Case In Point - Elmore Magazine

10/24/16, 2:26 PMCase In Point – Elmore Magazine
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Case In Point
Peter Case opens up about his proto-punk-rock roots, his
killer collaborations and the reissue of his self-titled solo
debut
Features | October 13th, 2016
Peter Case, Los Angeles, August 2015.
By Mike Cobb

Peter Case is one of America’s greatest living singer/songwriters. In the early 1970s, he
founded the seminal pre-punk band the Nerves, later went on to front the Plimsouls
and, in the mid-80s, embarked on a fruitful solo career. He has worked with Sir George
Martin, Elvis Costello, Mike Campbell (Tom Petty), David Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Ry
Cooder, Roger McGuinn (the Byrds), Van Dyke Parks, Victoria Williams, John Hiatt and
many more. His debut solo album, Peter Case, produced by T-Bone Burnett and
Mitchell Froom, earned him his first Grammy nomination, and has just been re-
released on vinyl by Omnivore Records.
Case will be performing live at Hill Country BBQ at Rockwood Music Hall in New York
City on Friday, October 14th. For more information and tour dates, head to his
website.
Elmore Magazine: How did you get started in music? Did you grow up in a musical
household?
Peter Case: Yeah, I did. I was the youngest kid in the family. There were a bunch of
teenagers in the house, and I was just a little kid. I grew up in a household with a lot of
rock ‘n roll, and it was the ’50s. My big sister played boogie woogie and Fats Waller
type piano, stride piano and she was pretty good at it. And so I grew up with a lot of
that kind of the music in the house all the time. They started me on the piano, I quit,
took up sax for a bit, and then eventually the guitar.
EM: Was there a crystallizing moment when you realized– this is what I want to do?
PC: Yeah, I guess I was about six, and I think it was my sister who said that I had an
intense devotion to rock ‘n roll. We had all these singles at the house: Elvis, Chuck
Berry, the Everly Brothers. So I really loved that, and then a few years later I got really
into the Kingston Trio; they were really big, with Tom Dooley. I was just a little kid, man.
My mother bought me a copy when we were shopping, she got these stamps you get
for buying groceries, and you got a free record. And then I guess… I wrote my first
song in about ’65 when I was 11; it was right around then when I got really serious
about it. I’m from Buffalo where everyone wants to play football, but I got real serious
when I was about 14, I had a band and we were working around town. I was playing
firehouses, dances, youth centers, high school dances, solo at coffee houses, church
basements. You’d just pick out what kind of gigs you could. I did that for a couple of
years, one band got pretty popular, and then I joined up with some older guys up in
Buffalo who were playing blues. They were in their mid-20s, and I learned a lot from
those people. I was also doing a solo thing all along, and then I grabbed the guitar and
went to California when I was 18, y’know? I left home at the end of my 15th year and
moved in with a bunch of musicians.
EM: In the late 70s, you founded the Nerves with Paul Collins in San Francisco. Can
you describe the scene back then?
PC: Actually, I moved there in ‘73, then the Nerves started at the end of ‘74, we started
playing SF in ‘75, made our record in ‘76, and the on the very 1st day of ‘77 we moved
to LA.
EM: I know, that was all during the growth of what we now call “punk rock.”
PC: Well, we were previous to punk rock. We weren’t really an outgrowth of the punk
rock movement, and we were never really a punk band, but when punk rock arose, we
felt sympathy with it, y’know? Because we were kind of in opposition to our peers in
the music world, and we were very different, also playing very fast, so there was a

Peter Case, Los Angeles, July 1985
punkish element, but we actually started in late ‘74, so it was that very first blast of
rock ‘n roll from younger people, and that’s really what punk rock was, like a new
generation of rock ‘n roll. But we were really before punk. I booked the first punk rock
shows in LA. Do you know about that?
EM: Umm, well, no. Tell me!
PC: Well, you can read about it in the latest issue of Ugly Things. Do you know that
magazine?
EM: No, but now I’m glad to.
PC: If you’re a rock ‘n roll fan, you’d
really enjoy it. It’s all about garage
rock and punk rock. It’s put out by
this guy down in San Diego named
Mike Stacks, and he gets a lot of
great interviews with people all the
time. In the latest issue, there’s a
story in there about the start of
the Weirdos and punk rock in LA
and how I came in and convinced
these guys to play a gig with us
before they had a drummer! And
so we were finding the Germs, the
Weirdos, the Zeros, the Dils, all those bands played their first gig with us. And we had a
few bucks from San Fran, so we came down to southern California and booked out a
hall or two and put on these shows. The Whiskey wasn’t putting on young bands, we
couldn’t get booked, so we booked our own shows and affiliated with all these punk
rock bands who were just starting. They all played with us, and then we went on tour
with the Ramones, also solo, and we played with Pere Ubu, and Devo, before they had
record deals, and then that band exhausted itself by early ‘78, but it was kind of ahead
of the curve.
You know what they say, the early bird doesn’t get the worm, it’s the second bird. I think
Guy Clark used to say that. It’s kind of true. [Laughs] We didn’t get the worm, man.
Though one of those guys from the Nerves made a lot of money off of that song
“Hanging On The Telephone,” y’know– the guitar player.
EM: Next came the Plimsouls. Tell me about that.
PC: So the Plimsouls…the vision of the Nerves was a band where everything was
minimal. I was really getting it together in the Nerves, but the songs were really
stripped down, they were like two minutes long. With the Plimsouls the whole thing
got fleshed out; we were more of a live act. As a result, the band went over pretty well,
live, everywhere. So we’ve always been known more as a live act. In fact, my favorite
records by the Plimsouls are the three live records that have come out from back then.
There’s one called One Night In America from ‘80-81, another called Live: Beg, Borrow, &
Steal at the Whiskey A Go Go from ‘82, and then there’s Beachtown Confidential from ‘83
from the Huntington Bear. And those are my three favorite ones; to me those are
better than our studio records. The band never did really get comfortable in the
studio.
EM: They didn’t quite capture what the band was truly about?

PC: The live things did. We were breaking attendance records live in California. We had
a big record on the radio, A Million Miles Away, but it never seemed like it got produced
correctly. Maybe even the Nerves were produced better in a way. But the Plimsouls
made their reputation as a live band, so that’s fine with me.
My songwriting was evolving from writing these two minute songs I’d been performing
solo since I was 15 or 16. Towards the end of the Plimsouls I started writing these
other kind of songs that were songs you could play completely solo; a lot of my
favorite music has always been like blues singers like Robert Johnson or Lightnin’
Hopkins that could bring the whole picture to you just solo– really exciting, rocking
music, not any esoteric thing, just done by one person.
When I was a kid, I hitchhiked over to Boston from Buffalo– which is about 600-700
miles– and I saw play Lightnin’ Hopkins play over there. It was early ‘71. I went over
there in a blizzard, man. It took me a few days to get over there; I actually wrote a story
about it. It was incredible man; it was, like, really moving. So I always carry that in my
mind. Actually, there’s a song that I do based on some Lightnin’ Hopkins music on that
solo record [Omnivore’s reissue of Peter Case] that just came out.
EM: Excellent, looking forward to hearing that. Since departing from the Plimsouls,
you’ve moved in an increasingly acoustic direction. Why is that? I imagine it’s easier
than dealing with band dynamics and all that.
PC: Yes and no. Easier is a strangely relative term. Going out and playing solo is
rigorous in its own way, because it’s all down to you, y’know? So to keep doing it, you
have to bring it up to a certain level where people are getting off on it enough that it’s
worth doing.
I haven’t been increasingly acoustic. You’re either acoustic or you’re not. I go back and
forth between all those things. It’s more about the song than whether you’re acoustic
or not, though I do like acoustic music. But I like rock ‘n roll too. I love full on rock ‘n
roll, and I believe you can play acoustic rock ‘n roll like Jonathan Richman did, or like I
do too. All those boundaries and borders and definitions in music are not as interesting
to me as whether something moves me and gets me off. And so, I don’t just like genres
of music. I love Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Bert Jansch, those guys all played solo
acoustic, but I don’t like everybody who plays acoustic music. And I like all their electric
music too. A lot of different musicians play electric and acoustic, and I’m that way too.
It depends on the situation; you have to make up your mind. I tour a lot solo, and I do
like it. I like the freedom of it, the contact with the audience, and I just like the freedom
to be out there and put everything into the song as opposed to having to rely on an
arrangement. I just like putting everything into that one performance. They’re kind of
like movies that you project on people’s imaginations, y’know? If you do it right, you
can take people to a whole other place that can almost feel like a whole big orchestra.
It’s possible to put it all into a real simple approach. I’m into songs and singers,
y’know?
EM: I’m a singer/songwriter too. For me, playing solo often feels very naked. There’s
not much room to hide. Do you feel that way as well?
PC: Well, certainly when I first started doing it, after being in bands for many years, I
felt really exposed. But I’ve come to love that. Over the years I’ve learned to put a lot
more into it. When I first came out of bands it was kind of shocking, kind of like a cat
being thrown into cold water, y’know? (Laughs) But if the songs are really right, and
you’ve worked on it right, it can go to a whole other place where you don’t have to
suffer like that. But I know what you mean, I especially felt like that when I came out of

the Plimsouls.
EM: Your first solo album was produced by
T-Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom and
had quite a roster, including Victoria
Williams, Mike Campbell, John Hiatt, Jim
Keltner, Roger McGuinn, Van Dyke Parks
and many others. How did you assemble
that crew?
PC: Well, me and Victoria were married, so she had to! [Laughs] No… she didn’t have
to, but she did. We were up picking guitars one night; it was me, Elvis Costello, who
writes about it in his new book, T-Bone, and Bob Neuwirth. Elvis played me “Pair of
Brown Eyes.” It was a single off the new Pogues record. We were all playing our new
songs for each other. I’d never heard it or
any of Shane’s [McGowan] songs, and I
really dug it. We started talking about it, and
I said we should do what the Byrds did with
Bob Dylan. We could take that song by the
Pogues and electrify it. We put together
pretty much the same band as the Byrds
used on 5D. Van Dyke Parks, who played
organ, and Roger McGuinn is on it. It’s sort
of electrified and expanded, sort of a far out
version of the song. T-Bone asked who I
wanted to work with, and I said Van Dyke
Parks, I’ve been a fan of his since I was kid.
We had Song Cycle and Discover America. I also loved all the work he’d done with other
people; he also played on that record with Judy Collins and Stephen Stills, Who Knows
Where The Time Goes. Anyway, it was fantastic working with him. He put a string
quartet on “Small Town Spree”; I got to take a harmonica solo on that, if you can
imagine that. It was super fun; it was a joy.
The idea on the first record was folk music, like Appalachia, but with a groove to it. So
you really feel it. That was the vision for that record. The track “Three Days Straight”
has Victoria on it with a drummer named Jerry Marotta.
EM: I know there’s some extra tracks on it. Can you tell me about that?
PC: There’s seven extra tracks. Several of them are from the original recordings we did
in Fort Worth from ‘85 that I did with T-Bone. Some of them are the same songs but
done radically different. There’s an outtake song called “The Toughest Gang In Town,”
with stacks of harmony vocals from Marshall Crenshaw, who is a friend of mine. It
really sounds great. One of the best songs on there, I don’t know why we didn’t put it
on the record, is called “Trusted Friend.” It’s a good song and we did get a really nice
recording of it.
EM: What informs your songwriting?
PC: My heroes when I was a kid were solo blues singers and poets, especially the Beat
poets. And for a while there I really wanted to be a big rock ‘n roll star when I was with
the Plimsouls. But before that my heroes wrote and represented life. I like all kinds of
stuff like that. Obviously it feeds your mind if you’re writing; it opens up your mind. If
you don’t read books it limits you. You gotta read, man. I get the feeling that a lot of
country singers these days don’t even read. [Laughs] I mean at least Hank Williams

read the bible, man. You gotta get all that experience. You go and get real experience
from the world, live, talk to people and read! That’s how I see it. And you gotta know
the history of music, listen to the old stuff and get over the hiss in old records. If you
do that, then you’re on the right track. [Laughs]
EM: How does the songwriting process work for you? Where does inspiration come
from these days?
PC: Well, I don’t know man. Inspiration’s the big one. There’s no point in doing anything
if it’s not inspired. Inspiration’s the only really important part of it. Where does it come
from? You never know where the next thing’s gonna start, so you can’t really plan for it.
Things just happen. A lot of it’s just based on your life. That’s why I stay on the road a
lot. In a way it’s inspiring to be out seeing and meeting people, playing for a different
audience every night and traveling. I find that inspiring because it sets you up for things
that are unexpected, and when unexpected things happen, that allows things into your
mind. A song will come in through that window.
Craft is different; it’s not really a compliment. It’s sneaky, crafty. What you want is
something that takes people away, that has an incredible vibe to it. It’s mysterious.
You’re always looking for that thing that’s more than you are or more than we all are. It
comes from a window or from outside; it’s not just mundane. You never really know
where the next thing’s gonna start.
EM: Your career has spanned all kind of different scenes, moments in history,
analogue to digital. What’s different today than when you first started out?
PC: Music today has a much less important place in society. It was looked at in a
different way in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Now it’s just part of all the options that people have.
But music’s really prevalent anyhow. A lot more people want to have an authentic
relationship with music than they used to. It used to be that I was the only kid who
played guitar at school. Now everybody plays, or they’re a DJ or something. So it’s very
different. In a way that’s good, that’s interesting. On the other hand, there’s less
people who are really committed to the history of it. You gotta know the history and
know what’s been done to know what’s left to be done. And you need to know the old
stuff. These days people know less about the past; it’s more homogenized.
EM: Do you think the transition from records to CDs to digital downloads has
affected people’s relationship to music? Clearly an mp3 is not the same as holding a
record in your hand, but there’s been a resurgence of vinyl, which I hope helps
people connect more again.
PC: Yeah, like streaming. They don’t pay the artist, which is a huge demotion, but on
the other hand you’re able to hear more. But it’s possible that you hear more but have
less of a relationship to it. I remember when I was a kid I had one Bob Dylan record,
Bringing It All Back Home, and I used to listen to it like a million times. I had like about
10 records. You learned them so much, you knew everything about it. That’s a very
deep relationship to music. I guess that’s still happening, but you have to create that
yourself. But like they say, you can have incredible access but no context.
This is an excerpt of a larger phone conversation, recorded in September. To listen to the
full interview, head over to Mike’s Mixcloud page here.

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