This interview with the original Texas band Josefus was completed in May of 2002, a few weeks after the release of their new retrospective cd. Pete Bailey (PB) vocals, Dave Mitchell (DM) guitar, and bassist Ray Turner (RT) are once again making Josefus music, this time with drummer Leesa Harrington-Squyres.

Interview with Josefus

A huge welcome back! You have been away from the scene quite a while.What made you decide to get back on the track again?

DM: We've watched our album re-issued and bootlegged so many times over the years that we figured there might be enough fans to justify a release of some old recordings. I had a home studio when we were playing in 1978-79, and I've held on to all those reels of tape.

RT: When Dave contacted us about his old recordings, I brought him two large boxes of tapes that my dad had recorded at our live shows. That's where we found most of the vintage material on the new cd.

DM: Once we were together again, we went to sit in at a local club and played a few of our old songs. Things have just happened from there.

PB: Also, I’m 55 years old. I think it’s now or never.

The brand new self-released album is titled Dead Man aLive. It is quite a stunning musical tour from early 1967 sessions to a fantastic live set and then the 1978-79 reuinon. Are you pleased with the outcome and mix of the cd?

PB: I’m happy enough with what's there, but I would have been happier if we'd included the rest of the '78 recordings. They were the best of all our studio work.

DM: We do plan to release those 45s on cd this summer. They were left off so that Dead Man aLive would be totally unreleased material. As far as the mix, we really couldn't do much but clean up the tone a little on the old tapes. They were
already in a two-track mix. Some of it was even mono.

Let's talk about the tracklist. First, the early stuff from 1967. To my ears,it is very British 60s sounding: Animals, Kinks, Pretty Things, Stones, that kind of feel. At the time, was that genre a big inspiration for you? Fill us in on those recordings. What were the circumstances at the time?

RT: Those were my first original tunes.

DM: I grew up playing stuff by The Yardbirds and The Who. And I guess back then everyone was into The Beatles, especially Ronnie Wiesner, who wrote and sang those early cuts. Ray and I just had a harder style that we put onto them.

RT: I even played a fuzz bass track on one or two songs.

Next up is an incredible live set with Dead Man, Louisiana Blues, Get Off My Case, and Light In Heaven. It's a great sound. Where were those recorded?

RT: They were all from live shows in Houston.

PB: Of Our Own, Jubilee Hall, Love Street Light Circus.

DM: The live Dead Man shows Josefus near our peak, probably late 1970. We play things in that arrangement that only developed after months on the road. The other 3 songs are from an early Love Street gig when we still used two guitars.

Stepping back in the time machine, fill us in on the origins of Josefus? I've read different stories about how you got the name. One comes from the Jewish prophet in the bible, another is that (original drummer) Doug Tull's mom used to call him Little Josefus when he was a kid. What is the correct story?

PB: Josefus was a militant Jewish historian. Other than that, I have no comment.

RT: Doug named us United Gas and then he changed it. That was his deal.

DM: It was a total surprise to me. Doug walked around to a microphone one night to introduce the band, then introduced himself as Douglas Josefus Tull, and said the band was Josefus. That was the last of United Gas.

Your way of heavyrock: to my ears, Josefus was one of heaviest bands to come out of the US in the late 1960s. After the early period, you turned into the heavy monster band that we dedicated Josefus fans enjoy and love today. When and where did you find that special doomy sound that you had ?

RT: We were just being ourselves.

DM: It was a combination of our different influences. For me, it was primarily The Yardbirds. Anything with a lot of guitar. For Ray, it was Vanilla Fudge and that heavy bass sound. Most of our songs would begin as jams. Pete would put lyrics to it or make songs that he had already written fit the new music.

PB: The band had the licks, but I wrote every word. In 1967, while they were writing about love and rainbows, I had already penned the lyrics to Dead Man, I Need A Woman, Slave of Fear, Cosmic Man, and several others. Sex, death and insanity were my trip.

How long were you together before making your debut album Dead Man?

DM: That depends on which album you're talking about. We first played in the summer of 1969. Pete became the vocalist in September and we went into the studio in December, but that album didn't come out until 1993. The next March we went back and recorded the version of Dead Man that was released.

Your first break came in October 1969 when you opened for Grand Funk and ZZ Top in Austin and Houston, Texas. Fill us in how you got the gig ?

RT: ZZ Top was an opening act, too. It was Billy Gibbons then, but Dusty and Frank weren't with him yet.

PB: Terry Knight’s advance man, Bob Gately, saw us at Jubilee Hall and hired us to play those shows.

DM: I walked outside this old church where we had just finished playing and found Doug talking to Bob. They said we were going to be an opening act for some big concerts. I looked at them sitting in the grass and thought it was just a bunch of bull, but Bob turned out to be real. He would be the one who later put us together with Jim Musil.

PB: Our performance at those shows so impressed Terry Knight of Capitol Records that he asked us to contact him the following Monday. They were looking for a Texas band with a dark personality and we certainly fit the bill. But Doug got fixed on barbiturates and disappeared for three days with the phone number. We never called. I think Bloodrock became that band.

Around that same time, producer Jim Musil invited you to Arizona for a deal he had coming with Frank Zappa's label, Straight Records. That never took off, but you made a single on Musil's Dandelion label. Fill us in on the
circumstances at that time. How was the response to that single ?

DM: Jim backed our first studio sessions, but the deal with Straight Records was only in his head. He couldn't get us a deal with anyone else, either, but we didn't give him much time. He only put out that 45 because we had been bugging him so much, but it got us immediate airplay in Houston.

PB: That’s when we became Come. Jim Musil’s idea, and a bad one at that! It was a real downer. We suffered with it while he shopped us around, but we finally couldn’t stand it any more and changed back to Josefus. The night we announced that, we got a huge round of applause. Nobody liked Come.

Looking back at the studio process recording Dead Man: what were the circumstances when you made the album in Arizona? Fill us in on what you remember about the recording sessions.

PB: We didn't have much of a recording budget. Everything was first take.

DM: Dave Oxman was such a good engineer. He's the reason we drove back to Phoenix instead of recording our album in Houston. He let us set up the way we would on stage, placed some baffles and microphones, and he captured it.

Looking back at the live following you had after the release of Dead Man:What was it like on the road? How were the turnouts back then?

PB: Audiences were tremendous. One listen to "Dead Man" live confirms that. It was that way everywhere.

DM: We built a following with our live shows more than with the album. The first time we played Corpus Christi we sold about 400 tickets. When we came back we drew over 1000. We worked the whole state like that.

I have read that Josefus was early on the leading edge of a cultural tidal wave that was sweeping the nation and reigned as the undisputed kings of the Texas Music scene. After reading things like this, I wonder what role Josefus played in the Texas music scene at the time? How was the scene before that?

RT: The local music scene had a lot of pop sounding bands, but people like the Elevators, Fever Tree and Bubble Puppy were starting to change things. When our album came out, we told people our goal was to be the heaviest band in the world.

Crazy Man and the title track recieved considerable airplay in Texas. What kind of reception, both airplay and critical, did Dead Man receive in the rest of the U.S.? Was there any response from Europe to the album or did that come later?

PB: Outside Texas, nobody knew about us. But a whole lot of people who passed through Texas saw our show and took some great stories with them. I guess that’s where this "legend" thing comes from.

Were there any singles released off the album?

RT: No. The Dandelion single was out there and we were still playing those songs. The single said "Come" but everybody in Houston knew who we were.

I have read that International Artists wanted to sign Josefus at the time.What were the circumstances back then ?

RT: They were crooks!

PB: International Artists treated their bands poorly. Doug spouted off about it one night at Love Street and we never played there again. We did, however, empty the club one night by playing for free in a parking lot across the street.

I also read that the major labels like Capitol, Atco, and M-G-M were interested in Dead Man for a national release at the time but it didn't happen. What was the main reason to refuse a deal like that and what were the
circumstances with those offers back then ?

PB: Don’t know. I wasn’t driving the plane. If I had been, things might have been different.

RT: Bad decisions. We had no real management.

DM: Doug was trying to handle the business end with our manager, who was a good salesman, but had never been in the music business. He worked with a friend of his who was in entertainment, but he turned out to be a crook.

What role did drugs play with the band and its music at this period ?

PB: Way too big a role!

DM: Our shows would too often depend on what kind of drugs Doug had at the time. He could push us to our limit or drag us like an anchor.

Looking at the response you had, Dead Man reached number one in your hometown Houston for a month and outsold The Beatles' Let It Be (!!) Were you surprised over that reception?

PB: We were very surprised. We didn’t even own enough albums to outsell The Beatles, but apparently, someone did.

DM: The local stores told us how many they were selling and we realized later that they hadn't ordered that many from us. We were young and excited about the whole thing, and didn't know enough to protect ourselves.

Who were some of the bands you played with?

RT: The Grateful Dead, Ten Years After, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Guess Who, It's a Beautiful Day, John Mayall, Procol Harum, Grand Funk,Pacific Gas and Electric. Some pretty good shows actually.

The next album, Josefus, came out on Mainstream Records, a New York based label. What was the reason to leave Hookah for Mainstream and how was the response to that album compared to Dead Man ?

RT: You can't make a comparison. The second album was terrible.

PB: Mainstream Records wanted us to castrate ourselves, so we did.

DM: Hookah was our own label. Ray's dad created the designs, and Dead Man was its entire catalog. We thought going to Mainstream was a huge step forward. After all, that had been Janis Joplin's label. But they were having problems that we didn't know about till later.

Josefus (s/t) is to my ears a bit different album than Dead Man, which has a total doominess, intense heavy riffing, and a volume that is so powerful. Is Josefus a more progressive album When you pieced together that album, were you looking for a new direction? Fill us in on what the circumstances were at the time in the pre-production of that album ?

DM: Pieced together is such an accurate term! Oh, what might have been if we could have re-recorded Dead Man the way we were playing it then.

RT: We didn't want a new direction, but Mainstream wanted songs that had never been recorded.

PB: The Mainstream album was written in three days on amphetamine power.

DM: We took all the pieces of songs we had and threw them together. They didn't have a chance to evolve through live performances. We didn't even play some of those cuts as a band until we were in the studio. Doug learned them by listening to a cassette tape.

PB: There was little depth or spirit in the songs. Execution was poor due to Doug’s unwillingness to rehearse, and studio support was definitely lacking. When I heard it, I knew it was over for us. It was then, and still is, the worst record I’ve ever heard.

RT: No one ever tried to bootleg that one!

I have also read that Mainstream ruined the release of your Jimi Hendrix tribute single. Looking back at the situation you were in, how frustrated were you that Mainstream didn't do their job properly ?

PB: What can I say? The band died frustrated. Incidentally, "Jimmy, Jimmy" had nothing to do with Hendrix.

RT: It was written for a friend of ours. We don't know who came up with the Hendrix connection, but that was right around the time he died.

How and when did the band break up in the first place?

DM: We were in the process of breaking up for a long time. We kept going because we had steady gigs, but we weren't developing. Doug was thinking more about running the business than playing drums. He wouldn't bother to set up his drums when we practiced. He just directed us.

PB: Everything bad that could happen to a band happened to us. One can only put up with so much crap.

Out of this came a new band, StoneAxe, formed by your frontman, Pete Bailey. How long was that together and how many recordings came out of it? Besides StoneAxe, did any other projects get started after Josefus broke up?

PB: StoneAxe lasted about 8 months. All our equipment got stolen or we may have persevered. There was one single, Snakebite/ Slave of Fear. So many people requested Snakebite that the then fledgling radio station KLOL played
it three times in two hours one afternoon. Of course, that was back when they actually tried to please their listeners.

DM: I got into another original music project for a few months, but we didn't play live very much. We recorded 4-5 songs and then drifted apart. Later, we found out our songs had placed third in a national songwriting competition and we'd won several thousand dollars worth of music equipment. So we put the band back together, but again it only lasted a few months.

I have read that a few years after the first break up you reformed a new Josefus in 1978 and made two singles for Hookah, your original label. How was the response and how were the turnouts at the gigs you played?

PB: We did the right thing at the wrong time and got the appropriate results. Had we hung on for just a few months, we would have made it.

DM: We were battling the disco craze at the time. We couldn't find many places to play the music we were doing. Like Pete said, if we had hung together a little longer, things might have worked out.

On your new Dead Man aLive album, the final 3 tracks are from this period. To my ears, it is Cosmic Man that has that old Josefus vibe, while Glory Guys has a more funkier feel and Wheels a more lightweight, rockier approach. To me, it feels like a band looking for a new direction. Am I right in my opinion, or do you have a different point of view?

PB: No, I think you got it right enough.

DM: Maybe we were trying for a more popular sound, but it was still Josefus. We even toyed with the idea of an album titled Still Not Commercial.

A re-issue of Dead Man came out in the early 80s on French label Eva Records. Are you familiar with the release? If so, what do you think of it?

PB: I was pissed at first. But, looking back, I guess it served a worthwhile purpose. That was when we first realized people knew us overseas.

DM: Doug contacted us in the mid-80s about suing somebody over that. We all passed, but he got a lawyer and went after one of the pressing plants, but nothing ever came of it.

Another re-issue of Dead Man is out on TexMan Records, a Limited Edition. Are you familiar with this release? If so, what do you think of it?

DM: I've seen these re-issues for sale on the internet, but never heard any of them. I assume they are just copies of what we originally put out.

PB: I pay little attention to this. Sundazed Music is the only label that treated us with any respect or offered us compensation for using our music.

Any regrets about not making it, looking back at the early days today?

PB: Plenty. Lots. More than I want to think about.

DM: If we had known then how popular the music would become, we might have put up with a lot more. Our success came fast and easy. We thought it would be a simple matter to replace Doug and have it all going again. Maybe we should have tried harder to straighten him out, but we were tired of it.

In 1990, you came back and released Son Of Dead Man on Paradise Lost Records. On mine, I read that the album only came out in 500 copies. For this album you had a new drummer, Leesa Harrington. How was the response to this album and did you reckon it was a good time to get back together after so many years? Do you plan to re-issue that album?

PB: Leesa is a great drummer and I hope she hangs with us this time. Son of Dead Man did serve to keep the band’s name from dying completely.

DM: The feedback I got was that our fans were disappointed in that album. They were expecting to hear some old Josefus, and even though those were old songs, they were new recordings. People may have been misled by the advertising. They will not be disappointed with Dead Man aLive.

Now to the subject of Doug Tull, the original Josefus drummer. From what I have read, he became an early victim of heavy drug addiction and he dragged you more or less into it. How was his mental influence over the band at the time and when did you first notice that he was going off the deep end ?

PB: He was off the deep end when I met him. I was just too young and naïve to see it at first, but I soon did. I managed to have him fired three times, but Ray and Dave couldn’t stick with the decision and outvoted me on his return. So I was condemned to continue. Hell, I should have quit after that Grand Funk fiasco. I might have had a career.

From what I have read, Doug's death in September 1990 came in a jail cell in Austin, Texas after he was arrested for driving while intoxicated. I have read a few theories as to what caused it. First, that he commited suicide in his cell by hanging himself and then that it was police brutality that led to his death. What exactly happened with Doug Tull in that cell? What did the autopsy say?

PB: There was no autopsy that I know of, but I don’t think Doug would've ever killed himself outright. He just liked to play at it. Cops killed him, or helped out somehow. That’s what I think, anyway.

RT: The three of us went together to his funeral. We were recording the Son of Dead Man album at the time with Leesa, and she went with us.

DM: None of us believed it was suicide, and I don't think his family completely did, either. But it was up to them if they wanted further investigation. We spent that whole afternoon with them, but they didn't contact us again.

Josefus had a short career, but record collectors, 70s fans, and those who are looking for an alternative have kept Josefus alive. How do you feel about the following and the reputation you've created since you broke up?

PB: Very gratified.

RT: Proud, but amazed. It didn't seem that big at the time.

DM: It's really something to meet our old fans at a record show or through our web site. They tell us about their memories of a Josefus concert somewhere and it's often things that we didn't remember ourselves.

Finally, what's up in the Josefus camp at the moment? Dead Man aLive is old material. Are you going to do some new stuff soon with the present lineup?

PB: I sure hope so. The new songs are more mature, with greater depth and profound lyrical content. They are my unborn children, and I would like to see them live. Only time will tell.

DM: We're working on some things, but it may take us longer now than when we were young. Everyone has a busy schedule, but I'm confident in these guys.

RT: We just have to make the cards fall right.

PB: I’ve had no greater joy than that which comes from entertaining people, and I’ve certainly missed it. If the opportunity presents itself, I’m ready to do it again. As for now, I'm currently writing works of fiction, and I hope to have my first story published this summer.

Any last words ?

PB: Well, I’d like to come to Europe. Maybe Sweden. I have a passport, but I need an invitation. And, of course, I still need a woman. Blonde or redhead, preferably. One of each would be even better.

DM: I want to thank our fans who have supported us and kept our music alive for all these years, even after we had quit trying. It's a terrific feeling when people appreciate and enjoy what you've created.
 

Thank you ever so much for taking time to make this interview happen. As a long time fan, I am very very pleased that are you are back in business again. All the best wishes with the "new" Josefus and Dead Man aLive.

By Gabriel Lilliehook

Dead Man Alive review at rec17.html

For Josefus info and order Dead Man Alive check out their official Web at www.josefusmusic.com

Email the band at info@josefusmusic.com

Josefus adress : P.O BOX 91685 Austin Texas 78709 U.S.A