Looking back into the past
19/12/98, Paris (France)

Roy, we're all well-aware of your work with the Tribe or with Bruce, but tell us a little bit about where you come from.

I was blessed with a talent and I don't want to use it to promote anything negative. At the same time, I don't want to be an hypocrit because like everybody else, I do stuff that's bad too. And I don't want to be a preacher, because there's already enough of those around. Seeing positive stuff is good for me, it makes me feel good and it makes me feel that I'm using my talent in a positive way. Also, growing up where I grew up, a lot of things that people took for granted were actually a privilege. Having your own car instead of taking the bus, having somewhere to live, having some food to eat, some OK clothes, some Nikes or something... This is true, it may be stupid stuff and people may think it's dumb. If you grow up in a poor area, in the so-called barrio, it's a big deal.

"The music that was going around in my neighborhood was pretty incredible!"

Growing up where I grew up was fun, but it was also difficult because there was a lot of negativity and it was so easy to get caught in drugs, gangs, doing crimes to get money. It was so easy to get into it... For me, I lacked in role models when I was a kid, I didn't have any. I'm not out to be some role model or big brother or anything, but if I can be a role model for a kid who's in my shoes and help him... I've been working with this band, Downset, and I was a role model for them. They've gone on and now people know who they are and they tour all over the world. These kids started looking up to me and I feel good about that, because now, kids look up to them and they sing about things that are positive. I think that's a good thread that I helped start.

Where I grew up was a melting pot. Lots of black people, lots of Mexican people and there were some poor white people too. Also, people from Africa, Central America, ... There was a lot of mixture of people and the music that was going around in my neighborhood was pretty incredible. You had the latin stuff, my white friends were playing Led Zeppelin and Sabbath to me. The guy across the street was from Belize and he played steel drums. Next door was a lady from Honduras and she played salsa. The lady two houses down sang in a gospel. All this music, man, was really cool.

It's not what everybody thinks, but it's like everybody thinks at the same time. When you grow up in what people call a ghetto or a barrio or whatever, violence exists. Gunshots everyday, bad drug deals that went wrong, prostitution,... All that stuff exists. But there's also harmony, you make friends. Growing up wasn't that bad.

When did you start playing music ?

"I wanted to be a baseball player and then a football player."

I'm told that I liked playing music when I was very young, when I was 2 or 3, but I don't remember too much. I know that  the first songs I heard in my life were Hey Jude and Come Together by The Beatles. This are the very first songs I remember hearing. Then I got into sports and I kind of abandoned music when I was 5 or 6. I wanted to be a baseball player and then a football player. That's what I was gonna be, either one of those. Then when I was 6 or 7, I discovered The Beatles again and I really started getting into it, just as a fan. When I was 10, I got into Zeppelin. I'd go to my uncle's house, he had a guitar and I loved just messing around for hours. When I was in Junior High, I was about 13 and I got some money for Christmas, $50 or something, and I bought myself a guitar and that's when it started.

I didn't know how to tune for the first 6 months, so I'd make my own tunings. From the first week, I was making my own songs, jamming for hours and hours. I knew I liked writing songs. I'd write them and play, record myself, listen to it. I played with my brother because he played keyboards, so that's how I started playing guitar.

Then, you got involved with Metal in the early 80s.

At the time, when I was growing up, the big bands were Scorpions, Priest,... Maiden was still rising. I got into these bands at school, they were the heaviest shit around. They were the extreme back then. You get involved listening to this music and your friends at school show you these bands, AC/DC, Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix,... This is the first stuff I remember trying to figure out.

And you played in a number of bands...

Yeah, backyard parties. When I was 15-16, I was playing parties in the summer, maybe once a week. It was great! You learn to play for people, for your friends. Maybe make a little money, charge $2, have beer for everyone. It was lots of fun. I was playing in bands in the neighbourhood. One of the first bands I was in, we did a lot of AC/DC covers, a lot of stuff like that.

Then, the big explosion happened in L.A., all the hair bands and so on...

It was cool. You'd go out to see the bands with your friends, your Mom's friend would take you and drop you off to see a band like Ratt, Armored Saint, Motley Crue or WASP. To be honest with you, I never really liked these bands too much. Ratt had good guitar players. I didn't like the music that much, but I'd go for the guitar players : Jake, Warren DeMartini,... I never was a Crue fan. I saw them when they opened for WASP at the Troubadour and I didn't like it. I didn't like WASP either. It wasn't my cup of tea, as they say. My favorite band at that time from that scene was Warrior. I really liked them a lot. Steeler, too. A lot of bands tried to be like Motley Crue, but I never was into any of them.

At the end of the 80s, all these bands started to fade away. And all the sudden, in the early 90s, you decide to start Tribe of Gypsies. Why latino Rock ?

"If you didn't have the right look (...) they didn't call you back."

You gotta understand... Where I was, in L.A., I knew that I was a good guitarist. I was probably one of the better ones out there. I used to go to a lot of auditions for bands looking for a guitar player. Pretty big bands. Everyone was auditioning at some point. You sent a tape, but if you didn't have the right look, the C.C. DeVille [Poison guitarist] hair job (laughs), they didn't call you back. I was playing in a band called Driver in L.A., it was one of the first professional gigs I ever got. I was 18 years old and we moved to Connecticut because we wanted to break New-York, because in L.A. it was all about glam. To us, this stuff was dying and it was. I played in this band from '89 to '91. Then, the band broke up, because the singer decided he would join another band. I was basically in the middle of New England somewhere, feeling very bad, very sorry for myself. I got sick of trying to conform to something that I didn't fit because I didn't look like C.C. DeVille or...

<insert name here>

Yeah, whatever the ideal poster child was. I know I'm not ugly but I know that I don't look like some of these guys in these fucking bands. They look like shit, you know. They look like girls and I knew I didn't want to look like a girl (laughs). Pretty Boy Floyd, Slaughter and bullshit like that... Then, I decided that I was gonna do something where I wouldn't have to fit in, where I am what fits. That's when I decided to do latin Rock.

How easy was it to find musicians ?

Oh it was impossible. I came up with the concept and two months later I moved back to L.A. and started looking for musicians. I hooked up with one of my old friends, Robbyn Garcia. I told him my idea and he was into it, so I started writing songs, coming up with pretty good ideas. The first song that I wrote was Nothing Lasts Forever with Robbyn. He wrote the words and I wrote the music, it was really good, I really liked it. I did a demo with a drum machine and a friend of mine played bass on it, Patrick Kelly. After that, I tried to find musicians but I was broke. Typical musician story... The musicians I wanted to get, I couldn't afford, because people who play latin music are always working ane making killer money. To get these was impossible. So I tried to get friends of mine who could learn the style, but it was too hard because they didn't have the vibe. Then, I was asked to join Warrior, so I kinda quit doing the Tribe. Warrior was one my favorite bands when I was a kid, so I was like : "Hey, this is cool!". Just for the fuck of it, just for fun, man.

While I was in Warrior, this friend of mine, Chris Leibundgut, he had the tape and he got me in touch with a small German label called Dream Circle Records. I met with the guy, we went out for some beers and he said that he liked it a lot and that he wanted to do a deal. I didn't know what to think, I was very excited! I had a record deal from this tape so I started recording some more demos, but he said that he really didn't like the singer and that I should find another one. I told my friend Robbyn and he was devastated. I think to this day he's still kinda hurt that he's not the singer in the band. I feel bad, because he's a good singer but he used to be an incredible singer. He took vocal lessons and it fucked up his voice because he started thinking too much and he lost it. Even on the original demo of Nothing Lasts Forever, he didn't quite have it like in the old days.

"It's easy to get a band together when you have a deal!"

I started looking for singers and I met with Eddie Casillas who's from my neighbourhood. He didn't grow up in my area, but he's from my town and I used to be in a band with his cousin and we knew each other pretty well. I told what I wanted to do and he was into the idea, even though he didn't really know latin bass lines. Maybe you don't know them, but you can learn them because it's your blood, it's easy to pick up. He got into and said that he knew some guys. We started to meet more people and the band started. It's easy to get a band toghether when you have a deal. Piece of cake. Because everyone wants to do a record. We got the whole band except the singer. I put the word out and I must have looked at maybe 30 singers and 20 drummers. Dave Ingraham was the last guy in the band as far as the players are concerned.

From this point, things started moving pretty fast!

"The first singer I ever wanted was Gregg."

The road was pretty smooth back then, incredibly easy. I found one singer, David Young. He was a Paul Rogers kinda singer, he was very cool. But the first singer I ever wanted was Gregg, but I couldn't get a hold of him. The second singer was Dean Ortega. He came to jam with us but he said he didn't want to be in the band because he already had one. We started doing the album with Dave and we finished it. Just before we mixed it, we played a show and it was packed. I was blown away, people had heard about the band and they were interested. Our first show was a big success to us and the very next night at the same club, Dean's band played and we went to see him. His band sucked, it was horrible for him. His guitar player was breaking strings and out of tune, the people were embarrassed for him. His band was no good. We played again that same week and he came to see us after the show and said he wanted to be in the band (laughs).

Right after that, we mixed our album for this German guy, we met Bruce and he wanted us to help him. Right when we met Bruce, a band I was working with, Downset, got a record deal and introduced us to Mercury. Mercury heard the band and wanted to sign us. Then a bunch of labels wanted to sign us too. They started a bidding war : "I give you $75,000", "$100,000", "$150,000". It was there for a while and the guy from Warner Bros said $175,000. The guy from Mercury said he'd pay $250,000, take it or leave it. We said we'd take it (laughs)! We had all this shit happening, it was incredible and very fast, maybe within one month and a half!

How do you end up on a Japanese label?

"[Mercury] didn't have the budget because they were spending more on Bon Jovi..."

This is the story. We were on Mercury and they had given us all this money. We had the album done, so we used the money for health insurance, money for the guys. We had to buy out the German label and that cost us a lot of money, lawyer fees etc. We didn't care because we knew we had a major deal. Then, there were problems at Mercury and they fired everyone. The only guy left is know the president and he's an R&B guy : Vanessa Williams, black artists, etc. He didn't know much about other music. They ended up letting us go, because they said they would put the album out, but they didn't know how to promote it: They didn't know what style it was, they didn't have the budget because they were spending more on Bon Jovi...

We ended up getting off from Mercury, but it took us about a year. They let us keep the album and the money but they wanted a cut of the album. We then went to the other labels that wanted to sign us. One by one, they all went under. Warner Bros changed everything, Eastwest merged with Elektra... Mercury screwed us because in that year that we waited, we couldn't do no deals and when we finally got out, we couldn't do no deals either. So, we ended up not putting the album out in the States. We just went with a Japan-only deal because it's a small part of the world. I'm really grateful to them, but we wanted to put it out smal and start working on a new album. That way, Mercury won't have a piece.

Then you put out an EP.

The EP was just leftovers from the album. Some of them were gonna be B-sides, some were recorded and for whatever reason didn't go on the album. We had all this stuff and the Japanese said that they'd take it. Then, we parted ways with Dean and now, we have Gregg Analla.

Yeah, he told us all about it some time ago. Actually, Gregg and you were in Japan last month. How did it go?

It went really well. The fans there are very recpetive and open-minded. That's what I like about Japan. At the same time. I wish it sould have been the whole band instead of just Greg and me. But it was fun, I had never really done that. We only did oneacoustic show before, a long time ago as a make-up show. We owed somebody a show in L.A. and we did it like that. Anyway, the new songs really came across really well acousticly.

The new songs are pretty different from the first album. Is this a conscious move or just a normal evolution?

"It's the first album I've ever made where I can listen to the whole thing and not want to turn it off."

It's just a normal evolution, I would say. We wanted to make, at least I did, a record that fit from the very first to the very last song. Like the old records. You put on Wish You Were Here or Zeppelin IV and they fit from the beginning to the end. You never wonder : "Why is this shit here?", you know. It's the first album I've ever made where I can listen to the whole thing and not want to turn it off. A lot of my older albums, I can't even stand to listen to them (laughs).

Your music has a very positive side with the Tribe, as well as a darker, heavier side with Bruce. How do you put them back together?

Bruce is writing all the lyrics, so whatever the contents of his lyrics are, that's what they are. I have no control of that. Musically, I'm catering to Bruce. It's not necessarily my style, but I feel that I could do any style in the world. There's nothing alien to me, except maybe Country music which I'm still trying to like.

If Garth Brooks calls you...

Hey, I'll try, shit, I'll try to make him heavy (laughs). There's very little Country that I like. Anyway, I cater to Bruce. I'm doing for Bruce what I think Bruce should be doing. With the Tribe, it's very natural. We had more songs and we took them out of the album because they didn't fit the vibe. That's something we didn't do on the first album and that's why I don't like it as much.

It's the end of 1998 and it looks like 1999 will be a busy year for you.

It seems like for the last few years, every year has been a busy one (laughs). But yeah, sometimes I'm overwhelmed. If I think too much about everything I have to do, I think I'll have a breakdown (laughs). I'm in the studio with Downset and hopefully that will be finished by the end of February. Then, I have to do 6 more Tribe songs for a new mini-album, some very cool stuff. In between, I'll be writing new stuff for Bruce. I don't know when we'll dot it but he already asked me to start writing. Also, I'll be doing some other things for different people. And let's see what happens.

Yeah, things may happen. Any message for the Tribe fans?

Anyone who does like our older stuff should really check the new stuff. It's a little more focused, we have a fantastic singer and overall, this is the best record I have ever made. Period.

Thank you!