Looking at what happened to Lone Justice, it seemed that your producer, Jimmy Iovine, was pretty exhausting in the studio.
Well, here's the thing. When I work with artists, I tell them, “Anything that goes wrong with your career is your fault. Don't blame your producer, your manager, your A&R guy, your agent, the lead singer's girlfriend or boyfriend, or whatever.” I saw the writing on the wall in ’83, but I didn't leave. [laughter] I was reading this article in American Songwriter Magazine with John Fogerty. He said something that was exactly my experience. He said when he was in Creedence Clearwater Revival, he talked about all the problems that were going on with [Fantasy Records’ head, Saul] Zaentz and how the business stuff was really fucked up. He said, “I thought at the time, if I just put all my energy into the music everything will work itself out.” And that was exactly my own philosophy at the time. "If I just put myself into the music, we're going to be so good, and everything will work itself out." Even Fogerty said, “Boy, was that dumb.” [laughter] That's a false formula.
It's not going to work.
The first thing that Jimmy did was take [Lone Justice vocalist] Maria [McKee] into the studio and cut a song with the Heartbreakers. If that's the producer you're working with, there's no future here. It never really got better from that. The same thing with our manager. The writing was on the wall early on. And Jimmy hated country music. This isn't just hearsay – this is what he told me. He looked me in the eye. One day in the studio, I took a big piece of paper that said, “I hate country music. -Jimmy Iovine,” and I put it on the door of the studio as everyone walked in. This is what was going on. When we were mixing the record, Jimmy would call, “Hey, Marvin. Go into the studio, The Village. Shelly [Yakus, Tape Op #31] is there. He's working on some of those country songs. Why don't you make sure it sounds okay.” He didn't give a shit. When we were working on “Soap, Soup and Salvation” on the [self-titled debut] record, Jimmy was in the studio and the whole band was set up at Sunset Sound or wherever. Jimmy looked at me in front of the whole band and goes, “Marvin, you produce this one. I'm going to go work on a single or something.” What we were about, he wasn't into. He was off working on Maria’s solo record from day one. That's not his fault that I didn't leave. It's all of those problems that you hear bands had in the ‘80s.
Yeah.
I'll give you one example: The first time Lone Justice went into the studio, I was producing. We went in with the original band, before I was in it. We went to a nice studio, Record Plant maybe. It’s 1983, right? You know where music was at this point. I said to the engineer, “You know that snare drum sound that's really popular on MTV?” He said, “Oh, yeah,” and starts plugging wires in. Then he said, “We're ready to get that sound,” and I said, “Unplug everything. I don't want that sound. I just want it to sound like a stick hitting a drum.”
Not the cannon shot sound?
Yeah. He looked at me like he’d never experienced anybody not wanting that sound. But we unplugged everything, and that's what we got.
How did you leave the band?
Everyone thought I was nuts. We’d just got off tours with U2 and Tom Petty. We were on Geffen Records, the biggest label at the time. I said, “It's not going to fly without me, and they don't want me.” Jimmy asked me, “What do you want?” I said, “I wrote a third of the first album.” I was writing; I had two co-writes in ‘84 with Richard Thompson. I said, “I've got songs I've co-written with people. I'm happy to co-write with Maria and Ryan [Hedgecock, guitarist, co-founder] or deliver songs, but I want to be creatively involved. I don't want to just be a scarecrow with an instrument. He goes, “You're not going to be Lindsey Buckingham [Tape Op #146]. This isn't a band.” I said, “Well, all right.” That was it. What can you say? By that point, I had no leverage. I was talking to Bill Bentley. Bill was a publicist for Warner Bros., Slash [Records], and a lot of labels. I never knew this then, but he told me later, “I don't know if you know, but in ’83 Slash Records wanted to sign Lone Justice.” I said, “I wish you would have told me.” Slash had X and Los Lobos – it would have been a good fit. But our band’s manager told them no.
If you can have a career slowly building and more in your control, you could do this longer.
Yeah. That was my personal dream for Lone Justice.
Make the record, hand it to the label, and tell them, “This is what it is.”
