Tonio K: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

Anyone who thinks rock'n'roll's appeal and purpose extend no further than young headbangers, tarts, and dweebs should listen to Tonio K. Anyone who puts up with rock music in their household as a phase of adolescence or, worse yet, prays for the day when Johnny will be delivered from it, ought to curl up with a couple of K.'s cassettes. Your pastor would benefit greatly from a heart-to-heart talk with T.K. For that matter, we heartily recommend that the funky western civilization as we know it in 1988 take Tonio K. out for a cup of coffee. It could be a revelation.

For beyond the world of ceramic dogs and highway dinosaurs, and behind the dark reflection of the eternal Ray-Bans, lies the mind of Steve Krikorian, known to most as Tonio K. This is the mind that set a good deal of us on our ears in 1978 with Life in the Foodchain, a proto-punk kick in the tush that delivered us in the days of disco. Over the course of two more albums and respective record labels, K. spewed forth some of the most literate, dangerous, and funny lyrics in rock'n'roll. They were especially funny if you were a misogynist, or at least had experienced the bad fortune of being dumped by the girl of your dreams.

Then something rather unexpected happened. Tonio K. found love, or it found him. Anyway, 1986 saw the release of Romeo Unchained, where K. declared in no uncertain terms that real love and grace were alive and well in an imperfect world. If that doesn't beat all, get this: he married Linda Myers later that year, which leads one to the conclusion he actually believes this stuff.

Tonio K.'s latest album, Notes from the Lost Civilization (yeah. the one with the dinosaurs) is a further extension of a worldview under reconstruction by the power of the Spirit. HRS contributing editor Thom Granger interviewed Mr. K. just prior to his national tour, opening for The Kinks.

Harvest Rock Syndicate: Before we get into discussing the lyrics and content, I wanted to ask you a question or two about the music on the new album. Are you happy with the sound of this one?

Tonio K.: Yeah. It seemed like there was a little too much production on the last record. It seemed like some of the musical parts drew more attention to themselves than they should have. Or maybe it was just the synthesizers. I've never liked synthesizers that much, and I had never used them before Romeo Unchained and just sort of inadvertently wound up having some on there.

Actually, this record is as close as I've ever come to doing what I would naturally do musically with my songs. Usually I've brought the songs into a rehearsal situation with whatever band or whatever producer I was working with, and we would sort of build on them from there. And more often than not I've wound up putting more music on them than I wish I had, in retrospect. This is as close as I've ever gotten to actually recording them the way I wanted to, which is basically just a five-piece guitar band.

HRS: I noticed James Jamerson, Jr., and Booker T. on the album. Should we call this "sweet surf music"?

TK: Yeah, well, that was T Bone's (Burnett) idea. My favorite music has always been American R&B and surf music, because I grew up in California and that's the first music I ever really heard when I was a kid or paid any attention to. T Bone said, "I'll play some and you play some." And Jack Sherman had worked with Raymond Pounds and James Jamerson on some Dylan stuff together. Those guys are the toughest R&B section going these days, without being revisionist or anything. So we said, "Yeah, well, if it's going to be urban surf music, let's go." It changed a little bit, 'cause T Bone and I both wound up getting these twelve-strings. He bought a Fender electric twelve-string just before we started the sessions. And I wound up buying back a '65 Rickenbacker twelve that I had once owned. I had actually bought it in 1980 from some guy who had bought it new and almost never played it, and then I discovered that I wasn't playing it much, so I sold it, and I wound up buying it back right around the time of these rehearsals and everything.

HRS: Was that one used on "Without Love"?

TK: Yeah, actually, T Bone's was used primarily on the album, but in the video I'm using mine, Jack Sherman has one just like T Bone's, the '66 Fender electric twelve, and then Rob Watson was playing a Vox Teardrop twelve-string, and Tim Chandler was playing a Hamer twelve-string bass. So the video has nothing but twelve-strings.

HRS: A twelve-string bass?

TK: Yeah, I'd never even heard of one, but Tim had one for some reason. So anyway, everything shifted a little bit away from the actual R&B/surf music when we fired up the twelve-strings, but it's still all pretty much in the same ballpark.

HRS: Was David Miner chosen as producer primarily because of the link with Burnett?

TK: Yeah, 'cause T Bone and I had wanted to do this work together, if and when we could, but when it was time to do this record he wasn't really available, because he was in the middle of Orbison and Kristofferson and finishing his own thing and doing the Leslie/Samlie Phillips thing. So he didn't really have time to be in the studio as the on-line producer every day. But he said, "Why don't you get David to do it?" So the working plan was, David and I were in the studio every day and then we would get together once a week over at T Bone's place and see what we had accomplished, and decide what we were gonna go for the next week. Then T Bone would come in and out once in a while and check up on us, and he wound up basically as the session guitarist and arranger more than anything, 'cause we worked out all the arrangements with him. Then he would come in and play his guitar parts.

HRS: He's revealing himself to be a real fine guitar player.

TK: Yeah, I think he's a great guitar player.

HRS: Let's talk about lyrics a bit. This is probably the part that you've been talked to death on, but it's always the part that people want to read about and analyze.

TK: Actually, the part I've been talked to death on is the "Tonio Goes Soft" angle. A lot of people are noticing the differences of lyrical audacity, I guess, between Life in the Foodchain and this one. When in fact this album is awfully tough lyrically. It's as hard as anything I've done. The music isn't as physical as the Life in the Foodchain thing was, and it doesn't have the apparently still beloved cuss words or something. But this is a pretty tough record as far as I can tell. I think everything from 'Where Is That Place?" to "Children's Crusade" to even "Without Love"—which has a positive chorus, but the verses certainly aren't particularly polite to anybody—is harder lyrically and tougher philosophically than Foodchain. I don't know what the function of this music really is, within the church or out on the street. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do ultimately. God knows, I don't, I just know I'm apparently supposed to write it, 'cause I don't know what else to do. I've never considered myself an evangelist at all. I think I'm just a journalist, you know, and even from a purely secular journalistic point of view, obviously something is very wrong in the Western world, and anyone with the ears to hear can sort out what the answer might be.

HRS: The themes on the new album seem to be, to a certain extent, an extension of those developed on Romeo. Songs like "Stay" and "I Can't Stop" continue those themes, don't they?

TK: Yeah, those are the two in particular that sort of connect this record with the last one. But basically I saw this thing coming together as a group of songs about maybe the platform upon which all of those relationships off of Romeo Unchained transpire. This record is the stage where that last record took place, kind of. This is a sort of behind-the-scenes look at just what exactly is going on in the Western world these days. We already know how it's affected us personally, so this is a look at the bigger picture or something—the sort of socio-political-spiritual-theological-psychological platform that we're all trying to act out our lives on.

HRS: Are you able to see themes that run through all your work from the early albums on, or have you disowned the B.C. stuff at this point?

TK: Oh no. Definitely not. The main theme that's connected everything I've ever done I can crystallize in one line out of one song: "What passes for love on the streets these days is a joke." That's been the theme from "HATRED" forward. "HATRED" was a love song in reverse, which I guess a lot of people missed. That song was an outcry against how wrong it's all gone. I don't know if it's with this generation of people, or in this part of this century, or just the heart of darkness getting even darker or what, but real love is certainly not in abundance on the street these days. You can buy anything but love in this culture. Could and can, and that's pretty much true. That's the main theme that has definitely been there in everything I've done. And the sociological-political theme that pretty much runs all the way through all of it is that government doesn't work finally. It's much bigger and much smaller than that, all at the same time. It gets down to the individual heart, and goes up to something as big as a universal, ethical, moral law that finally gets back to the Ten Commandments. Without that stuff being absolutely and rigidly applied, government won't work. Never has, never will.

HRS: Back for a moment to "Tonio Goes Soft"—is it perhaps the razor-sharp wit that the critics miss now? You've got to admit some of the early stuff was pretty funny, and the tone of the newer albums more serious. Have you lost your sense of humor?

TK: No, I actually think it's better. It's smarter now. I'm sure it could be what people are reacting to. It's nothing I can do anything about. You do what you do naturally, hopefully, and if you don't, then you're forcing something, and that won't be any good. So, you know, things just change. As you change, things change.

HRS: What are you referring to, something you've read?

TK: Yeah, something I had read, and something I had heard from a psychologist, that people that tend to have experienced certain psychological things in their lives are more inclined to be satirists and that type of thing than others, which I found real interesting.

HRS: Why do you think it is that certain groups of Christians tend to have such a hard time with satirical concepts?

TK: I honestly don't know. It's obviously not that they're any less intelligent or quick or clever than the rest of the cross-section of society, because they are a cross-section, so it's all the same stuff. For whatever reasons, I think they tend to be more fearful of letting anything else in. I'm not sure why that is, but the idea of that big bad world out there getting anywhere near their front porch scares them. Maybe because deep down they don't feel they're up to defending themselves against it or something. I think there is just a lot of fear involved in the lives of many people, not just Christian people. Most people are afraid of something, and it's usually fear of being wrong, unacceptable, unlovable, and stuff like that. I think anything that challenges what they're completely in control of makes them afraid, and obviously something satirical, or something beyond what they've compartmentalized as their worldview, challenges and frightens them.

HRS: And people do interesting things when they are frightened.

TK: Yeah, "interesting" is the polite word. And that's not to judge or condemn them by any means, but I think that's what keeps a Christian subculture to itself. You can see it on TV, those people that sit in audiences and allow those nameless TV evangelists to just harangue them. Somehow they feel safer being harangued and told what to believe by authority figures like that, who are literally yelling at them more often than not, than having to think for themselves.

Some of it is good. We as believers, people who believe the same thing, and we as the church, the connected group of like-minded people, need one another. We definitely need to be continually reminded of what it is that we believe, encouraged to hold on to those beliefs, and supported in our attempts to live the life that our beliefs imply that we should. But I don't think, as far as I can tell, we were called to do that to the extent that some people seem to be spiritually snickering at the rest of the people in the world. I don't think we were ever called to run away from the world; we were just called not to be like it.

HRS: By now, I presume most of our readers have caught the 'Without Love" video on MTV. For the sake of those that haven't, however, tell us a bit about it and who was involved in the making of it.

TK: It's real abstract. I'm sort of the narrator and there's a lot of really nice camera work. Just visuals of what the world is like. And there's a girl in it who one could interpret as looking for love, and seemingly never really finding it. Sort of flitting and running through every scene. They wanted to do a performance piece, 'cause this is the first thing we've ever submitted to MTV, and they wanted to establish me and the band. So we went out to the Cabazon Dinosaurs out on Interstate 10, where the album cover was shot, and filmed the band from the ground and from the air with a helicopter, playing as if we were a few more statues amongst those dinosaurs. There's no heavy theological connotation.

HRS: No crosses falling off of dinosaurs and impaling "the devil inside"?

TK: No, no, nothing like that.

HRS: Is that the first time you've done any video work?

TK: I've done live stuff before. I've actually done some other stuff, but nothing that we've ever finished, or ever submitted to MTV or anybody.

HRS: Who directed this?

TK: A guy named Cary Gries directed it. And Geoffrey Barrish was the principal photographer. I think Cary's either won or been nominated for an Emmy or something. And Geoffrey Barrish is an unbelievable photographer.

HRS: Of all the songs on Notes from the Lost Civilization, I think "Children's Crusade" intrigued me the most. It kind of nailed me personally, to be honest with you. I think you're talking about me there, along with a lot of other people in the '60s that bought the hippie agenda, or the pre-drug hippie, 'cause I really wasn't a druggie. But I definitely was an idealist and I think that's still a part of me as a Christian. How is idealism in music different in the '80s, and is it better, or is it the same trap as the '60s?

TK: I think the only ideals that are worth holding to and will stand a chance of working are Christian ideals. I think the ideal of peace and love, without defining terms, was bound to fail. Because what peace and love in the '60s meant and continues to mean, under other guises these days, is completely self-indulgent and selfish grasping and greediness. What was meant by a lot of that hippie ideology and philosophy was, "I'll do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and with whom I want to do it, and screw you if you don't like it."

HRS: Is that why so many of yesterday's hippies became today's yuppies?

TK: Of course. Here was this whole generation of people who suddenly hit the streets with a pocket full of money, and somehow were able to shout down their parents and do what they wanted. Ultimately the breakdown of authority that was the linchpin of the whole movement was and is a bad thing. I mean no one knows any more what is good or bad, or wrong or right, or what will or won't work, or what is or isn't acceptable. The whole culture just shifts to the brutal, as people's selfish needs drive them on.

HRS: Is that what we mean when we say, "Christ saved me from myself?"

TK: Well, yeah, I would say that's probably the big difference. What we all mean when we say that is we've come to understand that this is a creation, not just some dumb accident spinning through space. And that there is a Creator, and that Creator is unfathomable. I mean, about all you can say is "I Am." We don't even have the language to describe that Creator. But the great I Am, the great God of Israel, has told us certain things about ourselves and about how we can live this life, here and now, in this particular space-time continuum that we're on. And that Jesus was that Creator of the universe, in the flesh, on earth, for several reasons, some of which are almost too wonderful to even contemplate. The atonement and redemption are very heavy stuff. I think most people only think they understand them.

Anyway, if you wanted to just reduce it down to what it really is: The Creator of the universe and his Christ have told us and shown us what will and won't work in life. And that's on a psychological level, a sexual level, a social level, an economic level, a familial level. I mean, there are certain things that will and won't work sexually. There are certain things that will and won't go into the forming of healthy people. And all of that stuff is basically the Ten Commandments.

The hippie ethos of "Have sex with everyone you want to; it will be OK as long as you're not hurting anyone" is utter jive. In fact, human sexuality is so intricate, and the sexual act is so intense, and so intimate, that you can't share that with just anybody. You can only share it successfully with someone who is unconditionally committed to you, and that implies marriage. If someone is not unconditionally committed to you, at some psychological level, you're going to have a problem if you share yourself sexually with them, not to mention at a physiological level these days.

Finally, you could reduce the whole law down to what Jesus reduced it to: Love the Lord your God with everything you've got, which includes your mind (and understand what it is you're even talking about), and then try and love one another the way you want to be loved. I know I'm really waxing theological here. I certainly don't consider myself particularly knowledgeable, but that's my systematic theology. (laughs)

Thom "It's spelled with an 'h'" Granger is the former Editor of CCM and has written for Harvest Rock Syndicate on John Hiatt and Van Morrison.