Sunny13 here's the interview from April/May 1979. Stuart Hersh conducted the interview for Time Barrier Express.
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H - My name is Stuart Hersh, and I'm calling from New York. I'm with a magazine
called Time Barrier Express and I wanted to know if I could ask you a few
questions. I'm doing an article on Jan & Arnie...
G - Oh my goodness, you're gonna ask me a couple of questions, that's strange,
why would you be doing such an article?
H - Well. . . you are the one who used to do the recordings, right?
G - Right!
H - Well, It's just that. . . I've been trying to find out what really happened.
. . it has been hard to contact you. . . and I'd like to do an article. We
already have some pictures, such as a photo or you and Jan holding up a copy
of"Jennie Lee" by a phonograph...
G - Oh wow! . . . Why would you want to do an article on Jan& Arnie? It's so
long ago and so minute...
H - Well, it's all coming back, and Time Barrier Express deals with 50s and 60s
rock.
G - That's interesting. . . 0 K, you can ask me some questions.
H - How did you first meet Jan?
G - We were in school together, in the same club in high school.
H - Was it your idea for the song 'Jennie Lee".
G - I was the predominant writer on that piece.
H - You wrote that with Jan?
G - With him yeah. . . I had the melody, and I think about two thirds of the
words before going up to his house and working out the rest.
H - Where was it recorded?
G - Well, originally, our track was actually recorded in his garage on an old,
sort of out of tune piano, and the instrumentals were overdubbed in one of the
recording studios in Hollywood, I can't remember which one it was. It was
arranged by Don Ralke... or, I can't remember the guy's name (it was indeed
Ralke - Ed.). . . and they had some pretty heavyweight musicians play the
background to it. For that time anyway, they were heavyweight guys.. . Ernie
Freeman was one of them and he was quite good, he did a lot of studio work, and
a guy named Jackie Kelso, who was on sax, a guy named Hall - somebody named Rene
Hall was on guitar.. . anyway, they were good guys.
H - So, the original recording was not totally recorded in the garage?
G - No, it was not.
H - Was Dean at the original recording?
G - No, he wasn't.
H - He wasn't?
G - He wasn't involved. They came up with a lot of PR , but it is not accurate.
. . as far as I knew Dean wasn't even in the picture, but it is possible for me
not to have known everything that was going on with Jan, and what kind of
commitments he was making - but at the time, you know, none of us were doing any
recording and none of us considered ourselves entertainers or musicians. So, its
kind of likely that.. nothing was really happening with -although they were
friends, both Jan & Dean - it's very likely that nothing was really going on,
musically with him. I never remembered him around, and then all of a sudden, you
know, twenty years later, it's hard to remember what really happened, but, he
really wasn't in the picture - in my picture of what happened...
H - But, that's the story I heard Dean tell.
G - It's not an accurate story, I don't consider it accurate at all.. . and
having checked with people like my parents, what
they remember of it, of course they were not very well informed either - they
weren't informed until the whole thing was just about complete - they found out
something was going on, but from every indication, Dean really was just
completely out of it. There is no Dean - really was no Dean, he was not in the
picture. I began to get disenchanted very quickly with entertainment.. . with
the business and with the people, it just didn't seem worth it ... just too
spiritually draining, spiritually" used very loosely.
H - How did the breakup occur?
G - It just wasn't enough, it just wasn't
good enough, it wasn't enough fun. Jan was a difficult person to deal with, and
the people in the industry were not very "neat," they didn't seem very stable..
. it's hard to be an entertainer, a really hard thing - it's a very expensive
choice being an entertainer, and being in front of people who need to see you in
a certain way, and boy, it's a hard thing to break out of - and it's hard to
maintain a sense of what is in your best interest, hard to remain humble, hard
to feel equal - which I think is a very important thing to feel - and it's just
a very, very difficult, expensive choice to
make all that money, and to be an entertainer.. . it didn't seem worth it, to
tell you the truth, first of all I didn't feel good enough, I knew I wasn't good
enough, 'cause I had met quite a few people who were far (better).. . I didn't
have that real musical background and I met people who were good musically...
H - But, some of those songs were great, like"Gas Money" and "Jennie Lee," of
course.
G - Yeah, well they were - it was alright.
H - Now, after you split with Jan, you did a solo recording?
G - Nothing ever really got out, I tried a couple of things but nothing got out,
they weren't really good enough.
H - There's something called "Woman From Zanzibar"
G - Oh yes, that never made it out really, that was just sort of an attempt at
something, but really never happened.
H - Was that you solo?
G - I couldn't say solo, there were friends that I was involved with, and Jan
was not one of them. [Note: the record was indeed released, as by The Rituals:
see discography below - Ed.]
H - Did you see the "Dead Man's Curve" movie?
G - Yeah...
H - What did you think of it?
G - I was consulted about that originally, and they had a really, really bad
script, and it didn't get a whole hell of a lot better... but at least I was
lucky enough to get them to leave me out of it because.. . I don't really like
having anything to do with show business. I really don't like it, it's never
done me any good, and I just lead a very normal quiet life, and it's what I
want. H - Have you seen Jan after all the Jan & Dean success?
G - Oh yeah, often. I see Dean; Dean and I went to the same junior college and
college together. . . I talked to Dean right before "Dead Man's Curve," I talked
to him a little bit about it. I haven't seen Jan in a few years...
H - Have you seen Jan or spoken with him since the accident?
G - Oh sure, I was at the hospital.., we have mutual friends. I was at his house
a couple of times.
H - Do you think Jan was the type of person that they wrote him up in the script
to be, a somewhat "egotistical" person?
G - He was a very bright guy, and he was kind of a tormented guy, he was always
cookin' somehow, in one way or another, and. . . I didn't see the beginning of
the film, I came in about fifteen minutes into it. but Jan could be a very nice
guy, at times, he could do nice things, but it always was his nature to know
what he was up to and he wasn t just sort of automatically nice, to pull out the
plug really easy if he wanted to
He wasn't a loud person and he was not that overt - if he was up to something,
he was pretty cool about it, as I remember, but he could have changed a lot
because as soon as he got with Dean, I didn't have much contact with him, I
don't really know what was happening, I knew him mostly through high school, you
know, not as a college student, really, gee, he could have changed a hell of a
lot.
H - What type of person do you see him as today?
G - I don't really know, I haven't seen him for quite a few years, and the
accident made
him, for the first couple of years that I saw him after the accident.. . he was
not a tormented person but then he wasn't up to par either, he was sort of ten
years behind emotionally, and of course he couldn't read and it was hard to talk
to him, but he seemed like a... of course he was crippled in a way, he had brain
damage, so, emotionally he was retarded to some degree. He wasn't a driven
person after that, and he wasn't cantankerous, he wasn't aggressive. . . he was
just a completely different person. In one way you'd say gee, he lost a lot of
his bad qualities
but it's really a strange thing, 'cause you don't want to see a person lose
those qualities under those conditions. I really don't know what kind of a
person he is at this point of his life, I have very little contact with Jan or
Dean now, and hardly any contact with people in show business, it doesn't appeal
to me. H - What type of work do you do now?
G - I'm doing graphic design and product design.
H - Since the recordings, have you ever had the urge to go hack or do anything
else?
G - No, not at all, no regrets whatsoever. I'm very glad I got out, really glad
I had the sense to get away from it. I'm really happy without it, for some
people it's just a killer
- I guess some people feel they're really just right for it, but being a
performer and always on the stage, is not my lifestyle as far as I'm concerned.
from that. . . and I'll never do it again.
H - Do you want to send us a recent
picture of yourself, or should we run the old
ones?
G - (Laughing) Run the old pictures, I'm
safer. . . a historical document.
H - OK, thank you for the interview!
G - Thank you very much
.
Until next time
