Marshall Crenshaw Talks about His Career, Gear and Roots

by Rick Landers.

Power pop balladeer, actor and rock chronicler Marshall Crenshaw creates and electrifies contemporary songs from the heartbeat of vintage vinyl. He's firmly and comfortably grounded in the roots of rock 'n' roll and has gathered up a strong coterie of fans with his catchy hooks and timing. Crenshaw is a craftsman who merges classic taste with new style in a manner that produces his unique and captivating sound, always reminding us of the days when rock was young and magical.

His 1982 self-titled Marshall Crenshaw release showed promise with “Someday, Someway,” “Cynical Girl,” "Mary Ann” and “There She Goes Again” that clung to rockabilly structures, pop phrasing, and catchy boy-meets-girl lyrics. Followed up in ’83 by his second album Field Day and its opening track “Whenever You’re On My Mind” it was evident Crenshaw had a knack for coming up with solid material.

By 1985’s more sophisticated Downtown produced by T-Bone Burnette, Marshall proved he would be around for awhile. Downtown showed more confidence with “Little Wild One (Number 5)”; “Yvonne,” “The Distance Between” and the powerful backbeat of Ben Vaughn’s “I’m Sorry (But so is Brenda Lee)”.

Ten albums later, Marshall Crenshaw keeps plowing the fertile soil of rock and pop without resting on his laurels. With his last album What’s in the Bag? released in 2003, it seems to be a good time for Marshall to give his loyal fans their just due with another album.

Crenshaw’s first big break came when he was offered a role in the hit show Beatlemania! that not only helped pay the bills, but earned him some recognition playing a Rickenbacker 325 as Beatles’ rhythm guitarist John Lennon. After tiring of the role, Marshall handed some 4-track demos to Shake Records that eventually landed him a deal with the Warner Brothers label in 1982 and his first album.

Robert Gordon, Marti Jones, the Gin Blossoms, Kelly Willis and Bette Midler have all recorded his work.

As an actor, Marshall has credits including playing Buddy Holly in the hit movie La Bamba about the life of early rocker Ritchie Valens, along with an appearance in the ‘80s film Peggy Sue Got Married and on Nickelodeon’s series Pete and Pete. He has also authored the book Hollywood Rock: A Guide to Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Movies and published articles on vintage guitars.

Last year, Modern Guitars met Marshall getting ready for a show at Jammin' Java, Vienna, Virginia, where he talked to us about his early years discovering the roots of rock 'n' roll, his first break in the hit show Beatlemania and his life as one of America's finest troubadours.

We understand you’re from a great rock town – Detroit? What was it like growing up in the ‘60s with groups like Bob Seger & the Last Herd, Mitch Ryder, Savage Grace and the MC5?

Marshall Crenshaw: I never saw Mitch Ryder, but I did see some of those other bands. Detroit was place with a lot of social turbulence, but a lot of great music comes out of there too. It’s kind of a rough place. It’s a place with a lot of self-inflicted problems, like a lot of racial polarization. But musically it’s a great place and in the ‘60s it was really a lively scene. Motown was there and that was really huge

Did you go to the old Grande Ballroom?

MC: I never went to the Grande Ballroom. The night the MC5 recorded their live album at the Grande I couldn’t go there. A couple of my friends went but I was confined to my house. My parents wouldn’t let me leave the house for the first half of that school year because I was flunking everything. So I missed that. But, I saw the MC5 a handful of times and I saw the Stooges once at a pop festival thing at a State park where pretty much every band was there that weekend.

There was a big rock scene at the end of the ‘60s, but it was short lived. By the time I was out of high school it was all gone and there was a lot of despair and a lot of negativity in the air. It was a flurry of activity, but it didn’t last long.

Did your first band take over the family garage?

MC: We didn’t have a garage. I was in a basement band. My first band was when I was 12. There was myself and another 12 year old and two high school guys. Too tall guys and too little guys! We played, I don’t think we even had a name, at the local American Legion hall and we got a dollar each or something like that. We played all the usual stuff. Bands all played the same stuff, “96 Tears” and another Detroit area hit by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators called “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and "Open Up You're Door" by Richard and the Young Lionhearteds. I’m proud to be from where that could be a number one hit! Things broke in Detroit before anywhere else, like The Who’s “My Generation” before it broke anywhere else. It was a fun time. I've looked through the music surveys and it was amazing and all the really hard edged stuff breaking into Detroit before anywhere else.

You live in Woodstock?

MC: I’m in upstate NY, I’m not in Woodstock. I was in Woodstock for about 16 years and I moved across the river to Dutch County. It’s the same general area, just over the Hudson river. During the time there weren’t many venues. There were one or two, but not for very long. It’s funny, there doesn’t seem to be a large music scene there. When we moved over there a lot of people said, “Oh, you’re going over to the dark side.” I still don’t know why.

Your music always seems to have that classic pop innocence to it, but still sounds contemporary. What influences do you recognize having guided your sound?

MC: Boy, anymore they just come out of me. When I was writing stuff for my first album ‘60s pop and ‘60s R&B was very much in the forefront of my thinking. You know, I felt kind of alienated from contemporary rock music at that time. It just kinda lost me at some point, in the early '70s I guess.

It’s a matter of taste. I just remember being at concerts at Cobo Hall [Detroit] and looking around [shakes his head], at the beginning of the ‘80s and late ‘70s. I’ve spent the last few years listening to the stuff that I liked when I ws a child, like rediscovering Buddy Holly and the Sparkletones and going back to the pre-history of rock ‘n’ roll.

There was a friend I used to hang around with that I was in a band with right after high school. He was born in 1957, he's a couple few years younger than me, and he refused to listen to any music made after 1962!

Most kids your age back then were into the latest thing.

MC: He had this big Chrysler with an 8-track tape player in it and he had an 8-track tape of The Best of Louis Jordan. And that really turned my head around when I heard that stuff. It had all the drive of rock ‘n’ roll but it was really musically sophisticated and lyrically really intelligent and funny. It really intrigued me! I started listening to stuff from that period before I was born, like the Delmore Brothers. I was really obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll music and I really wanted to crawl inside it and dig deep into it to understand it and understand the roots of it. So, I did that for a few years and really didn’t listen to contemporary music.

When did you get back into what was happening?

MG: When I was making my first record I started hearing contemporary stuff that I liked, like the Clash's "London Calling", the B-52s, stuff that they use to call new wave and I grabbed on to that. So I was influence by the sounds. I lived in New York at the time and I was influenced by what I heard around NewYork. It was a mix of different things, some classic some contemporary. And somehow or another I stumbled on a style and a lyric writing voice. The thing about my first album is that you listen to the songs and you can sense that it's a person with a particular point of view. So that was important to be able to capture a moment like that lyrically and that's another thing that makes the record interesting.

Looks like you have an old Gibson ES-175 there?

MC: Yeah, it’s a ’54 ES-175.

Do you use vintage gear to get vintage sounds?

MC:Yeah, I kinda do, even though I think there’s something gross and absurd or obscene about the whole vintage guitar market. I think it’s really driven by peoples’ egos, but I do have a lot of old guitars that I’ve just accumulated over the years. I’ve got a couple nice Gretsch guitars. I have a ’55 Jet Firebird and an early ‘60s sparkle Jet that G.E. Smith gave me. That was nice of him! And I have a couple of Stratocasters, a 1960 Esquire, and a Mosrite that I got in the ‘80s.

What about amps?

MC: I have a single Showman with a JBL speaker. I fell in love with that speaker for a while. It has this kind of snap to it that I like that you hear a lot of on Rolling Stones records. You know, the JBL sound was really big for a while. I use the Showman as a bass amp in my studio when I record. I always play my bass through it.

I’ve got a Marshall Super Lead covered in red! I walked into a music store in Vermont sometime around 1993. I wasn’t in the market for anything that day, but I saw that amp standing there, they only wanted $400 for it, and there was no question about that I had to grab it and I did. I turn it on when I want to scare people, which is not that often. I record with it sometimes.

An AC-30 [Vox] was my main thing for a long time. Lately when I've been playing on stage I play this old Ampeg M-12 that I bought when I was fourteen. I've held on to it all this time. It’s kind of a crappy sounding amp, but I use it with a Sigmund pre-amp. There's a guy in California, Chris Siegmund, who makes really good amps and guitars. I bought this little tube pre-amp from him and it's really brought the little amp to life. The amp also has a great vibrato. I guess that's why I haul it around. I have about 6 or 7 amps.

How’d you start up with the guitar?

MC: I always wanted to play guitar from way back, from day one. My dad had a guitar he bought when he was in the Navy. It was a no name guitar with black plastic tuners. There are pictures of me when I'm three and four years old dragging it around the yard or hanging around the porch with it and it has two or three strings missing! But I always wanted to play guitar. I fell in love with rock ‘n’ roll pretty early. My two cousins who I was close to, Marilyn and Carol, would bring home 45s. I'd just jump up and down when I liked a song I heard. I liked Buddy Knox and “Party Doll, "Black Slacks" by the Sparkletones, and I loved “Susie Darling’” by Robin Luke. They all have electric guitar on them. I don’t know why, but that's the sound that grabbed me and it spoke to my inner hillbilly. They just made my blood vibrate for a reason. I still listen to those records sometimes.

My Dad got me my own guitar when I was six I think. It was similar to his. We went to Sears in Highland Park [Michigan] and it cost something like fifteen dollars. I got an electric guitar in junior high school. It was a single pickup Gretsch Corvette. I don’t have it anymore. My brother took it to a dance and somebody smashed it. By then I wasn’t really using it anymore.

I wanted a gold top Les Paul. You remember that for a while they stopped making them. When they re-issued them I wanted one, so I got a job at a fast food place called Checker Barbeque, a really crazy place with lots of interesting people. I scrapped together enough and got this Les Paul. I went out and played at this party with a lot of bikers and it was stolen. It was one of those with a big geeky headstock, so I don’t think that I would have kept it. I don’t think the first re-issues were that good. They were very heavy. The ones from the ‘50s were really light and sweet sounding. That's the thing about the vintage guitar thing. Because people in the '60s and '70 didn't think the guitars were well made then. Like they thought those Stratocasters made in ‘70s with the big headstocks were shit. But those Stratocasters, now people are paying thousands of dollars for those! Hendrix played those! So, to a certain extent I think it's a big scam.

Are you into home recording?

MC: God yeah, I’ve always been into that. When I was in a band in my early twenties we bought some recording gear and put together a studio. We bought this package of gear that had been owned by Sidra recording studios. They had a couple of hits like “If This Is Love”. The console was made out of these 1576 Aztec mixers and we got some Norman mics, but it was all really outdated. It was 4-track and we tried to run it as a commercial enterprise. I love gear and I became obsessed with recording and the act of playing instruments.

I started writing songs to give me a vehicle for that [recording]. I wasn’t really a songwriter until I wanted to make a record. It was in the ‘70s and early ‘80s when I got into that. I’d been getting by on playing guitar in various bands. I was in Beatlemania. I did that in a lot of cities. I was in a touring company, a west coast company.

How’d you manage to land that one?

MC: I sent in a tape and a picture. And the company sent someone to audition in Detroit, Sandy Yaguda, who had been a member in Jay and The Americans. I’m really indebted to Sandy Yaguda. It was a huge opportunity for me. I’d been traveling around the country a lot and just got temporarily back in the Detroit area. I was going to go to GIT [Guitar Institute of Technology] in LA, it’s now called Musician’s Institute.

I was accepted into that and was going to go there, but then I got the chance to get into Beatlemania. So I went east instead of west. It was a paying gig. It was super exciting! It was unbelievable to be in New York City. And it wasn’t a great time to be in New York City, there was a garbage strike after we’d only been there a short time. But it was great, it was really a huge thing.

How’d the Beatlemania version of the Beatles breakup?

MC: I quit the show. I really got to hate it. I left the show in February 1980, by then I had some tunes. And I had a game plan, I had a sound in my head and I had a lot of ambition. So, I left the show and was trying to do the right thing.

Your first album, the self-titled Marshall Crenshaw was a great first release.

MC: Uh huh. Most of my records are pretty good. Some of them aren’t, but most of them are.

I especially like your Downtown album and the track written by Ben Vaughn called “I’m Sorry But So Is Brenda Lee” – it’s a great tune!

MC: Oh thanks, yeah. I agree.

Have a new recording in the works?

MC: I do sort of have one in the works. I’m dabbling in some song writing. Right now I have four that are on the table. And I’m slowly getting them finished. I’m having a hard time with the lyrics. I start out usually with a tempo in mind and a drum beat and, then I don’t do this anymore, but for a few years I’d set up a pattern on a drum machine, put up a microphone and plug in a guiar get a guitar make some noise, gurgling sounds and have some germ of an idea. I can get the structure and the atmosphere and the melody of a song together pretty easily and then I have to write the words. That takes a lot longer. It’s like there’s two people , a composer and the lyricist but they’re both me. I’m good at editing. I think I’m better at editing than I am at writing. It’s so satisfying to write a song and feel that it’s really right. It’s a great feeling.

Your porkpie hat is a bit of a “signature” stylin’ thing with you.

MC: I guess. I was trying to do like a Sinatra thing with those hats! I was getting my fashion tips from Frank, if you can believe that.

You wrote a book Hollywood Rock: A Guide to Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Movies – so you’re a movie buff or a rock ‘n’ roll movie buff?

MC: Both. I was much more of a film enthusiast and film obsessive back then. Now that I have kids tthose are two things that don’t do anymore that I use to do.I don’t go to the movies and I don’t read. I cut those things out since I had kids.

So, what was the first movie with rock ‘n’ roll in it?

MC: I think the earliest ones in our book were the Louis Jordan films. He made like four films and they’re all great and they rock! You know, I think that the stuff that comes before rock ‘n’ roll is almost more rockin’ than rock ‘n’ roll. Have you ever heard ""Flying Home" by Lionel Hampton? God damn!

You were in movie about Ritchie Valens called La Bamba?

MC: Yeah, I played Buddy Holly. I sang a song. It was lots of fun, pretty cool.

Do you feel an affinity with Holly?

MC: Yeah I do! The older I get and the more I know the more I dig him. I think his music is really beautiful. He was an interesting person too. He was just a kid. I think it took a lot of bravery. He was in west Texas in this very provincial Bible belt place. To get on stage singing "Annie Had A Baby"! That takes balls! To get out into the world like he did, I like people like that, people with a sense of adventure and that kind of drive to live life and experience life. I think that’s really admirable.

As an accomplished songwriter, do you think songwriting is an in-born talent or a craft that someone can learn from scratch?

MC: I don’t know. I think you have to have some sort of talent for it. I don’t why I do or why anyone does. It’s just a mental quirk or something. [Laughs]

I’ve been musically inclined all my life, so I don’t know what it’s like for somebody to try to do it that can’t do it. I could always naturally play music.

MC: What else do you play besides guitar?

MC: I’ve been trying to play the drums for about the last ten years. I go through spells, years trying to learn. I feel like I started too late in life. But I would love to be a really great drummer. But I don’t think it’s going to happen. I'm 52 now and I get sore easy now. I’m afraid maybe it’s little too late to be a really good drummer. But, I bang away at it and I play on some of my records.

There’s one called Number 447 where I either play or program all the drums on that record and I’m proud of the way it came out. It’s the first record where I had control of the groove all the time. And I think it went well. At the basis of it, that’s where I’m coming from, I have a sense about rhythm and that’s where it starts for me.

Are your current projects self-produced?

MC: No, not self-produced, I’m working with a producer Stuart Lariman. He’s just a guy I know and like. He started prodding me to make another record. And I thought that’s a great reason to make one, to hang out with him. I did the last three by myself production wise. I worked on a couple with a brilliant guy, a buddy of mine named Brad Jones down in Nashville.

What do you think of the ability of artists to leverage the Internet?

MC: I think it’s good. I think it's really good. A lot of great stuff has bubbled up from the Internet and it’s definitely what’s going on now. I think it's really interesting. I Love iTunes. You know what I found on iTunes? This old one by Porter Wagner called “The Rubber Room”. This is a boon to mankind, that I can sit at home and buy a copy of “The Rubber Room”. I needed it for my radio show.

You seem to have the level of success where you can still manage your personal privacy, where it's not invaded all the time.

MC: No, I don’t have that problem. I have a pretty quiet life and I live in a small town. I don’t have people coming at me when I don’t want them to. I’ve always been really shy. It’s hard for me to even get out. I do it and if I didn’t do it I’d go nuts. But at the same time I like to be able to crawl in to my cul de sac sometimes to be able to do that when I need to. Like my little girl asked me if I’d sing and play at the barbeque that her class is having at the end of the school year. I’m terrified out of my fucking mind at the idea of playing for a bunch of eight year old girls, third graders, I’m just freaked out about it. [Smiles]

Related Links
Marshall Crenshaw
Siegmund Amps & Guitars
Michael G. Stewart Photography
Jammin' Java

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