The Tubes started as a collection of high school friends from Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona.Two Phoenix bands, the Beans and The Red, White and Blues Band, both relocated to San Francisco in 1969 and eventually merged.
The new band's core membership remained largely intact for more than a decade: Fee Waybill (real name John Waldo Waybill) (vocals), Bill "Sputnik" Spooner (guitar, vocals), Roger Steen (guitar), Prairie Prince (real name Charles L. Prince) (drums), Michael Cotten (synthesizer), Vince Welnick (piano), and Rick Anderson (bass).
Singer Re Styles (born Shirley Marie MacLeod) (vocals) and ex-Santana percussionist Mingo Lewis were also fixtures for much of the band's early history.
Show business excess was a common theme of the band's early work, with Waybill sometimes assuming the onstage persona of "Quay Lewd" (a pun on Quaalude), a drunk, drugged out, barely coherent lead singer, wearing flashing glasses and stilt-like tall platform shoes.
The Tubes' first, self-titled album was produced by Al Kooper. The track "White Punks on Dope" was an "absurd anthem of wretched excess" and a tribute to their rich, white teenage fan base in San Francisco.
"White Punks on Dope" has been covered by Mötley Crüe. The German rock musician Nina Hagen took the tune and set new lyrics to it (not a translation of the original lyrics), titled her work TV-Glotzer ("Couch Potato"), and used this song as the opening track of her own debut album Nina Hagen Band, released 1978 on CBS/Germany records.
The album track "What Do You Want From Life?", which became another of the Tubes' signature songs, satirizes consumerism and celebrity culture and climaxes in a "hard-sell" monologue by Waybill which name-checks celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Paul Williams and Randolph Mantooth and well-known products of the period including the Dynagym exercise machine and a host of American vehicles including the Winnebago and the Mercury Montclair.
The Tubes' second album, Young and Rich on A&M Records, was produced by Ken Scott.
It featured the hit "Don't Touch Me There", a suggestive duet between Waybill and Re Styles, which was arranged in classic "Wall of Sound" style by Jack Nitzsche and featured Laramy Smith, who with Larry Lee arranged and performed the backing vocals.
The song was co-written by Ron Nagle and Tubes dancer/vocalist Jane Dornacker, who died in a helicopter crash in 1986.
Now is the third album released by The Tubes. It was partially produced by John Anthony. John Anthony left the project after a drug-induced breakdown, Bill Spooner took over and completed the project with the help of engineer Don Wood.
Now features a cover version of Captain Beefheart's "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains" and Captain Beefheart also played saxophone on "Cathy's Clone".
The project was intended to be a double album but delays lead to cutting several songs including a version of Gene Pitney's "Town Without Pity" complete with horn arrangement by Bay-area comedian/musician, Dick Bright.
The cover of Now was drawn by Tubes drummer, Prairie Prince entitled "Tubes Descending a Staircase", and was inspired by a similar drawing in Time magazine of The Ramones.
In an A&M leaflet they described the album as "This outrageous and zany band have developed musically and visually since their inception in San Francisco and their previous albums.
Track List (The Tubes / Young & Rich - 2 x 1 CD):
01.Up From The Deep
02.Haloes
03.Space Baby
04.Malague¤a Salerosa
05.Mondo Bondage
06.What Do You Want From Life
07.Boy Crazy
08.White Punks On Dope
09.Tubes World Tour
10.Brighter Day
11.Pimp
12.Stand Up And Shout
13.Don't Touch Me There
14.Slipped My Disco
15.Proud To Be An American
16.Poland WholeMadam I'm Adam
17.Young And Rich
01-08: The Tubes
09-17: Young & Rich
Track List (Now CD):
01.Smoke (La Vie en Fumér)
02.Hit Parade
03.Strung Out on Strings
04.Golden Boy
05.My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains
06.God-Bird-Change
07.I'm Just a Mess
08.Cathy's Clone
09.This Town
10.Pound of Flesh
11.You're No Fun
[ Thank you LARRY for sending this post ]
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