Phoenix rockers release ‘great lost album’
It’s been 20 years since Beat Angels recorded “In the Gutter Snobs” with Gilby Clarke of Guns N’ Roses in a Los Angeles studio.
It was supposed to be the Phoenix rockers’ third release, an album meant to build on the momentum they’d established with the punkish power-pop and glam-rock swagger of “Unhappy Hour” (1996) and “Red Badge of Discourage” (1997).
Before they could finish the album, though, lead singer Brian Smith took a writing job at Detroit Metro Times and Beat Angels just sort of fizzled out, shelving the album while their singer tried to get his life together.
“I had to get sober,” Smith says of why he left Phoenix in early 2002. “Had to learn to communicate in the greater world from a completely different and healthy vantage.”
Today, in addition to his work at Tucson Weekly, Smith is a published author with a screenplay in development on the life of a friend he lost to suicide in 1993, Gin Blossoms founder Doug Hopkins.
As for the Beat Angels’ final album, it was released on Friday, March 11, courtesy of Drastic Plastic Records. “It’s a miracle,” Smith says.
‘That whole era is kind of a blur’
It was about a year ago that Drastic Plastic called and said the label’s owner had been driving around with a bootleg of the album in his car and was hoping they could put it out.
As Smith recalls, “I was like, ‘Are you kidding?!’”
At first, the singer wasn’t sure he wanted to revisit that part of his life. Then, he re-listened to the songs. “And I was thinking, ‘These are really good.’”
That came as something of a shock to Smith, whose memories of those sessions were perhaps more based on what was going on in his life at the time.
“I was in a really bad place when we did those recordings,” he says. “I was doing a lot of drugs. I was strung out on alcohol. I was depressed. That whole era is kind of a blur.”
When he heard what Clarke had helped them capture on those tapes, he says, “I understood what we were trying to do. And to me, it hadn’t aged in a real sour way.”
So Smith agreed to have the label put it out and brought in Clarke to remix the recordings.
“He did it in a night or two,” Smith says. “And it sounds so much better than the versions of those songs we had floating around that were bootlegged online.”
‘There was nothing else in life for me’
He and Clarke had been friends since the ‘80s, playing shows together in LA after Smith moved the Phoenixspawned New Wave band Gentleman Afterdark to California and Clarke was in a band called Candy.
Gentlemen Afterdark is where Smith learned to sacrifice everything for rock ‘n’ roll — “quit high school, two failed marriages, learned to become an accomplished alcoholic, zero career options other than a band.”
Within a year of that group breaking up, he started Beat Angels with two members of Gentleman Afterdark — Kevin Pate on bass and John Norwood on drums — recruiting guitarists Michael Brooks and Keith Jackson.
“I was still, somehow, young, and I hit repeat,” Smith says.
“There was nothing else in life for me. I mean, nothing. I was a singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band 24/7 who grew up on punk rock so much it became spiritual. That’s not what I did, that’s who I was.”
‘It was my life for all those years’
That’s how Brooks sees his connection to the band that came not only to define but to dominate his life, taking its toll on relationships, family and jobs.
“It was my life for all those years, from 1993 or whenever we started ‘til 2002,” he says.
“So nearly 10 years of giving it my 100%. And I identified as the guitar player from Beat Angels. Even to this day, I’m Michael, the guitar player from Beat Angels. That’s how it is. Even though I haven’t played a note for many years with the guys.”
The first two Beat Angels albums came out on Epiphany Records, a Phoenix label run by Brad Singer, who owned Zia Record Exchange and had agreed to do their next release.
Then, Singer died in 1998, by which point they’d already started tracking “In the Gutter Snobs” with Clarke.
“When we recorded a couple of those songs, we were like, ‘Man, these are are perfect. This is like the apex of what we’re doing,’” Smith recalls.
‘He was one of my best friends, and I handled his death poorly’
Those sessions featured A.D. Adams, the latest in a series of replacement drummers.
Norwood had developed cancer, which progressed to where he was too sick to continue after tracking two songs on “Red Badge of Discourage.” So they brought in Frankie Hanyak to replace him.
“We moved on without him,” Smith recalls. “We didn’t want to stop the band. He was our brother, and I think that hurt him. I still, to this day, ache for Norwood.”
“Red Badge” also featured a new bassist, Tommy “T-Bone” Caradonna, stepping in for Pate when his struggles with substance abuse became too much to handle.
“We had to give him the boot,” Smith says. “He was so strung out, it was horrible for all of us, and because I was in no great shape with chemicals.”
Pate rejoined in time to play on “In the Gutter Snobs.” Norwood never had that chance. He died of cancer toward the end of 1997.
“He was one of my best friends, and I handled his death poorly,” Smith recalls. “In every way. When he died, I was lost. Stayed drunk. He put me up when I had nowhere to go, and that’s how the band started. He was a lovely human being, and I had put the band first. We replaced him in the band after he died and it felt wrong.”
‘The band sort of ran out of steam’
They never finished making “In the Gutter Snobs.” The final track, a heartfelt ballad titled “Little One,” was supposed to have strings. And there was talk of going in to add another song or two.
“It just came at the point where the band sort of ran out of steam,” Brooks says.
“I swear, we finished recording and two or three days later, Brian left. So that was it. There was some talk of maybe us following him and trying to continue on, but it just never happened. Now here we are 20 years later.”
Smith says the depression in the band had gotten “bigger than the music” after one too many opportunities that didn’t pan out.
“Every time we’d do a show, a lot of people would turn out and we’d be great because we had all this inner angst coming out,” he says.
“But it didn’t translate into anything better, like getting us to another level to be heard. There were all these steps that had to be done. And we were good at a lot of the steps. But those final steps seem to elude us.”
It didn’t help that they were always being told, “You guys are gonna be the next big thing.”
As Smith says, “If you hear that enough times, you start to believe it and almost expect it. But it never happened.”
It wasn’t for a lack of coming through with strong material, if “In the Gutter Snobs” is any indication.
“We still were writing and recording good stuff to diminishing returns,” Brooks says. “No one was hearing it. A lot of apathy started to creep in. And the band just sort of fell apart.”
‘Beat Angels almost killed me’
The heavy alcohol and drug use may have made things worse, Smith says, but they’d been working really hard at making something happen for too long to have it come to such a disappointing end.
“We all believed in it,” Smith says. “And we all lived for it. It was my whole life.”
Smith was lucky in that when he realized it was time to start a new life, he had read a lot of books and “could scribble some words,” as he describes it.
“Because I could actually have another act in this life and not die. Beat Angels almost killed me, and that’s not hyperbole.”
Smith has seen a lot of close friends crash and burn in music.
Brian Smith says journalism saved him
“It was Phoenix New Times in the late 1990s that lifted me out of that gutter, showed me that second act,” he says.
The alt-weekly published his first cover story in 1998.
By the following year, he’d joined the staff fulltime.
“That saved me,” Smith recalls. “But I was still really drunk and doing meth. I hid it well. I’d file a story Friday, then fly to L.A. to play a show. I was two people. Actually three people. A singer, a writer and an addict.”
It took years to unlearn behavior patterns he’d developed as a singer. Pate, who succumbed in 2013 to cirrhosis of the liver, wasn’t so lucky.
“Kevin Pate never really unlearned it,” Smith says. “Almost. He had a giant wisdom and heart ... so we got that.”
As much as leaving Phoenix may be why he lived to talk about it, Smith says it involved “a lot of sadness” on his part.
“Those were my buddies,” he says. “And it was just sort of a really terrible sad finale.”
Brooks says he doesn’t begrudge Smith leaving Phoenix.
“I mean, anybody would have taken that job offer,” Brooks says. “He would’ve been foolish not to. We had nothing going on.”