A Conversation with The Empty Hearts’ Elliot Easton – HuffPost 8.11.14

Mike Ragogna: Elliot, after listening to the new project, I would argue that your new group should be called The Whole Hearts, not The Empty Hearts.

Elliot Easton: [laughs] Well, our hearts are full as far as making the music. And you’ll have to ask Steven Van Zandt about the name, he came up with it.

MR: What’s the story behind this group?

EE: Basically, it comes from a friendship between Andy Babiuk, bass player, and Steven. Andy was previously in a band called The Chesterfield Kings that was on Little Steven’s Underground Garage label. They appeared on an episode of Sopranos, they’ve been friends for quite a while. Andy has done some music consultation work for David Chase for Not Fade Away and things like that. So they’re pals. Steven is just one of those guys that likes to come up with cool band names. When it came time for a name, he gave us a list and said, “Why don’t you pick one of these?” We went through his list and we liked The Empty Hearts. It came about like most things, through friends.

MR: Speaking of friends, Empty Hearts is a merging of talent from The Cars, Blondie, Romantics, The Chesterfield Kings…

EE: Yeah, yeah. To us, it’s very natural, we’re all friends, we all have admired each others’ work through the years, it’s a great situation, it’s a nice, fresh beginning. It’s just been really pleasurable, it’s been fun. That’s really what it’s all about. Hopefully that comes through in the grooves, not that there are grooves anymore, but you know what I mean.

MR: The virtual groove.

EE: The grooves in the rhythm.

MR: What was the studio experience like and how did it progress from all these talents coming together?

EE: Andy just had this idea, “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a band with friends?” Maybe he’d come to some kind of a crossroads with his band and wanted to just have fun playing music again and we all felt similarly. He just called me. It seemed like an off the wall thing, a little dubious that it would actually happen. He said, “I’ve got this idea for a band, Clem [Burke] would play drums and Wally [Palmar] would be singing, what do you think about playing guitar in it?” At that point, it didn’t cost me anything to say yes because I didn’t know if it was going to happen or not, so I said, “Yeah, sure, if you get it together count me in,” ’cause I wasn’t doing much. Andy is quite a guy, he did get it together, he’s a really hard worker and a great organizer and he put the thing together and got everybody on board. We went up to Rochester New York where his studio is, he’s got a warehouse kind of studio set up. Two of us live in LA, Clem and I, two of us live out-of-town, Wally in the Detroit area and Andy in Rochester. For writing the songs, Andy and Wally got together a bit on their own, and they came out to California and we rented a rehearsal place. I showed them some ideas and some songs that I had incubating for a while, we recorded that stuff informally, Wally went away and worked on the lyrics and stuff like that, it was a very organic process, we just jammed on ideas and hammered some songs together, then we went up to Rochester and the great Ed Stasium engineered and produced it. People who don’t know his work would certainly have heard it, he did most of the Ramones records.

I first worked with Ed in the mid-eighties on the Lights Out record from Peter Wolf, J. Geils’ lead singer. It’s great to have him around. We all go back like thirty years or more. Then we got the bright idea, since we don’t have a keyboard player of getting Ian McLagan from The Faces and The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones to play keyboards. So he was up for the idea, he came up to Rochester and played Hammond organ and Wurlitzer electric piano, real rock ‘n’ roll keyboards and that was a great little addition to the sound. It’s just kind of taken on a life of its own, moving forward in one direction, all of us. And here I am talking to you, it’s very exciting. Musicians are notorious for discussing things that never come to fruition over a couple of drinks, “Hey man, let’s do something together” and then the next day it’s all forgotten–probably like in most business, you know what I mean? “We’ve got to do something together, we’ve got to collaborate,” whatever, and then the next morning it’s like, “What? Did that conversation really exist?” So it was really great to actually see this thing follow through to fruition and have a really nice record done, have it coming out in August, it’s great. It’s really fun.

MR: I see that Empty Hearts has a track called “Fill An Empty Heart,” I’m guessing a play on the group name. All this Empty Heartedness!

EE: [laughs] Yeah, as far as the line or the title “Fill An Empty Heart,” that was something Wally came up with. Maybe it was inspired by the band name. I can’t remember the sequence because he wrote lyrics on his own, but I just think it’s a cool name, I don’t think Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers are out to break anybody’s heart. I don’t know that The Empty Hearts really feel that their hearts are empty. It’s just a name. [laughs]

MR: Yeah, I’ve beaten that joke into the ground, sorry.

EE: [laughs] Well, that’s what fans like to do, isn’t it?

MR: Exactly! [laughs] This is pretty much a party record. Do you think that’s indicative of how good of a time you guys were having in the studio or maybe how creatively you guys were bouncing ideas off each other?

EE: I think both. I think it’s indicative of how we were having a great time. We’ve been having a great time every time we get together whether it’s to be in the studio or to write a song or to do a photo session, we’re always laughing and having a good time with it. That’s the whole point of the thing, to enjoy making music and have a good time making music. As I said before, I do think it comes through in the music that we were enjoying ourselves. That’s not contrived, that’s just the sound of four guys having a blast.

MR: Elliot, in my opinion, The Cars left a nice musical legacy. Remember when people used certain albums to test stereo systems? I can remember The Cars’ first album being a test record during that era.

EE: That’s very nice, thank you. I’m really proud of the work we accomplished. That first record took all of twenty-one days to make. It took twelve days to record in England and nine days to mix, just a song a day and we were done in three weeks. That was winter of ’77. It’s pretty amazing. It’s great to have been a part of that.

MR: Although you first broke hugely in the seventies, The Cars is one of the iconic groups that comes up when one talks about music of the eighties.

EE: Yeah, for better or for worse, I guess, huh? [laughs] It’s a much-maligned decade. I don’t know why. I think the seventies were a lot lamer, but we always joke… My wife and I were talking about the eighties and the shoulder pads and the clothes and the funny hair, some of those bands were just “haircut bands.”

MR: Yeah, especially a lot of the Europop dance groups. Elliot, you were part of Creedence Clearwater Revisited, how did that come together?

EE: Like so many things in this business, it just comes through friends. I had a buddy who worked at Atlantic Records who knew Stu Cook from Creedence. We discovered that Stu lived five minutes away from me out here in Calabasas at the time, so we got together and had some lunch. On Stu and Doug [Clifford’s] fiftieth birthday they got together and had a little party together and they decided they wanted to play music again. I’d been hanging out with Stu and he knew that I was a big fan and had played those songs in high school and stuff like that, so he said, “How about Elliot?” I was their first choice of guitar. In fact, we auditioned singers at my home studio here in southern California. I ended up doing that for eleven years. I’ve done a lot of fun things. I’ve played with Brian Wilson on his first solo record and I did some shows with him. I did a little touring with Hall & Oates back in the nineties, a lot of session stuff, I just try to keep busy.

MR: Yeah including The New Cars, which I enjoyed as a kind of Todd Rundgrens’ Utopia meets The Cars.

EE: Well thank you! That was a very enjoyable project. It was like Greg [Hawkes] and I from The Cars and Todd [Rundgren] and Prairie [Prince] and Kasim [Sulton]. Greg used to call it “Autopia,” because it was half Utopia, half Cars.

MR: You were also part of the No Cats project with Lee Rocker.

EE: Oh yeah! That’s right!

MR: Yes, sir, you’ve played on quite a few projects.

EE: A bunch of sessions over the years, it’s true.

MR: And you released that solo album Change No Change. Why no follow-up to that?

EE: Well, again, I wasn’t trying to have a solo career or anything like that, it was just something that naturally grew out. I started getting together regularly with a friend of mine, Jules Shear. We found we enjoyed writing songs together, he’d come over my house with his acoustic guitar and I’d show him some ideas and he’d help me flesh them out, he’s such a great songwriter, we ended up writing a batch of songs and then he was like, “What are we going to do with these songs?” They weren’t purpose-written for an Elliot Easton solo record or anything like that, we were just writing songs for the joy of it. I said, “What are we going to do with these?” and he said, “Why don’t you sing them?” I don’t remember exactly what I said but I’m sure I thought to myself, “I’m not a lead singer!” And I’m not! I wouldn’t mind hearing those songs sung by a good singer.

MR: Dude, they’re perfectly fine, don’t you think?

EE: They’re okay. It was an enjoyable thing to do, but to be perfectly honest I think self-awareness is important. It’s important to know your abilities and it’s also important to know your limitations. I think they both define who you are as a person and an artist or whatever. To be completely honest about it, I’ve always found for myself that I really shine in a supportive role. I enjoy it more, I’ve never really sought out to be center stage, that’s not necessarily my thing, but what I love to do is to take a piece of music or be part of creating a piece of music and give it that lift that sends it over the top, whether it’s those solos that people seem to like from Cars records or whatever it may be. I think that’s my little gift, just being able to come up with hooks and solos and cool parts and take a great song and make it into a great record, which are two different things, really.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

EE: Very good question. How would I answer that… For one thing, I’d say save your money. I’m not trying to be funny or facetious. There’s a feeling that you can lapse into when you achieve this great success and it’s thinking that it’s going to last forever. Nothing does. It doesn’t matter if you’re Nick Cave or The Cars or whoever. I would advise a young musician to think about the future and to write music. Don’t get involved in drugs if you can possibly avoid it. Drugs and alcohol are kind of a dead-end. It stifles creativity and shortens your life and adds misery to it. Those are some of the big ones. And above all, have fun, because if you’re not having fun, then you’re doing it wrong.

MR: That’s beautiful, that’s really a great answer. And speaking of having fun, are you still loving your Tikibird?

EE: My Gibson? Oh yeah, it’s a blast. I love that guitar! I’ll be playing it a lot with The Empty Hearts. I’ve been very blessed in my life, I was one of those kids that used to write away to guitar companies for catalogs. I still am, but even at ten, eleven, twelve years old I was so guitar crazy. You just can’t imagine how nuts I was over guitars. I was one of those guys who used to bring catalogs to school and hide them behind my textbooks. I knew every model. If you would’ve told me back then that I’d have five or six different signature models through the years and guitar companies would approach me to design guitars for them I would’ve just laughed you out of the room. At this point I’ve done two for Gibson, a Martin acoustic, a Gretsch and a Kramer in the eighties. I’ve had like five signature model guitars. It’s an honor to have the signature model guitar, but in a more philosophical way I just feel so blessed to be considered a part of the guitar community and the musical community and to have my opinion valued by people like that who think that I would be able to contribute something to the world of guitars beyond just playing music is really flattering. It’s a great payoff to all of my misspent youth staring at catalogs and memorizing specs. I could’ve told you every bit of copy in the 1966 Gibson catalog. Every serial number. I was just crazed for that stuff. To this day, when the Brown truck comes and a new guitar gets delivered to the door, it’s like Christmas. I haven’t become jaded about that or anything. I still love it.

MR: Beautiful. Will The Empty Hearts be touring to support the album?

EE: Oh yes, we’ll absolutely be touring. It’s kind of toured around from what it used to be. In the eighties we used to make records and then we’d tour to promote the record, but I think it’s flip-flopped now. You want to tour so you can make a record. But definitely one of the main goals of the band has been all along to get out there and play live. Once the record comes out in August I expect we’ll be getting out as much as possible. It’s definitely one of our goals.

MR: What’s the future hold for you, you know, since you could be teaming up with literally anyone at literally any time.

EE: [laughs] My tastes are pretty eclectic, I think I’ve got a pretty deep well to draw from in terms of influences and stuff like that. I don’t know… A year or two ago, I had a mid-century crisis, so I did The Tiki Gods. That was exotica, lounge, Les Baxter sort of stuff. I wouldn’t consider myself a jazz musician but I enjoy tackling most other forms. I like to play a bit of jazz, I just don’t consider myself a jazz musician.

MR: Is there something you want to conquer that you haven’t attempted yet?

EE: Well, I’m kind of doing it. It’s great to be in a band where both my playing ability and my writing ability is welcomed and we’re all writing songs together. It’s a nice collective, I would say this is one of those moments where I am achieving something I would love to achieve. I’m just kind of enjoying this one right now. I never know what the future will bring though.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne