Gary James' Interview With Andy Shernoff Of
The Dictators



They're back! They're releasing their fist new music in twenty, count 'em, twenty years! First formed in 1972, these guys were ahead of their time. Their first album was released in 1975. Writer John Dougan once called them, "One of the finest and most influential Proto-Punk bands to walk the earth." They opened shows for the biggest groups of the day, including KISS, Cheap Trick, Uriah Heep, Thin Lizzy, Bob Seger and Blue Oyster Cult. The group we are referring to is The Dictators. Bassist Andy Shernoff spoke with us about his band.

Q - Andy, I applaud your enthusiasm for Rock and Rock 'n' Roll, but when things get back to normal, whatever normal is, it still won't be the same as it once was. Gene Simmons says Rock is dead. The infrastructure isn't there. There are no record companies. Alex Van Halen said where a group could make money off every album sold, people don't want to pay for music. They want it for free. So what kind of a future are you and The Dictators facing when you step on stage?

A - Well, we're in a little different situation in that right now the band is me, Ross Friedman, Albert Bouchard and Scott Kempner, who was originally in The Dictators and he has health problems and he had to leave the band and we're getting a replacement. Our attitude is look, we've made between us three, hundreds of records. We've been involved in dozens and dozens and dozens of tours. We like making music. We're together because we like the process of writing a song, arranging a song, rehearsing the song, recording the song, mixing the song, and that's what we're doing now. Someday we hope to get in front of people and perform the songs because every day you make music is a good day. I understand the world is changing. As a matter of fact, I listen to music almost exclusively via Spotify. At the beginning of the pandemic I replaced my turntables. I got a higher end turntable with a pre-amp. I said I'm going to go through my records and have fun. You know what? Flipping over the records every fifteen to twenty minutes became not so much fun. I wanted to skip songs. The process of listening to music to me, and I believe the rest of the world, is different. It used to be I would buy records, put 'em on my turntable, look at the cover, listen to the first side, flip it over to the second side. I would do nothing but listen to the record. Now music is kind of background music. I think it's background music for most people too. Maybe you're driving a car. Maybe you go for a hike. People jogging. People exercising. Cooking food. Music is in the background. So the role of music is different. Rock 'n' Roll doesn't drive the culture like it did in the '60s and '70s. So, these are all factors in what Gene Simmons and Alex Van Halen say. These guys feel like, "Hey! I was a big superstar. Now, I can't be a superstar." I was never a superstar. I love making music. I can still make music. Not only that, I can make music in my house. I can distribute it from my house and I can still make money.

Q - That is important. You're keeping it simple.

A - Well, it's not so simple. Cultural forces are complicated. But the goal of The Dictators is just let's have fun, let's make music, and every day you make music is a good day. We're a bunch of friends. We're all good buddies. Albert is the new guy in the band, technically speaking. We've known him for forty, fifty years. I've played with him in different bands. Ross has played with him. So, it's not like he's a new guy, a new factor. We knew right away we were going to get along with him. So far it's been a lot of fun. It hasn't been easy. Recording over the internet is a very slow, frustrating process 'cause something that would take ten minutes if you're in the studio with a guy sitting next to you, it could take a week, it could take two weeks to do the same thing to get the same results because you're not communicating in the same way. But it doesn't matter now for us.

Q - When you were growing up you were reading the Rock magazines of the day, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Creem.

A - I wrote for Creem. I wrote for a lot of magazines. Before I was a musician I wanted to be a Rock writer.

Q - Before you became a writer and before you became a musician you were reading the Rock publications.

A - That is absolutely true.

Q - Did you believe every word you were reading in these magazines?

A - You mean like record reviews?

Q - No. More like the interviews.

A - You think people are lying in interviews or just coloring things?

Q - Maybe both.

A - Hmmm. When I was reading interviews as a kid I didn't think people were lying. As a matter of fact, I used to love Pete Townshend interviews. I think he was really insightful and honest. I had great respect for him. He was always my favorite interview. I don't think he was lying. You talk to anybody they're going to color the story to make themselves look a little better. That's human nature. I might disagree with you that they were lying. I'm a skeptic. So, I'm not going to read something and say this the law. If I read it I'll say okay, this is this artist's take. This is the writer's take. I'm not necessarily saying I think it's true. It's like a politician. Politicians talk. I don't believe what comes out of his mouth. I say okay, he's being pressured by one of his constituent groups or he's saying this because he wants to be re-elected.

Q - I'm not blaming the interviewer. You ask a question, you get an answer. You just hope the answer is as truthful as it can be.

A - Well, it could be an opinion. It's not right or wrong. Maybe they're trying to glorify what they've done in the past, take credit for something someone else did. That's human nature for me.

Q - All the magazines you read and collected over the years, you sold. Did you get a good price for them?

A - I sold a lot of stuff. I sold my magazines. I sold my fanzines. I think I got a good price. Yeah, I did. But I kept a lot of stuff that was important to me. How did you know? That must have been in an interview somewhere.

Q - It was.

A - I just sold it all in one batch. I might've been able to get a little more money if I sold it to one of these auctioneering sites. But I kept anything that was really important to me. If there was an article about The Dictators or me, I kept it. I just had boxes and boxes of Creem magazine, Rock Scene magazine, Fusion magazine. I kept the old Crawdaddy. I got rid of the new Crawdaddy. It was just I was paying storage space. I'm not looking at it for dozens of years. I had a guy who wanted to buy it, an archivist.

Q - It got a good home then.

A - Well, yeah. It's not going to museums.

Q - Even if it was going to a museum, that wouldn't be a bad thing. The public would get to see it then.

A - Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Q - You interviewed Alice Cooper and Marc Bolan.

A - I did.

Q - Do you remember what year that was?

A - '73, '74. For Oui magazine.

Q - What was Marc Bolan like?

A - Very affable. Very friendly. Of course I was very young. It was also a long time ago. He was not a big star. I remember the hotel. I'm sitting with him and it was a short interview. It wasn't like a full-length article. It wasn't in-depth, but he looked great. He looked like a Rock star, but he wasn't a big Rock star in America yet. He was a big star in England. I think this might've been his first tour when he played Carnegie Hall in New York City. So, he was very charming.

Q - And Alice Cooper?

A - I was a kid. He thought I was coming in for some kind of fanzine. He goes, "Hey, I got an interview with Oui magazine coming up!" "That's me!" (laughs) I love Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper was one of my inspirations in starting The Dictators. I love the band. I think the first four or five records were absolutely fantastic. Again, it wasn't a long interview. He looked good. He wore a real cool sports coat. There's a picture of it somewhere in my archives, reading a fanzine. I had a fanzine called Teenage Wasteland Gazette. So, I have a picture of him reading it and I have a picture of Marc Bolan reading my fanzine. But Alice Cooper was great. He was very straight forward. Probably not as affable and charming as Marc Bolan was, but definitely a nice guy. But he was great.

Q - It was easier to live in New York City in the 1970s than it is today, isn't it? Rents today are just through the roof. If a group tried to move to New York to promote their career, it would just be too expensive.

A - Well, we're from New York City. We were young and living with our parents. We weren't out of the house yet. In fact, we started up in my college town of State University Of New York at New Paltz. We got some interest in the band. So we moved back to New York, in with our parents. And this is the point in New York City when it was kind of falling apart. It was going bankrupt. It was empty. It was cheap rent. CBGBs was on the Bowery when the Bowery was full of drug addicts and alcoholics. Prostitutes. And it was dangerous. Now the Bowery is fancy hotels. What you're saying is right. Not only us, but people came to New York because it was cheap rent. Movie makers came to New York. Poets came to New York. You're paying $200 a month for a cold water flat on the Lower East Side. It made life easy. Nowadays New York is ridiculously expensive. That's the reason I moved out of New York. I have a cheaper lifestyle. I live in Upstate New York. I'm in the general area of Hudson Valley right now.

Q - You had a manager, Sandy Pearlman.

A - And Murray Krugman. They were partners.

Q - They got you a record deal with Epic Records in a relatively short period of time.

A - Yeah.

Q - Was that helpful or hurtful as you look back on it?

A - Hurtful. (laughs) We got a record (deal) so quick. Ross is a great musician. Me and Scott could barely play our instruments. They say you need 10,000 hours to excel at something. Malcolm Gladwell says that. The Beatles had 10.000 hours of rehearsals before they made it. The Dictators I would say did 100 hours. There was no place for us to play when we started. When we started there was no CBGBs. If you had a cover band, if we did Bad Co. songs or Led Zeppelin songs or whatever, there were places we could play, but nobody wanted to hear original songs in those days.

Q - Would you have played a Bad Co. song?

A - No. We had no interest in that. We had no interest in doing anything except original music. We knew we wanted to do our brand. We thought we were funny. We thought everybody was going to get our joke and in 1975 nobody knew the joke. They get the joke now. Everybody understands The Dictators humor because now they're onto the band, but back in '75 we were like lone wolves. We started playing '73, '74. New York City was Glam Rock. Dolls. King Of The Hill. And here we are in our leather jackets and sneakers and jeans and there weren't that many bands that looked like us or sounded like us. Not too much later The Ramones used to come see us all the time and sort of adopted our look and when CBGBs opened, more bands started to appear, but we were just a little bit ahead of the time. We missed the wave.

Q - The Dictators didn't perform much, outside of this club in New York called The Country. So, how did you live? You were with your parents then?

A - Yes. We were with our parents.

Q - After you had your first record did you go on tour?

A - Not on our first record. We did a few shows. We were managed by the same guys who managed Blue Oyster Cult, so we were able to hop on to a few of those shows. They were able to get us some gigs, but we didn't play that much. We were playing with Rush, Billy Preston.

Q - Billy Preston?

A - Yeah, ridiculous shows. There was no place for us to play.

Q - At one point you were supporting the top headlining bands of the day.

A - That was on our second record. That was in 1977. We were on our second record deal with Elektra and we had made a record that was more commercial than our first record. It got some radio play. It got some sales. It wasn't overwhelming, but it was more of a viable product. Our first record was impossible to market in 1975. That's why we got dropped by Epic. Now the record has been re-released five or six times and re-mixed. Some people consider it a classic. I don't personally. I don't listen to my old records, but I appreciate what people say about it. But the second record, we were more of a viable Rock 'n' Roll band. We had a little more experience. CBGBs had happened. When CBGBs opened you would play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, two sets a night. So in one weekend you're playing six shows. Now previously for us to do six shows would mean six months. (laughs) Then there were a few other clubs and we got a few other gigs. Boston was opening up. Toronto. A few other cities were starting to get Punk clubs. So we're playing KISS, Foreigner, Cheap Trick. It was a different stage in the band's career.

Q - Did opening for those bands translate to record sales for The Dictators or don't you know?

A - I don't know. Some people play a city and they find what their record sales were after they played. I don't know. I never found out. I was kind of going along for the ride. I was having a good time. We weren't necessarily knockin' 'em dead opening up for KISS or playing in front of 15,000 people. They don't want to see knuckle heads like us.

Q - I saw KISS open for Black Sabbath in 1975 and they blew Black Sabbath right off the stage.

A - KISS was blowing everybody off the stage in those days. They first started out as an opening act and they were just killin' it.

Q - By the end of the 1976, KISS was headlining. Sort of a fast climb up the ladder.

A - It was a steady climb and then the "KISS Live!" record put 'em over the top. I saw KISS when they played The Coventry.

Q - Did you look at their act and think to yourself, these guys are on to something here, they can go places?

A - I did. I thought so. Scott Kempner, who went to see the show with me, was a little more skeptical. He didn't quite enjoy what they were doing, but I said, "Wow! The songs are catchy." And then I saw 'em a few times after when they opened for Blue Oyster Cult. In 1975 they came back but they didn't play New York. They didn't play New York for awhile, for two years. I saw them when they headlined at Beacon Theatre in New York. It was basically the "KISS Alive!" show. They just slayed me. It was just fantastic. Actually fantastic. Another thing about KISS is they did a commercial for John Varvatos and they played CBGBs. This is after CBGBs was closed and John Varvatos took over the store, and he would sometimes move all the clothing racks out of the way and have a band play. They filmed a commercial there and KISS played without their make-up and no effects. Just a band playing their songs. They were fantastic. Just super tight. Everything was right on the money. I think they're a good band. I think Gene Simmons is obnoxious and over the top, but I think Gene Simmons would say that I'm obnoxious and over the top. That's the character he plays.

Q - In 1978 The Dictators were offered a European tour with AC/DC, but you couldn't do it because your record company wouldn't give you tour support. What was the record company thinking, that you had made enough money to pay your own way?

A - I think they've put enough money into the band. This is after the second record. We had done two records for them that hadn't really made money for Elektra. Not only did they not give us money for the tour, but they dropped us right after that. I guess they said, "Hey look, this is a money pit and we're going to move on." That's the way it goes in the world of Rock 'n' Roll. We had played with AC/DC a number of times in America. AC/DC, their first show in America was opening up for The Dictators.

Q - Did you think you would make a career out of being a musician, or did you ever contemplate doing something else?

A - When I was 20 years old and just starting out and you told me I was going to be in my 60s talking about my career, I probably would go, "Are you crazy? I don't have a career in music." I don't think I was even thinking past the next week in those days. There was a time after the band broke up in 1978 when I drove a cab. I was a mover. I had to do a lot of things like that. But starting in the mid-'80s I started producing records and I started writing songs. So my songwriting started making money. It became a full-time career at that point for me. I was able to maintain myself in the music business because I wasn't just a musician. I wasn't just a songwriter. I wasn't just a producer. I was all three. I had a production gig. I was getting a royalty check for songwriting, or I was playing in a band that was out on tour. I had a few revenue streams, as they say. And that's how I survived. I was not a guy who was making hit records ever. I had one hit record in Ireland for a band I produced. They're called Friends In Time. It's a classic song in Ireland. Everybody knows it. It's a song that's sung at funerals and weddings. It's a beautiful song, a ballad. It was on Mother Records, which is U2's label.

Q - What struck me is your musical tastes. You like everything from The Beach Boys to The Bay City Rollers. You don't always find that quality in musicians.

A - Yeah, to the detriment of the band, my songwriting varies. It was hard to categorize. If you can categorize a band it's easier to market. But I grew up at a time when The Beatles made a record and every record sounded different, or The Rolling Stones, every record sounded different, or The Kinks, every record had its own personality. So I continue that in Dictator world. But I do like all kinds of music. I'm a fan of music. Music is a huge part of my life. I love playing it and I love listening to it. Music is magic. It touches people emotionally. It can cure you of a disease. It can cure depression. When your cat dies, put a record on. You'll feel better. When your lover leaves you, put on a record and it consoles you. Music is magic. The fact that I've been able to make a living in music for my life has been an absolute, absolute blessing.

Q - The Dictators were considered a Punk band, but that type of music started in England, didn't it?

A - No. It started in America. New York City. What they call Punk Rock really started in New York City. The Ramones established the guidelines for what a Punk Rock band is. My first record was 1975. The Sex Pistols didn't put out a record until 1977. The Ramones put out a record in 1976. All the English Punk Rock bands started after seeing The Ramones when they played The Round House in England, July 4th, 1976. All the bands came out to see them and started to get serious about their music. It started in New York City and there were bands that were considered punky. Question Mark And The Mysterians, Syndicate Of Sound, had a punky sound. The downstroke, short song, silly lyrics is a variant of Punk and The Ramones really kicked that off. We really came a little bit before them, but The Ramones really set the standard.

Q - The whole Punk movement seemed bigger and lasted longer in England than it did in the United States. In the U.S. it lasted about six months. Am I right about that?

A - In England all the Punk bands had hit records. They were on TV. They were affecting fashion. They were affecting politics. In America they were a little niche that had no affect on the culture until Green Day and Offspring started having big hit records. But back in the '70s it was huge in England. I was there. The Dictators toured England with The Stranglers in the Fall of 1977. I was there the week The Sex Pistols' record came out and it was all over the media. They were on TV, top of the charts. The Stranglers had like twenty hit singles in England.

Official Website: www.TheDictators.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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