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Zoo World The Music Megapaper
May 24, 1973
The supreme compliment that you can pay to Doctor Hook and The Medicine Show is that if this group moved next door to you, your lawn would die. To put it mildly Doctor Hook is gross, obscene, raunchy, funky and downright blue. Needless to say they’ve become a vast musical success. The group, thanks to the creative support of Playboy handy-man Shel Silverstein, is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that being very bad can be very good. In a recent interview Dennis Locorriere, Ray Sawyer and Jay David (lead guitar, lead vocal and drummer respectively) answered the musical questions: Is raunch really the best route to rock and roll stardom?
Zoo World: Are you the people our parents warned us about?
Dennis: That’s us.
Ray: I don’t know. Are we the people our own parents warned us about?
Dennis: My mother made me study Latin when I was little. I think she thought I was going to be a junkie.
Zoo World: A great many of your songs describe normally taboo subjects. Why is this the case?
Jay: Well, everything else has been pretty well overdone, man. There’s nothing to the “I Love You” type of song anymore.
Ray: Why not hit the areas that haven’t been hit yet?
Dennis: Shel Silverstein, who writes our tunes, writes about lots of different subjects; like sex and dope and love and kids and lots of other subjects.
Zoo World: Do you consider yourselves musicians or entertainers?
Dennis: We’re more entertainers than musicians. But you’ve gotta know how to play and sing and be able to go past just that kind of thing.
Ray: Entertainment is theatrics or whatever you want to call it.
Zoo World: Do you feel the comedic aspects of your act complament your musicianship and vice-versa?
Dennis: We purposely try to be funny but we don’t purposely play at anything in particular.
Ray: We didn’t start out trying to be funny, it was just something that happened. Ronnie, our producer, picked up on it first. Then our manager said we should add certain things to the act. Its not planned. Its just nuts; things that come into your head.
Dennis: We have a tune called “High Flying Eagle”. Its about an eagle that goes around crapping on everybody. Ray was playing a blues lick in the dressing room one time when I was making this song up. We were all laughing and having a good time with it and Ron says why don’t you put it in the act?
Ray: The stuff we used to do in the dressing room is now the sthick that we do onstage
Jay: The same thing that happened to our playing is now happening to our heads onstage. Now we’re just being ourselves.
Zoo World: Songs like “Freaker’s Ball” and “Get My Rocks Off” tend to glorify what are considered obscene subjects. What do you consider obscene?
All together: Nothing!
Ray: It’s only obscene if you think it’s obscene.
Zoo World: Does anything shock you?
Jay: Not a thing.
Dennis: I haven’t been shocked by anything in a long time.
Zoo World: “The Cover Of Rolling Stone” seems to reduce the whole pop music scene to one big stereotype. Is that what you intended the song to do?
Dennis: It’s not that harsh. It’s more like making fun of it. Ray: I believe I’m trying to put myself in the position of the 14 year old Rolling Stone buyer. I can imagine him with the thought of getting his picture on the Rolling Stone cover so he can show a copy to his mother.
Zoo World: Is there a rock stereotype?
Jay: I think there is. I think what you’re asking is, is that what makes songs pretty? I think what Ray is saying is 100 per cent true for everybody who believes that. And what you’re saying is true. All of them are where it’s at and none of them are where its at. That’s what makes the songs great. That’s what “Sylvia’s Mother” was all about.
Zoo world: a couple of your songs tend to put women in a subserviant role. Are you male chauvinist pigs?
Ray: we don’t think of ourselves as male chauvinist pigs. We like to think of ourselves as the male chauvinist dream.
Dennis: We’re really faggots (laughs). I don’t ever think about any of that. If you do, than you’ve got to be ready to take a stand and I’m not ready to take a stand on anything like my manhood or stuff like that. Sure, some of the things we do may reek of chauvinism. But others don’t.
Zoo World: Bill Graham was quoted as saying that your group is heading for the top. Now that you’re at the top; what next?
Jay: We’ll go over it and right down to hell (laughs).
Ray: You never get to the top.
Dennis: You know whose at the top? Three Dog Night is at the top. Jethro Tull is at the top. We’re fairly popular in England but we’re not at the top in the United States.
Ray: Even when you’re on the top, it’s not like being on the top and relaxing. Its like being on the top and being paranoid that somebody is going to cut you.
Zoo World: Your act is a combination of comedy and music. Have you ever had a show where either one or both of these elements failed you?
Ray: Thank God that’s never happened man. One of them always works. We like to split the difference, play good and do our show good. But sometimes it just runs that way; that you’re doing one thing better than the other.
Zoo World: do you think your rather raunchy appearance has anything to do with your success?
Ray: This is the way we were to begin with. We dress like this because we want to be what we are. We could’ve really done it up when “Sylvia’s Mother” became a hit.
Dennis: We could’ve had shoes with 15 inch heels, with wings on them and wore sunglasses on stage and the whole thing. And we probably would’ve been a hell of an act for about six months.
Jay: Because it wouldn’tve been us if we started doing that.
Zoo World: you’re all very good musicians. Have you had any special musical training?
Jay: Everybody in the band learned to play with some dude holding a gun up to his head (laughs).
Zoo world: “Last mornin’ ” is played rather straight as compared to other songs. Do you try for a balance of funny and serious songs?
Jay: Yeah we do. We’re very conscious of balance in our sets.
Zoo World: Then you’re taking yourselves more seriously as musicians than as comedians.
Jay: Nothing takes precedence. It’s neither one or the other. It’s all just natural.
Zoo world: One of the songs is entitled “The Things I Didn’t say”. Are there things as a group that you have not yet said? Musically?
Ray: We’d like to do some real hard down country. The next album is going to be real funky.
At this point the interview turned into a definite plus as the boys broke into a rousing chorus of “Happy Trails”. Eat your heart out Rubber Dubber.
-Marc Shapiro
