Tonio K.'s pretzel logic
By Kristine McKenna

[Reprinted from Rolling Stone, June 14, 1979]

LOS ANGELES —"Change your name and wear dark glasses whenever possible," advises Tonio K., rock's newest angry young man, as we hop into his black 1950 Ford Business Coupe—just like the one Dennis Hopper drove in Rebel without a Cause—and cruise toward a burger stand on a smoggy Saturday afternoon.

It seems like the logical place to go. Tonio K. is, after all, quite concerned with food chains—specifically, who or what in the cosmic food chain is hungrily eyeing us humans. He investigates that question on his debut album, Life in the Foodchain, and deduces that the human race will probably be the cause of its own demise. And that's got Tonio K.—a.k.a. Steve Krikorian—really mad. His angry soliloquies may sound uptown, bursting with their obscure literary references (Tonio's name, in fact, comes from "Tonio Kršger," a Thomas Mann story), but basically he's talking murder, mayhem and apocalypse.

Slouching in the car at the burger stand, I ask him about all this rage. Clad in a black leather jacket, jeans, sneakers and shades, the singer/songwriter politely demurs: "I leave the room if a conversation gets too heated, and I'd never hit anybody. I mean, I really hate violence. At the same time, I'm very much aware of being surrounded by things worthy of anger. So I guess the anger in my music is something of a catharsis. If it wasn't in the music, I'd probably be in jail or a hospital."

Indeed, from where Tonio K. sits, things look bad and appear to be getting worse. As he points out in "The Funky Western Civilization": "There's a baby/Every minute/Bein' born without a chance/Now don't that make you want to jump/Right up/And start to dance?" Such enraged outpourings, combined with Tonio's sardonic wit and wry wisdom, have resulted in his being tagged—along with such incongruous musical cousins as Steve Forbert, Mark Knopfler and Jules Shear—as one of this year's Dylans. "It's always the same story," he says. "Every artist is just retelling it for the people on his block, and whoever retells it the best gets to be the new Dylan."

Raised on a farm in California's San Joaquin Valley, the twenty-nine-year-old Krikorian played bass for three years with the modern-day, post–Buddy Holly Crickets before striking out on his own when that group broke up in 1975. He spent the next year "inching toward bankruptcy" until manager Jon Devirian brought him to the attention of Bob Buziak and Irving Azoff, co-owners of Full Moon Records, an Epic custom label. They signed Tonio K. and brought in Rob Fraboni (of Band fame) to oversee the artist's debut LP.

"At a time when lyrics are very bland and less and less substantial, we felt that Tonio K. was an important and brilliant lyricist," Azoff says.

Recorded at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, Life in the Foodchain rocks a little harder than your average L.A. lullaby. Engineered by Nick van Maarth, Foodchain rolls along at a rowdy clip with help from guitarists Albert Lee, Earl Slick and Dick "King of the Surf Guitar" Dale. The hired guns, however, are easily missed in the face of Tonio's verbal onslaught. A somewhat toneless—yes, Dylanesque—singer, Tonio compensates for what he lacks in range with sheer screaming energy. Foodchain is notably short on the slap-happy ennui Los Angeles is known for, though Tonio acknowledges his regional brethren in a left-handed sort of way on a tune called "H-A-T-R-E-D": "Yes I wish as was as mellow/As for instance Jackson Browne/But 'Fountain of Sorrow' my ass/ @#$%¢&-(*&)$# /I hope you wind up in the ground."

"Just to clear the record," Tonio says, "I'd like to say that Jackson Browne is probably one of the best songwriters in our particular galaxy cluster."

Although Tonio K.'s acerbic ruminations on Western-man-run-amok have won him much critical praise, Life in the Foodchain has not climbed to the top of the charts. A brief tour of the Northeast this spring found him playing to ecstatic audiences of "mostly critics and a few real people. I guess I am pretty much a critics' artist," admits Tonio. "But on the other hand, a lot of bikers are into the album. Hopefully, the rock & rollness of the music overshadows its literary content."

Tonio K. surveys the bustle of the burger stand and concludes our conversation on an uncharacteristically positive note. "If I was totally convinced of the hopelessness of the situation, I would have shot myself long ago," he muses. "It's a possibility that I'm full of shit and everything's fine. Hey, how about that Harrisburg thing? Kinda cute, huh?"