Smash Palace
Third time's a charm, when you're making music on your own terms

interview by DJ Johnson, Cosmik Debris magazine

"We wrote our first song together when we were twelve years old. Now we said "what was it that got us juiced up about music when we were twelve?" It was just having fun playing, having a good time and not worrying about whether anyone else likes it, or whether it's going to get a record contract. We didn't have any of those ideas in our head. We wanted to get back to that feeling." - Stephen Butler, Smash Palace.

The following is a crazy story about three bands, two of them derailed by forces over which they had no control. The third band is a reinvention of the second, and it has yet to derail, primarily because it runs on its own tracks.

I first heard Smash Palace while working at a radio station in Seattle, Washington. Hundreds of records arrived every week, and very few of them were kept. Thumbing through the "out" pile one day I came upon a 12 inch club mix single of a song called "No Love Lost." It had a great beat, deep reverb and more than a little mystery, and I thought for sure it would be a hit. Never heard of them again. Until July of this year, that is. Seems the core of Smash Palace, brothers Stephen and Brian Butler, had recorded a new album under that moniker, and they'd done it by themselves in Stephen's living room.

Smash Palaces sophomore album comes thirteen years after the debut. Titled Fast, Long, Loud, its music leans toward power pop, a far cry from the synth-pop of the debut album. The songwriting is solid and the sound is radio-friendly. Ingredients for success? Stephen Butler probably wouldn't bet the house on it, considering what he's been through in the crazy world of rock and roll. Then again, the brothers have a new definition of success for this time around the wheel.

Cosmik: Let's start with the first album, which was way back in 1986. I assume "No Love Lost" was the single...

Stephen: No, actually the single was "Living On The Borderline," and the second single was "Never Say No Again". "No Love Lost" was only done as a club single.

Cosmik: I was working at a radio station then, and I found the 12-inch single of that song. I told everyone to keep an eye out because it was going to be a hit. Listening now, I think it was the strongest song.

Stephen: Yeah, you know it definitely used to go over great in a live situation. A lot of the time it was our closing tune. But we had an MTV video for "Living On The Borderline."

Cosmik: Which, in 1986, was already an essential make-or-break thing to have.

Stephen: It definitely helped a lot. We had this guy, Nigel Dick, who has more videos on MTV than any other director. He was just starting out then. He'd done a few videos for Tears For Fears. The video ran on MTV for about a month. It wasn't heavy rotation, but at least it got played.

Cosmik: So there you were with a single, a video, a 12-inch club mix of a song with killer hooks, you had an album readily available, and you sure as hell had the look down for '86, with all the foofy hair.

Stephen: (Laughs) Oh, my God, I look back and I get so embarrassed. It's funny, too, because we didn't look like that when we got signed. The guy at Epic saw us and his reaction was "you guys look like five undertakers." Because we had black suits, black jackets, normal hair. But we got together with these image maker people, you know, and all of a sudden I'm in this video, they're telling me I look good, and I'm thinking "geez, I wouldn't wear these clothes anywhere." You lose control. We were new, and we didn't have an "image," per se, so we were easily bowled over by image makers saying "wear this, you'll look great!" Now I look back and I'm embarrassed.

Cosmik: How old were you when all this started to happen?

Stephen: I was about 25 when the Smash Palace record came out.

Cosmik: You must have thought you were on the fast track to success, being that age and having all the signs there.

Stephen: Oh, hey, I REALLY thought I was on the fast track earlier with Quincy, and I was only 20 when we got signed. I was a classical guitar major in college, and I told my professor "I got a record deal!" He said "what, you're going to throw away classical music to do this?"

Cosmik: In a heartbeat.

Stephen: (Laughs) Yeah, you got it! I said "Yeah, I just got signed to Columbia!" I knew what my life would be like playing classical music. I'd probably be making ten cents. We got the biggest record deal Columbia had ever given a new band, at that time. We had like seven labels that wanted to sign the band, and I thought "this is it." My lawyer and manager are saying we'll be lighting our cigars with twenty dollar bills. Six months later I'm sittin' there trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. And why I'm broke.

Cosmik: What DID happen?

Stephen: The Quincy record comes out, it's doing really well. We go on tour. We're touring with The Vapors. We get to LA and play the Whiskey. We get this phone call from the record company. Quincy Jones has driven by the Whiskey, saw our name on the marquee, went nuts, slapped us with a Cease & Desist court injunction saying we could not use his name. HIS NAME!

Cosmik: Him, being the only Quincy in the world.

Stephen: Him being the only Quincy in the world, we cannot use his name. So the size of the law suit and the fact that he was also with Columbia Records at the time meant that we were strong-armed into accepting it. We couldn't fight a fifty million dollar law suit. There was just no way. The way it was laid out was that we could finish the tour under the moniker of A Band Called Quincy, and that had to be in all the press and on all the marquees, and we could not record a second record, even under that new name.

Cosmik: What kind of effect did that have on the band?

Stephen: Oh, it totally took the wind out of our sails. We'd had airplay and sold records and had momentum going for us, and that just completely took it out of us. We made a second record, but Brian and I were so disillusioned that we just quit in the middle of making it. The band carried on without us, but the record stiffed and that was it.

Cosmik: Quincy Jones, ladies and gentlemen. Big round of applause. Was the record deal for Smash Palace as huge as the Quincy deal?

Stephen: It was probably more normal for the time period. But then again, you make money for a couple years and you do okay, you quit your day job. Couple years later you're saying "ooooh no, I'm broke again." Fortunately, I got publishing deals, which were good. I managed to stave off a day job until five years ago.

Cosmik: You lived rock and roll for all those years and then went back to a day job? Was that pretty difficult to take?

Stephen: No. You know, getting a day job was one of the best things that I ever did. I'm a teacher now. It's the first time I've been able to not really worry about money. I think a lot of times what happens to people in the music business is they make decisions based on money. I was able to do this music for pleasure. If someone wants to come along and put it out as a record, I can do it on my own terms. They can't say we want you to do this, that and the other thing, because I don't need the money, really.

Cosmik: Say that again!? (Laughs)

Stephen: (Laughs) Well I guess I have to quantify that, because we always need money. But it's not like "if I don't get a gig or a deal or something..."

Cosmik: ...I live in the park.

Stephen: Exactly, and that brings a lot of worry and stress into things. When I had those publishing and songwriting deals, by the time I was done I was hating music. Where was that? Hating something I love. And it was because I was always trying to get money out of it.

Cosmik: There has to be a frustration from coming so close to the big time, not once but twice. Was there a different expectation back then than there is now?

Stephen: Yeah, I think when you're twenty years old, you think you're going to be a rock star. You're being courted by all these people, and it's not reality. You can completely lose track of everything and get totally sucked up in it. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been if we had been a success, but I really can't go there too much.

Cosmik: You came pretty close, but your A&R guy, Dick Wingate, left the label just as things were heating up for Smash Palace. They call it the "orphan band syndrome." What happened at that point?

Stephen: The record was in this hinterland, basically, where no one at the label was claiming it as their own. It was worked, because they'd made a serious investment into it, and you know, it actually didn't do that bad. It sold reasonably well and we got a lot of airplay. What happened was that we were slated to do another record at Epic, but Dick Wingate had gone to Polygram. He gave us some money and he said "I want you guys to come to Polygram and make your record here." So we asked Epic to let us out of our contract, and we were able to get out because they had a shakeup where they basically decapitated the entire hierarchy at the label. Lenny Petze, Frank Rand, all these people were gone, so we were able to get out. We left Epic and went to Polygram, and Wingate left Polygram.

Cosmik: Oh no! That's a back breaker.

Stephen: Here's something we're banking on, and... Brian and I just threw up our hands and said "Uncle! We give up!" We were offered a publishing and songwriting deal, and we said "Why don't we just do this." We ended up doing that for a few years.

Cosmik: What was that, exactly?

Stephen: We got a staff songwriting position. They give you a cash advance up front when you sign your contract, and they say "you're contracted to write a dozen songs for us this year." And of course you usually write more because you want to have your songs covered. So we just did the songwriting thing, but... it was bad. It was bad because they want you to write songs for people who you have no interest in at all, musically or artistically, and you're trying to clone yourself to sound like what they want. The publishers and A&R people at the labels you work with are so inarticulate when it comes to telling you what they want that you end up feeling like you're chasing your tail.

Cosmik: A little like selling your soul?

Stephen: Yeah, it wasn't fun. It was probably the most money I've ever made in the business, but it was the least fun. Finally, around 1992, we didn't get our option picked up at BMG, and Brian decided he'd had it. He's an artist, and he got a job offer designing toys at Tyko, and he said "ya know, I want to do this for a while and recharge my batteries."

Cosmik: You actually left music all together then?

Stephen: I ended up getting a job as a teacher. But then I hooked up with Mary Lou Cortes, and started a band called Mary Lou's Corvette. We did a little record on a small indie label, and it got great press. Timothy White, who is the editor at Billboard, picked it as one of the top ten records of the year. From there we got a deal with Wild Pitch, which is a bigger indie label in New York. That record is out now. Came out in March. A year and a half ago I built a studio in my house and started to write again, with no inclination to get a band together or get a record deal.

Cosmik: What were you after?

Stephen: We wrote our first song together when we were twelve years old. Now we said "what was it that got us juiced up about music when we were twelve?" It was just having fun playing, having a good time and not worrying about whether anyone else likes it, or whether it's going to get a record contract. We didn't have any of those ideas in our head. We wanted to get back to that feeling.

Cosmik: Then a home studio is the way to go.

Stephen: I didn't know anything about recording equipment at all. I just bought all this gear and set it up in my house and figured it out. Brian, who was the lead singer in Smash Palace the first time around, said "well I'll just play drums." (Laughs) He didn't know how to play drums. He just learned. He's only been playing eighteen months.

Cosmik: Now hang on, here, the drummer I'm hearing on the new CD is Brian, and he's only been playing for a year and a half?

Stephen: Basically, most of the things you're hearing on the record is Brian after playing only THREE months, because we finished the recording a year ago.

Cosmik: That's incredible. Most people don't realize what a complex thing drumming is. And that's some solid drumming on the Smash Palace CD.

Stephen: I can't play to save my life, but he did it like it was a natural thing. He said "I'm gonna be simple. I'm going to play meat and potatoes Ringo stuff." It worked really well. Now, I used to sing harmony in Smash Palace and because Brian didn't play an instrument, by default he was the lead singer. As soon as he started playing drums, I was standing up with a guitar in front of the microphone, working on songs, so I became the lead singer. That's what made it real exciting, getting back to what made if fun when we were twelve. For Brian, it was "Wow, I'm learning an instrument and having a really good time," and I'm like "Cool! I'm a lead singer, and I've always wanted to be!"

Cosmik: I had wondered how the sound of the new Smash Palace got to be so different from the old, but now it makes perfect sense. It's really a whole new thing. It's power pop. Back to structure.

Stephen: Yeah, and I think there is always room for that. People will always relate to that kind of music.

Cosmik: And you, coming from a career writing songs and working with song structure, are well suited to this.

Stephen: Yeah, you know, there really is a craft to being a good songwriter in that Lennon and McCartney vein. There are people who did that well.

Cosmik: The new songs are a lot deeper. They're songs about life.

Stephen: Yeah, they definitely are. They're experiential (laughs), and a lot of 'em ain't pretty. They're songs about relationships, and they're very real. Music tends to be cathartic that way. Helps you get through the stuff. At least for me, it does.

Cosmik: At this stage in life there's probably more to draw on and write about.

Stephen: Yeah, no kidding. There certainly is.

Cosmik: Not quite like the Stones and the Enlarged Prostate Tour.

Stephen: But you know if you want to write about it, there'll be somebody who's thinking "yeah, I know just what he's talking about.

Cosmik: Oy! (Laughs)

Stephen: And it may be us! (Laughs)

Cosmik: There's a danger when you're recording by yourself, or in your case with two people, because you can fall into the trap of sounding like just another one man band. And believe me, we hear lots of tapes and CDs like that. It sounds stilted and layered. Smash Palace sounds like a band. How do you avoid that?

Stephen: We really bounce off each other a lot. Because we're brothers. We're the kind of brothers that can finish each other's sentences. I tend to be the big picture guy, like the inspiration guy, and Brian tends to be the detail guy. He's great at that. That was always a big help. We compliment each other.

Cosmik: And now there IS a band around you guys.

Stephen: We're out playing live now. The record's been on radio for about four weeks and it's starting to appear in stores.

Cosmik: A totally different route than you've ever gone, isn't it. You've got a fine album here, and you don't seem too worried about all the usual stresses like sales and mass acceptance, which seems like a healthy way of looking at it. What would be success, in your eyes?

Cosmik: Success would be having this record sell enough copies in enough places that it might reach a few people in the same way certain records have reached me. I have records in my collection that no one has ever heard of, but they've had a big effect on me. They really got to me for one reason or another and moved me. If this album would have an effect like that on people out there, I'd feel like that really was a success.

~ © DJ Johnson, Cosmik Debris magazine