Check out Matt Coker’s mini-interview with Exene Cervenka: Exene X's Out Nostalgia.
X, for which Cervenka is lead singer, was perhaps the greatest of LA area bands in the 80s. I listened to them while in grad school at UCI; meanwhile, a younger Rebel Girl was closer to the action in South LA County. I’ve gotta get her to write about that scene.
Back to Cervenka. Coker asked her to reminisce about the recording of the band’s classic debut album, Los Angeles. Reluctantly, she did, speaking of producer Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist who, fourteen years earlier, discovered Jim Morrison for his band the Doors:
[Manzarek] read X lyrics in an L.A. Reader review slamming the band, [and he] realized the verse nailed the times and immediately sought out a show in whichever La-La Land hole X were playing at the time. ¶ Blown away by the haunting harmonies of Cervenka and her future ex-husband John Doe, as well as the musicianship of guitar god Billy Zoom and hot drummer D.J. Bonebrake, Manzarek made the proper introductions, went on to back X on keyboards live, and produced Los Angeles and three subsequent, critically acclaimed albums.
“Even though it was really serious, it was still really fun,” Cervenka says of the Los Angeles sessions. “We were kids, and we’d do a take, and I remember hearing Ray over the phone telling us, ‘Remember, this is forever,’ which is the worst thing you could say, and he knew that. But, guess what? We just stopped goofing off.”
She says Manzarek “did an amazingly great job,” although she now wishes the engineering on that record had been better.
“In New York and London, they had state-of-the-art studios for people like Brian Eno and Elvis Costello. Stuff was taken more seriously in those cities,” she recalls. “Here, our engineering, when you even got in good studios, those engineers used to work with the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, country rock, hair rock. They had their version of what a snare drum sounds like. Ray would have to communicate what he wanted to people who couldn’t speak the language we were speaking to get the best sounds.”
Manzarek, who is joining the band on keyboards for the first time in 30 years at the anniversary shows, deserves the credit as much as anyone for getting the essence of X on record, according to Cervenka. “It was very live, very much uncensored, pretty raw,” she says. “I think what that captured was more important than the tone or whether the drums could have sounded better.”….
