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Juan Croucier of Liquid Sunday/RATT
October 1, 2004
Carmine Rose Juan Croucier: Thank you. Well, before Ratt broke up in 1992 I had been producing and engineering records for other bands from various studios including The Cellar. But to answer your question, I finished the Liquid Sunday record in late 2001 so it was a few years ago and since then I took about two years off from my studio. I needed the time off. Although no one may know it, I have produced and engineered hundreds of sessions/records for bands and artists, most of which that have never seen the light of day. A few of the sessions/records I did really took a lot of effort for me not to quit them over various reasons and one of the last full length records that I did for a band who’s name I’m not going to mention, was abusive, ignorant and just plain lame, so I decided to only focus on my records and songs from that point on out. I mean, if people are never going to hear the records that I make anyway, they may as well be my records, not some unknown and never to be known band. After all, time goes in one direction and I’m into quality not quantity. JC: Thank you, I really appreciate that. These days, any recognition means a lot to me because it seems that rock music is just not in style anymore. I have been playing and singing everything on my song demos since about 1978 so, it was just a matter of doing the same thing. I had played everything on my demos out of necessity so, now that I’ve been doing it for so long, it just comes naturally. Over the many years of making demos for myself I also became very interested in producing and engineering. JC: I’ve been playing guitar for about 31 years. But in the early years I really sucked at guitar and was into trying to be a really good bass player and also a good singer. Of course, no one would know that because I have always played bass in all the bands I’ve been in. But I have always loved the guitar as well as the other instruments in modern songs. They are all just sounds in an audio picture. JC: I had a band that I started in late 1997 -- Liquid Sunday. (If your wondering why I didn’t have a band before it, right after Ratt broke up in ’92 it was because I became distracted by other personal failures, E.G., divorce and decided to commit myself to being a good stay home father to my two sons.) Anyway, my brother Rick and I had been the core of the band. We went through a lot of auditions for guitar players and line up changes. Eventually, Rick became too busy with his other band The Turtles and ‘personal goals’ to be able to rehearse, so I got a replacement for him and that band lasted about two more years. Our last show was I believe in November of 2002. Now that I think about it, Rick did the first show we ever did together and the last show we ever did together. I videotaped all the show’s we did. It was just a three-piece band. JC: All of the songs on that CD were inspired by either Love or Suffering. Love and pain have always been very inspiring to me. : ) What I did for that record was to put a group of songs together that I thought would run well together on a CD. It was meant to be an example of the different styles that Liquid Sunday was about, encapsulated, like an appetizer. Then of course, I added to that various elements that tie the whole record together as a whole, the fade-ins and the reaccouring themes, backward music, etc. So, the record is actually meant to be heard from the beginning to the end as a while piece of work. But I included song ID’s to jump from track to track JC: As soon as I get my ass back into the studio! I’ve been saying that I’m going to do it for about 6 months now. Of course, the songs are all done but I work full time now and when I get home, work out and eat, etc., I’m usually done for the day. Gone are the days when I could just focus on music 100% of the time! Ouch! Seriously though, I have a record for a band called Desensitized that is coming up and then I have a project from Japan I’m doing also. After that, I’ll pick the songs for, “Volume 1 of Demos From The Ratt Years,” I have to get it out before the end of the year. Then, I’m going to do another Liquid Sunday record but I may just make it an official solo record and call it Juan Croucier. At least some people will remember my name from the Ratt days. No one knows who Liquid Sunday is and I would not expect Ratt fans to remember me in another band. So, “Juan Croucier of Ratt fame,” sounds like the way to go. Liquid Sunday was going to be a long term band, lock, stock and barrel. I wanted to just be a member of it. But I soon found out that some people (with the exception of Rick and I) didn’t want to work very hard to succeed in a rock band. They want it handed to them. So, Liquid Sunday ended up just being Rick and I on the CD. JC: The Cellar Recording Studio has always been a great venture for me. But I knew when I built it that I could always at least fall back on making my own records and stay busy doing that. For a long time I did a bunch of different types of bands, from progressive rock to punk rock to R&B, you name it. When you run a studio the key thing is to stay booked. It’s not really about if you happen to like a band, although, we always knew every persons name in the studio and we have always kept a very high standard. But it’s really about keeping the record light lit. I don’t recommend running a professional studio. Most of them go under and loose money. A lot of artists don’t pay their studio bills! But those are the things you never hear about. JC: Wow, good question! No one has asked me that in a very long time. I’ll keep this short. I was in both bands for about a year and a half, while Dokken remixed Breaking The Chains, with Michael Wagener, I was out playing shows with Ratt. The Dokken camp thought that Ratt was kind of a joke at the time so, they didn’t care if I did a few shows around town with them. But after a while, Ratt started doing much better and they didn’t like me being in the band. They feared people would be ‘confused’ as to who the bass player in Dokken was so, they (Dokken and management) asked me to quit Ratt. They were paying me a small salary so I had to do what they said. Before I left Ratt, I negotiated with the ‘Dokken camp’ to be able to record the Ratt EP. That was the last thing I did with Ratt before going back to Dokken again. A few months after that Robbin and Steven came over to my place to give me a copy of the EP. While we hung out I immediately put the record on and upon hearing it right then and there, it confirmed what I had already known, my heart was in Ratt. So, eventually I had to pick between the two bands. Of course, I picked Ratt. And the Dokken guys were not too bothered by it. I don’t think George Lynch ever really respected me very much as a musician. (The mind-set was, why respect the bass players musicianship when you’re the lead guitar player?) SO! Having said that, I never got a penny from the Breaking The Chains record. The ripped me off. Cliff Bernstein and Peter Mench, Dokken’s management at the time, really helped to screw me over on that one. Mench later apologized to me (after we were successful and it was so obvious that we were on our way to being big) for saying what a mistake I was making by picking Ratt over Dokken. JC: Like working with fire and water and being the mud. Dokken was originally a three-piece band. It consisted of Don on guitar, Greg Pecka on drums and myself on bass, Don and I both sang. We played all over Hollywood and Southern California as well as toured Germany in late early 1979. In late 1979/80 Don and I joined forces with George and Mick. Don and George never got along. They were just together because Don had conned George and Mick into playing with us. George, was on a mission to get his talent/band heard and Van Halen had already beaten his band to ‘the-record-deal-punch.’ So, he was easy prey for Don’s scamming ways. All due respect to Don because I respect him for trying so hard, but in those days he would just talk, talk, talk… And right off the bat, there were problems. Don used to mix the truth with lies to keep you hoping: the donkey with the carrot dangling in front of it. That didn’t work with George and I and the problems escalated from there. That may have been why George was so closed to my song ideas. I remember showing him the song Lack Of Communication and his response to me was, “that riff is just too simple and repetitive.” I told him, “the riff is just part of the song, listen to the vocals over the top of it to get the whole picture.” But he didn’t want to get it. He was too focused with his battle with Don to bother working up new songs with the bass player. (I could not get a song in edgewise, and that was a very big problem to me.) George and Don were always at odds over Don wanting to continue to play guitar while singing in the band. George wanted Don just to sing and not play guitar but Don had been the guitar player/singer in Dokken not just the singer so, it was just a huge mess. I remember thinking to myself, “how are we going to go out on stage and have a good time with all this shit going on internally from day to day?” It was just drama after drama everyday. Pure bullshit. I was the odd man out and out I went, enter Jeff Pillson. RNR: How did you get to be the bass player of Ratt? JC: Bobby Blotzer and I had played together in a bunch of bands and two weeks after I took him to “audition Ratt,” he called me and asked me to come play bass for Ratt. JC: Dokken: playing the clubs in Hollywood back then with bands like Van Halen and Quiet Riot. Touring Germany. Ratt: also, playing the Hollywood clubs and going on to tour the world many times over. Selling a millions of records and having a great stage show. JC: Ratt. JC: Women, oh wait, you mean bands! Okay: Top three of all time are: Todd Rundgren, Don Henley, Daryl Hall. The others are: Eagles, Alice Cooper, Yes, Beatles, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, ACDC, Utopia, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever, James Taylor, Steve Wonder, Steely Dan, Foreigner, Traffic, Pink Floyd, Geneses, T-Rex, Mountian, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, James Gang, ELO, Hall And Oats, Ultravox, Tom Petty, Jeff Beck, The Police, Most of Motown. Scores of others I can’t name right now because of the next question. JC: I was just around music because of my older brothers (Tom and Louie) love of music. I can actually say that I remember seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan both weeks they were on. It was on a round black and white TV. I’ll never forget it. The girls in the audience were crying and I didn’t understand why they were having such a strong reaction to their music. I soon found out why. That helped to ‘inspire’ me also. JC: It’s a sad state of affairs. I think the day of the great songwriting hard rock bands has come and gone. Rock is not in style anymore anyway. Sure there are exceptions but things like the internet, file sharing, raves, rap, hop hip, country and a million channels on your TV has killed rock music and live show’s as well. It’s just not in style anymore. Rock music lovers are the minority now. Oh and The Darkness, those guys are just kidding, right? The part of a song that I heard by them sounded like they were making fun of rock music like some kind of parody/Spinal Tap 04 or something… It didn’t grab me as a serious band. I mean come on, that falsetto shit was laughable. Maybe, they are serious! Nothing surprises me anymore. But I hope rock music comes back around again. JC: It was very sad and also a relief at the same time. It was a very dark descent for me. Ratt should have never broken up. We were in debt at the time and it was not a good time for a certain person to quit, it was a very stupid move that affected the whole band in a very negative way. Ignorant. BUT WE DID BREAK UP! Believe me, no matter what you have heard, we broke up and I paid for it, dearly. Stephen Pearcy really blew it for us. He was out of his mind, no one could reason with him. In 1992 not only did my band break up but very soon after that I learned that I had married the wrong woman; a subject that I never like to talk about. (I made the classic mistake of not paying attention to the details/people in my life. I trusted many of the wrong people.) It was a paradigm shift. And still after that I made huge mistakes as well! But I learned that I am a true survivor/fighter and no matter what, as long as I am breathing, I will always try my best to be loyal to my personal believes of who I am and what I’m about. And I will always be a musician. RNR: Any chance you will ever get back with them? JC: A lot of damage has been done with all the talk on the Internet and the lawsuits, etc. Much of what they have said about-and to each other, has been shown to the world. I really wish that they had known how things were coming off to the fans of the band before they had said some of the things they have said on the Internet and press, as well as done to each other. Boy, I sure remember being so close to joining them and also voicing my side of things too. But I never the hit send button. Left alone, they managed to fuck things up enough. At this point, I would not consider being part of a Ratt reunion on any level. And don't get me wrong, I was trying to be reasonable and cooperative. I even attempted (why, I don't know) to be a liaison between some of the parties involved but we hit a brick wall. Let me just leave it at that. I don’t “need to be in Ratt anymore.” I have not counted on Ratt for over 12 years now. Recording as Ratt is pretty much out of the question for me. Why? As I said before, rock is out of style and we never really gelled as co-writers anyway. To be part of a good songwriting team with other people, everyone has to be honest about their abilities and not just change things because they are the singer, etc. You have to have a good grasp of the songwriting concept. I remember some of my songs getting changed before the person who was making the changes had even learned the song! To clarify what I am saying, when co-writing songs, you need to learn the song first, understand the concept of it and then, if needed, make change suggestions to the original writer of the piece and if your both in agreement that it is an improvement, you keep going from there. Not the other way around. Moreover, if you have heard the Liquid Sunday record you can probably figure out my end of the story. JC: We were sitting around my home after a rehearsal, trying to come up with names, I knew the kind of name I didn’t want for the band and most of the members at the time agreed. And as I sat there at the table, I kind of went into that song side of my brain and said, “we could be something really bazaar like, ‘Liquid Sunday.’” That was the statement verbatim. A couple of the guys said, “that sounds cool.” And the name grew from there. It stuck. I didn’t want a name that you could tell what we were about from, or a one-word name. At the same time I knew that my back round was in hard rock. Little did I suspect the powerful stigma that came with terms like “hair bands and 80s bands.” I’m proud to have been part of that rock era but I love to make all kinds of music and it’s disheartening to hear so many new ‘categories’ of music when in my mind, it’s all really open game. Good music is good music. There is good and bad in all music, regardless of any category. JC: Rock music could regain part of the market share it used to have if there is ‘a tiring’ of rap and hop hip (yes, I know it’s called hip hop) music. But I also think it’s a case of over-all-sensory-overload with all the new things we have in our world and also the ever popular, “artistic minds verses the financial minds.” In other words, it’s all about the money, not the art -- sad, but true. In regards to older bands regaining their market share, it depends on the sincerity of their motivation. But there is another factor, the age of the commercially strongest market, E.G., the young kids that buy most of the records and go to the shows. That marketing ‘bump’ has always been there but is always changing. Kids grow up and generations that come after want to ‘define their like’s and the music that set’s them apart from generations before them.’ If you can remain relevant, keep musical and artistic integrity, then yes. But with most bands, the answer is no. Unless, they have just been previously perceived as superstars. Anomalies usually prevail. JC: Sorry, it took me so long to get this interview back to you. It’s the downside of being a boss/working fool. And sorry about Ratt not being the band it used to be. In my mind the band ended on stage September 14th 1991 at Irvine Meadows in Orange County, Ca. As I said before, Stephen was simply out of his mind at the time and their wasn’t a thing we could do. Lastly, over the years, I tried my best on stage and in the studio for the Ratt fans. But everything I tried didn’t stop the cancer from destroying what we had built and could have potentially been. They call that “the breaks.” And please, I’m not bitter it’s just that I’m not going to lie about the facts either. Despite popular belief, we’re not all brainless idiots, just because we’re musicians. Real musicians love the art, or what is left of it. We (Ratt) made a huge mistake. Something went horribly wrong and it just slowly fell apart piece by piece. In retrospect, we never even had the balls collectively tell our fans the band had broken up as an announcement, officially. That is thin. Weak. What a let down. And for that I am very sorry. But if we reunited, would you come to see us again? I love you all! Thank you, for your time, Juan
Featuring the following songs:
Thanks goes out to Juan Croucierfor taking his time to talk to us. |
Artist Interview:
Album Review:
Keel |
You remember in 1983 when Dokken hit the scene with Breaking The Chains? Remember when Ratt's Out Of The Cellar dominated the charts in 1983? Well Juan Croucier was the bass player in both bands, at the same time. As the story goes he ultimately took the Ratt gig over Dokken! This may sound biased, but I, personally believe that this is the best interview anyone has ever sent to us. Juan took quite a while to send this, but he's a very busy guy, and as I said, this is the best interview anyone has ever sent us, so we'll let it slide. =) 
RNR: Do you plan to get a band going to play these songs live? 
RNR: You left Dokken right after Breaking The Chains ran its course, did you leave on good terms?
RNR: What was it like working with Don and George?
RNR: What was it like after Ratt broke up?
This record features Juan Croucier and Rick Croucier. It is the first record Juan has released since his days in Ratt. It is produced, engineered, performed and mixed by Juan and accompanied by his brother Rick on drums.