| Musicians and record labels are often at odds and, after 30 years together, Los Lobos has their share of war stories. Sax player Steve Berlin tells how their latest album The Ride almost got lost in the shuffle.
"We were ready to bolt (from our record label) before we made this record. It would have been really hard to make it without major label funding, but we were not happy with the way Good Morning Aztlan went down. We went from Hollywood to Mammoth, which was a boutique inside of Hollywood, then Disney pulled the plug on Mammoth six weeks before our record came out. Obviously that was not a good thing for us or for the record. It threw everything up in the air. All the co-ordination and all of the press stuff set up prior to the record coming out disappeared when everybody was fired.
"We anticipated being dropped or leaving, prior to starting this one. To their remarkable credit, they fired everyone who was giving us so much shit last time out and restarted the label with real, live music people who – again to their credit – seemed to really like us and seemed to get it. I mean, the first band they signed with the new regime was the Polyphonic Spree, which took a little courage for a major label.
"They came to us and said, 'We want to be the kind of label that people come to because we have bands like Los Lobos. So we're going to pick up your option and give you complete carte blanche to make whatever record you want. And again – to their great credit – they didn't even hear the record until it was mastered. They didn't hear anything along the way until it was signed off on and finished by us. So, there was no interference – no 'How about this, how about that.' They had suggestions for collaborators that I think were sound, but they were people that couldn't or wouldn't work for some reason. But they exerted none of the horror stories where you hear, 'Oh, my label made me go back in and remake the record with Ruben Studdard or someone like that.’" |
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