Nightwatcher's House Of Rock Interviews

NHOR : When you're not playing with the band, what do you listen to when you're at home?

DP : Rhythm and blues. I'm a really big rhythm & blues fan. I like Wilson Pickett and The Temptations a lot. That's what I've been listening to lately. It changes. I don't know how to narrow it down to just a few favorites.

NHOR : You released two solo albums back in the mid 90's 'Tramp' and 'Child Of The Darkness,' both of which are great albums which would appeal to most fans of the band. So far, they've never been released Stateside. Is there any chance either one of these might be released here, and do you have any plans of recording another solo album?

DP : Yeah, but I don't know when at this point. We're working on that. I certainly do have plans to do another solo album. It will be with my solo band Mother Ocean, and it won't be anything like Cheer. It'll be rock & roll though.

NHOR : Last year you performed at the Summer Of Love 40th Anniversary show at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, which was attended by over 100,000 people. What was that like for you?

DP : Oh, that was great. It was really wonderful. For me, it was sort of like, and for a lot of people there it was like passing the baton on to the younger generation.

NHOR : If you had to choose, which album would you say out of all the Blue Cheer albums is your favorite?

DP : My favorite Blue Cheer album, as of now is the latest one, 'What Doesn't Kill You...'. Prior to that, my favorite would've been 'Highlights and Lowlifes'. That one was done in Hull, England. That was the first album that Duck, Paul and I worked on together. I thought it was an excellent album. Jack Endino produced it, who is an excellent producer. When we gave it to the record company they put this reverb wash on it, which wasn't what we handed them. So actually what came out wasn't fully as we had intended.

NHOR : Have you given any thought of remixing it and re releasing it as you'd intended it?

DP : Yes, we have and we're going to do that. That's one of our goals. Because when we handed it to them, it was all the same notes, tracks and everything, but there was more of a raw edge to it. The reverb wash was not there that softened everything up. It's a technique that a lot of metal bands use where they put this wash on top of it. That's basically what they did. It wasn't with our approval, but they did it, and it was their property at that point so there's nothing you can do. We own it, so we're going to remix it and put it out again. There's no time frame for that right now though, as we're working so hard on what we're doing right now that it's kind of tough. All of that takes capital. So we'll cross that bridge when we get into that position. First of all, there has to be a capital interest to really do it right. We don't want to do it half assed. Which has happened to Cheer before. We don't want to do that, because things are pretty much in our lap. Yes, we have Rainman records, and Ron Rainey is doing a lot of the management work for us. Still, all in all, things remain in our camp. We plan to keep it that way.

(Continued in older posts)