Canned Heat
Canned Heat are celebrating a massive milestone with their fiftieth anniversary coinciding with their upcoming Australian tour. This band has been there and done that and having the opportunity to speak with one of the legendary members Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra was a real privilege as he reminisced over the journey of this band and the legacy created as well as touching on how sad he is about where music is heading today.
Congratulations, fifty years is an amazing milestone for a band what is the secret to keeping the band together for so long?
I always thought that whatever we do, the kind of music we play and our attitude towards life was something valid, something worth going. All of a sudden the time just went by and we had done it for fifty years. I’ve been in the band for forty eight years and the band was formed in 1965 by Bob Hite and Alan Wilson and they are both gone now but the experience is part of the band. It has been a wonderful experience.
Did you ever have any doubts that the band would last as long as it has?
I never expected to last this long and I’m surprised that we even agreed to do another Australian tour. We’re getting older and travelling is becoming a little more painful and harder for us. We still enjoy very much playing the music and I think that we’re playing better than ever but the travel is becoming very difficult. Not only difficult because of our age but because travelling itself has become a very difficult action no matter what your age is. It is not like it used to be twenty or thirty years or let say before 9/11, after that everything changed and the travel experience has become a more painful thing to go through.
Is that more noticeable in the US or is that everywhere?
Yeah, ten years ago we were doing an average of three European tours a year and also travelling all over America and the occasional Australian tour but now we’re only doing one European tour a year and Australia gets, well we didn’t expect to go back but the opportunity came up and the offers came in and somehow our manager convinced us to do that long flight. As I said the gigs are not the problem, we love playing music, I always say the music is free but what we charge for is to get there.
Do you think line up changes help keep things fresh?
Ah no! We have replaced members out of necessity not with the intention of changing the band’s music or keeping freshness in the band. I would love to keep the original members all the time but it has been out of necessity or forced by tragedy to replace members and keep the type of music without prostituting the band of changing. We don’t do it to be fresh or anything, we’re almost forced to replace members sometimes when people die. This band has had its fair share of tragedy and that is the reason why we get other people, making sure we look for the best musicians around and people who have the same attitude as we do blues music.
It must have been hard dealing with those sorts of tragedies especially as a band you would form really close links?
It is like a family when you lose a member, it’s horrible. Those guys were attracted to excesses and they paid the price dying young.
Do you remember the early years fondly and with experience you enjoy the band experience a lot more now?
Even the earlier years in Australia we would play Mulwala, I don’t know if you have heard of it, that was the first time we came to Australia and that was wonderful. All those times at festivals, let’s call it the era of peace and love when the innocence was still there, they were wonderful times and I’m glad we lived through it. I meet a lot of young people now who say they wish they were living in the sixties.
Given what Canned Heat has achieved over the journey what has been the biggest achievement do you think?
Our biggest achievement isn’t really our hit records or our Woodstock performance. Our biggest achievement is that we accomplished more than we ever expected to make blues music palatable for the mainstream white world. You must remember when we started blues music was not cared for, very few people liked that type of music, we were one of the first bands that started propagating and imposing that music. Now when I see worldwide blues festivals, blues societies, blues band all over the place, young people learning the type of music – that is really Canned Heat’s biggest accomplishment. The fact we promoted and we made a contribution to blues music palatable to white audiences and of course having hit records that are blues oriented music had a lot to do with it like Goin’ Up The Country, On The Road Again and Let’s Work Together were our three big hits which was undeniable blues music.
What do you think about how blues music has evolved? Do you like any of it?
Blues would never be very popular and would be mainstream like pop artists because there are so many of them. I would say the blues musicians are more like jazz musicians in a way, the older we get the more interesting we are. That is very important especially for us and other musicians our age but not only that the music itself is a very primitive form of music and that’s something we’ll always be around even if it’s not in the mainstream or on the news all of the time. The blues itself will always be there.
Do you get frustrated with where the music industry is heading now?
I don’t only get frustrated I’m devastated the turns that music has taken, the commercialism, the corporate music, corporate festivals and also the taste of people in general. I cannot say I like that stuff and it is very sad for me to see the direction that music has taken. Of course there is always a little light at the end of the tunnel which is represented by some young musicians that still treating the music with a little respect and love like we did when we started. They start playing in little garage bands, refining their craft and enjoying playing an instrument not a disc jockey. I find it insulting that they consider now disc jockey’s like musicians, disc jockey’s being rock stars! God forbid! That’s not to say they don’t contribute or play their part in the music world but they do not deserve the respect we deserve because we’ve paid our dues, we play clubs, we play instruments, we went through all the cruelty of the music business and it is not the same of going through that and the stress of playing every show at your best under very difficult circumstances sometimes like bad sound or audiences that don’t react. There are many things we have to deal with playing live music. Live music is very precious and should be appreciated and respected and when I see, especially young people giving this sort of respect to disc jockey’s I find that insulting.
Are you looking forward to your fiftieth anniversary tour in Australia?
Yes, we always love Australia and it is a wonderful country as everyone knows it as the lucky country. Again, there was a time when Canned Heat was very popular in Australia and we were coming to Australia more than once a year. We used to come several times a year for five or six years in the eighties and early nineties. Later on we stopped coming and now there seems to be a lot of interest. I understand most of our shows are sold out already.
Without playing for five or six hours how do work out what will be played each show?
We include our hit records of course every performance because that is what people relate to. We put the hit records in the set where we know we will get their attention then put new things or things we’re experimenting with in. Our position is not to be like a juke box then pick up the money and go home. That’s not what are about! We have to educate a little bit and that is our mission.
Whether it is rummaging through vinyl at record stores such as Clarity and Title finding hidden gems to scouring the internet to find that album by the next big thing or chasing bands to get that elusive autograph and photo his passion is music all the way.
- Aversions Crown - January 27, 2017
- Sick Of It All - January 19, 2017
- Refused - January 11, 2017
