29
Original/ Rock/ Punk Rock (get all that?). Big Al Staggs and Slicky Bob (the guy who named the band) are the original founding members.
Slicky Bob left the band leaving an opening for Eric Nestor to join. Along with original bass player Markus Wegener, the trio wrote the first EP ' All You Can Eat' recorded by Bob Smith at Earworks Recording in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Scott Carlisle (The Earatations) joined the band along with drummer Rick Murphy (Starving Artists).
Cellar Door Records signed the band and it was here that Stacy Heydon entered the picture, being brought in to produce the band's LP 'A Mother's Nightmare'.
Stacy already had a very impressive resume in his own right. One accomplishment stands out above the rest and that was being David Bowie/Iggy Pop's lead guitarist from 1978-1980. Other attributes include producing Canadian acts like Sherriff and Teenage Head. He produced Sherriff's only album and turned their song 'When I'm With You' into a #1 hit in the U.S.
Stacy also produced Left Wing fascist's second album, 'All Fired Up' in 1995 but the album enjoyed little success. The band split up and it wasn't until 29 years later that Big Al and Scott Carlisle got together again to record their third album, 'Oxymoron', bringing in Stacy to produce yet again. Stacy even did some guitar work on the album.
There were 'rumors' that Stacy was a bit of tyrant during the recording sessions in all 3 albums. To the point where one certain member of the band was 'terrified' of him. Rumor it may be but it does make for interesting story telling.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Big Al and Stacy recently and who better to tell the story then two of the main participants involved?
With me today is Big Al Staggs from the Left Wing Fascists of Norfolk, Virgina and Canadian producer, Stacy Heydon . . .gentleman, welcome to Q108 Kingston . . .
Going through the bios of both the band and Stacy - there's enough material for a full length documentary - heck, even a mini-series. When I read over some of the tidbits Big Al sent me regarding Stacy and the band in the studio together, I thought, 'wow - this is better than Metallica's 'Some Kind Of Monster'
Stacy, you produced the song 'When I'm With You' by Canadian band Sherrif, which became a #1 Billboard Hot 100 hit in the U.S. Was that the only song of theirs that you worked on?
Stacy: No, actually I produced that entire album. Sheriff only put out one album. I think it was just self entitled 'Sherriff' and the story's pretty interesting.
I just found them playing in a steakhouse in north Toronto and they had the spandex going and playing Uriah Heep and all the rock stuff of the day. I was just on a date actually and happened to just bump into them and I heard this kid's voice. So I went up to the band at the end of the set and it turned out Arnold Lanni the keyboard player was the leader of the band and I said look 'Would you guys be adverse to going into a studio? Why don't I take you to Phase One up there in Toronto?'
Doug Hill and Paul Gross had this great studio up there and we did some demos. Push came to shove and I got us some financing and we did a record. We sold it to Capital then the story went from there.
Two members from that group, Arnold Lanni and Wolf Hassel went on to form what is still one of my favorite Canadian bands, Frozen Ghost. Did You do any work with them?
Stacy: No, Frozen Ghost was much after Sherriff. I don't know if you know much history about that #1 hit (Sherriff's) in the United States, 'When I'm With You'. I had finished mixing that thing about seven years before it went number one.
That all happened because of a dj in Vegas just started playing it on his candle light hour. It was a gold station down in Las Vegas. We started to get a bunch of requests for it and lo and behold, seven or eight years after we released the record it went to number one over Tone Loc, Michael Jackson, the whole lot. So, I was lucky enough to have a hot one hundred Billboard from a record I mixed and produced eight years earlier.