STEVE LESTER of THE BOYS NEXT DOOR
Interviewed By JUD COST
From The Banks Of The Wabash To A Song About Raw Trash

The Boys Next Door were one of the most scintillating homegrown talents to ever blossom in Indianapolis, Indiana in the mid-'60s. Sure, you could probably trace most of their early originals to something cut by the Beach Boys, but that's not really the point. Throughout their career (1964-67) their richly harmonic, hook-laden material was flawlessly performed, and the Boys-always real pros-were adept at fine-tuning their set list with the times by adding a gentle Zombies touch here or a pinch of Turtles there.
All of this raw talent allowed the Boys Next Door a rare vantage point on the '60s pop/rock scene: to open for (our tour with) just about every rock & roll legend that passed through town. The band's founder/lead guitarist, Steve Lester, took full advantage of his opportunity to hobnob with his musical heroes, and when the band's time was up, Lester moved to Los Angeles, where his fretboard skills found him plenty of studio work. Like another studio whiz, Jerry Cole, it's hard to know where to start with Lester's excellent adventure, but the Beach Boys seemed as good a place as any.

Do you remember how many concerts you played with the Beach Boys?
We did several shows with the Beach Boys in Indianapolis: at the Coliseum and then at the baseball park, Victory Field, the home of the Indianapolis Indians. Then I ran into various members of the Beach Boys when I worked in New York. And when I came out to the West Coast, I hung out for a little while with Dennis Wilson. I wouldn't say I was buddies with him or anything, but a girl that I saw was friends with him and we'd go over there occasionally.

How was Dennis in those days?
Dennis was a pretty nice guy. He was writing songs and we'd hammer around on the piano and groan and moan a little bit. I ran into Carl a lot when I worked in New York for a while after the band broke up. And he was a very nice guy. I was staying in the same hotel as him in New York and I would run into him in the elevator. We'd just talk. There were four or five different midwest cities-maybe Cincinnati or Dayton-where we played shows with them. I remember after a concert we did once with them in Indianapolis, everybody else was settling down with various girls for the evening, and Carl was taking some Boy Scouts on a tour of the set. He was that kind of guy. Carl was the really sweet guy of the bunch.

Were you still wearing the striped shirts when you opened for the Beach Boys?
Yeah, I remember one of the guys-probably Dennis because of the attitude-when we came into the dressing room and started getting ready-we were sharing the dressing room with them-said, "Hey, another set of Beach Boys. It was really pretty dumb. It wasn't really my trip, dressing up like the Beach Boys. I guess it was kind of cool for some things, but not for concerts. I think the Beach Boys took it as a compliment.

(Laughing) I wonder if the Beach Boys were even aware that they got the striped-shirt thing from the Kingston Trio before them.
OK, let's just say the Boys Next Door were imitating the Kingston Trio, then (laughs).I was always a big fan of the Kingston Trio. The Beach Boys were a nice bunch. I never met Brian, even later on in the LA studio scene. When I moved out here, after the band folded, I did meet a lot of my musical heroes. But I don't think I ever met him. I know he never played any of the concerts the Boys Next Door played with them. They had Bruce Johnston and Glen Campbell. We met both of them, nice people. And I ran into him Glen Campbell a lot in the LA studio scene too. I think you could have put him in any band-Pink Floyd, anything-and he would cover it and be great. He was playing all the studio sessions when I came out to the West Coast.

What was your specialty that got you all that studio work?
At that time, my one selling-point was that I played acoustic 12-string finger-style. And I was the only guy doing sessions in LA for about a year who was doing that. So I got all the sessions on that kind of stuff for a while. But then these guys like Glen Campbell all got 12-strings and they got onto that too. Pretty soon I was third or fourth call.

Who did you work with in the studio in LA?
I played with John Phillips, just a bunch of demos that I don't think ever came out. The Mamas And The Papas weren't doing much at the time. They were having personnel problems, I think. I ran into Denny Doherty at John Phillips one night and he was moaning and groaning like a Shakespearean tragedy character and it disturbed me, because he was always one of my heroes. John Phillips was nice and business-like and Michelle Phillips was real nice. And I met their little girl too, McKenzie.

Right, soon to steal the show in American Graffiti. Who else did you do sessions for back then?
I did sessions with several members of the Animals. Hilton Valentine did an album and I was on that. But I don't even have a copy of it. It wasn't a big seller. And I played acoustic guitar for Sean Bonniwell and I think I did some arranging on that album too. I liked Sean. His music was understandable and very well written. Onstage he was kind of a fireball but in the studio he was a very business-like.

Who else did you play with from the Animals?
I was working a lot with Vic Briggs, who had originally played with Brian Auger. And then he became the lead guitar in the Animals when the original Animals band broke up. Actually this was a much better band, although they weren't as easily recognized. Vic was my neighbor in Topanga. He was a really nice guy. He and his girl, Debbie Smith, kind of took us in. They were a little bit older than we were. And I had my new girlfriend who has been my wife now for 28 years. So they introduced us to English and Indian cuisine. We just hung out and had a great time. Half the sessions I played after that were things that Vic was producing. He was a great producer. He did the Hilton album and he did the Sean Bonniwell project.

Any British groups you worked with in those days?
We opened for Herman's Hermits. Peter Noone was delightful. He's a phenomenal entertainer. And he's an actor. I sort of related to him on stage. He had a temperament a little like mine. He was far more talented, of course. But I actually adopted some of his theatrical stuff. They were real nice guys, not so heavy and serious as some of the other bands.

What did you learn from Peter Noone? I just saw him play recently and he sounds as good as ever.
After playing with Herman's Hermits I started doing more work handling the microphone more and just letting the band play and working with the audience more. I started working more of these between-song routines in. I'd always done that a bit. And I think that's why the Boys Next Door were more popular than the other Indianapolis bands. We did more of a show. I'd tell stories and make fun of the guys in the band. I said things then I wouldn't say now to people. For instance, everybody in the band had certain mannerisms, which I would joke about. Like our bass player, Steve Drybread, was "Crusty." He tended to fall down a lot. He fell on my trombone once, smashed it flat. And the rest of the show I played using that flat trombone (laughs). It was outrageous, the funniest show we ever did. It was a damn good trombone. It was never able to be fixed right after that. I'd joke with members of the audience and make fun of myself. I wasn't any Peter Noone. But I was the only doing that, and then when I saw him and, "Hey, yeah, there is a place for somebody who does that." They were probably the friendliest of the British bands. Although we played with the Hollies too and we liked them a lot.

Any friendships struck up with the Hollies?
Tony Hicks was my favorite guitar player in the world. He was, as a guitar player, my idol for years. I didn't know him real well, but we did several shows with them. And I noticed that Graham Nash's guitar wasn't plugged in, so I asked Tony about it, and he said, "Oh, he doesn't quite play well enough." I guess Graham just liked to hold a guitar. I don't know if people are generally aware of that.

Did you record with John Phillips over at his place?
John Phillips had a studio in the attic of his house in Bel-Air and he was always working on projects. He would call in people to help demo songs by artists he was interested in. He had me demo a bunch of my songs too, but he never did anything with them.

I see you toured with the Kingsmen at one time, right around the time of "Jolly Green Giant."
We opened for the Kingsmen in '65. We got pretty thick with them. We did several shows with them and got know them. The drummer and bass player, whose names escape me now, but when I got to LA they were in the session scene too. I remember (Lynn Easton) the keyboard player, was a real gregarious guy.

Did you play "Louie Louie" when you opened for them?
I remember one show we did with them, our drummer, the one song he sang was "Louie Louie," and we were doing our opening set and he went into "Louie Louie." It was ten or fifteen seconds into the song before I realized we were opening for the band that did that song (laughs). They were off at the side of the stage, looking concerned and confused. We got a good laugh out of that later. They made a big joke out of it. They were a good band, pretty down-home people. They didn't take their success too seriously. Some of the bands were pretty pretentious, but they were just out there to have a good time, the kind of people you could sit down and jam with and have fun.

How about the McCoys? I know you played with them back then.
Oh yeah. They were phenomenal. We were just knocked-out by them. They were so visual onstage. And I ran into them later in New York. Again, really nice guys. Everybody knows about Rick Derringer. They were real tiny guys too, the brothers, Rick and Randy. They didn't look so small onstage, but they were the tiniest guys you ever saw. Rick might have been 5 foot 3 and Randy, the drummer, was a couple of inches shorter than that. But they really kicked some butt. I don't think they got the recognition they deserved. It's a problem groups had-you're probably more aware of it than I am-but "Hang On Sloopy" was such a giant hit, they could never top it, even though they put out some great albums.

What would you talk about with somebody like Rick Zehringer when you were out on the road?
Rick and I would talk about guitars: how you like this pick-up, what kind of strings you use? And where you've been playing? You like the Stones new record? That sort of thing. These road relationships weren't close enough where I would know their girlfriends or wives. We toured once with Bobby Goldsboro and got to know him really well. Don't ever play cards with him. He took my whole week's pay once in a poker game. That's what cured me of gambling. He was on our bus. We backed him up. A five-piece band that could do horns was real economical for him. Then we went to Nashville and he produced some stuff for us.

I see you opened for Jerry Lee Lewis. That must have been a kick.
He was doing basically the same level gigs we were at the time, state fairs and small concerts. He was at the stage of his career where people just didn't realize who he was. I mean, he's an icon. I was just awe-stuck to play with him. There are probably five or six of his songs I've done all my life. I learned 'em when I was twelve and I still do them. I consider him right up there with Dylan, McCartney and Paul Simon. Top five or six ever.

Speaking of Hall Of Famers, you've played recently with Eric Burdon.
Eric Burdon, comes into my studio all the time. He's one of my neighbors. And, right, he was just inducted into the Hall Of Fame last year. We're going to do a concert together in a couple of months, for Earth Day. We're both sort of environmentalists. I have a single-under the name of my virtual band, the J.T. Shakers-that's on the air down here now, criticizing a faction of people who are putting these huge mega-dumps in the desert-all of LA's trash. The song is kind of a joke, but the environmentalists have adopted it as an anthem.

What's the name of the song?
It's called "Raw Trash Cannonball." Remember the old folk song "Wabash Cannonball"? That's the tune. "Listen to the rumble, the whistle and the bell/If by then you're still not sure, you can tell her by her smell/Ravens circle 'round her/soaring seagulls squall/so hold your nose when the whistle blows, she's the Raw Trash Cannonball." They're trucking out for the next 40 years 20 thousand tons a day of LA's trash.

Yeah, we've been getting smoke in the SF Bay Area from that tire dump that caught fire recently-five million tires and it was supposed to burn for a year.
Well, I got the song from this 75-year old folksinger I heard singing at a folk festival. And I just thought, "Man, that's very close to the situation we've got now in LA. He gave me the lyrics and told me to go ahead and use it because it was public domain anyway. So I just customized it to our situation. I've just sent out a bunch of CD singles, because it's an LA, Orange County, Palm Springs and the desert proposition. So one of these environmental groups is setting up a concert on the courthouse steps, in either Palm Springs or San Bernardino, with Eric Burdon and us and, I think, Jackson Browne. That should really be fun. Yeah, I still have fun playing. Never gotten it out of my system.