If you’re a fan of the 80’s L.A. music scene then you’ve probably heard the name Shark Island. Once one of the top bands in Southern California, Shark Island spanned the era from Van Halen to Guns N’ Roses. While their popularity on the Strip didn’t translate to mainstream success they remain as one of the bands that most influenced the look and sound of the era. Frontman Richard Black is back with a new lineup and a new record, Bloodline 2.020, and recently took some time to talk about it.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Richard Black:
On the new version of Bloodline 2.020 – Last year we released just Bloodline straight on our own. And we kind of managed it and sold it to our cult following. We just We do that from time to time. We’ll put out something, we’ll put out a live album or Gathering of the Faithfull we put out, a while back. It kinda took off and it sold out. We just went, “Wow. that was kinda great that it did”. So what we decided to do is we got together with Deko Records and they’re going to handle a larger territory for us. They’re gonna be able to reach Japan and in Australia and South American places that we really that we had a presence there, but it wasn’t really enough to justify. I’m over here on the West Coast, in Santa Barbara and to just mail something from here to England costs more than the product, you know? 1:19
On the new track “Someday” – I went ahead and wrote another song that I’ve been kind of meaning to write and it was called “Someday” and it ended up being the companion song for the last song on the album called “On and On”. And the record was done pre-Covid and this “Someday” was done post-Covid, even though the record was really kind of prophetic as far as the world events and stuff goes. So it was just to differentiate it from our cult release to a traditional type of release to the world. 2:56
“Someday”
On long-time Shark Island guitarist Spencer Sercombe – He decided to just retire from the whole thing. And frankly, I don’t blame him. We had a lot of ups and downs in our career, we’ve been doing this since the early seventies, okay? And it’s a long, long time and grueling, just grueling, up and down and just knocked down, get back up, knocked down get back up. Well, he just didn’t wanna bother with it. He had a family started. He’s living in Germany now as an ex-pat and has a family, and just doesn’t want to be bothered with it. 3:44
“On and On”
On the dynamics of a band now versus back in the 80’s – In this day and age, it really doesn’t matter. I don’t think bands (are any) longer like, “Hey, we’re the band of brothers, and we’re gonna go through thick and thin”. That just doesn’t happen. As much as I would like that to be like that, because really some of my best friends are the people that I did music with. Many hours with each other many, many hours and nights. We shared everything. We really were like brothers. I kinda missed that time. Even with the songwriting, we would write about our lives and what was front and center. And it was easy to figure out what we’re gonna do, where we’re gonna go next because everything was really natural. Now it’s just like, “Gee, what am I gonna write about?” I don’t really care. I mean, when you’re young, you know how the music was. You write about girls, unrequited love. We’ll write about drinking and drugs and women and all that stuff. It’s almost inappropriate to write about that anymore. I don’t think people can really relate. If they haven’t been around to be able to witness what the phenomenon was during the eighties then you can’t even explain it to them. Especially like the phenomenon with the Sunset Strip. It was just beyond description. It was like a crowded day at Disneyland. All the time people dress to impress looking beautiful, walking, intermingling, going to clubs, music everywhere was it was wonderful. It was like Bourbon Street. Right now it’s just it’s kind of a ghost town, and no one really cares. And the only time you go down there is when your friends’ band is playing, and that’s about it. Hard to explain. But for you and I, we got to witness the train leaving the station, so to speak. 8:46
“Paris Calling”
On the impact of Van Halen and becoming a “house band” – When Van Halen was playing Gazzari’s…We kind of model our career after them. And I used to go when I barely had my driver’s license, and we would go down to Gazzarri’s, borrow Mom’s car and go there and watch this band Van Halen play. Van Halen played at my high school dance for crying out loud. So when we went there, when we started playing there, we kind of modeled our lives after how they did it. Our, Sunset Strip gigs, the one that was most popular was the Gazzarri’s gig, an engagement that lasted two years every Friday and Saturday night for two years. And that’s every Friday and Saturday night, was like two shows a night, sometimes three shows a night for the weekend. And it was just part of our gig because we didn’t have day jobs. So we would play Friday and Saturday in Hollywood, and then Sunday we play in City of Industry, and then Monday we play in Huntington Beach, and then Tuesday we would play in Glendora, and then so we played all week long so we had no day jobs. Our clothes perpetually stunk of cigarettes constantly. You hardly had time to even do any laundry, were just constantly, constantly working. But because of that, we had a lot of, so in car racing, you call it seat time, but stage time, you’re on stage a lot. And during the week, there was some shows, there was some nights that we’re doing four shows a night. Like, say Wednesday night, four shows. I ended up feeling more comfortable on stage than I did anywhere. It was like a very nice, comfortable place to be, there was no risk there. I was seemingly in control of the whole thing, and in the centerpiece of thing. It was a very was very enjoyable feeling. 11:31
“Policy of Truth”
On the relationship between bands on the Strip – My perspective, it was kind of nasty. It was nasty. And it was a lot. It was very much…blow them out of the water. The thing is, that in music, and I imagine it’s still the case today, it’s such a desperate kind of industry show business in general is, and I’ll give you an example. I don’t know what the numbers are now, but at the time there was a paper that they stated that there were 10,000 bands in Southern California. 10,000. Okay, so you figure, let’s just be conservative and say each band has four members. That’s 40,000 people trying to become successful musician slash rock stars. 40,000. Now, how many venues do you have? Okay. Well, Hollywood had Gazzarri’s, the Whisky, Starwood, Troubadour, maybe FM Station, you know, 5-6, let’s just say 10. There’s probably some smaller ones, too, so you have those spots, so that’s just to get a gig. You have a competition to get 10 gigs for one night you have 40,000 people that want it, 10,000 bands that want it. What happens when you get those kinds of ratios then it brews a desperation. There’s desperation there. That’s why you hear about the casting couch in Hollywood. You know how people willing to just sell themselves bodily or anything to get where they want to be. And it’s way more common than you could even imagine. And it also happens in music very much, very much so. 14:26
“Bad For Each Other”
On the rumors that Axl Rose stole his stage act from Richard Black – At first, I avoided it and didn’t want to talk about it. And there was a reason for that because if you look at it from my perspective if I say anything at all, it is perceived as sour grapes. Well, you’re just jealous because that happened and that happened, you know? So I had to keep quiet. Couldn’t really say anything. Now, with so much dirty water under the bridge, it doesn’t really even matter. And frankly, as far as what I see Axl Rose doing is not very attractive at all. It doesn’t look good to me. I was a trained modern dancer, you know? I did that, too. I mean, I was a singer, a songwriter, a dancer. I spent a considerable amount of time training and doing all this and thousands of hours on stage. And then here comes a couple of people off the turnip truck and show up in town, and it’s pretty obvious that my kind of stick was appropriated. I’ll tell you one of the things that really got me was we were there at Gazzarri’s like I said every week, and at the time everybody didn’t have cell phones and video cameras with them all the time. People were sneaking in, camcorders with VHS tapes. I mean, I don’t know how you could, I don’t know how they managed to do that. There were people in the back. The places were packed. I mean, the shows were packed shoulder to shoulder, and if it was wintertime, you had a big jacket, you throw it under you. Anyway, I went over to Axl’s pad one time, like some kind of an after-party or something. And he had a TV going in the living room area and on top of the TV, there was I don’t know, 8 or 10 VHS tapes, all marked with Shark Island. He taped some shows verbatim, boom, and one playing as I walked in on TV, no bones about it, nothing was hidden. Well, you know, my heart sank when I saw that. Because I already knew at that time that Guns N’ Roses were getting down with David Geffen and that whole thing. And I knew that the person with the biggest mouthpiece is going to be able to claim whatever, so what can I do? You know, what can I do? He wasn’t able to do anything nearly as good as what I was doing. I’m not trying to boast or anything, but truly. So what happened is the first song that came out is “Welcome to the Jungle”, right. The video of “Welcome to the Jungle”, even by Guns N Roses standard, is largely different than what came after that for them. For Axl, for everybody. It was very much a different vibe, he was dressed differently, more glamour, after that and they decided to try to look like, Hell’s Angels or something. They kind of shifted gears to that. And we weren’t that I was never into that. I was more into, like, elegance and decadence and a trifle raunchy. That’s what I kind of tried to be. That was like what my intent was. So if you look, if one were to look at “Welcome to the Jungle” and one were to remember the Gazzari’s-era time, then the whole similarity is very obvious. but in the grand scheme of things, he ended up at best, getting kind of a jump start for some kind of image. Image is very important then, it is even now, but no one wants to admit it, but image is very important. How how do you want to be perceived? So it ended after that. I mean, and then when you see him now, you know there’s virtually no similarity. But maybe there’s little things that you can’t maybe put a finger on. 17:45
So I hate for it to sound like, again, like sour grapes. And it’s not, because good for him, you know? But I would have hoped… if it was me and something like that would happen, even inadvertently, I would’ve thrown somebody a bone at that point. I mean, I had I didn’t have a record deal for several years after that, and by that time, grunge was already knocking on my door and things were changing. So it was, like, too late, but he could have at any time, any of them, said, “Hey, I got this friend of mine”, or said something in an interview or did something because he knows how desperate it was. He didn’t have to cut his teeth as bad as I did for such a long time, because he was able to appropriate something and kind of move ahead of the line, so to speak. I don’t have to do all that. All that spadework, dig that ditch. I’ve already dug the ditch, you know? So that’s what that is. And I don’t frankly care. My life came out in the grand scheme of things a lot different than I had planned, but I think it’s probably, if I really look at it, it’s probably a good thing because I think I might have been dead. 24:15
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