The Comeback Of Gino Vannelli - Gavin Report, 1985

Gino Vannelli has spent more than half his life making music. Along with brothers Joe and Ross, Gino was influenced by early R&B legends James Brown and Otis Redding.By the mid-seventies he was signed to A&M Records and he became an early proponent al synthesizers. After a string of choice singles and intriguing albums, his career came to a sudden halt in 1981.He still can't quite explain away his absence, but the recent success of his comeback single, "Black Cars" and the recent release of his latest single, "Hurts To Be In Love," make up for lost time. Gino is also about ready to take up live performance again and may make his re debut at the upcoming Canadian Live-Aid concert.

RF: I was surprised to learn your roots were actually in Canada. Where did you grow up?
GV: Montreal, Canada. Montreal was not much of a city then. I grew up quickly in the 60's.

RF: You certainly have a grasp for production, at least you know how to get yourself to do what you need to do. As teenagers, you and your brothers put together a band called the Jacksonville Five.
GV: Umm-humm.

RF: Were you having fun with another band with a similar name?
GV: We put that together in 1965. I think the Jackson Five was in '69.

RF: So we could clear that up that you were not trying to have fun with the Jackson Five at that point.
GV: No no. R&B was getting very big in Montreal, and we were a bit of a bar band. We really wanted to emulate our black heroes.

RF: Who were those heroes?
GV: Oh yeah, all those records that were sort of a beginning underground records that became universal records: James Brown, Otis Redding, The Bar-Kays, The Chiffons, The Orions, The Teflons.

RF: (Laughter)
GV: And at that time Patti LaBelle too. All the Apollo. I can't even remember a lot of them now, but we were just tremendous fans of those records then. So we said The Jacksonville Five was a hip black band and we were just white, lower middle class, rural Italian boys.

RF: (Laughs) Doing R&B?
GV: Yeah.

RF: We know that you do almost all your work with your two brothers. Where do you fit chronologically with brothers Joe and Ross?
GV: Joe is the oldest. I'm the middle, and Ross the youngest. We have been working together for a long time. I guess maybe it was out of convenience at first and then we sort of realized we depended on each other's talents.

RF: Still as a teenager you signed with RCA for Canada and had a minor experience of some type there. Apparently that music didn't cross over the border. But how did you end up making contact with A&M Records?
GV: It actually started from the day I signed with RCA in Montreal. That further lead me exploring avenues in New York and then I followed avenues that I explored and failed in New York. I moved on to LA. So I guess ifs the domino theory. Getting to A&M was at first no easy task then all of a sudden it just fell like matter from the sky out of nowhere.

RF: Were you and your brother showcasing in L.A. and someone discovered you?
GV: No, nothing like that. A lot more, again it was sort of a low-class dream. You're there and you're hoping to meet somebody. You're hoping somebody is going to walk by or be at the right place at the right time. All the drama and then you swear you hear timpani in your head. We were there for three or four months, trying to meet people. Finally, our money ran out and I decided I was going to try to barge through the gates of A&M and try to meet Herb Alpert or wait until he came out of his office and just run up to him and see what happened. I found the locked up gates and I said it was now or never because I had a flight out in two days after that. I just barged through the gates and put out my hand and hoped he wouldn't punch me out or sick the guard on me. But he started talking to me and was very gracious. He allowed me to play some songs for him and became very interested. Two days later I was signed to A&M Records.

RF: And how long did that relationship last professionally?
GV: Oh, it lasted from '73-74 to 1979. So,it was a good five or six years there.

RF: And probably two of your biggest hits came during that era."People Gotta Move" and "I Just Wanna Stop." How did those records affect you? Did everything seem to accelerate with having successful records?
GV: Well, I never looked at it, unfortunately perhaps, much to my chagrin. I never really looked at music as a means of getting monetary satisfaction. It was all very serious to me. I did what I a to do to feel self-satisfied ... proving myself that I was an artist that I was wort y of whatever it is that makes an artist think he is an artist. To me, each album was just another chapter.

RF: You did seem to go from a singles philosophy into more thematic thing. You were stretched out. The songs seemed to be getting longer as the albums went along.
GV: Yeah, and I think it was also a sign of the times. Music was a little more experimental in the 70's, it wasn't as formulized as today. Artists were trying things. So we experimented very much with synthesizers and extra parts of songs and working on songs of "theme" rather than three minute songs.

RF: What are your thoughts now with pop music being dominated so much by synthesizers? Do you think we could be guilty of some overkill? Or do you like the flexibility the synthesizer type machines afford the artist?
GV: I think you have answered some of the question, but I look at instruments as vocabulary. I look at instruments as the means. But it is not the end, by far. You can be modern. You can be a modern thinking man. You can be a man who is contemporary and perhaps further the contemporary senses milling around in your mind and not even get close to a synthesizer and be just as modern and just as progressive as anybody else. I think people who depend on synthesizers to bring across modern thought and modern wave lengths are probably going to be the first to be accused of overkill. But the people who use a synthesizer as an instrument, as they would a violin, or a guitar, I don't think they are ever going to hurt their careers or their music. You can't say to yourself,"We're going to be an all synthesizer band," because you might as well call yourself The Synthesizers. First you've got to make good music, then use whatever you have available to further along that goal.

RF: You seem to be saying that you've got to be "saying" something on top of that music.
GV: Obviously everybody has access to the same synthesizers. Everybody has access to the props and programmers are the same. But it's going to go in waves ... perhaps in the future in some minor rebellion against synthesizers, but obviously we're becoming more digitized and more electronically inclined. But that should just help us get our point across that much more pleasantly.

RF: You've been missing for most of the last four or five years. What was your last record before Black Cars?
GV: Nightwalker in '81.

RF: Where have you been the last four years?
GV: Well, I don't think I can answer that take place before I could be as honest as I would like to be. All I could say is I really couldn't come out with the whole truth without being a little too candid. So I'd rather just say some things happened in my career that were unforeseen. I had a noose around my neck. I think I finally got that off.

RF: At least you're back on the airwaves and you've got product in the stores. Actually, part of your re-birth took place in Europe. The album we now have on our desks was out in Europe last Fall. Was there something from a contractual standpoint that made it easier to release product in Europe?
GV: It was all part of the knots of the noose around my neck. It was very difficult to make any kind of move upwards, downwards, or laterally in the United States. So I had to just go where it was less conspicuous. And things started happening for me first in France and then PolyGram picked up world wide. Then it got over to the states and finally people started thinking I was marketable enough and viable. Because, on top of being away for four or five years, a lot of things have changed in music, including the visual revolution. A lot of people had this sexist misconception on the interpretation of who they thought I was. It was very difficult after three, four, five years away to let people know who I really was.

RF: We talked about this noose around your neck. Did this prevent you from performing live? Or was it something you didn't feel the need to perform? In other words, were you also out of the live arena during the same period of time?
GV: Yes, indirectly it does because honestly a sound-minded artist knows he's not going to go on any kind of graveyard shift and you're not going to start performing songs of the dead. I'm just too young to be playing golden oldies.

RF: Between the last Arista album and this one, you seemed to have gone through an image change as well. In coming back, were you looking for a specific image outside of your music?
GV: Yeah ... But not really much. I think the whole world got a haircut since 1980, so I don't think I'm really alone in that respect.

RF: How do you feel your music has changed during your lay-over?
GV: I don't feel that objective about myself to comment on myself. All I can say is that as an artist I try my best to deal with all the obstacles ... all the adversities that I'm dealing with and the first being the energy from within. When you're dealing with the part of music that is the business part of it, in some way you have to maintain your artistry. I think you know what I'm really comfortable around you.

RF: Sure.
GV: You have to be very aware of the fact that you have record companies and agents and it really should be second nature. But many times, when you're trying to get back into the race, back into the business you're all so aware of it you're "hyper" aware of it.

RF: The current album, in lyrical tone, is reasonably somber Could we assume there is a little bk of autobiographical material in the album?
GV: I think the groove you happen to be in at the time will usually be reflected in the songs you're writing at the time. And I guess "Just An Emotion Away" and "Total Stranger" and a few of the other tracks are very much reflective of an isolationist kind of a feeling.

RF: Black Cars, which proved to be a very successful re-introduction for you, also had an outrageous video and a lot of people may not have caught some of the things in the video. Did you play an active role in the concept of the video?
GV: Yeah, I think it was a pretty good video. Derek Burvick is a good director. Its not exactly how I.felt at first but it grew on me.

RF: Do you feel it may have narrowed the listener's interpretation of the song down?
GV: No, I don't think it narrowed down. I think on the up-side it probably at least focused a little bit on what the song was really about. A lot of people have no idea what the song was about. The song was about people with things to hide.

RF: The current single, "Hurts To Be In Love," which is off to a very fast start with pop radio, is an extreme departure from Black Cars, in that the tempo is much more moderate. It's very much in a ballad style. But is this more you? Are you comfortable with this kind of song, or do you like to move it up and down?
GV: Well, even as we speak I've written 25 new songs for the next album. So, that album is already history for me and I'm on to something new. So I can't really look at one song and say "this is me" or "that's where I should be." I'm just one of those thick-headed people who just wants to be or remain an artist I went through it all and I'm just going to write whatever is most compelling or is really bothering me at the time that I think should be put on paper.

RF: The Canadian Live Aid thing. Do you have any thoughts on that?
GV: Yeah, I'm petrified.

RF: In what respect?
GV: Well, ifs strange because in the 70's I based my career basically on live performing. I guess I should be confident But if s been so long since I've been on stage. It has been six or seven years. All I keep doing is practicing in my living room and doing whatever I can do to build up confidence. I don't know, I've been toying with the fact that I might go and do a couple of songs as a guest or something like that.