NEWS / Nov 29, 2003

BayInsider Talks To Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin

By Dave Pehling

Revered by some critics as one of the best American rock bands of the last two decades, Los Angeles-based outfit Los Lobos has evolved from bluesy roots-rock and Latin origins to incorporate funky R&B grooves, folk and experimental electronica into its eclectic sound. Founded by multi-instrumentalists Dave Hidalgo and Louis Perez, guitarist Caesar Rosas and bassist Conrad Lozano in 1973, the group honed its fiery style of playing at bars, weddings and anyplace else they could get a gig for a decade before actually recording an album.

Before he joined Los Lobos in 1984, saxophone player and keyboardist Steve Berlin had ample experience on the LA music scene playing in The Blasters and starting a promising career as a producer (he would eventually work with everyone from Faith No More to Rickie Lee Jones). When BayInsider recently got a chance to talk with the musician about his time with Los Lobos, the band’s upcoming album and its annual concerts at the Fillmore.

BayInsider: The members of Los Lobos all stay pretty busy with various side projects, solo albums, session work and production work. I was wondering if this helps the band come up with song ideas and different approaches that you take in the studio? Or do you just look at it as a break from Los Lobos?

Steve Berlin: In terms of what it brings to us musically, with every musical experience that I have, I try to learn something from it and take it with me wherever I go. Whether it’s a Lobos project or something else. So, yes to a certain extent; but I’d say probably less than you might think. At this stage in our career, we’re not really trying to reinvent the wheel or anything. We’re just trying to make records that move us. Honestly, at this point we’re more into capturing cool performances and less inclined to try out wacky contraptions, which is unlike what we might have been doing as recently as five or six years ago. As we carry on with this career of ours, the things that really move us become more emotional and less technical.

BayInsider: That kind of touches on my next question: You worked pretty extensively with Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake through much of the ’90s. I was wondering what precipitated the change to producer John Leckie for ‘Good Morning Aztlan’ in 2002? You’ve kind of already answered that …

Steve Berlin: I’ll speak to that if you want. We did three records with them [Froom and Blake] and even Mitchell said “I think you guys need to do something else.” You know, it’s funny to talk about ‘Aztlan’ now, because just this week we’re finishing a new record. I mean, obviously you haven’t heard it; no one’s heard it outside of the band, so it’s a little funny talking about it.

But we produced this one ourselves, which I think is what we were sort of aiming for all along. I mean, there’s no lack of production experience among us: I’ve done a zillion records and Dave [Hidalgo] has done a bunch of records and Cesar [Rosas] has even done a couple, so it’s not like we don’t know how. I’m very happy with the way this one is turning out, so I think at this point the producer, to a certain extent, becomes less of a point of interest. I think it’s more about what we do and how we do it.

Leckie, to his credit, is a fine gentleman and a fine producer. But I really don’t think there’s a note of music on ‘Aztlan’ that I’d say “That was John’s idea.” He’s a great guy to hang out with and he’s a great engineer, but I think we produced that record. I think it says “Produced by John Leckie and Los Lobos.” John engineered it, but we produced it. Now we’re at a stage where that’s what we want to do. There’s no point in sharing credit or paying someone that’s probably not going to come up with any ideas that we like better that the ones we’re going to come up with.

BayInsider: I noticed on the Los Lobos Web site that the upcoming album is a collaborative work that’s going to have new versions of a couple older Los Lobos songs, but that there’s going to be a lot of new material. Could you run down some of the names of the people involved with the recording?

Steve Berlin: We have, in no order whatsoever, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Mavis Staples, Bobby Womack, Richard Thompson, Billy Gibbons [of ZZ Top]. Mitchell Froom actually contributed on one song. Dave Alvin, Cafe Tacuba, Garth Hudson from the Band. I know I’m forgetting somebody … It’s quite a list.

When you read that, people are probably going to think, “Oh, it’s like that Santana record” [‘Supernatural’ from 1999], but where we’ve done something that I hope is going to be interesting is that we’ve actually brought in those people and had them play on our songs. I don’t want to damn with faint praise here; the Santana idea is to sort of bring these people in and in effect have Carlos blowing a solo over these other people’s songs.

These are definitely Los Lobos songs; we just happen to have a really cool vocal or a great guitar part added. You know, it’s kind of like what we like to do live when anybody is around. We just throw them up there and make them work and that was kind of how we went at it. I hope it feels more like a Los Lobos record rather than something coming out of the current collaboration-mania vibe …

BayInsider: It sounds like there are a few people that Los Lobos has collaborated with in the past or that members of the band have done sessions for. Was this a matter of approaching people and just saying “Hey, we’ve worked together before; would you be interested in doing this?” Calling in favors?

Steve Berlin: Exactly. That’s pretty much the way it went down.

BayInsider: So the new album is projected for release when next year?

Steve Berlin: May. This week is allegedly our last week of work. So we’ll see what happens on that …

BayInsider: On a separate subject, I know the band had its biggest mainstream success with the ‘La Bamba’ soundtrack and has done some other soundtrack work, I think most notably on the ‘Desperado’ soundtrack [the second film in Robert Rodriguez’s ‘El Mariachi’ trilogy from 1995]. The versatility of the band would seem to make Los Lobos a natural for soundtrack work; do you get approached often for this kind of thing?

Steve Berlin: There’ve been a few, but it’s less than what I’d like. That’s work that I personally enjoy a lot. It sort of comes and goes. We did a whole season of a television show last year [the WB’s family sitcom ‘Greetings From Tuscon’], which was kind of fun. That was interesting work. But more often than not these days, the soundtrack thing has become a grab bag for people throwing together songs that functionally have nothing to do with what a movie is about. It seems like it’s a little bit harder to come by, but these things tend to run in cycles. Maybe next year there’ll be a bunch of them. A friend of mine called me last night to say that he heard that we were up for something, so we’ll see.

But we enjoy it a lot. It’s a really fun way to make music; it’s not as precious as an album, so you get a little bit more freedom to experiment. The most experimental stuff generally worked the best in most of the soundtracks we worked on, so that makes it fun. There are a few that haven’t come out as records. There was a movie called ‘The Wrong Man’ that we did about six or seven years ago. I think there might have been one song from that on our box set from a couple of years ago [‘El Cancionero: Mas Y Mas,’ released in 2000]; I think the theme from that was on there. We actually did some stuff on ‘Spy Kids’ that was on the record as well, although we didn’t do the whole soundtrack. We did four cues, as they’re called.

BayInsider: So Robert Rodriguez definitely isn’t against using you guys in the future?

Steve Berlin: No, but the bastard’s gone and learned how to play guitar a lot better, so now he’s doing it all himself. We’re mad at him. Well … no, not really. But on the new movie, ‘Once a Upon a Time in Mexico,’ in addition to writing, filming, editing and producing, he also performed the soundtrack, so he has no more use for us unfortunately.

BayInsider: I was kind of curious if you’d been offered work on ‘Once Upon a Time in Mexico,’ but I guess that answers that question …

Steve Berlin: Yeah, we dropped some giant hints, but he didn’t go for it (laughs). You know, the truth of the matter is that he’s just unbelievably talented. Even when we worked together [in the past] it was a lot of fun. He supplied a lot of ideas. He’s really smart, he knows how to play guitar and he’s actually a good engineer as well. His temporary tracks were always really good, so a lot of the time we had to kind of chase his temp tracks and try to make ours as good as what he was coming up with.

We’re happy for him and I’m sure we’ll work together again in the future. In fact, I just talked to him the other day. They’re going to do a DVD box set of the ‘Desperado’ stuff and he had some footage of us in the studio working out the ‘Desperado’ theme and so we were talking about that. They’re going to use what looks like a surveillance video of us writing the song. It’s kind of perfect for what he’s after.

BayInsider: I also read something on the Los Lobos Web site about the band’s 30th anniversary approaching. Is this tour a celebration of that?

Steve Berlin: Well, these shows are our annual Fillmore visit, which we look forward to greatly. But next year, this coming year, will be our 30th anniversary, at least to the best of our ability to tell. It’s sort of an uncertain date of parentage. But we’re going to call it our 30th birthday and that’s kind of the rationale for going back and redoing a few of our older songs on the new record. Honestly, we’re not going to sell it like that. I would personally prefer to underplay the anniversary. I mean, it’s a fact; I’m certainly not going to walk away from it, but I don’t want to make it a bigger deal than it is.

I’m as proud as I could be about the new songs on the record. I think it’s some of our best work and I would hate for the new work to be subsumed by this 30th anniversary deal. If there’s a way to politically play it as another fact in addition to this cool record we’ve made, that’s what I’m kind of hoping for. I’m really just happy to have a career that spans this much time. It’s really not that easy of a thing to do, to stay viable for 30 minutes much less 30 years.

BayInsider: There’s another thing I was wondering about, if only to satisfy my personal curiosity. There are a number of songs on the last few albums that have tunes that are relentlessly funky; has anyone ever approached you about sampling songs from ‘Kiko’ or ‘Colossal Head’?

Steve Berlin: It hasn’t happened yet, but hopefully it will. I would be honored if that were to happen. I think it would be great. We were talking about that yesterday; somebody thought they heard ‘Kiko’ sampled on something, but it turned out not to be. I’d be fascinated to hear somebody take a shot at it. Actually, where you are [in the Bay Area] is where some of the most interesting stuff is happening. A lot of the collectives in Berkeley are doing some really cool stuff, so they can consider this an invitation.

BayInsider: I guess the last question I had was in regard to playing at the Fillmore. I’ve never seen you there before, but I’ve heard that your performances there are a little more loose-limbed and jam-oriented than usual, with the odd cover song thrown in the set lists. Is this a matter of the spirit of the venue coming through the band?

Steve Berlin: Yes, absolutely. We do feel that in the room, and certainly the stuff that’s gone down in the Fillmore touches you. It’s a shrine. And you can’t stand on that stage and not feel it, to be honest with you. So, yes, it’s conscious. It’s something we’re very aware of. We go out of our way to honor the tradition and hopefully honor some of the amazing music that’s been made on that stage.