Rockin' Johnny!

Geezer Rock Hall of Fame: Rockin' Johnny of Johnny and the Vital Signs
Johnny Bruscia of Rockin' Johnny and the Vital Signs had a gig at The Dante Club in Sacamento on the Saturday I inteviewed him. He also had a painful, rotten tooth that badly needed a root canal. That would have to wait. Like any good rocker, Johnny would rely on strong painkillers to get through the gig - Vicodin in this case. "At our age, everybody in the band is on something, diuretics maybe."
Johnny, now 59, formed his own Geezer Rock outfit seven years ago simply because "it's now or never, man. You gotta do it now, because we're all running out of time." The outfit has survived name and member changes. But the mission hasn't changed: rock before it's too late. When not playing, Johnny runs an antiques shop in Old Sacramento that, among other items of intrigue, stocks many classic 45s and vinyl LPs.

So, how to you keep a Geezer Rock band together for seven whole years?
When you start a band that’s the beginning of the break up of the band. It’s like a marriage. You got five personalities with all kinds of different variables. “Oh, I can’t make it tonight because, you know my wife looks likes she’s uh, bloating a little bit.” Bands not easy to keep together.
What’s the secret?
I have certain requirements for the band. Your family’s first but the band is second and if you’re gonna commit to a band, you must do everything you can to be able to play with that band. I don’t want any of the guys in the band to have girlfriend problems. You know, they're pissed off because you’re in a band, there’s gonna be chicks trying to hit on you. So if you got a girlfriend problem, it isn’t gonna work.
How long have you been rocking?
Probably about seven years.
Has the band always been the Vital Signs?
Johnny and the Vital Signs, because we have to check our vital signs after ever gig. We used to be Rock bottom. We had all kinds of goofy names. I wanted a name that identified old dudes. I wanted something like an old-timer name. Like the AARPs. (American Association of Retired Persons.) But then I thought that might sound like a punk band and we’d have to play every song with the same three chords. (Laughs)
What is the signature sound of the Vital Signs?
Classic rock man. We open with Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones. Then Gimme Some Lovin’. We do some funky stuff. If you wanna be successful as a band, you’ve gotta play stuff that makes people wanna come out and dance. I’ve tried to pick out songs that make people wanna get out and dance: "Brick House," "Hold On I’m Comin’," "Domino." They’re not going to hire you so they can just listen to you. They want to get people going for a party!
What’s the best party song of all time?
They’ll get out and dance to "Mustang Sally" every time. It’s a simple song but they love it and they’ll always get out and dance. I also like to play "Johnny B. Goode" towards the end. They love that song.
Does it have anything to do with the average age of the audience?
It doesn’t make any difference. If you play a good song, they’ll all get out and dance.
What’s the line up in the band?
There’s been several different versions of the band. We’ve had saxophones, keyboards, and a trumpet sometimes. Now we’re down to just a keyboard, bass guitar, me on lead guitar and a drummer. We’re just down to that because; I wanna keep it a little more simple now.
Are you singing too?
Oh, yeah.
Who else sings in the band?
I have a buddy of mine that sings in the band named Dave. He's got a real good voice. The problem is, he’s got a such a good voice that a lot of rock and roll stuff is tough for him to sing.
How often do you guys play gigs?
We don’t wanna do it more than about a couple times a month, because it can really be a lot of work. We’re not the Stones; we don’t have people loading our stuff up for us. That’s another reason why I simplified it down to four or five people so that after you’ve done a gig where you’re standing up there for five hours you don’t have to be lifting everything until 3 a.m. We played Old Sacramento at a club and we got done at one o’clock. Then we had to unload and load all our stuff. People were fighting in the streets and stuff, I said, man, I said, this, is, it’s like playing Nam.
How do you guys keep getting gigs?
When you play a gig there’s usually somebody in the audience who will come up to us and say, “Hey man, would you guys uh, play a wedding?” That’s how you get your gigs, by word of mouth,
Do you guys have your own PA system?
Yeah, yeah.
Who does live sound for you? Who’s twiddling the knobs?
The guy that sings in our band, since he doesn’t play an instrument, he does a lot of that for us. But he gets paid the same as we do.
How much are you guys making?
We make from five to seven hundred dollars.
That’s pretty good.
Yeah, you know, for just a bunch of old dudes.
How do you guys get a good live sound?
That’s very, very difficult. We’re a basic band. I don’t have anything fancy. Just my old Fender amp. I just say, “Hey, all you guys out there: how do we sound?” If somebody says, “I can’t hear you or I can’t hear that,” then we adjust.
Are you competing for gigs with a lot of other bands?
There’s not that many classic rock bands. I mean you think there is but try to find one. Everybody around here wants to play the blues. The same thing, over and over. I love blues, don’t get me wrong. I like to go out and listen to bands but I have a hard time finding classic rock bands.
Isn’t hard to get Baby Boomers to come out a see live music?
I think probably if you have a stick of dynamite and put it under them and lit it right before the concert, you might be able to blow them out of the house. You’ll call them and say, “Hey, man we’re playing over here tonight man at the party and it should be fun, why don’t you come out?” And they say, “Oh, well yeah, well maybe we will.” But, then when it comes time, they’ll be right in front of that TV or they’ll be out and they’d be having dinner or something It’s very difficult to get boomers because, well, we’re into couches now. I always invite a whole bunch of them out and maybe I get ten to twenty percent at the most, to come out.
So, mostly your crowds are younger people out partying, right?
People in their forties - they’re still going out. But when you get to be a married and married ones don’t go out. Real difficult to get them, out, very difficult. My feeling is, “Hey, come on man, you can still go somewhere, you’re gonna be sitting in a retirement home staring at the wall for a long time.” Get out and do it now, while you still can, because, we are low on time.
Isn’t that the reason to start a Geezer Rock band in the first place?
If you’re not doing it now this is it; this is my last go round, man.
What’s your show like?
People always say, “Wow you guys sound really good” But - I’m not a very good guitar player or a great singer. We play good songs. I have a tendency to jump off the stage. I could be laying on the floor upside down, playing my guitar or standing on my head playing my guitar. I do some weird stuff to put on a mini show. Because, I want people to go just beyond listening to us. We do a little movement. I don’t just stand there. I’ve done it to the point where I’ve almost hurt myself. The last time I was playing guitar on my back on the ground, I had a hard time getting up and, and a couple of the girls came up there and, they lifted me up. This getting old stuff isn’t for sissies. We do a little comedy up there too. We talk to the people. I tell them please don’t throw any support hose up at the band or you know, walkers.
Is that how you fire up a show?
That’s important, firing the people up. It took me five years to come up with all the tunes. Now we’ve got thirty tunes that really get people fired up.
How often do your guys rehearse?
Once a week. We have to, because we have them senior moments on stage, where we’ll forget a song. We do about an hour and a half a week.
Who owns the PA?
We split it. Me and one other guy. You can’t get too many people involved because when people quit the band, then they wanna be bought out. Bands are not an easy gig man, they’re complicated little things.
How do you settle ego clashes and all that?
You know what I tried to do with my band is, when I hired people, I hired them more for personality than for musicianship, believe it or not. Because people can really go off over this stuff. “That’s not the way that song goes” and all that stuff. I had a bass player, but he’s left the band. He had the mellowest personality; you couldn’t make him mad no matter what. But a lot of people in bands have more Type A personalities.
Tell me a good Geezer Gig story.
The last gig we played out at Crawdad’s, after we got done playing, this beautiful young girl came up and she goes, “Hey, if you guys keep playing, I’ll take all my clothes off.” Well, I had a heart palpitation first. We were packing up, but I went and told the boys “Hey, I said, unpack that stuff!” Well, being that we are seniors, they got mad. “No. We ain't unpacking that stuff, I can’t do all that.” I said, “She’s gonna take her clothes off!” They just said, “Aw, just take a picture of her or something.”
Have you ever had a gig really get ugly?
I’ve never, we’ve really had that, the only thing that we did wrong once was rich guy hired us to play up in Auburn. We were playing and the whole thing was going great. We were getting close to the end, and he wanted his son to come up and sing, so you know, under those circumstances, they’re paying you, so you go, “okay.” The kid comes up and sings and he kind of rattles on. He’s okay, you know but, you know, he wasn’t you know gonna hit the big time. Afterwards one of the guys in the band went up to the microphone and said, “Hey, don’t you quit your day job.” Oh, man, things got sour after that. Everyone was drinking. The guy who hired us says, “What the hell did you say about my kid?” Pack your shit up and get out of here!” Fortunately it was over anyway but man they were mad. It was like they were gonna run us out of town man. I told the guy, “Of all the things in the world, you could have done and said, you had to say that?” So, we don’t go up to Auburn anymore, they got wanted posters on us.
How long does it take you to set stuff up and take it down? Have you got it figured out, so it’s a system?
Not too long now. About a half hour. Before, we had a keyboard player who would bring two keyboards and a whole bunch of amps. The drummer would bring all these different sound system things and afterwards it was just a long drawn out loading process. So I told everybody, “Look man, all this stuff, it’s not gonna make us sound that much better. We could pull it off with being more basic.” That’s what we’re doing right now. We don’t have fancy stuff. No unnecessary crap. Yeah, we played a New Year’s Eve party. Guys brought so much stuff man, I said, “Hey we’re not playing Woodstock. You don’t have to bring all this stuff."
A band is just like a small business, right down to personnel problems.
But, you know what’s cool about being in a band? You could be talking to somebody you don’t even know and when they say, “Well what, do you do?” I say, “Oh, I own a little store down in Old Sac.” They just say “Oh.” But when I say, “I also have a band and play around town.” Then they say, “Oh, yeah, well that’s cool!” See you get more reaction from that than anything else. Even more than if I said that I was lieutenant governor or something.
The band is more work than people realize, though.
Working in a band is not a light weight thing, especially if you’re not a great musician like me. I just picked up the guitar, you know, because, when I was a kid, I saw the Beatles and they were playing and the girls were screaming their brains out man, ripping their clothes off, I said, "I gotta get me a guitar. I want them girls jumping all over me!” Of course I got a guitar and I just walked around with it and didn’t know how to play it. And then, I got drafted and I went to Nam. They would sell guitars over there, so I got a guitar. I think I learned one song the whole time I was over there. And then we got out. I goofed around; I never really got serious with it. Then about ten years ago, I started thinking, “You know maybe I could get a band going.”
Do you try to do covers perfectly like the record?
You can’t think that you have to do every song perfect, although you gotta sound like the artists who did it. It’s difficult, buddy. But no one ever comes up and says “Hey, you guys didn’t do that exactly like the record, either.” That never happens. We’re not ever gonna sound as good as Chuck Berry. I’m never gonna sound as good as Mick Jagger But if you get in the vicinity, I guarantee you the people will like you.
So do you play the guitar solos exactly like the records?
I bluff them. That’s okay. They’re happy with it. Most people don’t know the difference anyway. When we were playing out at Crawdads the other night, we were playing “Twist and Shout” We were playing D but the keyboard player was playing it in C. It was funnier than hell, man. We have brain farts once in a while.
How loud are you guys?
Not too loud.
No you’ve got a toothache, right? You need a root canal? But the show must go on tonight, right?
I’m gonna do it man, I don’t care if they have to wheel me in on a wheel chair.
Do the Vital Signs have a band uniform or a look?
I don’t expect them to dress up but I expect them at least to look together. Yeah, yeah, well it’s hard for an ancient guy like me to look like a rock and roll guy. I look more like the guy in Kung Fu.
Do you guys play in bars a lot?
No more bars or anything like that, unless it’s a private party. They don’t pay you nothing. A lot of the money and the fun is in weddings, parties and shows for like corporations. High school renunions are good. That’s where the money is and that’s where the fun is. Not only that but you’re the star. Everything’s free for you. I ain’t never going to play another bar, man. It’s just such as hassle. They want you to play for four hours and they give you thirty dollars a piece. We’re not doing it for the money, but I’d at least like to get a hundred dollars in my pocket after the night of rock and rolling. Last time we played at a bar, there were only five people there the whole night. I’ve got too big of an ego problem for that! (Laughs) I need more attention! Old dogs need to be petted more. When there’s a lot of people dancing, it fires you up. It makes you want to play better.
What uh, what’s your policy about guys in the bands drinking beer during gigs.
I don’t care because, most of them know that if they drink too much, they’re gonna suck. Having a couple of drinks is cool, because, when you’re at a party, it’s hard not to. One time, the party didn’t start for two hours after we got to the gig and our keyboard an old keyboard player drank so much that he fell off the stage.
Have you ever had to fire anybody from the band?
Oh, yeah, sheesh, are you kidding? We had to let our last keyboard player go because could never find his way to our gigs. He, we’d be playing here in downtown Sacramento somewhere he’d end up in Placerville. I’ve had at least five drummers over the years. Drummers can get wacky.
Do you go for drum solos?
I allow them but you know, I don’t remember hardly ever having any. But I want everybody to have a little bit of attention.
So what keeps Rockin’ Johnny Rockin’ after all these years?
It’s the the attention. That’s the only rush I have left right now. Things change when you get old. I’m fifty-nine years old. Finding my glasses is more important than sex right now. Having a band’s still a rush. Everybody would to be in a band man. I mean, that’s something, I dreamed of that the whole time I was a kid. It’s something that you have to look forward to, every time you know, you play a gig.

Comments

[Uncle David]

Good interview with Rockin' Johnny! Maybe I'll have to start rolling around on stage more to get some attention! Do heart attacks count?

[Fitz Miller]

Great interview! I am glad that we were not the only one's who had problems with drummers. They can be a different breed. We had a drummer show up at a gig without his basepetal. Or so much shit that it takes a hour and half to set-up. Or so much shit that no one else could fit on the stage. Very Good Interview!!! ( No one wanted to see the naked chick, huh.)