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Submitted by: Lloydis Vang
His sound is unmistakable whether you’re listening to him as a young rockabilly guitar player fronting The Stray Cats or as the rockin’ big band leader and front man to The Brian Setzer Orchestra. His look, even now at 50, is his own. He still layers his blonde hair with pomade and jacks up a pompadour that reeks of 1954, cuffs his straight leg jeans or chinos and can still muster up a snarl so real, you catch yourself looking over your shoulder waiting for the other ‘toughs’ to start pushing you around. Like the phoenix of legend, Brian Setzer rose from the ashes of a crashed early career and has re-invented himself in a purer and stronger way and has developed a performing personality that is less act and more a way of life. Reaching into the past, Setzer has communed and collaborated with the great musical ghosts and has pressed on with his mission of revising and redefining the sounds of origins of rock and roll.
But with a healthy dose of Setzer swagger and ‘kick’ thrown in for good measure.
Setzer was born in Massapequa, New York but while still a child his family relocated to Long Island. His first instrument was a euphonium (a tuba like instrument) that he played for ten years and according to Setzer, gave him his first dreams of fronting a big band full of huge, sizzling brass sound. While still a child, he picked up the guitar and found his true love. “My teachers were old Italian guys, and they played jazz. That’s my upbringing, that’s where I learned to play guitar, from the old school guys. You know, all the rockabilly and stuff like that came out of personal love.
The chord knowledge and learning how to read and write music came from these old teachers, that’s where I learned to play. And then once you to start to play like that is when you do some homework and discover different kinds of music. So that’s the roots of it. A lot of it is hit and miss.” He claims that his first musical influence were, as they were to so many before and after, The Beatles. After hearing ‘She Loves You’ in a pizza shop when he was six years old, Setzer claims that although he couldn’t articulate it, he knew that music was going to be his future. “That’s my memory of really hearing music, it was The Beatles.”
As a teenager, Setzer would sneak into Manhattan and visit the local jazz clubs like The Village Vanguard and The Village Gate. What he would glean from these jaunts would form the ground work for Setzer’s successful later work. Although he was railing against the up and coming punk movement and yet influenced by the same, Setzer formed a rockabilly trio with his brother and a friend in 1979 called The Tom Cats. They also kept a straight up rock and roll alter ego band called The Bloodless Pharaohs so the gig dictated which band showed up.
Setzer left The Tom Cats in 1980 and hooked up with two high school friends. drummer Slim Jim Phantom (Jim McDonnell) and bassist Lee Rocker (Leon Drucker) and began to gig as The Stray Cats in the local tri-state area. But it was tough sledding as America in the early 80’s was in no mood for a rockabilly revival and the band was barely making it. Trying the Jimi Hendrix route, the band walked in the Sam Ash music store on 48th Street in Manhattan and sold all of their gear for the price of three one way tickets to London and caught a flight to the U.K.
After a few months in London, the band began to catch fire and caught the attention of British producer Dave Edmonds (also a part of the short lived ‘Rockpile’ with fellow Brit, Nick Lowe) who signed them to a deal and produced two albums for the band under the Arista label. Their self-titled debut, The Stray Cats, was recorded in 5 days and when it was released in 1981, it yielded two top ten British singles, Rock This Town and Stray Cat Strut. The success of their British debut allowed the Cats to catch an American tour opening for the Rolling Stones. Edmonds and Arista pushed the band to release another album that same year in hopes of capitalizing on their initial success and late in 1981, the band released their second album Gonna Ball. Apparently it was too much too soon as the album was dismissed by both the British press and fans alike, although it was considered a ‘hit’ amongst underground and punk fans alike.
The band signed with Arista’s American cousin, EMI America, in early 1982 who quickly delivered their American debut, Built For Speed. Speed was a cheap release for EMI as it consisted of tracks from their two British albums (which have never been released in America). The album found a willing and wanting market place in the United States and rolled up the charts finally resting in the top five and the singles Stray Cat Strut and Rock This Town both made the top ten.
The band released their American follow up Rant And Rave With The Stray Cats in 1983 which spawned the single (She’s) Sexy and 17 which peaked inside the top five on the charts. But it was a short lived ride for the Stray Cats when Setzer opted to disband the group by the end of 1985. In interviews, Setzer commented on the breakup The Stray Cats. “I think that what happened with us was that we just kinda ran our course. We got a little bored. Going on the road became a real drag. we wanted to compete like a real band and had been on the road for 4 years and we were burnt and pissed.”
The band would occasionally reunite and record again throughout the years, adding a few titles to their catalogue but none of their subsequent releases caught fire.
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