“He made all these crazy ideas coalesce.” “Kenny was and is a genius,” says Waybill. Kenny Ortega, who would later work with Michael Jackson, was The Tubes’ choreographer. Female dance troupe Leila And The Snakes and Prairie Prince’s girlfriend, vocalist Re Styles, joined them on stage. Cotton and Prince were their artistic directors and created backdrops and posters. “We got compared to Alice Cooper, but we were more deviant and had more social commentary than them.” “ Bill Graham put us on as support at the Fillmore West when anyone weird came to town,” Waybill recalls. They played anywhere that would have them: strip bars, biker bars, the art institute canteen… The band, completed by synth player Michael Cotton and second drummer Bob McIntosh, staged theatrical ‘mock-rock’ shows that parodied the pulp sci-fi and cowboy shows of their youth. The Tubes in the mid-70s (Image credit: Getty) By the early 70s the two bands had merged, with Waybill graduating from roadie to backing singer (“I said: ‘I’ll stand here and wear some dopey outfit’”) to eventually becoming The Tubes’ frontman-meets-circus barker. Spooner and Anderson’s band, now called The Beans, joined them soon after on the West Coast, but it was impossible finding gigs for two unknown groups. The rest of his band and their truck-driving roadie, Waybill, went with him.
In 1969, Prairie Prince took up a scholarship at the esteemed San Francisco Art Institute. I did them all – Camelot, The Sound Of Music, Oklahoma…” Meanwhile, Fee Waybill was the all-singing/acting/dancing star of his local high school.
By the mid-60s, Prince and Steen were playing in one high school group Rick Anderson and future Tubes guitarist Bill Spooner and keyboard player Vince Welnick were in another.
#ALTER EGO BAND MEMBERS TV#
The Beatles’ appearance on TV inspired them all. It was here, in this sizzling Death Valley climate, that The Tubes gestated. “We were all stuck in the burning desert, frying our brains with television,” confirms Prairie Prince. When the visual overload became too much, Waybill and his siblings jumped off the roof of their house into a four-foot-deep paddling pool in the back yard: “Then we’d cool off and go back inside and watch more TV.” “All these sitcoms, game shows and cowboy shows like Hopalong Cassidy.” “In the summer when school was out, it was too hot to do anything except watch TV,” says Waybill. In 1979 The Tubes released Remote Control, a concept album about a TV addict. Those four – Waybill, Steen, bass guitarist Rick Anderson and drummer Prairie Prince – grew up in Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona in the 1950s and 60s. Then it all went wrong.Īnd yet here they are in 2016, still touring with four original members. Stranger still, they then had a run of pop hits in the 80s. Their live shows featured bare flesh, dancing girls, roadies dressed as giant cigarettes and a prosthetic penis. They merged sex, satire and biting social commentary with virtuoso art rock. They also have a Facebook page and you can hear more by them on both Soundcloudand Bandcamp.In the 1970s, The Tubes were America’s most outrageous band. Monotony have a Bandcamp and they tweet as Youth can be found online here: .uk. Sauna Youth – Distractions LP – Upset the Rhythm ( Pre-order.).Sauna Youth / Monotony – Split 7” – Upset the Rhythm ( Pre-order.).Sunday 3 May – Sounds from the Other City, Salford.SAUNA YOUTH also has this live date lined up (where they’re booked to play as Sauna Youth): The 7″ is available to pre-order here: and it has the following track listing: Indeed, if the great man’s still got his finger on the pulse of contemporary music wherever he is, I’m sure Luxury Flats will be putting a smile on his face. There’s more than a hint of the “ death to trad rock” bands the boss wrote about once upon a time and who were staples on John Peel’s “wingding” in the mid to late 80s. It’s an unstoppable joyous blast of pop as punk, careening along like all your favourite garage rock songs and begging to be hollered along to. Judging by the track above, Luxury Flats, Monotony share a lot of SY’s traits, as you’d expect I guess considering they’re the same people. “The idea of Monotony came about during the writing of the new SY album during a break at practise, and has resulted in them touring the UK as Monotony, being invited by Wire to play their DRILL festival last December, and also doing two sessions back to back as both bands for Marc Riley at 6Music.” The press release tells where the idea came from:
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