Interviews

As big as they wanna be, Circus '92
Metal Missionaries '92
Livin' it up 92
Menaces to Society '95
Road Report - Whitfield Crane '95
The Will to Survive '97
Maybe for fun we do a show in Bali '00


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As big as they wanna be



by Mordechai Kleidermacher
- Circus - 1992 - pp. 73-74
© all rights reserved

"We're just a bunch of stupid-ass, cheesy idiots from Santa Barbara," Whitfield Crane, Ugly Kid Joe’s hyper singer, proudly proclaims. If that's so, these T-shirt-clad beer guzzlin' Californians in shorts and sneakers are the luckiest bunch of dopes to ever become an overnight sensation.

At last count, the hard-rockin' funsters' debut EP, As Ugly As They Wanna Be - a mad jaunt that runs the gamut from rap to metal - was already platinum and had entered the Billboard album chart's Top 10. As the icing on the cake, they scored the opening slot on their all-time hero Ozzy Osbourne's arena tour this summer. "I can't believe this is even happening to us," Crane, 24, hoarsely exclaims on the phone from Daytona Beach, Florida, where the band was captured live for MTV's Spring Break.

Ugly Kid Joe's success has been fueled by the sarcastic paean to the pissed, "Everything About You," a catchy ditty with a happy vocal melody and the crankiest everything-sucks lyrics - just what the doctor ordered on those days when you're asking yourself, "What's the point of it all?" The song's been receiving heavy exposure on MTV and radio. So who's the miserable wretch who actually inspired this charmingly nasty anthem?

"I've always kind of hated ballads, especially love ballads," explains guitarist Klaus Eichstadt as he lets out a humongous belch. "Especially with a metal band when the big hit that breaks them is a love ballad. I had written this song on piano with this happy melody and I go, 'God, if I wrote some love lyrics to this, I'd be a cheeseball.' So I said, 'No way! Gosh, just make this an anti-love song.'

"So when we were writing the lyrics, I imagined this guy named Farrell T. Smith who lived near Whit and me. We all grew up together. He'd totally rag on everybody, but in a really funny way. I'd be like, 'Farrell, check out this guitar riff.' And Farrell would say, 'You suck! Gimme that! I'll show you how to play!'

"I'd ask him if he wanted to go skiing. He'd be like, 'Ahh dude, I hate skiing. You get all cold and wet. And it's all uncomfortable.' Then he'd go to the beach and be all, 'I hate the beach. I've got all this sand in my shoe. I get all itchy.' He'd be all complainin'. That's how I came up with the first line 'I hate the rain and sunny weather"'

Other songs on the six-song EP include "Whiplash Liquor," a party anthem detailing the drinking habits of middle-class white teenagers (a subject the band is well acquainted with), "Too Bad," a true account of manic depression (the EP's only serious song) and "Madman," a sick frolic which ponders the possibilities of a psycho killer on the loose in Disney-land. Musically, the band whips up a tight mesh of big crunchy riffs and infectious funk grooves, all with the Kids' unique sense of irreverent fun-sort of like Faith No More meets The Three Stooges. That spirit is embodied in lyrics like "suburban white alcoholic trash, we ain't glam and we ain't thrash," in the group's name-a parody of L.A. glam-band Pretty Boy Floyd, in the scrappy kid flashing his middle finger on the EP's cover, and in the album's title, a takeoff of rappers 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be.

"[Rap] lyrics are totally hilarious says 24-year-old Eichstadt. "That's been a lot of my inspiration in terms of lyrics, writing stuff that tells little stories and has a lot of humor. I've kinda looked up to 2 Live Crew because they totally caused so much shit."

Whit and Klaus grew up in Palo Alto, California, which Klaus describes as "middle-to-upper-middle-class white suburbia where everybody complains about a little bit of noise." According to Whit, they met when Whit's father mulched the Eichstadt cat with the lawn mower. Mulched cat notwithstanding, the two Ozzy-and-Judas Priest diehards became close buds in junior high school. "He's my best friend," Whit says. "Basically, I wish I was a guitar player. We both started guitar lessons at the same time with the same teacher, but I'm real kinda lazy and I only made it a week."

After high school, Whit moved to Santa Barbara-" I was living with my mom and that wasn't a good thing, cause we were clashing." In Santa Barbara, he says, "I just ended up in a hand. I kinda end up places. We did a demo. It sounded pretty damn fantastic and I said to Klaus, 'Look dude, I'm actually in a band that doesn't sound stupid.' And he figured, if I; the biggest laggard in the world could pull that off, obviously he could. So he asked me to sing on his demo. I said, 'If I do, could you please come to Santa Barbara and be in my hand. I think that would be a very beautiful thing.' He lived in Palo Alto in his parent's house, in the back room situated away from the house, food in the refrigerator. He had his girlfriend. He was pretty set. So to get him away from there would be pretty hard to do."

Klaus left the comfort of his parent's home for an old Victorian house in Santa Barbara, which Whit terms "this giant Addams Family house-just a messed-up, lived-in, partied-in, really mean house with a view of the ocean. And we lived there with a hunch of slouches from Santa Barbara."

Initially the hand was called SWAT (Suburban White Alcoholic Trash). Along the way they considered such monikers as The Sperm-Ripping Gutter Sluts and The Regurgitated Anal Vapors. "We wanted somethin' stupid, cause we're stupid," Whit says. According to Whit, the band's present configuration was solidified; fittingly enough, on April 1st (April Fool's day) 1990 with the addition of bassist Cordell Crockett. Guitarist Roger Lahr and drummer Mark Davis complete the lineup.

Through the efforts of a local DJ, the band, despite its lack of ambition, was signed to Polygram. Whit relates, "He was like, [in a mock pompous voice] 'You guys could really be a big band someday.' And we were all, 'Yeah, right, whatever! And we're crackin' a beer. Sure we could.' With us it was never that vibe. It was more like, 'Music's a beautiful thing and let's have fun playing it.'"

Success does have its benefits, though. For Whit the best thing is neither fame, fortune nor glamour. "I'm happy," he says, 'just because my mom can finally he proud of something I've done. I was kind of a dick when I was growing up."

Ugly Kid Joe are currently working on their first full-length album with producer Mark Dodson (Anthrax, Judas Priest, Prong, Suicidal Tendencies). Whit says you can expect "thundering drums, real beefy guitar tones" and, get this, a cover of Harry Chapin's folk-rock classic, "Cat's In The Cradle." Go figure.

Metal Missionaries

(Blast! 1992 - pp. 35-36)
© all rights reserved

Ugly name... great band! Funny thing is, not a one of them’s named Joe! Who are they, and why are they here?

Rarely - and only then - does a band come along and set fire to the imaginations of music lovers across the board - different ages and ethnic compositions, different economic levels and political beliefs. But Ugly Kid Joe seems to have done just that - cut across all boundaries to become one of the hottest, most talked-about bands to ever headbang!

To know the origin of the band's name is to know the band, themselves. The quintet is a killed blend of talents: lead singer Whitfield Crane, bassist Cordell Crocket, drummer Mark Davis, guitarist Klaus Eichstadt and guitarist Roger Lahr. See what we mean? Not a "Joe" among them!

So, who - or what - is Ugly Kid Joe? That's like asking why is a Leppard Def?! (Coincidentally that's exactly with whom they toured all summer - the mighty Def Leppard!)

But back to this mystery guy, Joe.. Vocalist Whitfield and his four cohorts in crime are intimately acquainted with Joe. 'He's a scrappy kind of a kid.. .a real brat!" he chuckles. 'He likes to drink and get crazy and go up against so-called authority, but in a way, everybody sort of likes him.... even though they also sort of hate him, too!"

"Joe was always the kid in school who got himself in deep s**t!" the band members chime in. "He'd do the real dumb things, the real stupid pranks... but you ended up thinking he was pretty cool anyway."

So, there you have it - it's easy to catch on to the idea here that Ugly Kid Joe is a first-class fun band! But don't for a moment get the idea these guys are some overnight sensation just waiting to rake in some easy cash and then splitting for greener pastures elsewhere.

Guitarist Roger states, "We're very serious about what we do. There's no way on earth we're just in this thing to make a quick buck here! I know I speak for the whole band when I say we want to see some longevity in this business for Ugly Kid Joe."

What else can you figure out about Ugly Kid Joe? Well, their infectious song "Everything About You" was catchy enough to be included in the soundtrack to the hit movie Wayne's World, which catapulted their debut EP, As Ugly As They Wanna Be, high up the music charts. And by the time they released their debut LP - America's Least Wanted, their audience was primed and ready for more UKJ magic... and they made the album a platinum-seller.

In fact, the band is donating the royalties of their "Panhandlin' Prince" song to the Fred Jordan Mission in Los Angeles, a shelter for homeless women and children, and the money generated from the song will go toward building housing for those who need it so desperately.

But on the personal side, they say their image, such as it is, is pretty much what they really are. "We're all from California," they explain. "We all wear shorts, and we all like way-cool clothes."

They're not the kind who go out after a gig and get plastered; instead, you're more likely to find the guys playing a friendly game of football or Frisbee in-between recording sessions or shows.

Their camaraderie is evident in their music and stage presence; these are guys who really like each other, music aside!

"We're a pretty close band," they all smile. But they do admit their incredible success (no, they call it "fantastic success!") has left them without much time off at all just to hang out.

Somehow, though, the guys manage to find time to answer some of the fan mail they've been receiving (and it's A LOT!), though they wish they could personally respond to every letter of support. The band wants to be accessible to their fans, no matter how huge they get.

"We never want the kids to be afraid to approach us," they agree. "We want them to come up to us and feel that they can really talk to us, you know? Because, after all, where in the world would this band be without them?!"

Livin' it up



(by Caroline Mellon, Hit Parader - 1992 - pp. 60-61)
© all rights reserved

Ugly Kid Joe is waiting on pizza. After battling over culinary questions for the better part of an hour, the Ugly Kids finally decided that they could all stomach pizza...not sandwiches or Indian food or hamburgers, just pizza and nothing else! And now that they've made that decision, they want it now! But until then, they'll bide their time with us. We're tucked into a corner room, away from the hullabaloo of the day's activities, and we've got the undivided attention (at least until the pizza comes) of four-fifths of Ugly Kid Joe. (Very rad bass dude, Cordell Crockett, was detained with a health care crisis.) In what could soon become too close proximity (it depends upon their behavior), we've got inimitable motor mouth Whitfield Crane, band brain Klaus Eichstadt, the ever-witty Dave Fortman and the wildly wacky Mark Davis.

While the guys were still wild with hunger pangs, we got down and deep...

Hit Parader: So guys, you've been on tour with Ozzy, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard in the past year. Your EP, As Ugly As They Wanna Be is platinum, and your album, America's Least Wanted is almost there. Do you feel like rock gods?
Mark Davis: We don't feel any different whatsoever.
Whitfield Crane: We're all sitting here, dressed how we were a year ago; in fact I'm wearing the same shorts I've had for four years. We don't have any money.
Klaus Eichstadt: What we have now is opportunity. We have the opportunityto make money, but what we mainly have is money and backing and support from the label to do whatever we want musically.

HP: Your albums were recorded on a healthy budget. You should be raking in tons of cash. What are you doing with all your money?
Dave Fortman: What money? I haven't seen any money?
WC: All musicians, except if you're Michael Jackson, are the last to see money. It's the most screwed up industry there is.
MD: Recoup.
DF: I hate that word.
MD: You'd think we'd be rich. I've been wanting to make records my whole life. When I worked in a grocery store, I wore a short haired wig so I could play music at night... and now I'm in a "big" band, and I'm still broke. We've seen practically nothing.
KE: It takes like nine months before you see any of the money you make because it goes through all this paperwork. We're lucky though because the money we made from the EP paid for America's Least Wanted. A lot of bands don't get the chance to even make one record. Because of the success of the album and the EP we're pretty much guaranteed to make at least two more albums.
DF: The bill just keeps growing, it's ridiculous how much stuff costs. Videos cost $100,000.
WC: You have to understand that when the record companies go, "Let's go out to dinner, we'll take you to a five star restaurant and you can have whatever you want to eat." Well, later on, you go through the paperwork and you find that they billed that dinner back to us.
DF: Five months later you get this invoice $2,000 for a meal for Ugly Kid Joe.
WC: Dinner's on me!

HP: So when you finally get your money, what are you going to do with it?
DF: If I need a guitar I can go out and get it. That's all I really would spend my money on. In the future I'd like to buy a house and support a family and all that, but right now if I did have money I'd probably save up for a new guitar or amp or something like that.
MD: I'd like to be able to buy a house. It doesn't need to be a mansion or anything, just a house. I haven't had a home in a long time. When I lived in Santa Barbara before we got signed I camped on friends' couches for months. I lived in a motor home for a few months. Then on tour we didn't have any home, and when we did America's Least Wanted we lived in a makeshift apartment in L.A. I'd just love to have a place I can call home. A place where I can throw beer cans around and nobody's going to give a care about it.
WC: Like the tour bus.

HP: Your tour bus? Why, what's you're tour bus like?
MD: Don't answer that question.
WC: Shhh...Klaus is sleeping.
KE: Def Leppard's stage manager came on our bus and laughed at how messy it was. He was laughing so hard.
WC: Turned over ash trays, beer bottles, beer cans, clothes, stinky socks.
MD: There was some fat girl's butt sticking out of the bunk.
DF: Who's responsible for that?
WC: Not me.
DF: Yeah, but his bunk was moving. To pass the time, obviously we do live a little rock and roll. It was really funny, our tour manager doesn't like us drunk and he doesn't want us to drink, so he makes up these rotten stories of how he can't find beer or alcohol on our rider. So yesterday we got ten cases of Corona and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
MD: We had to buy it out of our own pocket, we stopped at a liquor store and bought twelve packs. So now we're poor.
DF: We could barely afford a box of cheeseburgers and some Dunkin' Donuts.
KE: I don't even like jelly donuts.
WC: Hey! Where's our pizza, I want pizza!
DF: It should have been here by now.
MD: I bet our roadies apprehended it, and they're chowing down right now!

And with that; four-fifths of Ugly Kid Joe pile out of the room and roam the haIls in search of their mystical pizza.

Menaces to Society

by Kristina Estlund, RIP - July 1995 - pp. 38-40, 93
© all rights reserved

Nestled high in California's Santa Inez Mountains are five of the most rambunctious men in rock. Ugly Kid Joe are recording their second full-lengther-their third release to date -Menace to Sobriety, and are having quite the time. They are living next door to tennis star Jimmy Connors-actually, in the house that Jimmy Stewart built and Dean Martin last owned, and which the band has renovated to suit their present needs. A beautiful, palatial estate complete with fireplaces in every room, one couldn't ask for a more comfortable atmosphere in which to record.

Vocalist Whitfield Crane thinks there are Indians in the vast gully the property overlooks. While sitting in front of the outdoor fireplace, taking in the beauty, Whit and new drummer Shannon Larkin (ex-Souls at Zero) suddenly take off as if they've seen a ghost. Tresa Red-burn, their lovely publicist/taxi driver/damage-control officer, and I follow, unsure, and discover that there are indeed what sound like wild dogs or Indians. "Do you hear that, dude?" asks Whit. We all nod. "That's the Indians." Could be. The house is located at the very tip-about half a mile up-of an Indian reservation. But it might also be wild dogs. Of course, Whit likes to believe it's wild Indians. After listening for a while, awestruck, we stumble back over to the fireplace and wonder where we're going for dinner. A couple of hours later, we're all tucked into cars and on our way to the local eatery. After only knowing the Kids a couple of hours, they have bogied all of my party favors and not even shared! Once at the restaurant we order dinner and wine. Guitarist Dave Fortman, who replaced original guitarist Roger Lahr in '92, tries to start casual conversation with me. I am not amused. "I met you two hours ago-it's not like we're old friends, and what you did ain't cool," I reply. Everybody dies of hysteria. "You're looking at the guilty party right there," Dave says, pointing to Whit. "Look, I got something to back you up," Whit claims.

But the point here is not that Whit the Bogie King was selfish, but that UKJ are releasing a record, helmed with great care by producer Garth Richardson (Rage Against the Machine, L7, Mindfunk). Whit's leaning back in his chair munching veggies, "Bogart" Dave is sulking, Shannon's pounding back the beers, Klaus (Eichstadt, guitarist) and Cordell (Crockett, bassist) are laid-back. Conversation has flowed from the new Ozzy record to how the Kids baby-sat Oz's offspring when they were on tour to video games to football. But what about the new disc?

"I'd ride my bike from my apartment down to rehearsal. It was two blocks from the beach. For a while there I'd be able to ride my bike from my apartment down to rehearsal and then go along the beach on my way back, go by the batting cages, hit some balls and stuff," Klaus explains. "It was a really cool place to work on songs. That's what we did for a long time. We had to audition a bunch of drummers. How long did that take?" he asks Cordell.

"Last year, through January, we did the Rio-thing-the festival. We had a sit-in drummer do that," Cordell explains.

"The sit-in drummer was Bobby from the Electric Love Hogs," Klaus interjects. "He also did the Black Sabbath track ('N.I.B.')" Anyhow... So we auditioned for a couple of months. We were auditioning everybody in any way we could. Then Whit went snowboarding in Colorado..."

"Tell her the Shannon Larkin story," Cordell and Klaus encourage Whit. He declines because it had been written about in RIP Rap some months back.

Cut back to RIR September '94. Whit calls in because he's just bonded like there's no tomorrow with Souls at Zero drummer Shannon Larkin, whom he met while snowboarding in Denver. "You know how you lust kind of click with people? I definitely clicked with him. Shannon is the king," he told us then, and Shannon was vibin' as well. So here we are.

"Then we started jammin' with Shannon. We booked a little room inside the warehouse," Cordell explains. "Then Klaus and me' got some eight-tracks goin' on; we were doin' demos, bringin' in rifts and ideas. Then Shannon and I just worked up our parts. We'd sleep on the couch half the time and we'd be working constantly, kicking at it."

Klaus continues: "The whole process was just like us in this warehouse, Dave with his stupid Natural Light beers, like 20 cases of 'em. All we'd do is beers, play ping pong and jam."

"Totally," Cordell affirms. "Started like being in a garage band again."

"There's two songs that have that funk vibe-'C.U.S.T. (Can You See Them)' and 'Suckerpath'; most of them are just straight-ahead, hard rock, metal," reiterates Klaus. "With the way that Shannon plays, there's like a strong groove goin' on with him and me. You can just play funk, you can play rock, whatever," Cordell gloats.

"The guitar player writes rifts, then the band writes songs." What?!?! The Bogie King comes out of the fog and speaks! "Whit mouths it. Like the 'God' rift, he mouthed; '10/10's chorus, he mouthed. Mouth rifts are rad! 'Clover's dududadadan. 'Tomorrow's World' is the best example ever of complete co-writing. Shannon wrote the whole chorus for 'Tomorrow's World,' which is one of my favorites."

"It's been really neat. It's cool to just have someone join the band as a drummer, and then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, this dude can do it all!" Klaus confirms. And the band continues having Whit "mouthing" for all the songs. "There's a song called 'Oompa.' It's a song about the Oompa Loompas [the characters from Willy Wonka And the Chocolate Factory] and sounds like the song [from the movie]."

What about the market now? Is it receptive to a new Kids record? "Market? There's a market down the street. It's pretty good. You can get like french taters," Klaus jokes.

Shannon throws in, "Fresh avocados, guacamole...

"The last record I bought was Scorpions' Love Drive," Klaus continues. "When we came back, it was just like time to kick back and get out of the scene. We'd been touring quite a bit, and we came back and got apartments and started life all over again in one way," the guitarist continues. "We just totally started from scratch in a way. Wrote all new songs and everything-you know?-find a new drummer; so we really haven't been keeping our noses in music magazines or seeing what's hot or whatever. It's whatever they play on the local radio or the CDs that we have. It's way good for us," Klaus notes. That's how rock 'n' roll should be, though-not a poor imitation of the current flavor.

Originally, the band had 17 tracks for Menace..., but only a dozen are on the record. They figure the rest can be used for B-sides and what-not. (That's something to look forward to!) "In Europe, they still sell vinyl, right? And they sell these 12-inch singles," explains Cordell "So like the first time we were ever there, these people come up with these 'Neighbor' singles. They're like 12 hits of records, like three other songs-live 'Neighbor,' re-mix, whatever. So in Europe, that's the way they do it. They sell more singles-they're more of a singles market-but four songs! If you're ready to work, its a great way to release new stuff."

Between America's Least Wanted and Menace..., UKJ have been on the Airheads soundtrack (Whitfield singing "Born to Raise Hell" with Lemmy and lce-T) and an accompanying video that aired frequently. As with most bands, they get a chance to read the scripts before tracking a song. If the script's cool, they'll do it. "We've gotten some really f?!kin' weird movies. We're like, 'Naw, it's all right,' " Klaus explains. "I mean, we really never think about it that much-doing a movie thing-but you never know. Why would we want to do a song for a movie? But then again, if its a rad movie, and you're like, 'This is rad, dude! Yeah, we'll do a rad song for this one!' I mean, if it's a James Bond movie, we're there! Guaranteed! Speaking for myself, that would be a dream." Like a bolt of lightning: "That's what Bond needs-like a heavy metal/hard rock theme song! All sneaky and shit.

What about the transition from living in Santa Barbara and traveling to L A to play local clubs-the Whisky, etc.-to gigging all around the world? "It's raaaaaad!" Cordell breathes. "It's like a new adventure every time. You don't know anybody."

"It's neat, man," Klaus overlaps. "You gotta make new friends fast."

Last time around the Kids were fortunate enough to tour with legends like Ozzy; this time around they won't be lumping into the arena spotlight so quickly. "We'll stay in clubs forever! I'd love it if we got big enough to go and play big places. Fine. But it's not like a goal in life to be an arena headliner;" says Klaus. "The thing is, it's not really the band's fault, because we got suckered into that a few times where our record happened to be doing really well at that particular time in that particular city, and they'd try to book us into 2,000-seaters. The last time we were there, we played for 200 people six months earlier. What now happens to a lot of bands is ...it's the promoters, everything, up and down, the band just wants to play. A think a lot of the bands would rather take it a little more gradually. That way, you don't go down!" concludes the guitarist, laughing.

"I mean, we've had great shows at bars and great shows in front of 60,000."


Road Report - Whitfield Crane

(by Gerri Miller, Metal Edge - August 1995 - pp. 100-103)
© all rights reserved

On tour since May in support of their latest release Menace to Sobriety, Ugly Kid Joe segued from a European stadium swing with Bon Jovi and Van Halen to a headlining road trip through the states. Kicking back in a Florida hotel room with a documentary about albino tigers playing on the TV, vocalist Whitfield Crane called to fill me in on the tour and more.

G: Day off today?
W: Nope. We play six nights a week. When we were touring Europe, the tour was so huge we were only doing four nights maximum a week. I'd rather play five or six.

G: Tell me about that European tour.
W: It was an amazing experience. Europe's always a total pleasure to play, it's all general admission so it's pretty, chaotic. The first show was some Olympic stadium in Germany. It was neat, I grew up on Montrose and Van Halen. Those dudes were cool. It's always neat to meet people and find out that they're really cool. Alex is the ultimate. We went everywhere. Italy was great. Latin cultures to me are always the most intense, a different kind of energy. It was a long tour but all the shows were 40,000 to 80,000 people a night and to me that's like "Great! Gimme the microphone!" We played Wembley Stadium a couple nights. Remember the Freddie Mercury AIDS tribute? Same vibe. It was packed. My friend works for Bikini magazine and asked if I wanted to interview Ozzy. His kids Jack and Kelly came to the show at Wembley. I asked Jack if he wanted to come on stage and sing with us, and when we did "N.l.B." by Black Sabbath, I introduced him as "Jack Osbourne, son of one of my favorite men of all time, Ozzy Osbourne." Jack walks out, fearless, with a Ninja Turtles hat on his head and takes the mic and says, "Go crazy!" After that we all went to Ozzy's house and rode dirtbikes with him. He's got 30 acres, they bought this old house. Heard the album, it's totally 'cool.

G: Were there any mishaps or Spinal Tap type experiences?
W: Yeah, many goofy things, you can imagine. The stage was made of a material like slip 'n' slide, you could catch like 45' air.

G: Isn't that dangerous, with all the equipment and wires around?
W: It probably is a little dangerous.

G: Did you get hurt?
W: No.

G: Any other memories to share?
W: We did a couple of one-off club shows in between and we played a place called Rock City in Nottingham, England. Glenn Tipton came down and jammed and did three Priest songs with us. "Grinder," "Rapid Fire," and "Manilishi." Before that I had jammed with him on his solo [album] and he was sifting there playing this white strat guitar. I said, "Dude, I can name any Priest song in two notes," and he goes, "Sure you can."

G: You're playing Name That Tune with Glenn Tipton?
W: I got every song in two notes, I knew every one. Tripped him out. Any avid Priest fan knows that the guitar Glenn used to jam on was an SG. I had asked him, "What's up with the SG from Sad Wings of Destiny?" So at the show in Nottingham afterwards, he goes "Here," and gives me the actual guitar he used to track "Victim of Changes" and other stuff on Sad Wings. Klaus [Eichstadt] told me not to bring an SG on the road 'cause the neck would snap so it's at my manager's house. I don't live anywhere so I don't have anyplace to put it. My car, the blue lemon-a '66 Pontiac Tempest convertible with an outrageous CD player- is at my manager's house as well. I really don't have that many physical amenities. I have a green velvet couch that I bought in Santa Barbara and I wrapped it up and put it in Dave's kitchen, on its side. All I really have is the car and the couch. I'm not really a material man. I kind of like not having an anchor.

G: So where did you go in your time off between the tours?
W: We had about a week and a half so me and my friend Will, he plays in the Sweet and Low Orchestra, we drove to Big Sur, kind of aimless, we didn't know where we were going. We ended up in Monterey, this beach with all these babies running around.

G: Now you're back on the road, headlining. How's it going?
W: We're out with Souls at Zero. Shannon [Larkin, drummer] was with Souls for years and it was very important for me personally to take them out with us in the States. It's amazing, good vibe, all the crews are good. Everyone's helpful to each other. Shannon's dyeing his hair now, he looks like Frosty the Snowman. Shannon is the raddest dude ever. He's my hero. The Souls guys come out at the end of the night and Shannon gets to jam with his old band. It's a very positive vibe. We surround ourselves with great people. This tour goes for nine weeks.

G: And then?
W: We're gonna go to Canada, with a band called Varga. We hope to go to Australia, we want to go to Latin America. We've been lucky in a million ways and one of them is that we've been able to break worldwide. There are a lot of places we haven't gone. I'd like to go to Africa. Argentina. I'm convinced that's where my ultimate future woman is. I just feel it.

G: How much of Menace are you playing?
W: Everything but "Cloudy Skies" and "The Candle Song" No ballads. We're not playing "Everything About You," unless we pick some dude out of the audience to sing it.

G: Can you get away with not playing the song that made you famous?
W: Yeah, we can. I feel like standing with the new stuff. If we play a show and the crowd's just incredible, intense, we'll play everything, but if they're just sitting there, not feeling the emotion and the intensity, we won't.

G: How do you feel when you're on stage?
W: It's a void, it's such a hard thing to express verbally, it's so emotional.

G: What about after the show?
W: It's weird, it takes me a little while to get to where... I need a little space, I kick back. Take half an hour to zone out. It's a strange reality I live.

G: How do you travel, plane or bus?
W: Bus. The air conditioning doesn't work. We're in Florida, where you can cut the air with a butter knife. We're hoping they fix it. First we had a crazy bus driver and a bus straight out of Elvis. Then we got a new bus but the air conditioning doesn't work. It cripples your vibe.

G: Do you sleep on the bus or get hotels?
W: We get day rooms, we shower and watch television. This one has a Nintendo machine. We have a show almost every night.

G: Don't you need a breather to rest your voice? Does touring take a toll?
W: Not really. Singing is a strange reality. Some days you work out, you're healthy, you're eating right. I do try to eat as healthy as I can. Some days I'm possessed, I turn into health boy. Some days I'm not.

G: Are you doing any writing while on tour?
W: Yeah, we got ADATs out here and a bunch of crazy shit I don't know how to work. We got a cool song called "Bicycle Wheels."

G: How do you feel about MTV eliminating Heedbanger's Ball and otherwise not playing much rock?
W: Isn't that sad? It's almost sacrilegious. But MTV was an amazing catalyst for us. I have nothing to complain about on that.

G: Now it's back to the grassroots approach of constant touring.
W: I think that's ultimately the best way. think the trick is outlasting it. If we can keep on making albums, we'll last.

G: Anything else to say to your fans?
W: Life is to be lived on the positive trip, never lose the ground, never gonna slip. You're never gonna slip if you never lose the ground; always draw the line, never wear the frown.


The Will To Survive



(by Jennifer Fusco, Hit Parader - June 1997 - pp. 68-69)
© all rights reserved

Ugly Kid Joe stormed onto the music scene at just the right time six years ago with their strange little ode about telling it exactly how it is, Everything About You. That single surpisingly landed in the top ten of the charts, and the band quickly became MTV stars. Little did these California beach bums-turned-celebrities know as their were riding high opening for the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and selling millions of records, that things were about to change in rock and roll. Fun, folicking tunes were soon to be replaced with the dismal dirge emanating from Seattle. By 1995, when Menace To Sobriety, the follow-up to their smash America's Least Wanted was released, nobody seemed to be listening. But instead of packing it in, leas singr Whitfield Crane, guitarists Klaus Eichstadt and Dave Fortman, bassist Cordell Crockett, and drummer Shannon Larkin headed back to the drawing board and have now created an intense, hyperactive, eclectic mix of tunes on their latest offering, Motel California. With a new label and a new attitude, we recently caught up with Whit and Klaus to find out just how they've managed to remain as ugly as they wanna be.

Hit Parader: Where has the band been since we last heard from you?
Whitfield Crane: It's only been a year. Did you ever hear Menace To Sobriety? Everybody forgot about that one. We made that album, went on to play stadiums in Europe. But our record label sucked. We escaped the label, and we had some new songs so we went straight into making a new album.

HP: Did you ever feel discouraged?
WC: Yeah, the guys were like "What are we gonna do now?" But I was like, "Cool, isn't it good that we're away from that now?" I think if anything, it was the excitement of "Wow, we can do this ourselves."

HP: How do you look at your past experiences?
WC: It's all educational. We traveled the world. It was good.
Klaus Eichstadt: You can regret certain little things. But in general, I don't regret it. My dreams came true. We toured the world with Ozzy and Van Halen, sold tons of records. We had a good time doing it; we never got screwed up on drugs or tweaked out on personalities.

HP: What about the backlash of being an "'80's band"?
WC: It's a blessing and a curse. Without Everything About You, would I have any complaints at all? When we play a big festival and bust out that song, come sit on the side of the stage and see what really happens. It's incredible.

HP: So you don't feel like there's a stigma attached to you?
WC: Sure there is, but it's all good fun. We don't fit in - we never fit in. We definitely don't have a clique of bands we're with. We're from Santa Barbara. We're not a part of the L.A. chic-hip scene. We're definitely on an island unto ourselves. But as far as worrying about it, no we don't.
KE: Yeah, it's twisted, but I can totally understand ut. I do it myself. I'll watch MTV and I'll be like, "God, how did these guys get on MTV?" But the I'll go, "Wait, it is original." (Even if it is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. That's the one thing people gave us credit for being original.) It's the nature of the beast. But we're doing a lot better than a lot of the bands that were big just a year or two before us that were selling out arenas and now couldn't half-way fill a club.

HP: How has the band grown musically and personally?
WC: We've grown musically, just from the addition of Shannon. He takes everyone to the next level. He's the best drummer this side of the Milky Way. So just because of the rhythm section, we're much tighter. I've learned that you've got to let the music be the catalyst for adventure. Sometimes you can lose sight of that. You get caught up in interviews, photo shoots, all the things a label wants you to do.
KE: We've learned a lot, gotten tighter as a band. We've had some changes along the way, but for the better. And we're still having a good time making music together. We could've just quit but we didn't.

HP: There are some very heavy tracks on Motel California.
WC: You've got Shannon - his roots are Wrathchild America, Souls At Zero - that's where he comes from. So its actually like a West Coast meets East Coast player. It's a good match. You can hear a lot of that aggression.

HP: What songs on the new album stand out for you?
KE: I usually like the songs that aren't "hit material". My favorite riff is on Strange, but that's a weird song that we all liked playing that turned into this heavy metal thing. I like Sandwich for the simplicity and groove of it. We're all big fans of rap music too.

HP: How does writing songs in the band work?
WE: Every song is different. Everyone wrote songs on this album. Lyrically, we use everything from our voice mail to dicaphones for rhythms. It depends on what you pick up. Keith Richard once said something very profound. "You don't really write songs". No one really does. We all have these antennas and we cruise around. Like if you're in a grocery store and you hear a lose wheel clunking along. You go, "Whoa." How you hear it turns into a song. It's an interesting challenge to put it all together.

HP: Do you all work together?
WC: I'll sit down and I'll scat vocal and those will be the lyrics. Me sitting down and being all deep with a piece of paper wearing my turtleneck never really works out. Everything is very spontaneous, very cosmic for me.

HP: So a song like Sandwich just "came to you"?
WC: I don't really question it. It's just like "there they are." Who knows who's really talking? It could be the Exorcist.

HP: Nobody in the band asks "What is this about?"
KE: When you know somebody well and you've been friends for so long, you know where it comes from. We don't go, "What does that mean?" We just go, "O.K. Whatever."
WC: They've given up! They all know I'm completely out of my mind.

HP: Are you?
WC: I don't know. I don't think so. But there are some people who might argue that point.

Maybe for fun we do a show in Bali

Aren't we all sad that Ugly Kid Joe broke up three years ago? So many questions remain unanswered and it's time for the fans to find out the real truth about the split. Guitarist Klaus Eichstadt agreed to do an online interview. He said he would answer any question, "... just don't talk about my mother!"

HMA: Were you all disappointed that Menace To Sobriety only sold 30,000 copies in the States vs the copies sold in Europe? Do you feel these record sales were a direct result of lack of Mercury promoting the band or the fans not ready for that level of rock from UKJ, or both?
Klaus: Both. We felt prior to the release that there was no hope for us in the States. We could just sense it, so we made a totally heavy metal album, enjoyed making it, and didn't expect much in terms of sales.

HMA: Although your sound changed a lot after the addition of drummer Larkin in 1995, the press still named UKJ "that band that hates everything about you..." Have you ever thought about changing your band name and do you think that would have improved the sales of Menace and Motel?
Klaus: We joked about changing our name, but never seriously considered it. I don't think it would have made much of a difference in terms of sales - probably would have sold alot less.

HMA: When did things in UKJ start reaching the point when you all felt it wasn't right anymore, for you anyway?
Klaus: After our European Tour ended in December of 1996, we came home to Santa Barbara and started demoing new material. Our manager said we had a couple of offers from record companies to do a record so we had to make a choice. It felt (to me) as if most of us were contemplating other options, directions, etc. Speaking for myself, my heart wasn't in it any more. I let everybody know how I felt and the reaction didn't surprize me. We agreed to disband UKJ. Maybe it was the 7 year itch? It was a very amicable split-up and I'm still friends with and in touch with all of the other members. We broke up in mid 1997.

HMA: What was Whit's reaction?
Klaus: Whit was in India. He and I talked for a long time on the phone. I told him how I felt and he agreed with me to disband. I think we were both a little relieved, but also a little sad. We knew it was the right thing to do.

HMA:. Don't you think that you guys broke up a little too early? As far I as I could tell from the gig in Amsterdam '96 that I attended I would say that you still had a lot of fun playing and with the Internet as a new medium and maybe a song on a soundtrack for a cool movie you could have made it big (again) with a new album?
Klaus: Sure, it was still fun, especially in places like Amsterdam (!!!), but you gotta be a hundred percent to keep it going. I think it was the right time to call it quits.

HMA: Most fans agree since UKJ split that each member is not nearly as successful as they were in UKJ, including Whit's. How do you feel about that?
Klaus: So far none of us have been in any project nearly as successful as UKJ, but then again, we sold 5 million records and that's pretty hard to top. Hopefully everyone will have success in whatever else they do in the future.

HMA: The split in 1997 was amicable. Do you still keep in touch with every member, including Erik, Roger and Mark?
Klaus: Yes. I've seen or talked to everyone in the last 3 months.

HMA: Is there anything in UKJ that you regret or that you would have done differently?
Klaus: I would have done alot of stuff diferently but I have no regrets.

HMA: Do you ever see UKJ regrouping, if not for another record deal but for some sort of reunion? If not, why?
Klaus: No, not really. I think UKJ was something we did in our youth and that's the way it should be. Maybe for fun we'd do a show in like Bali or something.

HMA: The-Best-Of-UKJ was a half-assed CD that probably nobody (band-fans-record company) felt comfortable with. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to release a live album and have the fans decide the tracklist?
Klaus: We had no say in that. Mercury just did it.

HMA: What is your favorite band or style at this time?
Klaus: AC/DC and Johnny Cash.

HMA: Last questions... AMEN or Life Of Agony?
Klaus: Amen.

HMA: Napster or Metallica?
Klaus: Metallica.

HMA: Mercury or Castle?
Klaus: Neither!

HMA: Santa Barbara or Amsterdam?
Klaus: ......?

Thanks so much Klaus!

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