If you've ever seen the Green Day: Behind The Music special, or pretty much any Green Day special on TV, you've seen Larry Livermore. This is the man who saw Green Day (then called Sweet Children) perform in a small house up in the hills of Northern California in 1988 for 10 kids, and compared it favorably to the Beatles performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, and he knew that night that he wanted to release their records
Larry, who is originally from Detroit, is the co-founder of Lookout! Records. He was also the guitarist and vocalist for the band The Lookouts (a band featuring a very young Tre Cool). Larry's not just responsible for Green Day's early records though – while with Lookout! he also released music by Operation Ivy, Isocracy, Crimpshrine, and tons more.
I recently got to ask Larry a few questions about the early days of Green Day, the downfall of Lookout! Records, and what he's up to nowadays.
Ronnie Riggar: I've just finished reading the new book Gimme Something Better. Numerous times throughout the book you are mentioned as being from Ann Arbor. You told me a few months ago that you were from Detroit / Allen Park. What is it about Ann Arbor that you relate with?
Larry Livermore: I didn't realize the book described me as being from Ann Arbor. I was born in Detroit and grew up in the Greater Detroit area. However, I did live in Ann Arbor for several years, and interviewers often ask about those years, not least because it was during the same time that proto-punk bands like the MC5 and the Stooges were active. I have never tried to mislead people into thinking that I was "from" Ann Arbor, but I often tell them about living there when I did (in the late 60s and early 70s) because it was a very important part of my life. I also liked Ann Arbor very much, to the point where I could almost imagine living there again one day
RR: Did you ever come across any bands in Michigan that you wanted to someday work with?
LL: Not really. There were a couple of bands I liked, mostly because friends of mine played in them, but they had their heyday earlier, at the beginning of the 80s, and by the time I had a record label, they were either broken up or had otherwise fallen upon hard times.
RR: What bands are you listening to right now?
LL: You mean apart from Lady Gaga? I like a bunch of the modern pop-punk bands, like the Steinways, the Copyrights, House Boat, Dear Landlord, the Leftovers, the Dopamines. And while they're not really pop-punk per se, the Max Levine Ensemble and Delay are among my favorites. Besides that, I listen to a lot of old Hank Williams stuff and some of the Lookout classics like Green Day, Screeching Weasel, Operation Ivy and the Queers. Oh, and Brent's TV, of course.
RR: You've said that watching Green Day / Sweet Children play the first time you saw them was like watching The Beatles at Shea Stadium. Was there any song of theirs at the time where you thought "maybe you guys should drop this from the set"?
LL: No, I liked all their early stuff. That one song they did for the Flipside comp (it's also a bonus track on the 39/Smooth CD), I could have done without, but I'm not sure I ever heard them play it live. I wasn't too fond of their cover of Operation Ivy's "Knowledge," but they didn't start doing that until they'd been a band for a while, and over the years it's grown on me. I hate "Brain Stew," but of course that didn't come around until many years later, when I was no longer in a position to be giving them advice (not that they ever listened to me even when I was!).
RR: What used to provoke all of the skins vs. punks fights? How did it get so bad?
LL: I don't remember all that many skins vs. punks fights. The worst I experienced was when skinheads tried to wreck Gilman in the early days. I think they were offended that this was a punk rock place that they couldn't take over and ruin, and so for the first year or so groups of them would try to crash shows there or, when they did get inside, try to beat up people in the pit until we threw them out. But to be fair, there were only a handful of skins involved in that stuff; many others either paid no attention to Gilman or came to shows there and enjoyed them just like everyone else.
There was a separate thing going on in San Francisco and many other cities where they'd have battles between "anti-racists" and "nazi skins." I put those terms in quotes because as far as I was concerned, most of that was just straight-up gang fighting based on hair styles. We had the same thing when I was in high school in the early 60s, with the greasers (of whom I was one) fighting the "frats" (what you might call preppies today). It was totally moronic, but it seemed important at the time.
RR: After you left Lookout!, the label really took a turn for the worse. Besides the general royalty and other monetary issues, what brought the label down in your opinion?
LL: Well, the money was a big issue: you can't really have a successful label if you don't pay your bills, and the most important bill of all is the money you owe to bands. It's my opinion that the new people running the label believed that if only they spent enough money advertising and promoting bands, they could turn almost any record into a hit. But many of the new bands they signed were not very good, or at least not good in the sense that they were likely to sell a lot of records. But instead of accepting that fact, Lookout kept throwing more and more money at these bands in the hopes that they could convince people to buy their records. Unfortunately, the money they were using to do this did not belong to them; it belonged to bands like Operation Ivy, Green Day, and Screeching Weasel, who had earned it in royalties. I don't think Lookout deliberately set out to cheat these bands out of their money; I believe they were gambling that they'd be able to pay them back once some of the new bands became as popular as Green Day. Of course, as you know, this never happened, and Lookout lost their gamble. It's only too bad that the money they had been gambling with did not belong to them.
RR: Were there any other bands out of the East Bay that you thought could have (or should have) been as big as Green Day, Rancid.. etc?
LL: I always thought Nuisance should have been a lot bigger, but they were a different type of band than I usually worked with, more of a Nirvana-type band, so maybe I didn't understand that field as well. I always thought they were just as good as Nirvana, if not better, but apparently the public didn't agree. I think Neurosis could have been a lot bigger if they'd kept doing what they were doing instead of switching into a more hippie/experimental direction. Not that didn't do pretty well for themselves anyway. Downfall would have been huge if that record had ever come out. But mostly, I'm of the opinion that if bands don't get big, there's usually a reason. Sometimes it's the music, sometimes it's the label, most often it's something to do with the attitude or psychology of the band itself. If, on the other hand, a band is truly destined for greatness, the worst label or the worst scene in the world is not going to be able to keep them down indefinitely.
RR: Favorite record of all time? Favorite book of all time? Favorite movie of all time? A hard question yes... but answer it the best you can!
LL: The best answer I can give is that there is no answer. Although as far as movies go, I was awfully fond of both "Gone With The Wind" and "Titanic."
RR: What the hell happened to these Green Day songs? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waKpvsftIws) They were never on any albums... were they recorded?
LL: I have no idea. The best I can offer is that Green Day have always written way more songs than they actually ended up using. I don't think I've heard these particular ones before.
RR: What were some of the songs on the original Green Day demo tape?
LL: What demo tape? Did they make one? I never saw it or heard it if they did. I "signed" (more like agreed to make a record with them; we never signed anything until several years later) them based entirely on seeing them play one time in the fall of 1988 when Billie and Mike were 16. It was their third or fourth show ever, and before they were even halfway through their set I knew I wanted to make a record - hopefully many records - with them.
RR: You must have an amazing record collection. What are some of the coolest records you got that would make the collectors freak out? I mean, you've gotta have some awesome first and test pressings of some great stuff.
LL: Nope. I have almost no record collection, apart from copies of records that I actually played on and maybe a handful of other Lookout favorites. I used to have a bit more of a collection, but I sold the last of it several years ago. I never was much of a collector, but it's true, I did have some first presses and test pressings. I had one Green Day record in white vinyl, the only copy ever made; that was probably the rarest record I ever had. But all that rare stuff is long gone now. Today I listen to music almost exclusively on mp3s.
I'd like to thank Larry for giving me the chance to talk with him. Thanks Larry!
Larry Livermore - http://larrylivermore.com/
© Ronnie Riggar / January 21, 2010
Source – http://ronnietalksaboutthings.blogspot.com/2010/01/interview-with-larry-livermore.html