By John Johnson

JOHN WAITE WITH SPECIAL GUEST GREG BILLINGS
This Fri. Jan.30th -8PM | Nancy and David Bilheimer Capitol Theatre
Tickets: https://www.rutheckerdhall.com

It’s barely nine in the morning in Santa Monica, but John Waite is already fully inside his day. Yes, THAT John Waite. From The Babys to Bad English and a very successful solo career John Waite. I was lucky enough to grab him for a phone interview before he hits The Capital this Friday, thanks to the fine folks at Ruth Eckerd and Waite’s manager and bassist extraordinaire Tim Hogan. My cell buzzes 3 minutes prior to the scheduled time, and reads Waite, John.

After exchanging pleasantries he proclaims “I get up at six,” he says casually, like it’s nothing. “But my day starts kind of like… about three in my head.” He’s calling from his home in Cali, prepped to hit the road, in the middle of making not one but two records—a new studio album and a live one. His tone isn’t frantic, just honest. “I’ve got my hands full,” he admits. “Kind of overwhelmed, you know.” But when someone tells you they’re overwhelmed, they typically sound winded or flustered, but not Waite. There’s no rock-star bravado here, no performative mystery. Waite, with his distinct and charming British accent, talks like someone who’s spent a lifetime trusting instinct over image. He says’ he “doesn’t warm up” his voice. Never has.

I tell him that that surprises me considering how good his voice has always sounded. But he likens himself as more of an “artist” than a “singer” per se. “There’s something that happens between walking out from backstage to the mic,” he says. “The world turns inside out and you’re just there.” In the studio, he prefers his voice rough, uncorrected, hence the early start. “The first take is always the best,” he insists. “After this much time being a singer, you just have wisdom about it.”

I bring up American Football briefly on the off chance that he may have an opinion on the LA loss in the playoffs over the weekend. “Oh, not really into it unless there’s something spectacular, and the only rams I’m familiar with…well, a ram has a fairly good time in life, yeah?.” We both chuckle at the innuendo and I mention that I worked for the Buccaneers where I became friends with Robin Zander. I tell him that I spoke with Zander and he reminisced about a gig from way back and that The Babys were Zander’s favorite band of the time. He sighs knowingly, the memory hitting him the same way songs do—sudden, vivid, unforced. He recalls the show from decades ago like it happened last week. “It was a million years ago,” he laughs. “But what a bill.” He’s quick to return the compliment, and gushes about Robin Zander’s “superhuman lungs,” What a bill indeed. A bill that reads like folklore now: AC/DC with Bon Scott, Cheap Trick in their hometown, The Babys right in the middle of it all. On July 4th. John Waites birthday.

I confide how much I would have loved to have been there, even if I was only 13 at the time. He laughs as I also inform him that years later my high school band performed “She’s Tight” by Cheap Trick but weren’t allowed to do The Babys “Head First” for the obvious blowjob implications. He responds with a laugh, “You know, it’s right in the open, isn’t it? We submitted the album, but we got a tremendous falling out inside the band, and one of the guys was let go, and we finished it as a three piece. I’d already called the album HEAD FIRST. And we went in and cut some more songs to make it fly. And I wrote a song called “Head First” to go with it. It became one of the biggest songs we ever did.” I concur. One of my favorite Babys songs, to this day.

A Holly Knight penned song, turns out, is one of my favorite tunes from his solo career, “Change”. I tell him my friend Mark has always been impressed by the Tim Pierce’s “eight bar solo” being “a masterpiece” in that song. “Tim. Yeah, he’s, uh, I’ve known Tim since the Babys. He’s clever. Great musician.” He adds, unwavering in his ability, as a singer no less, to credit others in the biz.

But he’s equally clear about how he’s survived an industry built on interference. “From the get-go, there was no love lost between me and the record companies,” Waite says flatly. “They’d say, ‘You’ve got to do this because that’s what the kids are digging.’ And I’d think, what do you fucking know?” Instead, he followed one rule, and it’s the same advice he now gives younger bands who recognize him in a rehearsal room and ask what to do with their lives. “Don’t take shit off anybody,” he tells them. “Stick to what you want to do. If you change direction and you didn’t want to, you’re going to hate yourself. If you fail, you’ll still be proud of yourself.”

That belief runs straight through the new album, which he says could be finished any day now. It’s different. Blunter. Made without concern for outcome. “This one is for me,” he says. “Every time you make a record, it could be your last. Everything needs a coda. Whether it succeeds or fails doesn’t really enter the equation. It just doesn’t matter,” he shrugs. Excited, and with a bit of self-aggrandizing I inform him that I have designed three album covers for Cheap Trick and would gladly throw my hat in the creative ring for his forthcoming album cover. “Oh, that’s splendid…thank you, but I actually did a little caricature of myself that I plan on using.” With a modicum of disappointment, I ask who might be some players on the upcoming release. “Shane Fontaine is on guitar. He played with Springsteen, Sting, and he’s been all over my solo records, basically all of them, and he lives a couple of miles away. So there was no choice.” He chortles charmingly. “I mean, he’s really been a tremendous asset. He’s in the same boat I am.” Referring to his no-takes sensibilities. “I’ve seen him in the studio on this album. The band just sat behind him, and he’s looking out into space. And he’s thinking. And then he says, okay. And then the band kick in and he plays this one tick. And then looks at me like, what about that? And that’s the take.” He refrains with knowing pride, “And he doesn’t even run through it first and he looks at the guitar and he looks at it and he knows which string sounds like what and what chord shape is going to be. I mean, he’s on another level.” And he adds with a snicker, “And we’re both English.” The new album, with a title that he made me swear to secrecy to, he states that “It just needs mastering. I mean, it’s basically just that. I’m talking to the guy that masters my records today and hopefully I can get in there before I leave for the road this week.” The album title may be a secret but I can tell you that it’s a very fitting one, for a singer, song-writer who is an artist first and foremost. “It’s been a tremendous life,” he adds “And at this point, I wanted to do something that people didn’t expect, and that I have no choice but to make.”

Waite has always existed slightly outside the frame people try to put him in. A rock singer, with angular, almost abstract, sharp good looks and an incredible sense of style. But behind that, he is deeply influenced by folk, country, Irish (he’s got a bit in him he says) and Celtic music. Story songs. Dark themes. Feeling over flash. “I was always more influenced by country than I was by rock and roll,” he says. “Those songs knew where they lived. And I lived there too.” Case in point, if you get a chance, re-visit his, almost tribute album,Temple Bar. He does a wonderful version of “I’m so lonesome I could die” by Hank Williams. “I choose to do something that moves me. If it doesn’t move me, I’m not going anywhere near it. Patty Smyth said, if it’s not going to be wonderful, why do it? You know?”

I wholeheartedly agree and sheepishly bring up his biggest offering of his storied career, and the only song of his that reached number one on the charts. That song of course is “Missing You”, off of his second solo album No Brakes. “I’m one of the most lucky guys in the world that wrote something that came off the top of my head, it was completely unselfconscious, so it’s still a mystery to me. It’s virtually poetry,” he says. “I made the whole thing up in twenty minutes.” That’s more of a flex than I’m sure he’s aware of. Having been to many of his shows I wonder how surreal it must be to hear thousands of people singing your written words back to you. ‘Oh, it Is.” He concurs and I ask him why, during live performances, he changes the cadence of songs. In jest, I query that it makes it difficult for devotees like myself to sing along with him. He chuckles knowingly “Every time I sing, it changes. The cadence shifts. The phrasing bends” he declares. That’s not a choice for John, it’s a necessity. “I couldn’t sing the same song the same way twice,” he says. “Every room is different. You walk to the mic and you’re in a different world.”

He pauses, searching for the right words, then lands on one that feels final. “You’re just a conduit, really,” Waite says. “You’re in the middle of it, but I don’t know where it’s going to go. It just takes me forward.” He calls himself a conduit, not out of humility but accuracy. The music moves THROUGH him, not FROM him. These words, like his many lyrics, are beautifully spoken, by an exceedingly cool dude, and true artist. As the conversation winds down, there’s no sense of nostalgia weighing things down. Gratitude, yes. Curiosity, always. Waite is still reading, still questioning what any of this means, still convinced that art lives everywhere.

“ART is in everything we do. It’s in absolutely everything we touch. And it isn’t something that just exists in an art gallery. Everything we say to each other. The clothes we wear, the design of a car, uh, you know, I mean, just about everything is art. It’s the love of my life”. I utter with great appreciation that I could not agree more with that awe-inspiring sentiment and thank him for his time.

His Uber has arrived. The studio is waiting. Another day of stepping into the unknown without a map.

“Life,” John Waite says, almost to himself, “is good.”

Now. Go Out and See, Hear and Feel Live Music