. Mid-West, East Coast, Asia and Australia and Netherlands and the UK area really dig The Babys as well.

Q - That's quite a territory.

A - We can get there. Let's find the right package. It'd be awesome. (laughs)

Official Website: TheBabysOfficial.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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