Green Fuz (II)
Never before has 60sgaragebands.com printed separate interviews with different members of the same band at separate times…but when The Green Fuz is the band in question, how could we refuse? We printed an interview with Green Fuz leader Randy Alvey in an earlier update and, after being contacted by Les Dale, we asked him if we could pose the same set of questions that Alvey answered. Thankfully, he agreed. While Alvey is synonymous with the band due to his name preceding the group’s moniker…it was Dale that actually wrote the legendary song.
Combined, their responses represent the most information gathered to date on one of the truly legendary groups to emerge from the garage band era.
An Interview with Les Dale
60sgaragebands.com (60): How did you first get interested in music?
Les Dale (LD): I became interested in music at a very young age. My father was a guitar player and singer in a band when I was quite young and my mother was a singer in a band as well. I picked up a guitar at ten years old and never put it down. It was one I found in a closet in my parents' room. It was old, it was missing a machine head (tuning key), it only had five strings (rusty strings), and the neck was warped - but I loved the thing. I took it with me everywhere.
60s: Was The Green Fuz your first band?
LD: No. The Green Fuzz was my third band, but it was the first band I was in that played in public.
60s: Where and when was The Green Fuz formed?
LD: I believe that Randy, Mike and R.E. (Buck) formed the band about a year before I came to Bridgeport. I think that must have been around 1966 or 1967. The band was formed in Bridgeport, Texas and stayed based in Bridgeport until we broke up. I came to the band in 1967. I had moved to Bridgeport from Los Angeles, California. Buck and I lived on the west side and one night when I was playing (loud, I guess), he heard me and came over to my house with I think Mike Pearce and Jimmy Mearcer. We all went to the same school and got to know each other quickly. They asked me if I wanted to hear their band (not named yet) and maybe play lead guitar, so I said, "Sure." The practice place was Jimmy Mearcer's house in his mom's living room. I believe the first song they played for me was "Gloria." I was really blown away and could see right away that these guys and I would be perfect together. They liked the same music as I did (no country music), and so I joined them that night and started to play and rehearse. I think the next day, and two weeks later, we played our first gig. It was at a roller skating rink. I don't remember where it was, but we were all very young and our parents had to drive us to get to the place. For our first public gig, we did pretty well, and I felt even then that this could be special band if we could stay together and get the equipment we needed to make the music.
60s: Is it true that the band was named for a green fuzz box that you used?
LD: Yes! I had an ugly green fuzz box that Mike Pearce's dad saw as we were setting up one night at one of the gigs that he took us to because, remember, we were not old enough to drive when we started playing in public. Someone asked us the name of the band and Miles Pearce, Mikes Pearce’s dad, having seen the fuzz box said, "Hell, you guys should call yourselves the Green Fuzz!" and the rest, as they say, is history.
60s: Where did the band typically play?
LD: The band played any place we could in the beginning but as time went on we could mostly play places we wanted to play. One such place was the Bridgeport City Pavilion. I think it was built in 1967 at the Bridgeport city park. And our manager at the time David Davis (who by the way, played a big part in our recording sessions and used to dance standing on his hands at the gigs we played. He was a character!) got us the gig to be the first band to play at the Bridgeport City Park Pavilion. It was really cool because we got a lot of publicity, we opened it for the city, and it was a good place to play. I used to like playing outside on the hot summer nights that we always had in Bridgeport and the Pavilion was a perfect place to do that.
Note: I was back in Bridgeport this past March and the Pavilion is still there after all this time and still in good shape. It might be a nice place for a reunion concert (stay tuned)! We also played at the teen center we use to practice in. Now it is a Mexican Restaurant and a pretty good one. Jimmy Mearcer, my wife and I ate there when we went back - lots of memories in that place. Add to that schools and skating rinks, county fairs and parties - we stayed pretty busy. In the summer we would play just about every Friday and most Saturdays.
60s: So David Davis was your manager?
LD: The Green Fuzz had a few different managers. Davie Davis was our first manager and really played a big part in getting us most of our first bookings and played a big part in working with Shorty Hendrex to get us into recording. He was older than we were, but he really fit in with us well, and we all liked him. I don’t remember why we moved on to a different manager; maybe it was just time for a change. We did things to fit the way the band changed.
60s: Did you play any of the local teen clubs?
LD: Yeah, like I said before, we played a lot at the Bridgeport teen club that we, along with our manager, ran. During the week we used to rehearse in it, and on the weekends we would play there. A lot of times our manager Tim would hire other bands to play there if he had us booked to play some place else. We also played, like I said before, at the Pavilion in Bridgeport. The cheerleaders from Bridgeport High School were always asking us to play at the Pavilion for them, and if we didn’t have a gig planned, we would. The guys would always say this is the last time, but we really did like to play for the hometown kids. They didn’t pay much, but it did secure us a large fan base in Bridgeport. We also played gigs in nearby towns, most of them within a fifty-mile radius.
60s: Did The Green Fuz participate in any battle of the bands?
LD: Hell yeah! We lived for those things. Whenever we could we would play in any battle of the bands. We met a lot of good bands at those things. The Olive came to be good friends of ours. The Chocolate Moose was another good band we got to know. We never won one battle of the bands. We came in second in a lot of them, but it was not about winning or losing. It was about letting people know who we were and getting the free publicity. But they were really a lot of fun.
60s: How would you describe the band's sound? What bands influenced you?
LD: Well…the band’s sound was very original. No matter what song we played, we always played it our way. Remember I was from California, and I brought a surfer music sound like The Beach Boys, who I still like, and a band called The Seeds, who I thought was way ahead of their time. I could play every song they made. I thought they were great. I brought this musical sound with me to a band that was more country rock, so the mix was really different and surprisingly good, but it took weeks of practice to get to that point. We were still trying to get our confidence at our first few gigs and learning how we wanted to play in public. I think our sound was a very raw, hard-driving rock sound with that same kind of beat. Our influences come from many different places. As a band we loved Jimmy Hendrix, Iron Butterfly, Credence Clearwater Revival, and a lot of the top bands of the time like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. As for me, I love the blues, so I listened to a lot of Robert Johnson, Bo Diddly, Eric Clapton, BB King, Freddy King, and any band that had a guitar player who could burn up a guitar like a new band called Led Zeppelin.
60s: How popular locally did The Green Fuz become?
LD: We became the band that everyone knew about especially after we recorded “Green Fuz.” We had a pretty large following and big fan base in the towns surrounding Bridgeport. For a small town garage band, we broke out really well. I think had we been able to tour and been marketed properly, we would have done well.
60s: How did the band become associated with the Wash-Tex label?
LD: We became connected to Wash-Tex label through a man named Shorty Hendrex. Shorty was a friend of my dad’s. In fact, I met Shorty before I joined the Green Fuz. He and my dad worked on a country song together. I was the first person from the band to approach him about recording “Green Fuz,” and he was one of the owners of the label.
60s: Legend has it that the single was recorded in an empty cafe.
LD: I remember the cafe well because my parents owned it. You see, we needed a place to do the demo recording, and my mom and step dad’s café seemed to be a good place. It had a large area to set up the equipment. Our options were limited in a town the size of Bridgeport. I don’t remember which one of us recommended it, but it seemed like a solution to a problem. And it fell on me to talk to my parents. Fortunately, mom agreed it would be a good idea. So we used the restaurant.
And we thought it had good sound acoustics. Boy, were we wrong. But on the other hand, that bad acoustic sound is what gave the song its signature sound. Anyway, when we decided that we wanted to record there I asked my mom and she agreed to let us. The fact that Shorty Hendrix and my family knew one another helped convince my mom that this would not just be a big party, but rather a recording session. It was really cool recording with my family watching. My sisters and brothers still remember. The café was called The Cross Roads Café, and it was located in a very small little Texas town called Balsora, Texas. It was called Cross Roads because it was located at the intersection of two farm-to-market roads that were used by the local farmers and ranchers. They would stop in and have breakfast or lunch, and the place did a pretty good business. It was located about twenty miles from Bridgeport. I haven’t been back there since 1970. I think the next time my wife and I go back to Bridgeport we will take a drive, and I will show her where it all took place…if it is still there and I can find it after thirty-six years.
60s: What was your immediate reaction when you heard the pressing for the first time?
LD: When we heard the pressing for the first time we said, “This sounds like shit!” So we kept playing it over and over again and it still sounded like “Shit!” Who would think that after all these years that song that was recorded in that café would become such a phenomenon? Oh, by the way, after nearly forty years the record has finally started to grow on me. Not bad for a 16-year-old songwriter with nothing to do one night in his father’s living room, all alone with his guitar.
60s: Did The Green Fuz write many original songs?
LD: The Green Fuz didn’t, but I did. I wrote several songs, most of which were just music that I had in my head that I would put down on paper or play on my guitar and set aside because we were covering so many contemporary songs that were really good and the kids wanted to hear. Trying to slip in original songs was really difficult. Fortunately, I still have some of those songs and who knows?
60s: Do you recall the titles of any of the Green Fuz' original songs (that weren't recorded)?
LD: No. There were some. One that comes to mind that I wrote was called “Orange Sodie Water.” We may have played it two or three times. I’m not even sure now as to how the song went. I remember it vaguely and I can’t for the life of me why I called it “Orange Sodie Water.” Stay tuned—I might dig it up!
60s: Do any other Green Fuz recordings exist? Are there any vintage live recordings, or unreleased tracks?
LD: I don’t know for sure. I have asked the guys in the band to talk to people we grew up with and try to locate any pictures and any recordings of our rehearsals. We did record our rehearsals often. I’m not sure if any of them still exist. We are trying to locate them.
60s: Do you recall the inspiration behind the writing of "Green Fuz"? What inspired it?
LD: Sure, I do. The inspiration for the “Green Fuz” came from my thoughts of the Green Fuz being aliens or foreigners, not necessarily from a planet…just somewhere else. It was of telling a story of coming to a town and not necessarily doing any harm, but just blowing people away with our music. The lyrics pretty much tell the story of the Green Fuz invading a small town like Bridgeport. The music I wrote to go with the lyrics had to be as driving and forceful as the lyrics. And after I figured out the beat and tempo I wanted for the song, the chord progressions and melody just fell into place. The lead guitar solo changed at least a dozen times before it was recorded and as you hear it today. The entire song from start to finish took me a little over an hour. The song remains as it was when I wrote it on the record, except for a few words in a sentence that Randy changed at recording to fit his singing style. Mike Pearce, who happens to be the best natural talented drummer I have every heard or played with, introduced the drum solo after I played the song for the band for the first time.
60s: Did you ever perform "Green Fuz" live?
LD: Yes, we performed it live several times. It was a mainstay signature song for our shows and people really liked it. After the record was released, people requested it frequently and sometimes we’d end up playing it two or three times a gig.
60s: R.E. wrote the flip, "There Is A Land". What are your thoughts on that song?
LD: I think it shows just how imaginative and talented Buck really is. He wrote this song when he was fourteen years old. I look at it as more of a poem than a song. I think had it been arranged and recorded differently, with an orchestra and editing, that this song would have been received better. I like the song. I just don’t like the way it was arranged or recorded.
60s: Did the band make any local TV appearances? Does any home movie film footage exist of the band?
LD: There was some film made by amateur photographers at the Bridgeport Pavilion. I don’t know if the film still exists. We are also trying to locate that. We never appeared on television because in the sixties it was very uncommon for a television station to send any kind of television crew out to small towns. We were just not “big” news even though we did play some charitable functions.
60s: What year and why did the band break up?
LD: I left the band in 1970 because Jimmy went into the U.S. Navy and we were all just growing up and going our own ways. R.E. moved to Dallas and went to work for Hertz where he works to this day. I moved to Dallas and started playing in a band called Ziegfield and started to play the nightclub circuit in Fort Worth and Dallas. They were a club band. In 1972, I was drafted.
60s: What did you do once the rest of the band morphed into Natchez?
LD: I had no idea about Natchez, nor am I interested in the band.
60s: When did you first learn about the cult reputation of "Green Fuz"? Was this before or after the Cramps released their cover version?
LD: I learned of this phenomenon in March of 2006, when my wife and I decided to take a trip to Bridgeport (or down “Memory Lane!”). We were in Longview visiting my mom, and I told my wife, Marti, I wanted to take her to the town I grew up in. We drove to Bridgeport, which happened to be about four hours from Longview. After finding Jimmy Mearcer’s house he informed me that people had been trying to locate me because of my song and that it had become almost a cult phenomenon. I didn’t believe it at first, but then he showed me the album of the Cramps with my song on it. Then it started to sink in that after 35 years my song became popular.
60s: How do you best summarize your experiences with The Green Fuz?
LD: If you have ever seen the movie Stand By Me you would know that this is like five boys from different walks of life, growing up in the country with one shared dream: To play music. We went through many life-changing events. We were each other’s family and best friends and still are.
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