They often claimed Quicksilver Messenger Service as one of their biggest influences. I could never quite hear that in the music. But (even if the Deadheads never picked up on them), in terms of image True West were firmly in the best of the San Francisco tradition. That is to say, they had none. They were an American “big guitar band,” (that was the code word used by writers who were too scared to let the word “psychedelic” escape from their typewriters unless in a pejorative context), even as U2, Big Country, Echo and the Bunnymen and R.E.M. were all described as “big guitar bands” at the beginning. What separated True West from them was the fact that a “big guitar band” is all they ever wanted to be. True West existed simply to play their music, and very well.

This “big guitar band” label was a funny business. It was a year or two after Soft Cell, Gary Numan, Devo etc. had all had one or two hits apiece and faded from view. The industry took note, bands relying upon more traditional instrumentation began to get signed again, and then the rockmags proclaimed “guitars are back!” Back in the real world, (non-college) kids listened to crap like Triumph, Van Halen and Judas Priest. If anybody had ever tried to tell them guitars had ever been gone they’d have laughed out loud. Did this mean that they were culturally deprived? Of course it did--but only because they never got to hear True West.

Their first album (first it was an EP, then they added two more tracks to make a 35-minute “album”--a friend bought it for $1 in the bargain bin) was their most demented, with a shrieking cover of Syd’s “Lucifer Sam” (let’s not forget the fanclub B-side, “maS reficuL”--a stunt unutilized since the demise of His Excellency Napoleon XIV) and equally outré originals such as “I’m Not Here, I Don’t Care.” When they weren’t doing that, they could pull off a perfectly infectious, insidiously memorable, uplifting-sounding piece of rock’n’roll/sexual/existential dread and title it “Hollywood Holiday.” Ah, those California kiddies...and somehow, they were one of those bands that managed to sound like their name! You can’t put your finger on it, since there’s no obvious country or folk influence, yet somehow those big guitars (especially the one belonging to Russ Tolman) conjured up a perfect wide-open-spaces feel that was instantly recognizable as no less than inimitable, inevitable True West.

They became less psychedelic as time went on, unfortunately; between the first and second LPs I saw a quote to the effect of, “how many one-chord drone songs can a person write, anyway?” It all depends on who’s writing them. Spacemen 3 could jam on one chord for 45 minutes, using just two guitars, and have everything come up roses. The Velvet Underground could do it for hours. True West should have put out at least one album of nothing but that.

I loathe it when psychedelic bands run out of steam; it seems to plague the genre more than any other--the debut album grazes the ionosphere and then the group gradually plummets to the ground, just like Skylab. A boogie band (nowadays they’re just a simplistic boogie band) like Status Quo can crank out 20 LPs and who can tell the good from the bad? To be fair, there are some who would say the same of Hawkwind. But Hawkwind are about the only explicitly psychedelic band I can name with 20 or more psychedelic albums to their credit, so they can scarcely be invoked as a typical case.

The second True West LP, Drifters wasn’t nearly drifty enough. It contained some fine songs and performances, and it rewards repeated listening even today, but it was just a bit too tame after the guitar apocalypses that had so ennobled their debut. Live (as the bootlegs attest) they remained a primal force. There ensued the inevitable sad personnel changes, and changes within the personnel remaining (happened to Rain Parade and the Three O’Clock too, the third LPs by all of them sucked jasper as a result) and everybody who didn’t die outright found themselves losing interest. Russ Tolman’s solo disks have won well-justified critical praise that has yet to be matched with well-deserved commercial success. His debut, Totem Poles and Glory Holes, showed up on a lot of “Best of this Year” lists--and would have earned it on the strength of that title alone. (It’d be an even better title on a Madonna record, but she’s a bit of a prude about such things.) Maybe I can talk about Russ another time (preferably after I’ve been to his website and bought some more of his CDs). As for True West, there have been several rarities/outs/demos/live comps out ever since, all worth hearing.

Their third LP, Hand Of Fate, wasn’t nearly as remarkable, although it has a decent cover of “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”--the version they did with Russ was downright homicidal, just as it should be, but anybody covering this tune gets a gold star for sheer balls. It’s about all that remains in print, except for a couple of rarities/outtakes/demos/live compilations on tiny labels. I have West Side Story on tape, and it’s a wonderful thing. It turns out they had enough material in the can back in 1982 to put out a long album, and all of it was worthy of release at the time. Inexplicably (and disastrously--only I would have bought the thing twice within one year) they dribbled out the True West EP and later the Hollywood Holiday LP with just two more songs--and left another 20 minutes in the can. There are times I’d like to wring their collective neck for having made such obviously bad decisions, until I recall that I’ve worked with people who’ve made even worse ones. In light of that I’m just glad that the damn thing has seen the light of day and remained in print long enough for me to hear it. You might feel the same--like the Velvets, even their leftovers are a fine place to start. Happy trails.