Interview: The Mods on EXD

The MODS were a four piece punk band from Toronto circa ’77-’78 with a unique look and sound. They added another inspiring dimension to the Toronto scene with the killer 7” 45 “Out of Step” and the ’95 CD release “Twenty 2 Months” both long out of print. There was also their inclusion on the extremely rare “Last Pogo” LP and appearance in the obscure Colin Brunton film of the same name. The following interview was conducted by Greg Dick, the singer of the DREAM DATES, and took place one week prior to their reunion gig, which coincidentally was the band’s first gig in 30 years. Scott Marks, the guitar player and David Quinton, the drummer, were interviewed on Equalizing Distort radio.

The MODS are going to be playing this coming Saturday for the first time in twenty five years at the Horseshoe, a place that was almost home base for you guys.
Scott (S): It’s been a short sabbatical.
Dave (D): You know the last time we played there was December 1st, 1978. We used to play there a lot before that, but that was the Last Pogo. That was the last time we played.
That was the last time you played the Horseshoe ?
D: Yeah.
How did the MODS form ?
S: Well the MODS formed - pre-David - was Greg Trinier, Mark Dixon and myself. We were all in close proximity in Scarborough and we really had similar tastes in music but more venturing towards the folk.
I don’t believe that.
S: Yeah we did. We used to go to Mariposa and the River Boat. Somewhere along the line we decided to start up a rock band and we were doing really bad covers of old WHO and STONES stuff. Well we met you in that phase David.
D: At the Philips Building. There were a whole bunch of bands that used to rehearse at this…I don’t even know how to describe it. It was almost like an abandoned warehouse and somebody picked it up and started renting rehearsal space and when the MODS were there and I first met them when they were doing these cover tunes and stuff I was in a band called the ANDROIDS. This was 1977 and right down the hall from us was the DIODES. Right next door to us was the UGLY. So it was the UGLY, the ANDROIDS, the DIODES, the MODS down the hall and some other bands. So I had actually met these guys just in the hallway hanging out and found them rather amusing and then because I was already fully into the punk thing …
So somebody was already playing drums for the MODS at that point.
D: Yeah.
S: But we were not …we were doing tingly little versions of songs. I don’t know how else to describe it and Mark our bass player was rhythm guitar. I was lead and we had another bass player and another drummer not knowing what we were trying to do. We were basically trying to be a cover band and break into the traditional bar circuit, but we really weren’t good enough for that.
What kind of covers were you doing ?
S: We did everything from old WHO to BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD to DYLAN songs to BYRDS to STONES. I mean we did basically everything. You know “Midnight Rambler” to “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man”. And they had long hair man.
And you had long hair and were calling yourselves the MODS at this point ?
S: We were calling ourselves the MODS.
So who was the drummer ?
S: That guy was Len Perry of Wexford Collegiate. And then … the metamorphosis of the band was we couldn’t stand our bass player so we …. At the same time we picked up …I remember buying “Anarchy” downtown on a 45 RPM and we went and saw the JAM at the Colonial and …
That was a great show.
S: Oh a phenomenal show. And we realized what the hell are we doing. We can do this or we can do what we are doing and that’s when we really started going out and checking out some Toronto bands. We saw the VILETONES, we saw the UGLY, we saw JOHNNY AND THE G-RAYS. It’s funny. The only bands that stood out the most for me back then was JOHNNY AND THE G-RAYS. Musically I loved them. We threw our bass player out. What we did was we had his equipment there at the rehearsal space so we had a rehearsal without him and Mark picked up the bass and we took our whole repertoire and paired it down to about 6 songs that we still liked and I remember us taking a version of Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah” and pumping it up. And we just did that with everything. “Substitute”, “Kids are Alright” we were doing all those songs, we just turned them on their heads and played them like we wanted to play them. The main problem was Len our drummer couldn’t handle them.
D: That was a real shock for me because I knew them from the Philips building and they had long hair and were doing these cover tunes and then one night I was at the Turning Point and they were playing. I was there and I saw this band the MODS and I thought well it can’t be the same group of guys. It’s got to be different. I walked in there and it was like this really aggressive punk power pop and it was these guys and they all had short hair and their singer – I didn’t know what kind of transformation had taken place, but it was like the most bizarre on-stage presence that I had seen.
Yeah Greg was a very unique performer. He had a lot of presence and he had a really interesting voice. Now the drummer at that point, was he a guy named Nick.
S: Oh yeah.
Didn’t he quit and join ARSON ?
S: Len who was our drummer in the old days never did play live with us as the new MODS. He bailed out on us. We actually auditioned a ton of drummers and we had almost settled on Vince who ended up going on to play with you in the QUTE and then Nicky came out the next day and Nicky had the biggest drum set I had ever seen in my life. It was so loud.
I heard Dave had one of those drum kits. I think Rodney Bowes told me this.
S: Not like Nick’s.
D: Nick had a 28” bass drum.
S: ….and he used baseball bats as sticks. He was as loud as …we used to joke. We would say ‘You go out to Pickering and count us in because we’ll still hear you.’ He was incredibly loud and a great guy. He had the greatest curly hair, but not right for us. He was a punk drummer and he wanted to be in a punk band. He wanted to end every song with ‘motherfucker’.
Were you guys still in high school at this point ?
S: I wasn’t.
D: We were.
S: Mark and Greg were.
And which high schools in Scarborough did they go to ?
S: We all went to Thompson.
Dave, what school did you go to ?
D: I grew up at Bathurst and Eglinton and my father was a music teacher at Forest Hill Collegiate and what happened was after Nick left and they were looking for a new drummer they asked me to join because I had friends with them. We used to hang out with them a lot. This is an interesting fact. I don’t even know if Scott knows this but they asked me to join the day before Keith Moon died and I accepted the day after Keith Moon died.
Who you were often compared to ?
D: Yeah you know it was flattering to be compared to him. I don’t know if anyone could be compared to him. It was really interesting because I was 17 at the time and it just seemed like the right thing to do and I really liked the guys and I liked what they were doing musically and I was really excited about it. We did our first gig September ’78 at the Hotel Isabella.
That was the first place the MODS played ?
D: Well with me. That was the first gig I played with the band.
S: I remember playing the Isabella. I had no idea that was the first one with you.
That was downstairs ?
D: Downstairs.
Yeah I loved it there.
D: I have incredible memories of that night because it was so bizarre. You know they had a waitress who would sort of do a strip tease act in the afternoon and then get her tray and go around and take drink orders, you know. This was before we played.
What were you doing there in the afternoon ?
D: Well you know just trying to get a feel for the place.
Dave. You were in the ANDROIDS originally as we said earlier with Bart and Sally who originally had a band called the CONCORDS. When you were in the ANDROIDS were you in the QUTE first and then you joined the ANDROIDS ?
D: No. Actually. It was the other way around. I was in the ANDROIDS and our first singer was Ruby T.
…who was on the cover of the Last Pogo record for all you kids trying to figure out who Ruby T is.
D: She was really a fun girl.
And quite beautiful too.
D: She was gorgeous. And she was Mike Nightmare’s girlfriend the singer for the UGLY and then when the CONCORDS broke up Sally, who’s real name was Karen, she joined us and the band was kind of weird and dark and strange. I didn’t love the experience if you know what I mean. And after the ANDROIDS broke up, that’s when I put together the QUTE. And the QUTE were together for three or four months during this time that I was hanging out pretty heavily with the MODS and getting to know these three crazy bastards from Scarborough.
S: That’s when I recall seeing you guys at the Bev and Vince was your drummer then.
D: I was singing.
Was the QUTE a punk band or ….
D: Power pop, punk band. You know what’s funny is when we talk about punk nowadays everybody thinks of Mohawks and pins and this hyper fast music. That’s not what it was when it started.
When that stuff came in it was already dead. That was the death of punk really.
D: For us in ’77 everything from ELVIS COSTELLO to the POLICE to TALKING HEADS to PATTI SMITH to TELEVISION to the DEAD BOYS was all considered punk. Basically any band that played simple raw punk music and wasn’t caught up in the corporate rock scene was considered a punk band and a new wave band. So it’s funny, even the ANDROIDS they had punk-ish leanings but it wasn’t punk in the sense that people think of it now.
How did you guys get turned on to punk ? What was your first … where did you hear about it ?
S: I think my first experience wasn’t going to see punk rock. I saw PATTI SMITH play Massey Hall on the “Horses” tour.
Her first gig ever.
S: I was interested in PATTI SMITH. Most of it was from reading Rolling Stone and they were talking about PATTI SMITH playing the Bottom Line and all these places in New York and everyone from the folk scene to every scene was thinking about PATTI SMITH. And that show was incredible at Massey Hall. I remember buying tickets and we ended up with floor seats half way back. We had great seats and no one knew who …I think we were the only two who knew who PATTI SMITH was. But I didn’t know what it was called at the time. To me they were just a great rock band. And then I remember reading the article in Rolling Stone about the PISTOLS. It was all about their secret tour, the SPOTS tour where the SEX PISTOLS were on tour secretly. That article just fascinated me. Talking to Greg and Mark at the time, it was before we had really gotten involved with David, it made sense that this is where we had to go. What we were doing was just not making any sense. It was a slow evolution. We started hanging out at Records on Wheels downtown. Seeing the JAM at the Colonial was definitely a turning point for all of us and we realized we can play this, we can do this. We could probably do it better than some of the people out there and we can write this stuff.
I think a lot of the Toronto bands could do it better than the other bands. A band I always thought was a lot like you guys too was the ROMANTICS. Did you guys ever do any gigs with them ?
D: I remember seeing them at the Turning Point. They actually came up and did a three song guest set one night and they were sort of similar to us. They were a lot more poppy maybe and we were a touch more aggressive. But when you talk about the first exposure to punk or what got us interested, you know you have defining moments in your life when you remember things especially from your teen years and I remember my first exposure to it like it was yesterday. I was watching a TV show and they had this segment on the DAMNED from England and they showed them doing their photo session and they were putting brown paper bags on their heads.
That was a single cover for “Neat Neat Neat”.
D: Yeah exactly and I had never seen anything so outrageous in my life. That was at a time when rock bands were supposed to look pretty and everything was ELTON JOHN and BOSTON and all that kind of crap and just to see these guys putting bags on their heads … it was outrageous for 1976 – ’77 and I got interested in it and the next thing I did was pick up a VILETONES single downtown – “Screaming Fist”. And then I just started buying 45’s of all these different bands. I think the first punk album I actually bought was the DEAD BOYS record, which was one of my favourite ones.
Yeah the DAMNED record came out … I think that was actually the first “Punk” record and back then especially in the earliest days there really wasn’t a lot to choose from. I mean if you bought compilation records and you had stuff like TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS
S: Or EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS.
Yeah EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS. Those guys were wearing bell bottoms. They did have some cool songs. “Do Anything you want to do” is a pretty cool track.
D: Well a lot of bands went through transformations just like them, but the amazing thing for me is that after having watched that television show and seeing the DAMNED who at this time was sitting at someone’s house babysitting as a teenager three years later I was playing in a band with Brian James from the DAMNED.
You were babysitting kids man ?
D: Well I won’t tell you what happened to them, but at any rate to think that three years later I was actually playing in a band with one of the guys, it was really strange.
S: I think the strangest thing about the ROMANTICS connection though, I think we had a bit of the same look.
You guys had sort of a mod-ish like a heavy pop thing. You both had killer drummers.
S: But do you recall playing at Bookies in Detroit. Bookies was the home base…
Yeah I was going to actually ask you about Bookies. Tell us about it now. What was Bookies like ?
S: Still the strangest club experience of my whole life. Bookies was located close to the university, but was also the local transvestite bar.
That always makes for a good mix.
S: So it was the university students into punk and new wave and transvestites. I know my ex-wife, my girlfriend at the time, went into the washroom and there was as many guys facing the toilets at the stalls with their mini skirts on, but Bookies and do you remember the women who ran the door that had a shotgun across her lap. I mean it was just the most bizarre experience playing at Bookies.
And Detroit has quite a few crazy characters running the streets so…
D: We had a very scary experience there because we had no money and we would stay in these …we would buy one hotel room and the whole band or whatever would stay in it. We had this motor hotel which is just a big window from the floor to the ceiling and we got into this weird wrestling match in the room, you know as young guys will sometimes do and Greg’s brother who was our roadie, our soundman threw him against this heavy drapery and behind the drapery was that big window and the thing popped out and smashed on the ground. It sounded like World War III and Greg and I being the tough guys in the band. We immediately ran to the washroom and shut the door and we were in there freaking out.
S: The guy came out with a gun and it was kind of like $25 and the glass man will be here. Either you pay us the money or I’m calling the cops and I just remember …
D: We wrote TEENAGE HEAD right.
S: Oh we were there with HEAD. We had to gather up enough money to pay this guy or he was going to call the police.
S: We were there for two or three nights and I just remember the one night, there was a bunch of people from the hotel or the bar that came over and drinking Wild Turkey straight and I just remember the one guy guzzling Wild Turkey and I was in awe.
D: That’s what you aspire to.
So you guys played Bookies three nights with TEENAGE HEAD. We did Bookies twice.
S: The first time we did Bookies we were on our own. The second time was in that summer of ’79. We did a number of dates in the States. We did Hurah’s in New York. Went on to Philly. I don’t remember the name..
D: Pirate’s Cove in Cleveland. The place we played in Philly was the Hot Club. The Hot Club was unbelievable. It was all cement. It was a cement floor, cement walls, in a really bad part of town and I played there a couple of times.
S: And then we went to Chicago. The first time we played Chicago was really weird. We played this Bourbon bar on the one night and the next night we played punk night at Mother’s. And then the next time when we played with TEENAGE HEAD…
Where was Mother’s ? Oh that was in New York. That was in Long Island I think.
D: Mother’s was a Chicago bar.
Oh there was one in New York I think.
D: See all I remember from that one was it was the first gig in Chicago and it was the first time I ever saw that guy Jim Skafish, who put out albums on IRS. That really weird looking dude with the big nose.
S: What I remember, I have a few memories of Chicago. I remember being very, very, very, very hungry in Chicago because we hadn’t eaten in three days and we had no money because we played Cleveland and I think there was six people there. Us and TEENAGE HEAD. Once you got out of Ontario TEENAGE HEAD, at that time were really breaking in Ontario. They were starting to fill traditional bars, but you got south of the border and … do you remember the Pirate’s Cove … I remember doing the sound check and the girl coming out and asking us …they were in line to get in and they wanted to know if we did any Bob Seger. They had no idea. And I think generally speaking any of the cities we went to in the States with the exception of New York were far behind the Toronto scene. The Toronto scene was really healthy at the time.
Well you guys were actually quoted as saying after playing New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit that you realized how much further ahead the Toronto scene was and Toronto has always embraced, especially back then and even through the 80s with bands like the CURE and the SMITHS – the kind of bands that would always play in theatres like big stadiums in Toronto and then down in the States they would be playing to 50 or 60 people in bars.
D: I think that’s right. I remember when the RAMONES were here and playing at the New Yorker and the DEAD BOYS had come in and …I think Toronto has had periods in its history where its been ahead of the times and other times in history where it hasn’t been and it has been other cities in the US or whatever, but yeah. Let’s talk about the UGLY for a second because you brought up the UGLY before.
Yeah, they did. I remember seeing them one night at the Colonial when I remember Sam, he couldn’t keep his bass plugged in for some reason. It just kept on popping out. I think it was the DISHES, the UGLY, and the ROMANTICS. I am pretty sure that was the gig that I saw. They were just great. What other local bands did you guys find inspiring ?
S: Like I said, I was a big fan of the G-RAYS.
Where did you first see them play ?
S: The first time I saw the G-RAYS was at the Horseshoe and I guess what I really found refreshing about them was the fact that …. You know I had been to see the VILETONES, and the UGLY. I had seen a lot of the Toronto punk bands and I just found the G-RAYS were far more what I like in music. They were more musical number one. You could tell they had some background ….like Johnny wrote great lyrics. I mean phenomenal lyrics and he had such a great stage presence. I mean to me they were ore along the lines of TOM PETTY and that kind of ….They had that background of folk or country. That was there. It wasn’t necessarily at the front but you knew that these guys listened to something other than punk stuff.
I kind of think that the SECRETS were quite inspired by the G-RAYS the way they ended up going for a heavy R&B sound because that is what I recall the earliest version of the G-RAYS sounding like.
S: Yeah there was this song….
D: … “Susie Peroxide”…
No that’s the SECRETS.
D: “Trying to Chew My Head”.
S: No but the one that is kind of more basic rock n roll like “Here comes John” or….the one that’s got Johnny’s name in it. I really liked them. They were probably one of my favourite Toronto bands at the time. The DIODES I liked.
D: I think all the guys in our band really liked JOHNNY AND THE G-RAYS. I know Greg did a lot and Mark did a lot. Scott loved them. We used to play with them sometimes.
S: And when we split up I joined a band called POPULAR SPIES for a while, which ….
I remember seeing that name around.
S: And I will tell you….great guys. Graham Scares was the drummer. Great music historian. I have often wondered what happened to Graham. He was a dynamite guy. Roman Bishop the guitar player, another super guy. And Jeff Ralton the bass player, who went on to play with some more bands I know in the 80’s, but other than that I had had enough of playing. It was a great experience. They were really great guys.
D: There were an awful lot of eccentric Toronto bands in those days.
There was the first wave. I don’t know if you guys caught anything like OH THOSE PANTS, ZOOM, the CADS, …
D: I saw the CADS.
Where did you see them ?
S: I went to high school with Paul Eknes. He was the lead singer of the CADS.
Was Paul Eknes the lead singer of the CADS ?
D: No no you are thinking of the ….
He was in the WADS.
S: I’m sorry. You’re right.
And that’s a band…I think there is some tapes of the WADS out there.
D: No the CADS were “Sex was the Only Way Out”.
“Do the Crab Walk”.
S: I know who the CADS were. There was that Chick …
D: They used to play at the Bev sometimes. And you know who I really liked was the GOVERNMENT.
Yeah, I loved the GOVERNMENT.
D: I liked Andy Paterson. I thought he was a really interesting character. I liked their songs. I thought they were cool.
S: The SCENICS were an interesting band too but ….I mean not really accessible live but I liked their recorded stuff.
Yeah, they had a record out on Ready Records and actually I remember hearing a story about them recently. There was a concert promoter in Toronto who came up around the late 70’s named Louie Louie and I remember the SCENICS opened for a band called the NEW YORK NIGGERS at the Horseshoe and it was the same time that the Gary’s had the Edge and after that gig the Gary’s apparently wouldn’t book the SCENICS anymore. And I was actually going to ask you guys, I know you guys started playing Larry’s Hideaway.
D: ’79.
Yeah. Now I think that was the same time as the Edge. Did that run into any problems for you ? Were you guys getting gigs at the Edge ?
D: No the Gary’s were always really cool with us.
S: They were great with us. We got great shows with them. And I don’t think they minded that we played other places in town.
D: Larry’s is filled up with grass now.
S: I know I worked the fire there. The best Gary’s show that we opened was with the SPECIALS at the Palais Royale. That was just an awesome venue. It was a great night. It was steamy. It was hot. That’s the show to me that stands out of our big opening acts.
Yeah the floor in there is like a trampoline. Kind of like the Commodore in Vancouver. The MODS had a very unique sound. Unlike any of the other Toronto bands. How would you guys describe yourselves, as being a part of that scene ?
D: The description of our sound you mean.
Yeah.
D: I think we were a punky power pop band. I don’t think we were a punk band. We played pop music. We had harmonies, but we played very, very aggressively. And I think the punk overtones were in there. So by no stretch were we a pop band, but I don’t think we were a punk band either. We were somewhere in the middle.
S: Yeah we moved more towards the pop but there was some other influences as well. But I mean I think the studio stuff was never captured. In retrospect I still find the live stuff more interesting. A lot of the studio stuff that was recorded sounds kind of pale.
D: Yeah, I agree.
It was interesting, the FORGOTTEN REBELS. Mickey De Sadist was making fun of you guys in the Last Pogo film. I was wondering what your reaction to that was.
D: I was just going to say that the FORGOTTEN REBELS are shit. They’ve got no pretence or nothing. The FORGOTTEN REBELS weren’t good enough to play at the Last Pogo. That’s why they weren’t there.
S: After they magic markered my house on Main Street. That was the first time I had met the FORGOTTEN REBELS. We had done a gig downtown and I was renting a house on Main Street. Main and Lumsden with some other guys and a bunch of people came back there and there was this Johnny Rotten look a like who was Mickey of course and in the morning we woke up and there was all these FORGOTTEN REBELS things written in magic marker all over the house. So he didn’t really ingratiate himself.
But he did go and see the MODS a lot.
D: Yeah, we used to see Mickey at MODS gigs and I’ve always quite liked him. I think he is great and I think their band has always been good and done some good things and you know he has hung in there a really, really long time.
They have never broken up. They have continued to…they have constantly played and they have a fan base worldwide. He’s a great guy. He’s got a sense of humour in him.
D: It’s funny. I never….
He used to rub the Toronto people the wrong way. It seemed like it.
D: When he said that about us in the Last Pogo movie I never took offence to it at all.
S: I thought it was hilarious.
D: I always thought it was very funny and that he had a very sharp wit. I never took offence to it whatsoever.
He did a great Greg Trinier impersonation I thought in that.
D: He did.
S: That’s right he was in that.
D: And I saw Mick for the first time since the old days at the punk Horseshoe gig in July.
Yeah in July.
D: You took me up to him and he said some really nice things to me. I quite like the guy. I think he’s great.
Your first gig was at the Horseshoe with the JUMPERS and the VILETONES. How did the crowd react to you guys ?
S: June ’78. Actually the crowd … I think we literally came from nowhere and people were expecting nothing and I honestly think. We blew them away that night. That to me was still the …and to this day I have never been so scared. Nicky was on drums at the time. We had just revamped the band. We had been rehearsing for about a month. We had a set. The first song we opened with was “Substitute” and literally I remember us being up on stage and people had told us ‘You guys looked scared shitless’ and we were. We were scared. We didn’t know what was going to happen. And we did it and the place, literally you could see people stopping and turning and watching because we had been playing together for a year and a half. We could play. We were tight. Musically we were tight. We had vocal harmonies. I think people had just … we had come from nowhere so I think it was a great reaction we got an encore that night. And from there on Gary Cromier, I remember him coming up and saying ‘I want to book you guys again.’ It was immediate. And I remember we drank for two nights after that we were just so happy about it.
You guys built up a following pretty quickly it seemed like.
S: Within two months. I mean it was unheard of and it was weird. It was really weird.
Now there is a couple of things, you guys were talking about the Philips Building, an old warehouse where you guys practised. Where was that place ?
S: Right at Laird and Eglinton. Brentcliffe and Laird actually.
And the UGLY practised there and I know Dave you had told me a story about the UGLY, I think I am sure that some of the gear might have been found or borrowed and you told me a story about a few constables coming down looking for Mr. Nightmare.
D: Well it was really weird because the Philips Building was a little refuge for all these bands and nobody from the outside would ever really came in you know. One day these plain clothes policemen came and they were looking for guys from the UGLY and I remember them questioning Sam and asking whether he had receipts for equipment and Nightmare had sort of run outside and gotten onto the roof and taken off. Yeah it was one of my memories of that place because I hadn’t really seen that sort of thing before. At 17 years old I hadn’t been exposed to that kind of stuff. And I also remember the DIODES very distinctly rehearsing because they were doing rehearsals for their first album at the time with their Producer Bob Gallow and I used to go into the room once and a while and listen to them and kind of watch what a real record producer would or supposedly real record producer would do with the band and their music. The one thing that kind of freaked me out was I was in the room when he suggested they change lyrics for one of their songs. They used to have a song called “Jerry Hall” and Bob Gallow he was sort of this discovery guy you know with his shirt undone and a big medallion and stuff and he looks at them and goes ‘Who’s Jerry Hall ?’ and they kind of laughed and they said ‘It’s Bryan Ferry’s girlfriend’ and of course we all knew of her as Bryan Ferry’s girlfriend in those days and he said ‘Well, you know, nobody knows who Jerry Hall is so I think you guys should change the name to something like “China Doll”’ and of course they did change the name of the song to “China Doll”. That’s the way they recorded it, but to me it was always Jerry Hall.
And you know it’s funny considering how popular Jerry Hall is especially with her own reality TV show now they might have cashed in on that. They could always re-record it I suppose.
S: They were there the first night we played the Horseshoe too because I remember Cato coming down to the dressing room after and he kept looking at me and pointing at his Townsend button because I was playing a gold Les Paul with a Hiwatt amp which I didn’t do for any particular purpose other than I bought them together off a guy used. I’m going Yeah well…and of course it was Townsend’s signature thing.
It wasn’t Mike Nightmare was it ? (loads of laughter)
S: No it wasn’t. Thank goodness.
What Toronto clubs did the MODS play ?
S: We did the Horseshoe, we did the Turning Point, Larry’s….
D: The Edge
S: Isabella
I saw you guys play at the Edge with ULTRAVOX.
S: That was right after we got….the first time we went down to the States and literally we arrived back in Toronto at 8:00 in the morning driving all night and we got the call from the Garys and we went down and used their equipment. Actually that gig is recorded.
You’ve got recordings of that.
D: Yeah.
There is actually a photo of it in Mojo Magazine from last month. I think I still have my ticket stub. It was a $3.00 cover that night if I’m not mistaken.
D: I remember the gig very well because we drove all night, we were totally burned out and I remember one of the boys calling me in the afternoon waking me up like at 3:00 in the afternoon saying we’re going to go play with ULTRAVOX tonight and this was like the cool version of ULTRAVOX, when they had John Foxx as the singer.
It was the only good version of ULTRAVOX.
D: Yeah. And I remember because I was using the guys drums. It was the drummer Warren Can and he wanted to talk to me on the phone first and he asked me all these questions about whether I hit hard and all this stuff but he was very gracious and cool and we used their gear and did the gig and somehow managed to stay awake through it. I remember it quite well.
No one seems to mention the Cheetah Club much. I know you guys played there. Tell me about the Cheetah Club. Where was it ?
S: Cheetah was on Isabella almost at the corner of Isabella and Yonge on the south side and it had been a disco. In the heart of the disco era it had been a hardcore disco with the glass tables and these little loungey things. It was as far removed from a punk bar as you could get. You know going from the Horseshoe which was your typical beer swilling place to the Cheetah which opened up for some punk bands who immediately started to destroy it. That’s what I remember.
I don’t think it lasted very long.
S: No. It didn’t last long and we played there and the VILETONES showed up and I remember … I don’t know if we did two nights there or one but anyways I guess they got Mark or someone to agree to let them do a guest set and that was the biggest mistake. The VILETONES got on stage and they wouldn’t get off and that was the night that the P.A. toppled over and they had one of those big old juke boxes at the Cheetah and it crushed the juke box. It was a mess.
D: I remember Leckie getting thrown into that juke box.
S: I remember Leckie up on stage. He took his spike belt off and started just swinging it around.
I saw him do that a few times at various places. Either his belt or a chain.
D: There was a big, big fight. I think we did the two nights and there was a huge fight on the second night and that was the end of the Cheetah Club basically. The thing I remember about it is that was the first night I met Stiv Bators. The first night that I actually talked to him was at the Cheetah Club.
He was probably here with Cynthia from the B-GIRLS.
D: Yeah he was here with Cynthia. Cynthia was his girlfriend at the time. But I remember that fight. That was a massive ugly fight at the Cheetah Club. It was funny, in those days I remember in ’79 or early ’80 when all of a sudden there was a lot of violence at the end of gigs. Do you remember there were times at the end of every show where there was a fight.
S: Well that’s how you knew it was over.
D: Yeah they were ready to close the place.
S: In Ottawa we played the Roters Club and that was hilarious. We were right at the end of the gig and
You were playing with the BUREAUCRATS at that gig I think because they actually wrote about it.
S: Is that right ?
Yeah, yeah.
D: They probably opened for us.
S: And really there was no stage you just played at the end of a room in the corner and they were all pogoing in front of us and I remember the one guy leaning over and pouring beer on my guitar and then all of a sudden Mark fly off the stage put his bass down and attacked this guy and a brawl ensued.
Who was pouring beer on your guitar ? Was it a guy from another band ?
S: No a guy from the audience, but Mark was our fighter.
D: Scott is not telling the whole story here. The guy sort of sprayed beer on him first and Scott was warning him. You came to the front and you said ‘If you do that again blah blah blah’ and then the guy did it again and Mark lept on him and this huge fight ensued. Again me and Greg being the tough guys in the band we kind of went out the back door because it got really rough. That was a small little place.
When you guys were playing Ottawa was there much of a crowd there ?
S: Yeah it was packed. Stuart, I can’t remember Stuart’s last name, but he had … the scene up there was pretty good.
D: It was a good scene. It was very, very underground because Ottawa was Ottawa. It was a government town. A university town. But they had this really strong very underground scene. But we had a very strange set of experiences there. Not only that bad fight, but I got hit with a bottle at a club called the Black Swan. And it was a quart of beer that was full, you know.
Like those big ones that they had at the Gasworks.
D: Yeah. It was a guy from a motorcycle gang that had just walked in and picked it up and …
S: Well you used to go on the road and you had no idea. I mean at Cobourg you play for these people where they had LED ZEPPELIN cover bands and we would walk out playing our own stuff and that’s what the situation was. The Black Swan was not a punk club but they were trying out some punk bands and when they didn’t like you they just killed you.
D: Yeah they tried to kill me. I was knocked out cold. I had to go to the hospital. It was pretty bad. My other favourite memory. Well actually no I have another favourite memory in Ottawa that I don’t like to discuss, but my second favourite memory is of Scott at the Beacon Arms Hotel.
S: (laughter) And you want to discuss that one.
D: Well you might know that Hotel Detectives in the 30’s and 40’ were called Hotel Dicks right.
Yeah.
D: Scott was the Hotel Dick.
S: I had a tendency sometimes to get naked on the road and cruise the elevators at 2:00 in the morning with Mark. Cruise is probably the wrong choice of words.
D: Yeah, you weren’t cruising.
S: The joke was that the elevator opens up at 2:00 in the morning myself and Mark on it and this guy is walking by the elevator promptly turns around and gets in with us and I am thinking why would any guy in his right mind get into an elevator with a naked guy. Anyways it turns out that he is the house detective. So the elevator proceeds to the basement where we are both just pissing ourselves laughing and so we get off non-challantly walk away and that’s when he tried to stop us and we head for the stairs. I ran up nine flights of stairs ball assed naked and got into bed and the guy caught Mark on the second floor because he was smoking like a chimney and Mark was totally winded. He couldn’t get away.
D: It’s funny. Everytime the MODS went away and when I had been in other bands over the years, but I have to tell you everytime we went out of town it was some kind of adventure. It was very, very funny and I think it had something to do with the way we were as people but also our age because unlike a lot of the punk guys who were thirty years old and pretending to be twenty or pretending to be nineteen, we were young.
Well you were young.
D: And so was Mark and Greg and Scott was just a little bit older than us. We were young guys so when we went away out of town away from our families and our parents and whatever we would go crazy. To think that we never got in trouble, never got arrested or never got in accidents or whatever. We would pile into this little van with all of our equipment and Scott reminded me of a story the other day where we were driving in the winter after a gig in Montreal and the van starts swirving out of control and it is one of those moments where you can bite it if luck isn’t on your side and we went and checked the tires and there was no treads on ‘em. So here we are these guys driving around in this van in the middle of winter, no treads on the tires. I mean the fact that we came out of this stuff alive is amazing and the hotels we would stay in Chicago and Detroit and New York … it’s unbelievable we came out of it alive. We weren’t staying at the friggin’ Waldorf.
Now you guys were talking about …. Back to the Cheetah Club you were saying Stiv Bators came to see you play there. That must have made you feel pretty good to have somebody with that high of a profile would have come and seen you.
D: Well it’s funny because Bators and Leckie were at a MODS Turning Point gig that we did and they both came on stage and did “Tell Me”, the old STONES song with us.
With you guys ?
D: Yeah.
Three singers.
D: DEAD BOYS had done “Tell Me” and the MODS had done “Tell Me” so Greg and Stiv and Leckie sang it together. But I didn’t talk to Bators at all that night. I didn’t talk to him until the Cheetah Club gig and he came up to me afterwards and he was so drunk he could barely stand up and all I remember him saying is ‘You’ve got to play with me.’ And I was like ‘Uh huh.’ (hesitantly) And he was like ‘I’m going to call you. I’m doing this record and you’ll come and play on it.’ And I was like ‘whatever.’ Then I didn’t hear from him for five months.
Then you ended up playing in his solo band and on his album of which you contributed a song “Make up Your Mind.” Now did you write it for Stiv ?
D: I wrote it for Stiv. I wrote it when we were all living in Ohio and writing for his solo album and he recorded it and then when I did my solo record in 1980 I re-did it. Scotty came in and did the guitar work on it.
Beautiful. So you guys kept in touch. Now Stiv, he knew a lot of people in Toronto so he was close to Steve Leckie ?
D: I don’t know that he was close with him. I know he knew him. And Bators had a funny tendency of making fun of people that were very intense. So the more intense you were the more he made fun of you. He knew that I liked Leckie and I liked the VILETONES and stuff so he used to try and poke fun at me. He used to write letters to me and stuff saying ‘How is Nancy Dog and the V-TONES ?’ And used to tell me that I should start a band called DAVID AND THE QUINTONES. You know the funny thing is that Bators was much older than me. He was born in 1949 so he is a child of the 50’s and early 60’s so a lot of his humour was that kind of stuff. Like plays on words and making fun of you like ‘You were in a doo wop band.’ So I think when he would make fun of Leckie it was all like that. Like in good spirit. I think he liked Steve and I think he liked the VILETONES, but the more Bators liked something the more he made fun of it. That’s how he was.
You guys played a song by Lennon-McCartney called “From a Window” and a lot of punks really considered the BEATLES the enemy. Were you guys trying to make a statement ?
S: Yeah we were trying to take ‘em down (laughter).
D: It wasn’t that the BEATLES were the enemy, it was that BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS were the enemy.
S: Yeah JERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS.
I looked for that song on a BEATLES record and ….
S: No the BEATLES never recorded it. We did certainly choose the covers versions based on the obscurity factor like “She’s Still a Mystery” by the LOVIN’ SPOONFULS, which was a hit but not a big hit. And of course the funny thing about “From a Window” recorded by BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS is shortly after we start doing that song, Mark’s father worked for a publishing firm and they hire this guy for doing one of their magazines and he turns out to be the drummer from BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS.
D: Tony Bookbinder.
S: Tony Bookbinder. He was actually going to sit in and do it with us at the Edge and he came out for a few rehearsals and blew his arm out.
D: It was unbelievable. He was probably around our age now, but he came out and rehearsed for us and he must have messed up his wrist because he couldn’t play with us. But he came and regailed us with stories and stuff. “From a Window” is interesting because it is a Lennon-McCartney song written for BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS were managed by Brian Epstein and Produced by George Martin. So I guess that was a common occurrence. Lennon and McCartney would throw in songs for other bands to do and of course the version that Billy Jay Kramer does is very sweet and beautiful. What we do is very nasty and obnoxious, but it worked out really well for us.
What is the song “the Other Side” about ?
S: Greg wrote the lyrics for that and that was definitely a song about the hypocrisy of the downtown punkers. I mean the reality was …. Steve Leckie, the first time he came out to hear us in Greg’s basement we were driving out to Scarborough and Steve’s going ‘Wow man, like I am out in the country’ and of course Steve went to Midland Collegiate down the road from where we grew up. ‘I’m from the other side’. I can’t even remember the lyrics but it is basically you live downtown you talk like you’re a street person but the reality is your just like us. You’re from Scarborough. You’re from North York. You’re a poseur.
D: I think the more I came to realize over the years I concluded that it’s not where you come from and it’s not you’re education level and its not the community that you grew up in it’s a feeling that you have and if you have that same feeling you come together and enjoy the same kind of music and might enjoy the same kind of scenes together. It doesn’t matter where you come from. So people who were trying to say ‘I’m like this and your not so you can’t be a real punk or you can’t be a real this or a real that’ it’s really just a crock of bullshit because it all depends on … you know people come together because of what they like. People come together because of a commonality and a community of feeling. So Greg, I have known you all these years and some people might look at us and say that we don’t have a lot in common on the surface but we have so much in common because of things that we like. Over the years, you’ve kept me honest in the sense that I don’t have a lot of people that I can talk to about the scene and about music and you’re one of the few people that I can do that with and it’s because of you in many ways that we’re doing this show next week. Because you have constantly reminded me of my musical past and constantly reminded me of the responsibility I have to keep things alive.
Well that’s a very high compliment and if I have done that then I think I have done something good because I am really happy that the MODS are playing again. I know that there is a lot of people feeling the same way about seeing you guys play. Tell us about your 45.
S: The 45 was recorded in late November of ’78. A couple of nights at Comfort Sound up at Dufferin and Rogers Road ….
D: For $120.
S: We did a basic bed track with everyone playing. We did a guitar overdub then we threw the vocals on it. We pressed a 1,000 copies with the picture sleeve and they sold out very quickly. They were selling them at the Record Peddler at the time and Records on Wheels. They got around the country a little bit but it wasn’t the distribution you could get today. The first time it was ever played before it was released on vinyl was we had gone to see ELVIS COSTELLO play at the O’Keefe. BATTERED WIVES were opening the show and that would have been November and Mark and I and Greg went to the early show. He did two shows that night. From there we went over to the Horseshoe and got over there at about 10:00 and the POLICE were playing the Horseshoe. The first Toronto appearance by the POLICE.
I was at that gig.
S: Well there wasn’t many people there.
There was about….well its funny because the amount of people that said they were there …
S: It would have been packed.
I came into Toronto with my friend John Rudyk to buy a Bryan Ferry album which because records came out a week earlier in Toronto then they did in Hamilton and we had come in and we were in town that night and we went down to the Horseshoe and there was a little colour picture on the door and it said ‘Tonight from England the POLICE at the Horsehoe’ and we thought what the hell we’ll go in. I didn’t like them. I thought they sounded like STYX because he had such a high voice. There was no one in the place and he had this green jump suit on with zippers on it and stuff and it really wasn’t my bag.
S: What I recall about the Horseshoe was about half way back they had the drop in of the lower section and …
They used to have an old section along the side
S: Yeah. And I just remember the place wasn’t even full to that first section
The night I was there I remember there couldn’t have been more than 6 people there. It was really empty.
S: I would have said 50 to 60 but my recollection was….
There was two nights. You might have been there ..the night I was there ELVIS COSTELLO was playing the El Mo the same night. I know that. It was the second time he had played the El Mocambo.
S: Well he was playing the O’Keefe that night because that was the night he played with BATTERED WIVES.
He must have done the night before at the El Mo then or maybe I am getting it mixed up.
S: Or maybe I am getting it mixed up, but who was doing the sound for the POLICE that night was Nash the Slash and because I went over because I was standing beside the soundboard and he gets talking to me and he says to me ‘You’re in the MODS’ and I said ‘Yeah’ and we got talking and that’s when I first found out that …. You know maybe I did mix that up. Anyways, that night in the Horseshoe they Played “Step Out Tonight” on cassette in between the sets for the POLICE.
Well I left after the first set so I probably didn’t hear that.
D: I’m sure it was the highlight of the evening.
S: There were very few people there but you’re right so many people said they were there.
D: I remember when they came back and did the Edge. So after doing the Horseshoe the Garys were telling me that they called the record company A&M to say how many people were coming down and they said ‘Who’s playing ?’. ‘The Police.’ ‘Who’s that ?’ Even at the time after the first record was out it took a while but they just kept touring and touring. We opened for them in ’79 right ?
S: At the Music Hall.
D: So they had done the Shoe they had come back and done the Edge and later the Music Hall we opened for them for I think the second album. Those were big shows for us too.
Did they talk to you guys ?
S: Oh yeah. Sting was very … he came in and … it was a big show for us and it was the first time we did a theatre venue and we did two shows with them that night WAZMO NARIZ was coming up from Chicago and they got delayed and …
He was also on IRS Records too I think.
D: Yes he was.
S: But Sting came in after our set and sat down for a few minutes to talk to us and it was funny because you didn’t really … I mean we had seen them at the Edge … actually Mark’s brother opened up for them at the Edge.
D: Yeah that’s right.
What was his band ?
S: He used to do a solo act called the ROCKER. He opened up for us a few times too. He had just come out with an acoustic guitar playing old rock and roll songs and always got well received.
D: People loved him. You know it was funny because the POLICE … the one thing I remember about them in terms of their attitude was that they knew they were good. I think that is what set them apart. I remember that sort of vibe.
S: What I recall too was that this was our first true opening at a concert setting and we got no back lighting and we got about half the P.A. It was like why is theirs so much louder than ours was ? What happened to all those lights up there that weren’t being used. And it was funny because when we opened for SQUEEZE a year later we got everything. They just gave everyone everything.
D: We were simulcast on CFNY that night too.
S: That was our last show.
The MODS were ?
D: Yeah. Not the POLICE show.
S: The SQUEEZE show. That was the last show we played. Well not the last show but …
So there is recordings of that floating around out there.
D: Playing at the Music Hall we were simulcast.
Johnny McLoud of JOHNNY AND THE G RAYS mother passed away in the late 70’s. The day after she passed away the G RAYS were booked to play U of T with the MODS. Because the G RAYS needed the cash Johnny agreed to do the show. Within the first couple of songs beers flew past John’s head which prompted John’s brother and Harry Palm to enter the audience and lay a beating on the culprits. Do you guys remember this gig ?
S: I remember the gig but I don’t remember any of that.
D: I don’t remember that but the thing is that we were probably not around Scott because I do remember that they had a hard time. They weren’t happy about ….
S: …that gig. I remember that.
D: The crowd was pretty rough on them, but I don’t think we were there when that stuff happened.
You were probably getting drunk or something before the gig.
S: It was a university show.
I’m going to have to get Johnny on the show. I think he is going to have to be one of our future guests. Apparently the U of T newspaper wrote about it describing the unruly punk rock bands as the problem. You guys started playing universities a fair bit. What was the difference with playing universities as opposed to playing the usual venues ?
S: The money was better. And the beer was better. There was more free beer.
D: I just remember, you know it is really interesting the kind of things that stick out in your mind when you bring up an issue like that. One thing that I remember so distinctly is we were playing at Western and I remember doing a college radio show and whoever was interviewing us said so you guys are just in this for fun and to have a great time and you don’t care about money and for some reason it pissed me off. I don’t remember what it was, but I think it was the fact that a College kid was saying that to me. And I thought to myself ‘Why is it that we can’t care about money or success. Are we just there for people’s amusement ?’ So you’re here getting a College education and you are going to get a job and make money and have a family and am I supposed to die in a gutter ? And I remember sort of challenging the kid and saying that we have to live too. We have to survive also. You know the beautiful thing about this band is that we have also survived so nicely. Because to me this life was not about ending up in a gutter. It wasn’t about ending up dead. It was about infiltrating the regular world with our influence and the way we think about things. And I think that the four of us have been really successful in doing that. We’ve all sort of achieved success in other ways other than music but we have infiltrated the world with our attitude. In that way in that very tiny corner of the world in which you live you effect a little bit of change. And to me that’s what it was all about. It wasn’t about dying. It was about staying alive and surviving. I didn’t think Sid Vicious was such a wonderful character.
You just had one foot in the gutter.
D: Yeah. I mean once in a while it’s nice but you don’t have to give up your life and ruin it in order to have a great time and to be involved in rock and roll.
S: I thought we were totally in it for the money back then (loads of laughter).
I never believed anybody that said they didn’t want money. I remember Joe Strummer kind of going on about that and the next thing you knew he was riding in a limo opening for the WHO in football stadiums.
S: You know what though. In all honesty to me … and they got hand in hand but the fame I think….when your 18 to 21 the idea of being famous is more exhilarating than having a mansion in the south of France or something like that.
Absolutely.
D: It was all about that and when I say money it was not about money to be rich it was about money to survive. To have enough to go to on. Scott had money problems the whole time we were in the band because he was older then us and he lived on his own and you know I remember a lot of gigs where you would get more than us just to keep you going. He had to buy groceries and stuff.
You guys had a lot of A&R interest from major labels and then finally almost a recording contract. What happened ?
D: There was a local producer by the name of Keith Elshaw. He used to work at Q107 and did some demoes with us. He started his own record label to be distributed by CBS and we went in and we did some recordings with him. The problem was as Scott said earlier tonight was that we never really got the right approach in recording this band and if it were the 1990s there would have been no question that a really knowledgeable producer would have recorded us properly. We probably should have been recorded live. Instead we did this kind of airy fairy pop kind of treatment and it really was disappointing for us. At the end of the day CBS approached us directly and said, ‘We think that we should just sign you guys directly.’ And we thought that this was an okay idea and our independent label sued them. So there was a lawsuit that came up out of the whole thing and I think ultimately it got settled and the settlement was that CBS stayed away from us and then paid the studio bill to the independent label. So our album remained on the shelf until 1995 when a handful of those tracks ended up on our CD. But I think all the guys in the band agreed that the best stuff that we recorded was either live or demoes that hadn’t been released and I think our single is probably pretty representative of what we sounded like at the time.
S: Yeah the early phase of the band I think the vocals got a lot stronger and a lot more cleaned up. Yeah we were just badly produced. No one knew how to produce us. Everything was being produced like they produced QUEEN back then. They separated you moved you far into the studio and it was all about separation. It was just the absolute wrong approach for the type of band that we are. It took about 10 years before people figured out what they should be doing with bands like us.
So this recording is on “Twenty 2 Months” correct ?
D: Yeah some of the tracks.
But it is cleaned up ?
D: For “Twenty 2 Months” we chose a whole range of material from our demoes and some came from that album. It was never released.
S: Not a heck of a lot. There is three tracks on “Twenty 2 Months”. “Reactions”, “Coming in out of the Rain”, and “Change My Mind” that were recorded in 24 track but not in the album sessions.
D: Those were for Warner Brothers.
S: Warner Brothers wanted to do some demoes so we went in and they were done in a ten hour period over night from about 10:00 at night until 8:00 in the morning , we punched out the three songs from beginning to end and they partly stood the test of time because we didn’t dick around with them.
D: Yeah. And in fact they are more representative of what the band sounded like then and all the stuff that we did for the album, but you know Greg there are a lot of bands from that period that had similar complaints. The second DEAD BOYS record …
Yeah they hated Felix Pappalardi I think.
D: The same situation. They totally cleaned it up whereas the first album those were demoes done with Genya Ravan and they ended up being their first Sire Records album. It was the same thing. The demoes were more representative of these bands than the records that they eventually did because people were trying to clean them up and make them commercial and I guess that is the only way the music industry responded back then although the music industry is still horrible and always will be horrible.
Why did Chris Spedding play the lead guitar on “the Other Side” on the CD release ?
S: Because he wanted to (laughter).
D: You know what was funny was we had unmixed masters for some of our old demo recordings for 1979 and we were doing re-mixes on them and Chris was in the studio with us. There was a guitar there and he said ‘You know rather than having that kind of a section in the song a guitar solo would be really cool there and he picked up the guitar and he just started doing it. It’s kind of funny because he doesn’t play like Scott. He plays this sort of rockabilly Chuck Berry kind of thing, but he did it and we thought it was kind of interesting. It was a different kind of feel to the song and stuff.
I think I’d rather hear it without it as much as I love Chris Spedding.
D: Yeah it doesn’t really fit.
Christina Hunt of the Toronto Star wrote an article on April 26th 1979 saying that ‘violence hatred, and ugliness died when punk rock crashed out. In it’s place are new wave bands like Toronto’s the MODS aiming to put fun back into the music. Do you agree with that statement ?
S: That’s what we told her.
D: You know what ? I think that as much as punk was the beginning of a whole period of change, people were anxious with it to go away.
You guys seemed to because of your really unique style it seemed like when it was time for the crossover when a lot of bands starting going rockabilly and the new Romantic thing happened you guys didn’t really have to change. But one thing that did change around that time was that you guys changed your name to the NEWS. Why did you do that ?
S: Well the whole Mod thing was coming out of England. The kind of revival of mod-ism. Greg and Mark had gone over to England in that summer of ’79 and they had come back and everything was mod. It was like calling yourselves the rock and rolls. It didn’t make any sense anymore. In retrospect it was probably the right thing to do at the time but the wrong thing to do in retrospect. And the NEWS was an okay name until HUEY LEWIS took it.
Did the NEWS sound any different from the MODS ?
S: No it was a name change only. It had nothing to do with musically. I don’t think. It was strictly to do with the Mod revival that was happening in England. It was a name that wasn’t going to fly outside of here.
D: We were trying to distance ourselves from it but the problem was the name never really took. Like every time we were doing a gig the NEWS was always ‘formerly the Mods’.
I remember that. Times were changing. When do you think punk rock died ? What do you think ? Was there any one thing or …because it definitely ….
S: There were just more bands coming out that were doing things that were a little more complicated and interesting. I don’t think it was a question of it dying. I think when the VILETONES split up and the SECRETS formed and Leckie took all the UGLY and created the new VILETONES and it was just like they were shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. It was the same guys playing in different bands. But we … I still recall one of the funniest stories for me was driving in a taxi in ’78 just after we started playing out and we were going along the Danforth and we pick up these guys just outside of the Beer Store at Greenwood and Danforth and a bunch of young guys they get in and are going to Blake Street. So I am driving them to Blake Street and one guy looks at my ID and goes ‘Hey are you in a band ?’ And I said ‘Yeah.’ And these guys are pretty ….
Was it Allie ?
S: I don’t know who it was but it was the Blake Street Boys and the one guy says to me ‘You’re in the MODS. You’re the only band other than the VILETONES we like. You’re cool.’ That was it.
That’s definitely how they talked.
S: Oh yeah. They would just kick the shit out of you or anyone else.
I actually liked those guys as crazy as they were. In 1980 you guys started getting frustrated. What was starting to happen ?
D: I think the recording was very disappointing for us and the record company shenanigans was disappointing for us and I don’t think we had an appreciation at that age for how long it took for things to happen. We were very impatient and naive and you know it’s funny because the same naivete and innocence that made the MODS such an incredible experience for us and has left us with such good memories is the same naivete and innocence that caused us problems as kids because we couldn’t wait. We thought that things had to happen quickly. But you know what to be fair to us we saw bands like the POLICE where it did happen quickly. It was like every step that they took was boom boom boom and it was a period of months not years. You gotta remember man in those days there weren’t old grey haired fifty year old farts playing rock n roll music. You did not see that. So guys did have their success early. Guys did have their success young and they were on their third record or fourth record or whatever. So its easy for us to say now that we were impatient but the fact is that that is kind of the way it was back then. That was a big big part of the problem.
S: It was the first real turnover of rock n roll too. I mean it’s re-birthed a few times since then you know in the early 90’s with NIRVANA and all that, but I mean realistically …. And I think people see the cycle now I think they are more attuned to the fact that something new will come up it will kick in a whole new series of groups and there will be some new superstars out of it down the road. But I think the late 70s was the first time that it really happened. I mean finally the BEATLES of Lennon and McCartney were getting old. The KINKS were getting … all these guys were getting old and they were moving into different things and you had the new bands coming in like QUEEN and all these studio bands that no one could even hope to sound like so then you had … it was really what punk and all that always was the re-birth of giving the music back to the next generation, except no one realized it at the time. That’s my theory on it. No one realized it in the late 70’s. Now I think you look back and you see exactly what was happening is that we could not sit down and learn “Bohemian Rhapsody” and play that. We could not learn STEELY DAN songs you know. We just did not have the virtuoso to do it. And when you’re 18 and 19 you shouldn’t be playing that crap. You should be playing something that means something to you and that’s the first time it kind of happened.
You said that you guys started looking outside for hired guns for encouragement which you said was a mistake. Why was it a mistake ?
S: What we really lacked was some good grounded management. I think we got to a phase in the last six months where we were trying to write songs that pleased A&R people and pleased those kind of people. We were trying to get a record contract where the more we tried seemed to push us further away. We left what we had started which was lets sit down tonight and write three songs. Now it became lets sit down and write a single and it was foreign to what we should have been doing because we were no longer writing from our hearts. We were writing with a purpose in mind and we weren’t good enough song writers to do that. Either it fell out of you or you pushed it out of you and it is not the same.
D: What is so amazing is the stuff that we are playing on Saturday night is the original stuff from the first phase of the band where we were doing it for us.
And you said that you even found an old set list that I think you are going to replicate for Saturday night which I think is great.
D: Yeah I pulled a couple of our set lists from the old days because I kept diaries and we’ve looked at them. The order is different. We’ve come up with a new order but we are also approaching it the same way where we used to back then which is rapid fire delivery of the stuff because we were very RAMONES like in our delivery. There isn’t a lot of stage chatter. We’re not up their telling stories and stuff. We just let the music talk for itself and we bang it out real hard and fast.
Well you guys both look like you are in good shape and you better bang it out like you used to because those old gigs were pretty heavy duty. Your last gig of all places was at a private school. Where was the school and how did you get a gig at a private school ?
S: That was our last gig that no one really knew about. The last gig was opening for SQUEEZE what everyone thought and then we went and did this show at the private school. Where was it ? Bathurst and Bloor somewhere.
D: Yeah. I can’t remember the name of the school.
Like UCC ? Oh Bathurst and Bloor. There is one just sort of north of Bloor a little bit west of Bathurst. I’ve seen that school.
S: I don’t know how we got it. Greg got it somehow. Someone approached Greg at a show and they brought us in and we played there and that was it.
What finally broke the MODS up for good ?
S: Hmmmmm. I think it was Mark’s socks (laughter). I think Mark sort of had enough and you had the offer from Bators.
D: I had the offer from Bators.
S: Greg and I were not ready to pull the plug but ….
After the MODS broke up I saw a piece on the New Music where the NUMBERS were having a party in a basement and Greg was with them. I don’t know if he was actually a member of the NUMBERS.
S: Yeah he joined them.
And Scott, you went on to be in the POPULAR SPIES. What about Mark, was he in any other bands ?
D: No. You know it is funny that when we broke up it was kind of like me and Mark deciding to do it. Greg and Scott weren’t ready to do it. So it was like a marital couple kind of coming apart in a way. But there was always a strand of friendship that went through us and has been there all these years and that’s how we are able to reunite right now.
Which is evident by looking at your recording since then and seeing participation of album cover design and by Ralph Alfonso of Crash n Burn and the DIODES fame, Greg Trinier helping design your sleeve, and of course Scott playing guitar on “Make Up Your Mind” on your solo record Dave. Now you started with Stiv Bators and then you ended up in the DEAD BOYS. Is that correct ?
D: Yeah.
So you met Stiv at the Cheetah Club, you ended up playing on his record. Tell us what happened next ?
D: When I met him at the Cheetah Club with the MODS he really liked the MODS a lot and I went down first in the summer of 1979 to Los Angeles to record a couple of singles with him and one of the guys from BLUE ASH which is an Ohio band and I spent a month and a half down there. We recorded a bunch of material most of which came out on singles and has since been released over the years and then I came back to Toronto and re-joined the MODS and we played for several more months and the DEAD BOYS had gone back on the road. The original band had reformed and then they started to fall apart and when they started to fall apart BATORS called me and said would you like to come and replace John in the DEAD BOYS ? So after having done these solo singles with him that’s when I joined.
And how old were you then ?
D: When I joined Stiv I would have been nineteen years old.
So your parents were pretty liberal about letting you go to play with a bunch of guys called the DEAD BOYS.
D: Yeah.
Hanging out at the Tropicana with everybody from John Belushi to Dee Dee Ramone. I know I have heard a lot of crazy stories from you. You eventually went along and were in the original line up for LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH with Brian James and Stiv Bators. What happened ?
D: Well at the end of the DEAD BOYS and after Bators solo record had come out Brain James came and joined the band. We didn’t have a name for the band at first. We actually played some gigs under the name PARTNERS IN CRIME and I quite liked playing with Brian. I thought he was a great guy and a really fabulous guitar player and we did a bunch of gigs together then this decision was made to re-locate to England where the band was going to be managed by Miles Copeland. So I kind of faced this dilemma whether to come back home to Toronto or whether to go to England with Stiv and Brian and I chose to come back home to Toronto.
Then you went solo. You released an album on Bomb Records which has a killer photo of you taken by Rodney Bowes. Listening to the album it is clear of your love for pop music. Did Stiv and the DEAD BOYS turn you onto pop ?
D: Yeah, I mean I always liked pop music anyway and I loved the sort of pop glam phase. I loved bands like SLADE and the SWEET and stuff but the DEAD BOYS and Jimmy Zero loved the RASPBERRIES and a lot of that sort of Ohio pop. Bands like BLUE ASH so that influenced me a lot. And in fact I think a lot of punk bands and guys in punk bands were closet pop music fans. And really it was a stones throw away. We thought the music was so dangerous at the time we go back and listen to the RAMONES now and it sounds like the BEACH BOYS.
Oh yeah. I always thought that. I know Stiv always spoke highly … I think he even liked the Eric Carmen solo records. I’m pretty sure. You almost signed a deal with EMI.
D: Yeah. Well what happened was after my solo record I got developed as a solo artist for a while at EMI, which just really consisted of doing a bunch of demoes and photo sessions and things like that carried on for some time and then at a certain point they put me in a band that was out of Vancouver called STRANGE ADVANCE. I played drums for them on tour.
Did you have shoulder pads when you played in that band ?
D: No shoulder pads. I fought that kind of retro version of the future as much as I could playing with those guys.
You said ‘the only really beauty in music is the people who make it and the people who listen to it. Everything else sucks.’ You kind of hinted at that earlier. I thought it was a very interesting statement. I couldn’t agree more. There is a lot of interest in the 70’s Toronto punk scene now. Film projects from Colin Brunton and Blair Martin, the “Punk til you Puke” exhibit by Will Munro, an upcoming book by Liz Worth, a photo documentary by Rodney Bowes. Scott what do you attribute this to ?
S: People are really bored (laughter). No Toronto had probably outside of London and New York had the best scene going. Maybe L.A. but I don’t even think L.A. had much going at the time. And it took a while before people realized it and there is some history here that kind of unearthed and people are going back to revisit it.
What is inspiring you guys to play this Saturday besides me trying to get you out there as you were saying earlier?
D: For me it was the fact that we have talked about it over the last few years but it never materialized because there wasn’t a proper venue or thing instigating, but for me personally was watching the documentary “New York Doll” about Arthur Kane. Watching that documentary film just made me feel like ‘You know what if we want to do this now is the time to do it.’ We really want to get now while the getting is good because the fact is as we get older and stuff like that it becomes more and more difficult to pull it off. And watching that film just gave me a sense of immediacy about all of this and thinking now is the time to do it. And Cleave Anderson it was him who first called me, the drummer from BATTERED WIVES and TYRANNA and a whole bunch of other bands and he is also in the SCREWED.
S: The WAY OUTS.
D: He had called me and said ‘Would the MODS ever consider doing something. ?’ And I said ‘You know what I think we will and as long as we don’t have to play three hours.’
Can we expect any more shows after this gig on Saturday ?
S: Just the Asian tour (laughter).