Dickie Peterson Of Blue Cheer The Rock N Roll Universe Interview

Inspired by the heavy blues improv of Cream and Hendrix, legendary
proto metal gods Blue Cheer roared forth from the San Francisco Bay
area onto the national scene in a big way in early 1968 with their
debut album 'Vincebus Eruptum'. Completely at odds with almost all of
what was coming up from the hippie flower power underground, they were
the antithesis of bands such as The Grateful Dead, as subtle as a
jackhammer and louder than a 747.

Named for the particularly potent "Blue Cheer" acid, incredibly they
hit paydirt with both the album and the single culled from it, the
classic cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" soaring towards
the upper reaches of the Billboard charts, peaking at #14 and #11
respectively. Contemporaries of Hendrix, Joplin and The Doors, their
powerhouse performances elicited Jim Morrison to pronounce them, "The
single most powerful band I've ever seen".

The first American band to use Marshall amps, the power trio,
initially consisting of bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson, drummer Paul
Whaley and guitarist Leigh Stephens were undoubtedly the heaviest and
loudest band of the time. So loud in fact that due to said loudness,
these pure volume dealers had to, for their Eddie Kramer engineered
sophomore release 'Outside Inside', record the basic track sessions
outside on Pier 57 in Manhattan. Live, they were the first band ever
listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records as "Loudest Band In The
World", establishing a precedent which was eventually eclipsed by
Ritchie Blackmore and Deep Purple.

In a brand new exclusive interview conducted by Rock N Roll
Universe(www.rocknrolluniverse.com) with founding member of Blue Cheer
Dickie Peterson, the legendary bassist discusses the band's new album,
their first in 15 years, 'What Doesn't Kill You...', recording the
classic 'Vincebus Eruptum', playing with Jimi Hendrix plus much, much
more.

A short excerpt from the interview follows below :



RNRU : Blue Cheer has a brand new studio album out 'What Doesn't Kill
You..." which is the first studio album from the band in 15 years, and
the first one released here in the U.S. in 20. How do you feel the
album came out, and why was there so much time between albums?

DP :  First off, I think the album came out really great. Duck
McDonald is an excellent producer. He did pretty much what I wanted to
do, in that we wanted to capture who we really are. I think he did a
really good job in doing that with today's technology applied to what
we do. We didn't record for quite some time simply because #1, we're
performing artists. We record albums because you have to in this
business, but if you really want to see what Blue Cheer is all about
you have to go stand there. Performing live, that's what we're all
about.

RNRU : Are you pleased with the response the album has been getting?

DP : I'm very pleased. We've got a lot of good responses, a lot of
good reviews. I haven't really read any bad ones. The way people hit
the 'net these days, if somebody thought it was bad it'd be on there.

RNRU : This year, 2008, marks the 40th anniversary since your debut
album 'Vincebus Eruptum' came out in 1968. It's one which has
influenced countless bands including Black Sabbath, Grand Funk
Railroad all the way through to modern stoner rock bands such as
Nebula and others. Arguably it can be said that the album was the
catalyst for what later became heavy metal.  What do you recall about
the sessions for that album? Was there ever a sense that what you were
laying down was something special?

DP :  Yeah, we thought it was special. But every band does, of course.
Did we realize what was taking place? No. I don't think anybody at 19
years old has a grasp of your band turning into a classic, or anything
like this. We were breaking ground. We were doing stuff that at that
time nobody else had done. But whether it was going to be accepted or
not, we didn't know that. We were doing it because that's what we
wanted to do.

RNRU: That album has been referenced by countless critics as being, if
not the first, one of the first heavy metal albums ever. How
comfortable are you with that classification?

DP :  We're pretty flattered by that statement, although we really
don't consider ourselves heavy metal per se. We're a power trio. We're
all low end. Heavy metal is high end, we're not. We're a Harley. We're
not some high winding super bike, we're low end cruisers. (Laughs)

RNRU : What do you feel the band's chances are of ever being inducted
into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame? Is that something that you're even
interested in?

DP : It's not anything that excites us. We'd be more interested in the
Rock & Roll Hall Of Infamy. The Hall Of Fame is a strange animal.
There's a lot of people that should be in there who aren't, and
there's a lot of people in there who I don't know how they got there.
But I know this, that you join, and that's how you become eligible to
be considered. To me, this doesn't have anything to do with rock &
roll. Rock & Roll...the obvious doesn't have to be enrolled to be
considered. So, it's not something we don't even talk about. The band
speaks for itself. If you want to make it a hall of fame type of band,
that's up to somebody else, not up to us. If they think we're going to
pay money and try to buy fame, they're wrong. Not to mention most of
the guys who get in end up playing Atlantic City, Las Vegas, or they
die. We're more interested in the gig tomorrow night than being in the
hall of fame.

To read the entire interview go to this location :

http://rnruniverse.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=qas&action=display&thread02531
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Brian Running (10.02.2008 18:28)