A Conversation with California Breed’s Glenn Hughes – HuffPost 5.30.14

Mike Ragogna: Glenn, you’re part of the group California Breed. How did the configuration congeal?

Glenn Hughes: Well, when my previous band Black Country broke up in the fall of ’12, Jason Bonham and I decided that we would continue collaboration, but not with Black Country Part Two or “B.”; we thought we would continue in a brand new project. The way we wanted to consider it was, “How can we make it different but spectacular?” we thought, “Well, if we take away the keyboards and bring it down to a trio and hey, just for the hell of it, let’s not go the route of finding someone who sounds like Joe Bonamassa or my other friends Ritchie Blackmore or Tony Iommi.” We didn’t know who we were going to get, whether they were going to be famous or not, but just a few months later, the day before the Grammys of ’13, it would be February eleventh, Saturday night, my friend Julian Lennon was having a party in Hollywood celebrating his lovely photography, as we know he’s a wonderful photographer, and he introduced me to Andrew Watt, this young 22-year-old kid from New York. I was taken aback by Andrew’s intellect with his versatility about the songwriting abilities he had. I meet a lot of people, Michael. I meet a lot of people who want to tell me how great they are, but Andrew was speaking to me in terms I understood. He seemed really intelligent, so I asked him if he’d got anything I could listen to. After the Grammys I went to Minneapolis and when I got off the plane I received three songs that Andrew had written. I played them and I was blown away by his writing, by his guitar playing, and by his voice. So I said, “Can you come to my house next weekend when I’m home in LA?” and he did and we wrote that first day two songs called “Chemical Rain” and “Solo.” The next day it just so happened that Jason Bonham was in Hollywood, so I booked a studio and we went in. So the premise is, Michael, Julian introduced me to Andrew, I brought Jason in, we recorded these two songs, and let’s just say from last March we knew we were on to something.

MR: What was the chemistry during “Chemical Rain?”

GH: Andrew played with this riff, this gargantuan riff, and what he asked me to write with him obviously became the chorus, the melodic part. That’s the beauty of it, here I am, sixty-two, forty years older than him and he was speaking to me like he was a 1967, ’68 type of player. Obviously he’s not, I think he was born in 1990, but his dad turned him on to Zeppelin when he was four or five, and since he was born in the 90’s he started listening to Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains. I’ve never worked with anybody from that genre of grunge-meets-psychedelia before, which I also thought was interesting. Yeah, probably on paper some fans would have thought, “Surely Jason and Glenn would have gone with door number one, two, or three, but they opened door number four with,” yes, let’s be clear, “an unknown guy.” But when you listen to what we’ve done, can you hear three different generations of musicians?

MR: No, it’s an amalgam, it’s really smooth.

GH: I think it sounds fresh, spontaneous, and raw. It’s recorded live, vocals as well, in Nashville, a place I’ve really wanted to go to for ten years, with Dave Cobb, to me the best rock producer on the planet. We recorded it over the course of six months last year. I wrote a lot, Andrew wrote a lot, we finished each other’s work, then Jason finished some of our work. The one thing I wanted, Michael, in this particular project, before it was called a band, I wanted everyone to collaborate. Everybody’s a good writer. Andrew was the young gun, he has a lot of cool ideas. We could talk about the whole album, who wrote what, but you need to know it was collaborative. I think bands from my generation, let’s call it the seventies, were very collaborative. Zeppelin was collaborative. Deep Purple was very collaborative, I was in that in the seventies. That’s what I wanted to get back to with this band.

MR: Was it rejuvenating, having that come back into your creativity?

GH: I’ll tell you what was rejuvenating for me. Before I joined Deep Purple in the seventies I was in a band called Trapeze. I was a teenager, coming to America in 1970 and playing specifically maybe twelve tours of America in three years as a trio. We started out playing for twenty people and of course at the end before Deep Purple Trapeze was selling five thousand tickets a night. As a trio! I learned the ropes, Michael. I learned the genres of groove, soul, funk, and rock with Trapeze in a trio. I was really, really good friends with John Bonham, Jason’s father. Really close. I’ve always said–not spookily–that Bon’s old karma is here with us.

MR: And that’s like what you said before, about it being three generations.

GH: Of course I’ve known Jason since he was in diapers. I remember staying at John’s house one night, we’d been out drinking and carrying on and I was awoken about nine in the morning by this drum groove and I thought, “Fuck me, he’s starting early,” I walked downstairs and it’s Jason! I’ve spoken about this before, Jason and I have a real secure relationship because of his father, we get to share privately some things he’s asked about his dad and I think that’s a great service for me to do that for him. When I listen to this album I think that Jason can now hang his hat next to his father’s on this album. It’s the best drumming that he’s ever done.

MR: So you think you’ve really found something special with California Breed.

GH: You know what it is, Mike? I’m going to speak some musical stuff here, I don’t know if you know anything about music, but if you listen to my work as a teenager on Trapeze, the chords I used were minor ninths and major sevenths. Of course you know they’re jazz chords and they sound great stripped down on a piano or an acoustic guitar. The only other band that plays them in a rock way was Stone Temple Pilots, but you really can’t hear them. But when you really pinpoint them or you ghost the track, you’ll notice, “My god, the DeLeos are writing a lot of major sevenths and minor ninths.” In this band, the producer Dave Cobb understood those chords that we were writing. Let’s just say without naming names there have been some situations in the last twenty years where we’ve been working with producers who thought those chords were too inappropriate for rock music. Well I call their bluff on this album, because this album is loaded with those chords, but they’re played in a very driven way. I got to do what I really wanted to do in this band, which is not just play a major, but a major seventh, because they sound really fantastic here.

MR: And straight ahead minor and major chords are such a rock tradition.

GH: Yeah, and I get that, but my God, my influences… when I look back at things I wrote in ’70, ’71, ’72, they were rock records but there were a lot of major sevenths and minor ninths. I don’t want this interview to be about chords, but you’re asking me how I felt about the chemistry in the band, and I think that we were allowed to do in the genre of rock music stuff that Jason and I weren’t allowed to do or wasn’t appropriate before. So I was really, really happy, “Will the real Glenn Hughes stand up?” and I’m standing up on this album! I think a lot of my die-hard fans and a lot of Jason Bonham fans are going, “This is great, and it’s just three guys!” Listen, Michael, I don’t know how old you are, but I’m from the seventies, let’s talk about The Who, no keyboards, really, Zeppelin, not really a keyboard band, Free, Humble Pie, can you imagine The Who with a Hammond organ player like Jon Lord? It just wouldn’t work. When Andrew and I wrote this album I really only wanted to hear guitar, acoustic and a Les Paul or an SG. I wanted to go back to that organic sound–hey, and it’s on two-inch tape!

MR: You recorded this album analog without a lot of overdubbing, right?

GH: No, here’s the deal: The morning of the first song we went into the studio and I saw the digi stuff and I saw this two-inch tape and Dave says to us, “What do you fancy?” and we all sort of looked at each other and went [scoffs]. I hadn’t done analog in thirty years, and I had missed it. I can hear when things are recorded onto tape. I’ve missed it. I’ve been working with Chad Smith for the last ten years on my own records and he was dying for me to go back to tape. For me it something I was dying to get back to. Cobb suggested, “Jason, Andrew, why don’t you go out there and record, and Glenn do you have the melodies and lyrics?” I said, “I do,” and he said, “Well how do you fancy just going in the vocal booth and singing and overdubbing the bass later?” I said, “Sure, why not?” So what we’re hearing on this album is me singing live from start to finish. I’ve got to be honest with you, I did try to drop in and do a better line than I thought I’d sung, but the first take of singing this album is what you hear. There are some inaudible words where I may have missed a line or missed a word or missed a syllable, but I just couldn’t get that feeling back. I really never in forty-five years of recording have made an attempt to sing live.

MR: Forty-five years of recording, what does that feel like? You have a reputation for being one of the great voices of rock, what do you think of all you’ve achieved?

GH: I’ve been sober a long time, I normally make a record every eighteen months, I have been doing it for so long now that every time I go in number one I really feel grateful to still be here to do this. I don’t call it a job, Michael, this is a gift. Musicians, dancers, architects, journalists, whoever, we’re given this gift. And I realize that all the abuse I’ve given myself in the seventies and eighties, all the things you’ve heard about, yeah I did that, but this is a gift that I’ve been given. People have asked me today, “How can you, at sixty-two, sound better than you did at twenty-five?” Well I’m not on drugs, am I? I’m not drinking, I’m not carrying on. I’m sleeping at night. I love singing, man. This is a singer’s album. This is me in the moment. This is not me dropping in after every line, I’ve never really been that guy.

MR: How come you called this project California Breed?

GH: Okay, from April to September we were coming up with names and then Googling them and going, “Aw, somebody’s got that name.” Jason or Andrew said to me September-ish, “Look man, why don’t you look at the lyrics you wrote? Go in your books.” And I did, I went through all the songs and in the song “Solo,” which is on the Deluxe edition, there’s a line in the song, “A California breed acceleration,” which means a fast-moving someone. I thought, “California. Wow. California Breed,” “breed” to me, of course means “fellowship.” I’ve always been a team player. I thought, “Just maybe California Breed,” let’s get a really good logo going here, let’s get some visuals. Black Country was all dark brown and dark purple, this is all orange and yellow and magenta, and the eyeball… I just think that the name of the band and the graphics and the art and the logo is really important.

MR: What do you think about today’s music scene?

GH: Here’s the thing, Michael, I don’t collect a lot of records. I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t listen to a lot of new music. When I was a young lad it was obviously Sgt. Pepper, wasn’t it? Then it got into Crosby, Stills and Nash, and then it got into Neil Young, and then I got into California music. You know my history, I love Stevie Wonder, he became my friend and mentor, so for me I’ve always been a groove-oriented rock artist. A soulful singer in a rock genre, so for me there’s a lot of other kinds of rock going on that I have no clue what it is, I look on Billboard and I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s number two and I haven’t even heard it!” Because radio’s not like it used to be, is it? When I’m in the car with the radio I can’t really find anything because I don’t know what it is, so it’s not like it used to be. I’m just so bloody lucky to have grown up and been in a band like Deep Purple and been around my peer group, the Stones and the Who and Zeppelin and come from that early seventies where everything is larger than everything else. Roadies had roadies. It was that time. I don’t think that’s ever going to be repeated. I’d love one or two or three bands to come up and have that joy, but I don’t really hear a lot of originality. What do you think?

MR: I come from the singer-songwriter position and while I’ve explored almost every genre and I like dance music, I feel now is the most cookie cutter things have been. I hear good songs here and there but personally this is the first era where I’m not identifying with the music.

GH: I follow suit, then. I have to be told by my friends or people I admire to listen to a new thing or a new girl or a new band or a new shape. I can’t turn on the radio and hear something that blows me away, I’ve got to sort of be nudged to it and then I might get into it and go all the way. But like I said before, I would love to blown away like I was blown away when I first heard The Who when I was only a lad. People ask me all the time about the current state of music, not just hip hop, rock, pop, or soul, and I go, “What do you want to talk about?” because I really don’t know too much of what’s going on.

MR: This is a perfect spot for me to ask you my traditional question. What advice do you have for new artists?

GH: It’s a gift, Michael! You know this, you’re a musician, it’s a gift freely given to us. When I first held a plectrum pick in my hand when I was eleven, let’s just say that I’ve still got that pick in my hand at sixty-two. You give a kid a guitar when they’re nine years old and when they’re nine and a half they’ve moved on to hockey or something. For musicians and artists who are indebted to their career and art form that’s what I’d suggest: You know you’re a musician if you live and breathe it. Nothing comes before your art. Nothing. I used to put drinking and drugging before my art, and looked what happened to that. Music runs through the center of who I am. I have no say so on a daily basis to write songs because I just do it. Even if nobody hears that song, I become a better person by doing something that I love. I’m chuckling because people would give anything to have the career that a lot of us have had, but I don’t take this for granted, man, I’m a guy that really works at being honest with my art form.

MR: And that’s how others should be to experience a more fulfilling aspect of the music?

GH: Michael, Generation Y meets Generation X. I’m a Generation X-er, and I’m going to assume you’re a Generation X-er. Well, Generation X people have worked a long, long, long time to get what they get. Some people have lost their lives and what have you. Andrew is Generation Y but he’s a seriously ambitious young man. You’ve got to work for what you get. It’s all about putting the work in. It just doesn’t fall off a tree anymore, you’ve got to put the work in. This is a life-long ambition for me to continue. People say to me, “You ever think about retiring?” I say, “Retire? If you’re a real musician you can’t retire!” You can’t ever stop playing, whether it’s in front of ten people or ten thousand.

MR: I totally agree, beautiful.

GH: We hear about people, “Oh, he’s hanging that guitar up for the last time.” Then there’s something wrong, they must be ill. Look at Tony Bennett. Eighty-seven years old; try telling him to stop. That’s ambition. He lives this life. Long may that continue for me. On this album I don’t think I’ve ever sounded so enthusiastic, exuberant and extremely excited. Look, man, I’m always going to grow and learn. I’m never going to say, “I know my style, I’m there now.” No, no, no, no, I’m forever changing, man. If you listen to my work, I change. I never let it stand still. I’m not frightened to throw a weird chord in or leave a mistake in. Not me.

MR: Glenn, what does it look for the future? Do you have some goals that you still want to get to?

GH: I just sang with an orchestra in London. Jon Lord, our friend from Deep Purple died and we did a concert for him and I sang with an eighty-seven piece orchestra. Everybody left the stage and all that was left was me and an orchestra. I have to tell you, Michael, I played the Albert Hall nine times in my career and to have an orchestra behind the major sevenths and minor ninths is pretty awesome. I love orchestra work, I do also love to do acoustic shows alone, California Breed is everything I live and breathe right now, but I will continue to grow. I’ll go and do whatever I feel is appropriate for my soul. I really try to skip away from material, the spiritual condition is more important to me because I believe if everything goes ell for me spiritually and I’m doing the best I can then everything falls into suit, you know? But I have a lot of famous friends that have made a left on Sepulveda when they should’ve made a right and they’re still doing okay. Sometimes it’s good to change and sometimes it’s good to walk through the fear. As humans we’re driven by f**king fear, there’s a lot of fear in this world and I’ve just got to walk through it.

MR: And you’ve pretty much been fearless.

GH: I’m fearful. I’m a bit of a klutz. I’m liable to fall on the floor, but when I’m up on stage, that holy ground, when I’ve got that microphone near me and I’ve got the bass on I’m fucking fearless. It’s like David Beckham when he takes a penalty. He’s full of fear he’s going to miss. When I’m up at that microphone I’ve got a four or five octave range, I’ve got to be on my f**king game and I’ve got to take this sh*t deadly serious. I really do.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne