Thanks so much to Will and J.D. for making this interview happen! I wrote about the Brooklyn, 80s band The Few a few months ago, and as it happens sometimes J.D. and Will got in touch with me! This was great of course! I wanted to learn more about the band, and on top of it all, they had been a band in the same city I live in these days. So yeah, the band released just one record back in 1986, but didn’t know their story. So join me in learning a little bit more about The Few!
++ Hi Will and J.D.! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Are you still involved with music?
Will: Doing well, thank you. And thank you for featuring us on Cloudberry. It was a really nice surprise to see us and other bands from way back when on there. Yes, I’m still involved in music. I have been lucky enough to be able to build a pretty nice home studio and I still write and record. It’s amazing what you can do these days, how far technology has progressed since when we were doing our thing. But I’ve always loved the recording/engineering aspect of music. Went to school for it the early 90’s. It’s just a matter these days of finding the time and learning the ins and outs of computer based music production. I wouldn’t call my self a computer wiz by any means lol. One of these days I’ll release something but I find I’ve grown more particular in what I feel is a finished piece these days. Also wearing the musician, engineer, producer hats all at once can be a challenge. Also I suffer from G.A.S (gear acquisition syndrome.) I love buying new toys. Thankfully I have a very supportive wife.
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what was your first instrument? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
Will: Well I have always been in love with music since as long as I can remember. I used to tape songs off of AM radio when I was a kid. I also secretly joined one of those music clubs that they used to have where they would send you like 12 free cassettes and then you’d be obligated to buy more in the future. I think I did that 3 or 4 times until mom caught on. Now AM radio back then was Motown, early 70’s rock, Pop, etc. If you listen to any one of those Billboard Compilations from 1966 to like 1978 that’s kind of what I was brought up on. Lots of different music that I still listen to. I was also fortunate to be exposed to my parents stuff. Sinatra, Bennet, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, and classical as well. One of my earliest memories was my mom playing Schubert’s Unfinished for me. So I have a love for classical as well. I’ve run the gauntlet from Alice Cooper Killer to Scott Joplin, to Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells. And of course I’ve always loved the Beatles. I literally woke up one day and I wanted to play the Piano. We had one in the house and my mom could play a bit and I had maybe a year of lessons when I was like 10. I got bored with it quickly and stopped. I started playing guitar at 12 or so trying to figure out CCR’s Proud Mary. I somehow ended up with a Tel-Star Electric Guitar and some really horrible amp and the rest is not history lol. Then in 1977 I got a Fender Tele for my 15th birthday and the rest is STILL not history! I am 99% a self taught player. What I used to do was tape a rhythm track on a cassette an just play over it endlessly. I still recommend this to whoever is starting out. Except you can skip the cassette player these days. After a point I always had a guitar in my hands. Used to drive my friends nuts. I did have a few lessons early on.
++ Had you been in other bands before the The Few? If so, how did all of these bands sound? Are there any recordings?
Will: Yeah I was in 2 bands before the Few. The first was a garage band in Flatbush, Brooklyn. It started out as a 5 piece band but the lead singer, well he really wasn’t good at singing but he was a high school friend of mine. Unfortunately I received the honor of telling him he was out on a Subway platform on the way home one day. What added to the discomfort was that I was newest member of the band. Telling band members that you’re moving on is never an easy thing. The other guitarist left shortly afterwards but I’d hook up with him in the next band which was a 3 piece. He switched to bass and his girlfriend was on keys. She was a classically trained pianist so the results were a bit weird. But I liked it a lot. I like music that’s a bit off kilter, quirky. Yes I have recordings of almost everything that I have done or been involved with. It goes back to my love for recording. We did a few gigs with each band. The turning point for me at this time was that I bought a Teac/Tascam 144 multitrack. Cost me $1100.00 at the time but my god there was never a better investment.
J.D.: No bands for me, other than playing the trumpet in high school, an instrument I played live a few times (sometimes not so well, sometimes okay). Will may have a version of Grownup that’s got trumpet on it (sung by Clay, the drummer, since I couldn’t sing and play trumpet at the same time).
++ What about the other members?
Will: Well we all keep in touch to some point. And I love them all. There is a bond that in my opinion will never go away. It’s like any group of people with a common goal. You bond. These guys are my brothers for life. Clay, as you know, moved to Sweden in ’87 I think. Has a wonderful career and family and is the best drummer in the world. J.D well he’s an accomplished writer and still cranking out the tunes. We send each other material on a constant basis. He was always the most prolific of us all. Jon, well I know him the longest. It was he and I that started the Few back in ’82. But I’ve known him since ’74. Damn good bass player and singer. Just not great at reaching out. I’ve been trying to get these guys down here (I live in Florida now) to do some work but it hasn’t panned out yet. Hopefully we’ll be able to work something out soon.
++ Where were you from originally?
Will: Brooklyn, born and bred.
++ How was Brooklyn at the time of The Few? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
Will: We’d do the Bleecker street thing. Plus CBGBs. We played there a lot as well. We’d go out to support other bands that we knew. But pretty much kept to ourselves. Brooklyn in the early 80’s, well it wasn’t the safest place to grow up. But we were good. Our first rehearsal space was my 12 floor apartment in Clinton Hill. I almost got evicted. For example on the 4th of July we’d blast Hendrix Star Spangled Banner out of the window. We actually wrote a song about it. It’s called “Mrs Charles.” She wanted to kill us. And the last thing you wanted to happen was getting caught in the elevator with her. She lived 2 floors up. We then moved to Jon’s Dad’s house basement. We did some renovations. Carpets on the wall and stuff. And the we ran into another neighbor called Dougie who actually used to throw handfuls of dirt through the basement window to make us shut up. It didn’t work.
J.D.: Brooklyn was very different. In terms of clubs, I think they came about more towards the late 80s (like Lauterbachs). I also got held up at gunpoint twice, but that’s another story (actually two stories).
++ One thing I suppose is that Brooklyn wasn’t what it was now, that is sort of the center of the independent music scene, Manhattan was?
Will: I’ve been out of Brooklyn since 2003. At the time there were some cool clubs in Brooklyn and I remember playing some of them but yeah it was all lower Manhattan. Brooklyn has blossomed. You know that 12 floor apt I just mentioned? Yeah well it‘s worth half a mil. now unfortunately I don’t own it.
J.D.: Everything was in Manhattan in terms of where people hung out. The Bleecker Street strip was, as already noted, the dominant place.
++ How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?
Will: Here’s the wonderful thing. I knew Jon from ’74 he was the older brother of my friend Jim who I met the same year. Jon eventually started playing bass and was in another band. I was doing the same. For some reason which I cant remember we hooked up and started playing and recording music on my 4 track. Jon had gone to Purchase and although this is a bit hazy to me, you’re dead on that JD went there as well. Don’t remember why but JD moved to Brooklyn. And now we had 2 guitars and a bass. We did a lot of work using a drum machine before Clay made his appearance. As a matter of fact we had a drummer named Kevin Teschner in the early days but Clay always fit us best.
J.D.: Jon went to Purchase for a while, dated somebody who was a good friend of mine, and that led to me meeting Jon and Will. We had another drummer for a while, but he had real issues keeping time, and eventually Clay (whom I knew from Purchase) became our guy.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
Will: Most of the time we’d come up our individual songs and then bring them to the rest of the band members to flesh out the parts. It was pretty democratic. But there were times when certain songs or ideas were vetoed by the other band members to the displeasure of the writer. Sometimes we sat down and would try to write together as well. As for practice is was in the places mentioned above.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
Will: Hazy on this as well but what I remember was that there was this actor named Charles Rocket, think he was on SNL for a season and he happened to be Jon’s cousin I think. He supposedly came up with the name. After we split up another band adopted that name.
++ Who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?
Will: Well we all brought our own from what we were exposed to or grew up with or liked. We were kind of all over the place. Everything was fair game. But to me we never really sounded like anyone else that I had heard. For the most part I don’t think we consciously tried to sound like anyone else. One or Two influences that I can remember would probably be Elvis Costello and also The Pretenders. But just on certain songs.
J.D.: I shared some musical influences with these guys (we all loved The Band and Neil Young), but I also was a big Elvis Costello, Graham Parker guy. Living in the city we were exposed to a lot of different sounds, and funk and hip-hop made a real impression on me.
++ And what about NYC bands? Which are your favourite bands from your city? And if there are any that you would recommend me as obscure bands that deserve my attention?
Will: I think we were closest to a band called Urban Blight. Some of their members did the horns on “Where’s the Fire” and keyboards on “Grown Up.”
++ You released just one 12″, back in 1986. One thing that caught my attentions is that it had no label. So it was self-released, right? How did you raise the money for the record? Was it hard?
Will: Yeah it was self released and as I remember it cost about 3k from recording to mastering which was a hefty sum back then. It wasn’t hard to raise the money. I asked my mom to co-sign a loan and after a bit of convincing she agreed. After that it was just a matter of everyone getting their payments to me so I could get to the bank on time to repay it.
++ Also wondering why you did a 12″, wondering as perhaps a 7″ may have been cheaper?
Will: I can’t remember why we made that decision but I don’t think 7” was very popular at the time.
++ Who came up with the illustration on the front of the sleeve, what does it mean?
Will: That would be Clay and believe it or not I think he “borrowed” it from a Boy Scout Manual or some such. What it meant to us was 4 band members (the vertical lines) bonded by the music (the horizontal line.) Besides it was pretty simple and recognizable so we thought that helped as well.
J.D.: My memory is different from Will’s: Marianne Geist (I think that’s her name) was the wife of the photographer, and I thought she came up with both the concept and the finished design.
++ What about the band photo on the back, where was it taken?
Will: It was somewhere in Manhattan a school or office setting as I remember although I might be wrong. I remember we all partook of some, uh what we liked to call the “creative edge” in the bathroom before the shoot. Probably why we’re laughing so hard.
++ The four songs on the record were recorded at New Breed Studios by Robin Danar. What do you remember of those sessions? How was working with Robin? How long did it get to finish the songs?
Will: Well I always loved being in the studio and as I remember it we were well rehearsed and ready to go. I believe that Robin came to our practice space before hand and we ran through our stuff and he picked the songs that he thought we should record. There might have been a bit of a debate about that but in the end we normally listened to his advise. We were pretty efficient in the studio. We didn’t screw around and were focused. I think it took about a month with us being in the studio a couple of times a week. Robin was easy to work with and very professional. I remember one major disagreement we had with him about how tame Grown Up was turning out to be. Specifically the keyboard riff. We didn’t like it. He did. As you can tell by the track he won that argument. We also did some cool stuff like mic-ing my amp in the bathroom for the lead on My Romance. From what I hear Robin is very successful now.
++ Was this your first time in a recording studio by the way? Or did you have previous experience?
Will: We had been in the Studio at least twice before this. We had done two other Ep’s with 4 songs each that we mainly used to get gigs in the city. They were never put on vinyl though. I can’t remember the name of the studios. We had also done recording sessions in our rehearsal space with the Teac 4 track. We rented drum mics and did a couple of compilation tapes with 20-30 songs on it. I might be wrong but I think we did another 4 song EP after this as well with a different drummer…actually yeah we did. In ’91 I think.
++ Was there any interest from any labels to put out your music?
Will: No. We did send our stuff to them but they politely declined. I still have the rejection letters lol.
J.D.: No, but a couple of young advertising execs saw us at CBGBs and for the blink of an eye we were considered for a media campaign. We even wrote and recorded a jingle for Miller Beer that I still think would have sold a lot of beer.
++ And how come there were no more releases?
Will: In 87 we were doing pretty well. We were finalists in a battle of the bands that was sponsored by WPLJ which was a major rock station back then and we had been played on the radio in the days leading up to that which was cool. Nothing like hearing your songs on the radio. We lost the final to Urban Blight I think. It was held at “My Father’s Place” In Roslyn, LI. We were giging regularly and I think we were as tight as we’d every be. We used to rehearse 4 nights a week for 4 or 5 hours a night. And then Clay dropped the bombshell that he was moving to Sweden. After that we auditioned drummers and hooked up with a few but it was never really the same so we broke up and just used to get together and record stuff for most of ’88 and ’89. By that time I had acquired a Tascam 8 track Reel to Reel. We got the bug again around 1990 and auditioned drummers and Jim Harris became our drummer. We gigged some more for a year or 2 and made the last EP in the studio. We broke up for good after that. Although we were the band did an off Broadway play that JD had written called “Famine Street.”
++ There are no compilation appearances either, right?
Will: Well in 1999 before the Sweden thing we did have a reunion at The Bitter End I believe and did like three sets. That was fun. In fact I remember that being what started the ball rolling on the going to Sweden.
++ Aside from the four songs on the 12″, are there still many unreleased songs?
Will: Yeah there’s a ton of them.
++ I think my favourite song of yours might as well be “Grownup”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?
Will: I’ll leave that to JD since it’s his song.
J.D.: We were in our mid-20s and playing in a band, but everybody had to work to make ends meet. I had just started teaching high school in Brooklyn, a place called Sarah J. Hale that was one of the toughest schools in the city and it was a very sobering experience for somebody who was hoping to get a record deal. I ended up learning a lot from it, but at the time the line that said “It’s so hard to be a grownup” was very heart-felt.
++ If you were to choose your favorite The Few song, which one would that be and why?
Will: Tough question as there are not many that I dislike…but I’ll go with one called “Natural Cause.” This was an early JD composition where JD and I do a double lead at the end which really compliment each other.
++ What about gigs? Did you play many?
Will: Yeah. We did. The Bleecker street circuit, CBGBS, places in the East Village, a couple of surrounding colleges like Princeton etc. We used to do some crazy parties for friends as well.
++ And what were the best gigs you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?
Will: Well there was the time Clay and JD almost got arrested right before a gig for smoking a joint outside a Bleecker St. club. When we came on stage JD dedicated that gig to the NYPD. Our first one at “The Other End” in April of ’84 was a favorite of mine. The first time we played CB’s was a milestone for us considering it’s history. Besides they had the coolest dressing rooms with all this band graffiti all over the walls. I’d pay to get my hands on those walls now. But really to me they were all fun. We had a couple of clunkers usually in the early days but normally we were well rehearsed. We used to tape most of them (which I still have) so we could iron out the kinks. We were once featured on this old cable show called Tucci at 2. It was fun being on tv even though it was a low budget show.
J.D.: I think our reunion gig in 1999 was a really good gig. I thought we were all playing at a high level at that point, and it was a lot of fun.
++ And were there any bad ones?
Will: Oh yeah and I wish I could remember the name of this club/hotel on LI. We got an audition to be the house band at this club on LI in the summer of ’84 I think. So we rented a van and drove out to this place only to find that the sign out front was advertising us as a Reggae band. Now we did a couple of Reggae songs but by no means were we a Reggae band. Not quite sure how that happened. We were hired to do 3 long sets. Well we opened the first set with a song called “Factory Boy” which couldn’t have been farther from reggae as you could imagine. Was more of punk kind of thing. The place was packed. By the time we were into like the 3rd song everyone was leaving and I mean everyone. We cleared that room in no time. The only people left in the place were like 2 or 3 friends that had made the trip out there. The owner was pissed and made us play our full 3 sets to practically no one. Then he didn’t want to pay us. He also had agreed to let us stay overnight which made it even worse. Somehow we got paid and slunk out of the place in the morning.
++ When and why did The Few stop making music? Were you involved in any other bands afterwards?
Will: Well I guess it was ’91 when the last incarnation of the Few called it quits. I do remember having discussions about trying again in ’94 but that never panned out. Being in a band is a lot of work and commitment and is a young mans game when you’re trying to be successful. Humping your gear back to your space at 3am starts to lose it’s appeal as you get older. Besides people get married/ have jobs, find different interests and drift apart. The commitment isn’t there any longer. Now honestly I would have continued on but I wanted to do it with these guys. There were other problems as well that will remain within the band. Well Jon was part of a group called Pie Alamo that did some gigging. I went to see them a couple of times and they were pretty good. More of a country type band. One of the best memories I have about that was that I was sitting in the audience once with a friend of mine and they called me up to sing one of my songs that they used to do without telling me they were going to do it. I remember coming off the stage and crowd was really happy and shaking my hand and all. It was a nice moment for me. In ’02 or ’03 I joined JD’s new band called JED for a time but I was going through some rough times personally then so it didn’t turn out too well which I take full responsibility for.
++ What about the rest of the band, had they been in other bands afterwards?
Will: Well you know about Clay he’s been in several since he went to Sweden. JD had JED and John had Pie Alamo.
J.D.: I played with some great musicians in a band called Rocket Time, and then Will played with another band I was in briefly in the early aughts. Now I’m in a bar band that’s a lot of fun (though we haven’t played in a long time thanks to the pandemic).
++ Has there been any The Few reunions? I believe you did one in Sweden, right? And there were even recordings released by The Few as a 6-song EP titled “Will Fisher”. Care telling me about this release?
Will: Just the ones that I have previously mentioned. Like I said I’d like to get these guys down here (Florida) at some point and do some work but we’ll see. “Will Fisher” came about after that reunion gig. It was Clay’s idea to get me over there and do some of my songs. So I agreed and went over there for a month. Clay had a friend over there that was an engineer connected to this studio. Nice place. So I rented it for a month and the house across the street from it in a very rural area of southern Sweden near Malmo. I had agreed to just be the writer and musician and let them produce it. We also used some studio musicians. It was a lot of fun.
++ Was there any interest from radio? TV?
Will: No. Except what I mentioned above. Oh and some college radio stations we did pretty well in that area.
++ What about the press? Did they give you any attention?
Will: No.
++ What about from fanzines?
Will: Nope.
++ Looking back in retrospective, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?
Will: Well I loved being in the band. All aspects of it. It’s so much better than being solo. I was always the first one in, last one out guy. I never wanted to stop which annoyed the crap out of the rest of them I think. So the whole thing was a highlight for me. But I guess it would have to be the Battle Of the Bands thing. I believe that was our high water mark.
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
Will: Well I work full time so I don’t have a lot of time for hobbies. I do music and read a lot. Play golf sometimes.
++ Well, I live just very close by, in Astoria. But as NYC is so huge, and many indiepop fans visit our city. I want to know what would you suggest them doing here, like what are the sights one shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?
Will: Well I can tell you this. Go get some real Pizza and Chinese food in Chinatown and enjoy it because boy the stuff they have down here doesn’t even come close. Boy do I miss those things. I also miss the changing of the seasons. As for sights I would have said 48th music store scene but I hear that’s moved and no longer there. Can’t remember where it moved to. I would say the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights is nice gives you a nice view of the city. Soho is always interesting as is Little Italy. Or if you really want to spend some coin go book a room at the Pierre Hotel near Central Park and get some room service!
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Will: just want say thank you for the opportunity to be able do this interview. It was really fun. And thank you for what you do! Keeping us all informed and aware of one of the best things in life, music! I’m sure it’s hard work. All the best, Roque!
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Listen
The Few – Grownup
