By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
July 7, 1996
Back in the early 1980s, when he was doing the Stray Cat Strut, neither Brian Setzer nor his fans would have envisioned the tattooed, pompadoured singer playing in an orchestra. These days, the former rockabilly hep cat not only performs in one, he fronts one.
But don’t mistake this for a smooth, sedate affair. The 17-piece Brian Setzer Orchestra may be the 37-year-old singer-guitarist’s latest incarnation, but it’s not exactly a lulling experience. Setzer hasn’t traded in his rocking repertory for a set the CSO might perform. Rather, his orchestra rocks, as fans will hear Monday night at the Skyline Stage at Navy Pier.
“Someone once told me that we are definitely a rock ‘n’ roll band that also happens to be a big band,” Setzer said. “And that pretty much sums it up, except that we’re not limited to rock. There’s also a lot of jazz in our music due to the size of the orchestra and the chords we can make, and there’s also an element of that sort of late ’50s, crime drama feel. We’re really a lot of fun.”
Fans who miss Monday’s show can catch Setzer on television later this month. His orchestra has been asked to perform at the Olympics opening ceremony in Atlanta.
“I just kind of started this whole thing not really knowing how long I could keep it together,” Setzer said, sipping coffee at the Whitehall Hotel downtown. “Some of the guys (in the orchestra) get a lot of money to play with (Frank) Sinatra or Phil (Collins), and when they get those offers, I’m like, `Go! Make some money!’ because I can’t pay them that kind of money. But they keep coming back to this project. They’ve been with me for like four years now, and they want to rock, babe.”
Laughing, he added, “They don’t want to do Yanni.”
Yanni was never in Setzer’s vocabulary either in his days with the Stray Cats or his subsequent solo career. While still with the Cats, who released their last album in 1992, Setzer recorded two superb solo albums, “Knife Feels Like Justice” (1986) and “Live Nude Guitars” (1988), which were more roots rock-oriented than the typical Stray Cats rockabilly fare. The spartan mixes showcased Setzer’s plaintive vocals and proved that even though his slicked ‘do screamed “1950s,” he had a sound that was timeless.
If his work on those two albums was introspective and somewhat brooding, the Brian Setzer Orchestra is an ecstatic release. The Orchestra came out with its lushly rocking, self-titled debut album in 1994. This year’s “Guitar Slinger” follows in the same vein, focusing on tightly orchestrated musicianship and Setzer’s flexible chops, which sound as at home crooning a cover of Gene Pitney’s quasi-cheesy “Town Without Pity” as they do ripping through “Hey, Louis Prima.”
“One of the pleasures of this band is that there’s nothing I can come up with that they can’t do,” he said. “I’m in awe of their musicianship. They’re the best.”
Though Setzer has been living in Los Angeles for more than a decade, his New Yawk accent remains thick and recognizable. Still sporting his trademark blond pompadour – though it’s not piled as high as in his Aqua Net hey day – Setzer often performs wearing a suit and bow tie and, sometimes, glasses.
“I’m very nearsighted and should wear glasses all the time, but I don’t,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I don’t always want to see so clear. And when I’m on stage, I sweat so much that they just get fogged up and slip off. I haven’t found a pair of glasses that I can wear on stage yet. I don’t know how Buddy Holly did it, or John Lennon. I remember watching Lennon on some of those early Beatles footage and seeing him just look lost. That’s how I feel sometimes.”
Laughing, he added, “I’ve missed a cue or two with the big band. I’ll be looking around going, `Whose turn is it? Oh, is it my turn? Whose solo is that? And who the hell is that?’ I am definitely the band’s biggest liability.”
Despite his self-effacing statements, Setzer doesn’t need 20/20 vision to know exactly what’s going on with the 16 other musicians on stage with him. And he said each performance is precious to him because the band is an expensive one to book and therefore doesn’t hit the road as much as it would like to.
“When a promoter calls to book us, I’m embarrassed to tell him how much it will cost,” said Setzer, who wouldn’t reveal any numbers. “We’re not trying to gouge them or anything, but they often have to pay three times what they would a smaller band simply because there are so many people in the orchestra.”
Setzer will be the first to admit he’s mellowed a bit since his Stray Cats days when he was a woman magnet who could party with the best of them. These days, he’s more into his family. Setzer said a great time for him is taking his wife, Christine, and 9-year-old son Cody (from an earlier marriage) on camping trips with the Strummers (as in Joe Strummer, from the Clash).
“Our families get along great, and Cody loves Joe,” Setzer said. “He knows Joe and I are musicians, but he’s more into Rancid than he is our music. One day he was listening to the radio and heard a song and said, `Dad, that’s Uncle Joe, right?’ It turned out to be Rancid, so I think Joe was flattered.”
Pausing, he added, “Kids . . . what’re you going to do?”
