INTERVIEW: Love In Reverse
- Al Muzer
Ask any other three musicians to deal with what Love In Reverse endured following the release of their 1996 major label debut and you just *know* you're gonna wind up with three exploding, imploding, possibly lock and loading long-haired former friends on your hands inside of a year.
Bolstered by a major label deal with Warner/Reprise; a management contract with Megaforce Records founders Jon and Marsha Zazula; radio airplay for the lead single taken from their five-song EP, I Was Dog ; opening slots on successful Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills and Republica tours; a show-long profile on ABC TVs Turning Point; and the high hopes and high praise of a score of national music publications and critics - the Ocean County, New Jersey-based trio comprised of guitarist/vocalist Michael Ferentino, bassist/keyboardist Andres Karu and drummer/tape loop wizard Dave Halpern got to live every bands ultimate dream when I Was Here, their 11-song, Russ (Eric Clapton) Titelman-produced Reprise Records debut, hit the nations retail racks in the summer of 1996.
The only problem, it seems, was that the number of Love In Reverse CDs actually *in* those retail racks appeared to be somewhere in the virtually non-existent category while the retail racks themselves were, apparently, few and very far between.
"I have a few theories," laughs Ferentino when asked about possible contributors for the less-than-Hootie-like sales figures garnered by his group's critically-acclaimed first effort. "If you saw that Turning Point show you know bad marketing decisions were made. They didn't go to alternative radio, there was no video, there was *really* bad distribution - so the record didn't get out to anybody. The only thing we did right was tour," which, he reasons, normally, would have been great "except for the fact that anyone who saw us play live and then went to buy a CD the next day generally couldn't find one."
"The band and the label," proclaims Ferentino as he correctly anticipates the next question, "seem to be on the same sheet of music this time around."
"One thing thats' been a real saving grace for this group," he offers when it's pointed out that most groups receive one shot at the brass ring while his outfit not only got a retry - but their own studio in the process, "because we haven't sold a whole shitload of records, is the fact that the fans we do get are real fanatical. I mean *really* hardcore fans. Love In Reverse is their favorite band kinda fans. Which has," Ferentino adds thoughtfully, "always been one of my dreams, actually. A cult. To be more of a cult thing. Man, If it ever grows beyond that, well - that's just shit I'm not expecting to happen anyway, so..."
The conversation wanders off on tangents that include the label's difficulty pigeonholing - and therefore marketing - LIR's debut ("They had no idea. They were so confused by that record."); musical influences (the Beatles, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Prince, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd and old German electronic stuff); life on the road (most of 1997); his long-time friendship and fruitful creative partnership with Andres and Dave; and songwriting.
Rumored to have composed well-over 300 songs before anyone at Reprise knew he or his band existed, the unusually prolific Ferentino and his freewheeling creative partner, Karu, are childhood friends who spent most of the late-1980s and early-1990s as Dog - a deep, dazzling, baffling, moving, confusing, quirky, confounding, occasionally outrageous, continuously-mutating outfit that sported a huge sound, an intense light show (courtesy of unofficial fourth band member Matt Schmidt), deliberately out-of-sync go go dancers, smoke, silver sparkles and an ability to play their swirling, sprawling, edge-of-darkness hum and agitated, atmospheric, end-of-the-world excursions to 10 people as though they were performing in front of ten thousand.
Surveying the decaying Jersey club scene one day in the latter half of 1994, Ferentino and Karu weighed the prospect of yet another year playing for beer and gas money at the handful of remaining bars that understood (or pretended to, anyway) what Dog was all about. It was time, the two friends decided, for a few changes.
Jettisoning everything but a basic guitar/bass setup, the duo put in a call to Mr. Reality drummer Dave Halpern and invited him to join them in their journey to strange new worlds. Christening the new trio Love In Reverse, the group wrote, rehearsed and recorded a slew of exciting new songs and began shopping a demo that eventually wound up in Jon and Marsha's mailbox at Crazed Management.
Intrigued by what they heard, the Zazulas visited Long Branch, New Jersey to see the band perform at the Brighton Bar and were quickly convinced that their initial impression of Love In Reverse - a major talent in need of a minor push - was on target.
A call to Reprise Records resulted in a showcase at The Saint in Asbury Park, New Jersey that was all the label suits needed to convince them that it was time to take pen out of pocket. One EP, one CD, one brand new recording studio and a solid year on the road brings us not only up to date, but to the trio's brand new 15-song Reprise Records release, Words Become Worms, as well.
"We really got lucky when it was time to make this album," Ferentino says with genuine enthusiasm, "they [Reprise], literally, gave us free reign in the studio. At first, they wanted us to go back in and do a new record right after I Was Here was done. The first thing we told them, however, was that we wanted to do the new album by ourselves. They, much to my surprise, said yes!"
"I was, like, Really?!?" he laughs. "I couldn't believe it! They told me that they didn't hear that much of a difference between my demos and the last album, so there was no need, really, to spend all that money on a producer. I told them I had a few ideas, you know? And, that, if we could just build our own studio, we could do the album completely on our own."
"So, instead of them giving us an advance that we'd only wind up wasting on someone else's time in someone else's studio," Ferentino reasons as though he still can't quite believe his own audacity in asking for it, "I said they should give us the money so we could buy our own studio. We built a 32-track digital studio in Andres' house. We wanted creative control and that's what we got."
"We all feel really good about this record, you know?. A lot of it gets back to the feel of our old Dog stuff," he reflects. "In fact, some of it is old Dog stuff! 'Vast Garden (North and South)' was originally recorded in 1994 and 'American Cream' is also a couple of years old."
"The only real concession (if you could call it that!) we wound up making," he adds when asked about any conditions or suggestions Reprise may have had for the band, "was on the first single, 'Load Of Motivation', in that we brought John Fryer (Nine Inch Nails, Stabbing Westward, Love In Rockets) in to work on the song with us. Otherwise, we were pretty much left alone and allowed to do whatever we wanted to do."
"Some of what wound up on Words Become Words was premeditated. But, a lot of it," he laughs, "well, we went into the studio not knowing *what* was gonna come out. We tried to expand things beyond where we've been before, you know, by just layin' down tracks and fuckin' with 'em until they turned into something all three of us had heard, ya know - but none of us had ever really *heard* anywhere else before."
