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Stephen Quadros is a renaissance man of sorts living in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California. A Mixed Martial Arts broadcaster by day, Quadros spends many nights performing in various Los Angeles bands as a drummer. Dig deep into the history of LA rock and you may find yourself encountering Quadros' name; as part of the hard rock group "Snow," he opened for Van Halen and shared the stage with members of Quiet Riot in venues romanticized by Penelope Spheeris' film Decline of the Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.
I snagged a quick interview with Quadros before a performance with the all-star band Sacred Cowboys, a group featuring noted Hollywood film producer Peter Spirer (Bigger Than Life: The Notorious B.I.G.) and actors from Deadwood and Six Feet Under. The interview is filled with a ton of history about the music scene circa 1965-1985 and is recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in classic rock.
Q: Because your history is quite extensive, let's start at the very beginning. Why did you start playing drums, and which artists were influential to your development?
A: I first got the urge to play drums when I saw a drum kit in a kid’s room at a pool party when I was about 12. Everybody was out by the pool, but I wailed on this little red-sparkle set for a long time. It wasn’t until years later that I got on a kit again, though, as I received my own drums at age 16.
At the beginning, I just practiced what I heard on records. The artists that were being played on the radio and really grabbed my attention, which made me want to start playing, were Cream and Iron Butterfly. One life-altering moment was sitting in my room listening to the Sunday evening “underground rock” hour on my little mono, single speaker, plastic transistor radio. They played "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" and Cream's "Toad" back-to-back, and both of these tunes contained epic drum solos. After that mind-numbing onslaught, my mission in life was clear. I had to get a drumset!
Another moment that got me was watching the Kinks play "You Really Got Me" on both Shindig and Hullabaloo, two weekly network music shows that I used to watch without fail. That song summed up my attitude at that moment: upbeat and looking for adventure.
Q: Were you in any bands as a teenager? Describe them and the aura and vibe of the
venues in which you played.
A: The bands I was in when I first started were more like test runs than anything - ways for me to work off my training wheels. Then I joined "Heatherstone," a Salinas, CA-based high school trio featuring fifteen year-old guitarist Ronnie Parker and bassist/lead vocalist Eddie Cain. We started playing high school dances and parties and got a big local following. Then our manager got us a showcase in San Francisco for a record company. They liked us, but we had to sign an additional agreement with yet another local manager who threw a terribly binding contract at us. The lawyer we hired advised us against it, which caused us to split from our original manager who was pushing hard for the deal. As might be expected we soon broke up.
Q: Wow. You must have seen some great artists in concert back then, though.
A: I saw concerts at the Fillmore West and Winterland in San Francisco, the Berkeley Community Theater and also Monterey Community College. I saw Ten Years After three times, The Who with Keith Moon on drums, Black Sabbath’s first tour, James Gang with Joe Walsh, Iron Butterfly, Johnny Winter, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, It’s A Beautiful Day, Canned Heat, Cactus, Montrose, Journey, J. Geils Band three times, Tower of Power, Eric Burdon and War, Beck, Bogert and Appice, and many more. I loved going to concerts then! But the sad thing was that I never did get to see my two favorite artists live: Jimi Hendrix and Cream! I missed the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and was afraid to go to Woodstock in 1969, as I was still living with my parents during that whole time and couldn’t even have long hair.
Q: Apart from music, how did you pay the rent once you became an adult?
A: I had some pretty crappy jobs back then to make ends meet. I flipped hamburgers, washed dishes, worked as a janitor, and worked in a food processing plant. It was discouraging, at times. Then I thought, “Hey, just join a top 40 band, play for money on weekends, and create originals in my spare time during the week." But guys wanted to play things exactly as it appeared on the record, and I just wasn’t cut out for it. I wanted to make my own musical statement.
Q: Is that why you moved to Los Angeles to pursue music?
A: I had been in a band with a guitarist named Mark Etienne, who moved to Los Angeles after our group ended. I was jealous of the fact that he would brag about his drummer's "long solos," as playing in mellow country bands in Santa Cruz was driving me insane. My dream of "making it" in a hard rock band seemed so far away. Then, out of the blue, Mark called me up and wanted me to come down to Los Angeles to jam with him and bassist Tim Richardson, as they were unhappy with their previous drummer's sense of time. The three of us, though, had immediate chemistry, and, once Mark asked me to move down, I jumped at the chance. I packed my stuff up and drove the Ford pickup truck I had bought from my grandfather down to good old L.A. on Thanksgiving day, 1975.
Mark, Tim and I eventually added an old pal named Pat Mata on vocals and named ourselves "Orange." One of our first gigs was at the KROQ Cabaret on La Cienega and Burton Way. That place was HAPPENING! The Motels, Van Halen and Quiet Riot with Randy Rhoads were all playing there back then. Phil Spector jumped up on the stage in the middle of a set and started dancing! We went to his house afterwards, which was a strange and frightening experience.
Q: What are some of your most vivid memories of the L.A. music scene of
the late 1970s through the 1980s hair metal era?
A: In 1978, I joined a band called “Snow”, featuring Carlos Cavazo on guitar, Tony Cavazo on bass and Doug Ellison on vocals. The band was heavily influenced by Van Halen, Montrose, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, among others. So I left Hollywood and moved to Arcadia, where we all shared a house.
Punk rock was the norm in Hollywood, though, and most of the bands playing the Whisky, the Starwood, and the Troubadour were playing punk rock. There was a huge generation gap between those bands and their fans and ours, and most punkers back then hated guys with long hair - even though I really liked a lot of punk music, myself.
We eventually found our niche in the Pasadena area, gaining a significant following there, and used that experience to barter our way into Hollywood. We didn’t want to ‘go punk’ to try and cash in on what seemed to be the latest thing just to get booked. But, upon my insistence, as mainly a parody, we did a cover of a punk song that was getting a lot of airplay on KROQ. The song was called “Sit on My Face Stevie Nicks” by a band called The Rotters. We played it as our encore. At first people were shocked, but then they started to see the humor in it.
Snow eventually became the biggest local draw in Hollywood. We used to sell out the Whiskey and the Starwood when we played there Friday and Saturday nights. It was a great time for our egos and our sexual appetites, but the record companies ignored us. We eventually released an EP but disbanded in 1982 when Carlos Cavazo, our guitarist, replaced Randy Rhoads in Quiet Riot. Afterwards, his brother, Tony, and I played in "Dangerface" with singer, guitarist Gar Robertson until I got carpal tunnel syndrome and had to stop playing. So while all my friends and colleagues were taking advantage of the shift of emphasis in the industry away from punk back to hard rock/heavy metal, and were getting signed to record deals and touring, I had to get my hair cut and get a regular job.
Q: That's unfortunate, but, earlier, you mentioned to me that you auditioned for KISS in 1979. Describe what the process was like.
A: Carmine Appice held a drum off in the parking lot of what was Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. I entered and placed 8th out of 32 entries. A month or two later, I got a phone call from Bill Aucoin, KISS' manager, who asked me if I'd like to audition to replace their drummer, Peter Criss. At first, I thought it was one of my idiotic friends joking around, but, as the conversation progressed, I realized it was real. Apparently a videotape of Carmine’s drum battle had ended up in Gene Simmons' hands. So I met with Bill in Beverly Hills and we set up my audition. Because Criss was a really good singer also, Bill asked me if I sang. I lied and said I did, because I didn’t want anything to stop or disqualify me! (laughs)
Q: KISS chose an equally great drummer, Eric Carr, for the job, but what was your life like after you stopped playing music?
A: I only hit the scene sporadically after my recovery from carpal tunnel syndrome in the 1980s. The local live scene became “pay to play”, where bands had to pre-sell tickets and give a certain bottom line of cash to the clubs before they could get on the stage. It was different, but I understand the rationale and why that happened. I do still go to the Rainbow Bar & Grill, though, which has always welcomed me with open arms.
My ‘day job,’ today, is as an announcer for televised mixed martial arts events, which I have been doing internationally since 1998. I comment on cage fights for a living. I am currently employed by Showtime Networks, which means I primarily call the action for Strikeforce Challengers events, and occasionally the main Strikeforce shows.
Q: Returning to music, what, in your opinion, have been the most important albums in history and why?
A: Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, Wheels of Fire by Cream, the first album by Led Zeppelin, Who's Next, and In Rock by Deep Purple. Those records shaped who I am, musically, to a large extent. Nowadays, they might be considered standard fare, but when they first came out, they were radical.
Today my sensibilities are blocked by the fact that I may have experienced too many different styles, making me all too aware of recent music and where it came from and watering down my enthusiasm in the process. When I was in high school, listening to music and getting excited about it, I was fresh, naïve and didn’t know or care what my favorite bands’ influences were. Now, I have to consciously try to judge newer music as if it sounds like "these guys” or "those guys."
Rock music has been around so long that it is no longer the deviation it was back in the Chuck Berry and Little Richard era. Honestly, the kind of music I want to hear doesn’t exist right now. I like restlessness as expressed onstage and in recordings. I believe that very few bands at the moment capture that. It could be the fact that it's all about the industry's bottom-line. We’re surrounded by anarchy mixed with indifference. Artists have to find a way to reflect that and rally the troops.
Q: What do you envision, as far as your future in music is concerned? Do you have any advice for youngsters reading this article?
A: I probably will never “retire” from music. I hope that’s not delusional (laughs), but I'd like to go out like Buddy Rich -swinging for the knockout at the top of my game. I feel confident that my best is ahead of me. To those interested in pursuing music as a profession, play it because you love it and not because you want to be loved. If your motivation is for anything other than the music itself, then chances are your music will not have much influence.
Check out The Fight Professor, Stephen Quadros, HERE.
