Lee Rocker

Forty years down the line, the Stray Cats are playing with as much attitude as ever. Silvia Bluejay slips into her polka dot dress for a chat with the great Lee Rocker

“WE HAD A LOT OF CONFIDENCE, SO PEOPLE TOOK MERCY ON US AND GAVE US SOME GIGS”

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Stray Cats, who are celebrating in style, with a new album – aptly titled 40 – and a world tour on which frontman Brian Setzer, bassist Lee Rocker and drummer Slim Jim Phantom have been reminding audiences of the huge power of their amped-up rockabilly brand. We caught up with Rocker at a recent London show for a chat about those early days four decades ago, when the Cats first left New York in 1980 for pastures new in the UK. What did they bring with them?

“We sold pretty much every bit of equipment except my one upright bass, which I brought with me” Rocker reminisces. “Brian brought his 1959 6120 Gretsch guitar, and Jim brought a snare drum in his suitcase. We bought four airline tickets, and one of them was for the bass; you could put it upside down in the seat in a soft case. We got to London without a plan, and pretty quickly realised that we hadn’t really thought it through well! We had to sleep in Hyde Park, and although we made friends, we had no contacts.”

Did they know what awaited them in London, we ask? “What we knew, we pretty much knew from the NME and Melody Maker, the rock weeklies of the day,” he recalls. “We knew the names of the venues, so we knocked on their doors. We looked different enough, and carried around this gear, and although we only had this crappy cassette tape, the band always sounded good. We had a lot of confidence, so people took mercy on us and gave us some gigs. We ran into all sorts of people; Ronnie Lane from the Small Faces took us home and let us sleep in his house, introduced us to others, and word spread quickly. We weren’t homeless for long.”

The band’s first big gig was at Camden Music Machine, and in the post-punk era, gigs were loud. What rig was Rocker using to avoid feedback? “I figured out in the early days that nothing existed to amplify double bass that was really any good, unless it was some kind of ‘jazz-something’ you just couldn’t get any volume out of,” he explains. “I had a Kay bass with a Fender Precision split pickup stuck with adhesive tape on a block of wood, and steel strings, and that worked. A local guy in New York, Jess Oliver, who designed Ampeg amps, improved it by developing a bracket and screwing it on properly.”

He continues: “As I didn’t bring over an amp with me to the UK, it was whatever we could get, often Ampeg SVTs, and those worked well. Then I added a piezo pickup, and that’s where I like the SVT, because it’s a two-channel amp. I’d run the magnetic, Precision-type pickup through one channel, and EQ that for a lot of low-end bass. For the highs and slap stuff, I just got a piezo acoustic guitar pickup, stuck it to the underside of the fingerboard, and ran that through a different channel. That by itself is an utterly horrific sound, but when you put it all together, the magnetic doing all the lows and the piezo doing all the highs, it sounds good.”

Any need to block the F-holes? “No. The more solid, tight and heavy the bass, the less feedback it gives you. Finer instruments tend to be heavier and feed back less – but you don’t want the same thing as the classical guys! And plywood is better than carved for rock shows; they sound better, play better and are stronger and more resistant to ambient changes.”

Moving forward almost 40 years, what’s Rocker’s current rig? “Over the years piezo pickups have gotten a hell of a lot better, to the point that now I’ve got different instruments for different things,” he tells us. “I really like one by a Danish company called Planet Pickups, the Planet Wing. It’s dead simple, in my mind very trueequalised, doesn’t colour the sound at all; with gut strings and that pickup I don’t get feedback. I now use real gut strings, which have that more traditional sound, with a quick note decay that pulls back.”

Guts aren’t right for all the Stray Cats’ songs, presumably? “The scalloped bass with the magnetics that I use on ‘Rumble In Brighton’ and ‘Misirlou’ sounds like I’m playing a giant electric bass. That’s what I go for, tone-wise, for those songs. It’s not traditional upright, that’s just not what it’s about. It’s like Motörhead or something!”

He goes on: “On this tour, I’ve got a tech friend of mine, Jason Burns, who is a luthier and owned companies called King Bass and Blast Cult. The bass with the three-eyed cat on the back has a real hybrid system that he put together. It has an amazing piezo and layers of plastic and different woods that you put in the bridge. You can add, take out or swap the layers, and it changes the tone. That, and I use an SVT head.”

Any additional effects trickery? “I don’t use pedals, I only have an in-line tuner. No boost. No EQ, no effects, just keeping it absolutely straight through. The only ‘effect’ is the different instruments and the pickups. And once in a while I change some EQ on the stage. I’m pretty simple, and of course it’s how you play it – your attack. I’ll definitely dig in more or I’ll be lighter, or change where my right hand is on the instrument, up in the fingerboard, or down close to the bridge. Where you’re actually touching the strings, and how hard or soft you’re using both hands, makes an enormous difference.”

Are the Lee Rocker signature Kolstein Busetto basses part of the rig? “No. I love them and I used them on some of the album, but not live. I use them for a lot of my solo recordings and concerts. I also sometimes use a Chadwick, the folding bass. I will not go anywhere without two basses, and on this tour I have three. If you break a string, you need to be able to put the broken bass down and pick the other one up. Even on smaller shows, I still always have two basses, and I’ve got an emergency kit behind the amplifier, with multiple pickups, strings and adjustable bridges. I’ve got a tech but, if I’m somewhere playing where I don’t, then I can do it all myself.”

Rocker also has two identical rigs on stage. “They’re both plugged in and ready to go in an emergency, and the tech guys are on top of it. A lot of switches happen on stage. Once we’ve come up with a set as a band, I sit down and work out which bass to use on which song. In general, I use one for about four songs, then it’s better to get a fresh instrument with a certain tone.”

Despite singing lead and backing vocals, Rocker doesn’t use headset microphones. “I’ve tried them, but I’m just so old school when it comes to that. I use a mic on a boom stand. I still use guitar cables as opposed to going wireless – I’ve tried that, and I don’t like it. I don’t like in-ear monitors either, so I use floor monitors; I’ve got two in front of my mic stand and a third on my side of the stage. Also, there are no tapes or click tracks. I have ear protection, but I don’t use it, as I don’t have tinnitus; low frequencies are not as damaging as high frequencies. The Cats are pretty loud on stage, but we haven’t played much – four shows last year, 30 or 40 this year. My solo stuff is lower volume on stage than the Cats.”

He pauses. “It’s amazing, the speed with which we got back into this. It feels really comfortable and easy. We don’t rehearse, we don’t soundcheck…” Really? “Yeah! For the album, just like the first record, we literally rehearsed for one day, in the studio, and then we cut the album in 10 days. Before this tour we did a rehearsal day, with some bits for us, and some bits for the crew, so we can work as a team. The Stray Cats are a rock’n’roll band and a rockabilly band – a bit of both – but, musically, we operate more like a jazz band than anything else. We have a musical conversation going on; the songs are never the same way twice, and everyone is very reactive to each other’s improvisations. It’s all on the fly, so rehearsing is irrelevant. Things are arranged, but each take is different. In the studio we listen to all of them and choose the one that had the magic.”

We still can’t believe our ears. Walking on stage not having soundchecked? “Yeah. You know, we say, you get a good soundcheck or you get a good gig. I think the gig is better than the soundcheck,” he grins. “Don’t give it away!”

Like many bass players, Rocker stands stage left, which means turning his back to

“IT FEELS REALLY COMFORTABLE AND EASY. WE DON’T REHEARSE, WE DON’T SOUNDCHECK”

the band. Why? “We’ve talked about that over the years, and yes, it’s kind of weird. It doesn’t bother me. It would’ve made more sense the other way round, but we’re so stuck in our ways. I mean, that’s how the band lines up in the studio as well! As I said, it’s a musical conversation, and we set up very close to each other, even when the stage is huge. We’re really adamant about that. My back is turned to the band but I do move a lot, and that proximity creates a connection we all feel, audience included.”

It can’t be easy to improvise on songs like ‘Stray Cat Strut’, though – it has the entire audience singing every word. “That’s a structured song. The solos on that hold it together. The live version may have a longer intro. We’re working with the audience, and we may double the bass solo. It’s different every night.”

Double bass is hard physical work – does Rocker have a pre-gig warm-up routine? “Yes, but mainly vocal; I sing scales. I do have a bass in the dressing room, and I’ll play it for a couple of minutes. Other than that, I’m pretty simple. Drink water, try to keep in relatively good shape. I run, but not before gigs. On tour, I’m physically aware of what I want to be able to do, which is 90 minutes on stage, have fun, and for it not to be a struggle.”

Moving on from performing to writing, can Rocker still come up with fresh rockabilly bass-lines? “I’m still discovering things. I still have revelations: ‘How did I not think of this before?’ There are a lot of different rhythms and slaps, and different ways to walk your bass-lines. There’s only 12 notes but there’s an infinite number of ways to play them.”

Does he write instinctively or use his extensive knowledge of theory? “Both. I’m a student of the bass. I definitely think about theory as I’m playing, how to move through chords and passing tones. What you study as a kid stays in your mind – harmony, arranging, classes, bass lessons. Use your ears. All the stuff you just take in and listen to, which then seeps in, and then you go, ‘Wait a minute…!’”

So with the Stray Cats still very much strutting, what does the future hold for Rocker? “I’ll be back in the studio, recording, after this tour. This year is busy, and a really fantastic celebration. We’ve got Europe, we’ve got the US, running through the summer, and then I’ve got 25 of my own US shows between then and the New Year.”

Finally, having been among the rockabilly crowd at the Cats’ London gig, we know there is a scene here – is there one in New York now? “There’s a scene everywhere, in a way,” he reassures us. “It’s alive and well in the underground. A lot of people love this music, but they don’t even know the term ‘rockabilly’. It doesn’t matter. This music is part of the fabric.”