When Foghat performed in January 1971, the group's members had little grasp of how to make commercially viable records. Indeed, hit records were not even on the minds of the British blues-rock quartet, which initially evolved from Savoy Brown. By the end of the decade, though, the rock world had caught up to Foghat, and the group was clearing space on the wall for gold and platinum albums with increasing regularity.

Today, many of Foghat's '70s recordings, including original songs such as "Slow Ride" and "Fool For The City," as well as their re-workings of classic blues and rockabilly tunes like "I Just Want To Make Love To You," "It Hurts Me Too" and "Honey Hush," have become staples of classic rock radio in many parts of the Country.

Foghat was born when three members of an early version of British boogie kings Savoy Brown - guitarist "Lonesome" Dave Peverett, drummer Roger Earl and bassist Tony Stevens - quit that band and decided to form their own group.

Peverett was born April 16, 1943 in Dullwich, but raised in London. Rod Price, born Nov. 22, 1947 in London, took the lead guitar position in Foghat. Earl was born May 16, 1946, also in London, and Stevens was born in Willisden, England, September 12, 1949.

As Peverett explains in the following interview, the group wanted to take the sound of Savoy Brown a step further, and add more of a rock edge to their basic boogie blues. Foghat took their name from a word that Peverett and his brother, a fellow blues player, record collector and enthusiast, invented some years earlier in a demented Scrabble game. The legendary, late impresario Albert Grossman heard Foghat in London in 1971. A year later, the group's self-titled debut album was released on Grossman's label, Bearsville Records, named after a small town in upstate New York, near Woodstock, where Grossman held court.

Grossman, who by this point had already been enjoying the fruits of his labor as a manager of stars such as Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan and the Band, had sewn up distribution for his record label with Warner Bros. Because Bearsville was small and run by young, sharp executives, Foghat was able to become hugely successful, Peverett reveals in this interview. (By the early 1970s, Grossman wasn't very involved in the day-to-day operations at his label, Peverett says, and had turned his attention to other things, like running a restaurant and a playhouse.) Foghat's gold-selling albums, all for Bearsville, included Foghat (II), which peaked at #67 on the album charts and was certified gold in November 1975; Energized, which peaked at #34 and was certified gold in February of that same year, and Rock And Roll Outlaws, which went gold in November 1976 after reaching a peak position of #40. Other Foghat albums that reached gold status include Night Shift, released in November 1976, peaking at #36, and going gold in February 1977, as well as Stone Blue, released in May 1978, which peaked at #25 and was certified gold a month later.

The group's platinum albums included Fool For The city, a 1975 release that peaked at #23 and was certified gold in March 1976. That album continued selling through the 1980s due in no small measure to continuing airplay, and was certified platinum in October 1986. The group's September 1977 effort, Foghat Live, was its best-seller. It peaked at #11 and was certified gold a month later, then certified platinum in December of that year. In October 1984, the album was certified double platinum.

Although the blues boom of the late '60s had largely subsided by the time Foghat got started as a touring act in the U.S. in 1972, the group nudged its sound in a more rock-based direction and picked up fans of both genres. The excitement and energy of their live shows helped to build up a loyal U.S. following.

The band ended up settling in Long Island in 1975, having grown tired of commuting from England with a planeload of equipment and crew members. Still, Foghat's work ethic - endless touring, busy recording schedule - may have strained relations among members of the band at times, and Tony Stevens left the group after its fourth album, to be replaced by Nick Jameson, who produced the band's Fool For The City album, and was later replaced by Craig McGregor. Rod Price also left the band for a time, and was replaced by Erik Cartwright.

But in the past few years, original members of the group have put their personal and musical grudges behind them. When they broke up around 1980, they did so on reasonably amicable terms, Peverett recalled. Now, the original Foghat is back together and in fine form. In the summer of 1993, American Records founder and president Rick Rubin, a longtime Foghat fan, encouraged Peverett and fellow guitarist Rod Price to pursue their basic blues-rock sound again.

In October of last year, the Los Angeles-based Modern Records released "Return Of the Boogie Men." Once again, the group has the distribution power of Warner Bros. behind it.

Peverett, a longtime record collector and for many years a Goldmine subscriber, said most of the well-known British blues musicians got started as record collectors. People like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, John Mayall, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger started playing blues for the sheer joy of it, he said "Most of these guys were record collectors and enthusiasts who started off just listening to records, like Chuck Berry, and then later delving into where his sound came from," Peverett said. In the following interview, Peverett not only delves into the origins of Foghat, but where they are going as well.

Goldmine: Tell us about your new record deal and Rick Rubin's involvement in the reformation of the original Foghat.

Dave Peverett: For a few years now Rick has been interested in doing an album with Foghat and he approached us about two years ago. That gave us the impetus to get the band back together again. We started to write material, and we went on the road to get ourselves tight again and then while we were on the road, Rod Price and I worked up some new songs. Unfortunately, Rick was busy with Johnny Cash and others.

Since he couldn't do it himself and the producers he had in mind weren't available until the end of the year, it got to the point where we realized if we let this thing go on without putting an album out, it's going to fall apart. We couldn't keep going around the country without an album. We just told Rick we were going elsewhere. But we do give him thanks on the album.

I think we would have gotten ourselves back together eventually, but it (his involvement) just kind of gave us that little extra kick to do it.

One good thing with Rick was he gave us carte blanche with the material. He told us, don't worry about what's on the radio, just go with your hearts. That's what we usually do anyway, but it was nice to be told it, because usually we're fighting record companies. There's always a pressure to be commercial and it's so much easier to just be yourselves.

Goldmine: "Return Of The Boogie Men" is a marvelous album. When Rubin came to you he explained he was a fan of yours from the 1970's?

Dave Peverett: Yes, he's very much a fan of '70s rock, bands like Humble Pie and that. The more honest kind of rock music. He's not into the very produced, slick music. As you can hear from his productions, he likes no gimmicks, just a band playing. That's what he wanted from us, and he always gets a very honest sound on stuff. He grew up in that generation, and then later, he got into the rap thing. He's very much into the blues thing as well, and he was stressing, be as bluesy as you want to be. Which for us, is like "Oh! Thank you!"

But we kind of parted ways when we realized we were in danger of the band falling apart again, because we knew we couldn't exist without an album. We needed some product out there to take us up a level.

Goldmine: Is Modern Records connected with Rubin's American Records?

Dave Peverett: No it's connected with Atlantic, although really, with this particular album it's connected with ADA, which is a new company that Warners has set up. It's mainly alternative rock acts. It's through Warners/ADA, and it's more or less the album we put out ourselves through Paul Fishkin, who's with Modern. It's a small company and so we still had the freedom to do what we wanted to do.

These days it's very hard when you go with a major company; they're looking for hits and they're looking for you to sound like somebody that's big at the moment. So this gave us that freedom and with Rick Rubin we would have had that freedom too. It's very nice.

Goldmine: Given Rubin's level of interest in blues and country music, is it still possible you can do something with him in the future?

Dave Peverett: I think what he likes is basic, honest music, and he's very much into music being honest and kind of street level. Like Johnny Cash, you could almost say he was one of the original rebels of rock. Those Sun Records guys were going against the grain and all.

Goldmine: You were born in Brixton, southwest London, in 1943. Can you give us some background on your early life?

Dave Peverett: I was born in Dullwich Hospital but grew up in Brixton. My parents weren't all that interested in trad jazz or blues, at least not initially. My dad was a singer, like a classical singer, and his name was Carlton Webb, the Man With the Golden Voice, and he used to do gigs on weekends. He never gave up his day job.

But he was very much into classical, and when I was a kid, music was around but I was never really into music until I heard Bill Haley and the Comets one day when I was at a Christmas party. They had a bunch of 78s. They were all pop at the time, I guess, and then there was this one 78, "Rock Around The Clock," and we just kept listening to it again and again. I didn't have a record player at the time, so I'd listen to the radio a lot.

I lived in a house with three flats, and the people upstairs had a record player but we didn't have one, so I used to go upstairs and listen. Later I bought a record player and began to listen to other early rock 'n' roll, like Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Elvis. Fats Domino I used to hear quite a bit because Brixton was a Jamaican community; when the Jamaicans first immigrated to England, that was one of the big areas they settled in, so I'd be walking home from school and there was a little cafe which had a jukebox and they used to play Little Richard and Fats Domino and Bill Doggett and stuff like this. I heard this certain strain in the music, but I wasn't sure then what I liked about it. It was the blues influence in the music, but I wa sn't sure I liked it. But there was something mysterious and appealing about it.

Goldmine: What was the first blues record that made an impression on you?

Dave Peverett: It's hard to say because I used to get B-sides of Chuck Berry records like "Blue Feeling" and then I bought an EP of Chuck Berry's with "Wee Wee Hours," which ia a blues. I can't think of a specific record. I went from Chuck Berry to Bo Diddley, because I figured he's on the same label, let me check him out. Of course Bo was more bluesy than Chuck Berry. And from there I started to read about how Bo Diddley was influenced by Muddy Waters, and I bought this EP of Muddy's, called "Mississippi Blues," and that was the first real blues record I bought. It had "Louisiana Blues," "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "I Feel Like Going Home," and "Evan's Shuffle."

I had some friends and we were collecting rock records at the time. We started getting into R&B and blues together, but we hadn't yet discovered the really deep stuff yet. It was so weird, I remember when they came over to my house I used to hide it.

At that time, I'd never heard slide guitar before in my life, and it was just Muddy and an upright bass guitar, and to me it was like something from another planet! I thought it was very weird at the time, but I liked it, and I didn't want them to think I was listening to some weird music. That's still one of my favorite records. I just made up a tape for the road and those are the first tracks on the tape.

Goldmine: What year are we talking about?

Dave Peverett: This was 1961.

Goldmine: At this time in '61, other kids around London were listening to the same music, unbeknownst to one another in many cases. Kids like Eric Clapton and the Stones. Kind of a strange confluence of taste.

Dave Peverett: Yeah. There were like three of us were into this stuff and we thought we were the only people in England that knew this stuff, and then we discovered there were other people into it.

Later, we went to this Ealing Club in London. Alexis Korner used to play there. And Mick Jagger used to get up and sit in with Alexis, and Keith Richards did occasionally as well. We started hanging out there and meeting other people that were into the blues, and we thought we'd discovered it. In those days you used to go down to Dobell's Record Shop in London and they'd get blues records in there. There was another place called the Swing Shop, and that was the same kind of thing. We'd go down there every week, and they'd get the new imports in, and there'd be a T-Bone Walker album or a B.B. King, and we'd pretty much take a chance, because sometimes you could listen to stuff and sometimes you couldn't. They'd let you listen to a couple of things and then they'd throw you out for wasting their time, you know.

I took a chance and bought this John Lee Hooker album purely because I liked the name John Lee Hooker. I had no idea if he was any good or anything. I saw the cover, and it was the Riverside album, where he's on the cover with just an acoustic guitar. There's "Black Snake" and "Bottle Up And Go," and it's just him and an acoustic guitar. I used to go on names! You know, Slim Harpo, that's gotta be good. Lightnin' Slim, that's gotta be good! Howlin' Wolf!

We met this other guy who had a massive blues collection and Mick and Keith and Brian Jones went over there too, and that's where I met them. We were all discovering this American blues thing, and it was fun, because there was a whole new thing opening up. It was just a group of enthusiasts, and we were all 16 or 17 or 18.

Goldmine: Who was the first American bluesman that you met?

Dave Peverett: I think it was Buddy Guy, but actually, no, I'd met John Lee Hooker before that. I'd kind of shaken his hand, but it was too intimidating to talk with him. It was like, I'm not worthy. I'd met Howlin' Wolf when they did those blues shows, with sonny Boy Williamson, to get their autographs and stuff. But the first guy I actually had a chance to speak to was Buddy Guy when he first came to England. I was impressed with him because he was very open-minded and he was the young generation of blues guys then. He was talking about R&B and Wilson Pickett and Booker T. and the MG's and I was impressed by his open-mindedness to things.

I was also into that music and I went through a phase where I was exclusively a blues purist. I wouldn't listen to the stuff I used to like, like Elvis and even Chuck Berry. I said, that's commercial stuff, I don't listen to that stuff anymore. I'm into blues exclusively, and nothing else, and I think after meeting with Buddy Guy I realized it was all inter-connected. And I knew that, really, but I was just being a snob! (laughs) that's the word, yes!

It was sort of fashionable to be a snob in those days. It wasn't so much a fashionable thing as it was an arty kind of thing, that blues is expressive of the black experience, and Chuck Berry is just a sell-out. But even blues is commercial. In my opinion, the best blues was made for commercial acceptance, to be played to as many people as possible. I mean, even John Lee Hooker and all the Muddy Waters stuff, they're classic songs, the material was made to be commercial, really, and they wanted people to come out and dig 'em.

That's what music is all about: Obviously, you want people to hear your music, otherwise you may as well just sit in your room and play it for yourself. So you want to appeal to as many people as you can but you also want to like it, so I always figure, If I like it, people who have similar taste to me, they'll like it too.

I've never written anything that I didn't like, or at least we've never put it out. If enough people like it, that's ideal. I'd be embarrassed to get up on stage with something I hated.

Goldmine: When did you begin playing guitar?

Dave Peverett: I had a guitar when I was about 16, but I'd just sit around and plunk on it. I didn't get anywhere for ages, I just used to do, like, one-string style. It wasn't until I'd heard John Lee Hooker that I started to play that stuff. Before that I was just playing little one-string riffs and when I heard Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, I learned more. My brother John bought a snare drum, and that was the drum kit in those days.

At home we used to just play these songs very badly. Then we had this guy up the road, Allen Collins, he honked along on sax. He was learning saxophone, I was learning guitar, and my brother was learning drums, and then we found another guy who played guitar, so the first gig we did was at somebody's party in a house, and it was just two guitars, drums and sax! A weird combination.

I don't know if they enjoyed us just out of sympathy for the music! The first song we played was "Maudie," by John Lee Hooker; it was the first song I ever sang in public. We had a repertoire of about three songs then. With the saxophone, you have to play in weird keys, and we took a whole rehearsal just to find one song that we could all play together.

That was the first band and we were still very much learning, and it eventually evolved into a proper band, where we were playing colleges and stuff. We changed our names about every other week in those days, just so we could get work.

Goldmine: Dr. John and his friends used to do that too, in New Orleans.

Dave Peverett: Plus, at that time, all these bands were coming up in the Beatles era. The first name we had was I think the Roadrunners. Then we found there was a band in Liverpool called the Roadrunners, and then we had the Cheaters and found out some other band had that name, and then it was the Nocturnes, very kind of beat era names. Then we had the Cross Ties Blues Band, you know because of the railway cross ties. I had an instrumental B-side from Daryl Hawkins called "Cross Ties," and I had no idea what it meant. I liked the instrumental and thought it sounded like a good name for the band.

In those days we were playing a mixture of Chuck Berry and things like "High Heeled Sneakers" and "Walkin' the The Dog," and "Poison Ivy," mixed in with John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed Stuff. Then we started to get more into the blues, and then the Cross Ties Blues Band became Lonesome Jax Blues Band, which was my stage name.

In 1966 we were the Lonesome Jax Blues Band, and we played the club circuit in south London and the colleges in central london. Pubs were the mainstay of the band and then colleges were an added bonus, 'cause they were willing to have us. But by 1966 we were pretty good.

It's tough to remember the exact dates, but 1963 was the year we played our first party and then we played the local pub. Then my dad sang in this local pub and he got us a gig there one Sunday, lunchtime. And they took pity on this bunch of kids.

Goldmine: Well, it was decent of your dad to not think it funny you were playing blues.

Dave Peverett: Yeah, he was very supportive, and in fact for a while he was our transportation to the gigs, and he only had a three-wheel Reliant. He had a motor bike and he'd just gotten a three-wheeler then. When we were playing a pub, we used to have to do it in two trips, to fit the drums in there.

Goldmine: How did you get the moniker "Lonesome" Dave Peverett?

Dave Peverett: Growing up in London, we all tried to give ourselves bluesy names. For instance, my brother, a drummer, called himself Spider John Lewis. At the time I was known ad Dave Jax, and the "Lonesome" sort of evolved from that. I'd seen a record by Lonesome Sundown in a catalog, I believe, and I went in for that. In retrospect, it kind of matched my personality at the time, since I was this guy who stayed home and listened to blues records all the time.

Goldmine: You joined Savoy Brown in 1967?

Dave Peverett: Yes, but I was in a band in Switzerland before that. I knew Savoy Brown and used to get up and jam with them quite a lot.

[Note: The very first version of Savoy Brown, led by guitarist Kim Simmonds, was formed in 1966 and managed by Simmonds' brother Harry. The first Savoy Brown also included Brice Portius, vocals; Bob Hall, piano; Martin Stone, guitar; Ray Chappell, bass and Leo Mannings, drums. In 1967, the second of many later incarnations of the band, all led by Simmonds, included Peverett on vocals and guitar; Simmonds on guitar; Roger Earl on drums; Chris Youlden, vocals; Tony Stevens, bass; Rivers Jobe, bass and Bob Hall, piano.]

Actually, it's quite a small world here, because Harry Simmonds was one of the record collectors that I knew. He's Kim Simmonds' older brother. When I first knew Kim he was this 13-year-old kid who used to come up on his bike. Kim Started to get this band together and Harry became their manager. And Kim played with our band a couple of times back then too.

I jammed with Savoy Brown quite a lot. But then I had a call from a band in Switzerland and they'd seen me play in London, and they asked would I join? They were going to Japan, and would I be interested? At that time I was still working by day and doing gigs at night and that gave me a push to do it full time. I wasn't sure it was a good career move at the time, playing blues. But I figured at least I'd get to see Switzerland and see a little bit of the rest of Europe.

We were called the Questions, and we were based in Luzerne. They were a pop band. They knew I was doing blues. I got there to rehearse, and I saw their set list and it was all Beatles and Kinks. And I said, "I'm sorry, you've got the wrong man. I don't play this kind of stuff. Nothing against it, but that's not my cup of tea." I was very much a blues purist then. But then they said, "Well, whatever you want to play, we'll follow you." I think they wanted to do something new anyway and they were into what they'd heard of blues. We became, as far as I know, the first electric Swiss blues band.

Then that summer Cream and Hendrix started to filter up over there. We didn't get a great amount of work, 'cause it was still playing ski lodges and pubs. But it was a novelty. I was doing all the Buddy Guy moves, playing the guitar with my teeth and stuff like that. And they were trying to find out what blues was about anyway, and it worked out okay. That was until October of 1967 and then I came back to England and I wanted to get a band together with Chris Youlden. It's confusing, really, 'cause Chris Youlden had been in my Cross Ties Blues Band before he joined Savoy Brown.

So I had just gotten back and I went down to see Freddie King play at this pub, and I ran into Harry Simmonds there. He said, "Oh, you're back." And a couple of days later he called me up and asked me if I wanted to join the band. He asked me, "Do you do drugs?" I said, "No." He said, "Good. Do you want to join a band that's looking for a guitar player?" And you could almost hear the drum roll. Savoy Brown! Because they had an album out. They were one of the first blues bands to have an album out. Chris Youlden was already with them, he had just joined.

The original Savoy Brown band had gotten fired because Harry was very anti-drugs, and Kim had fired the first band. But I don't want to go into all that. The next band had Chris Youlden, Bob Brunning on bass and Bob Hall on keyboards and Hughie Flint from John Mayall on drums, which was like the big album at the time, the [John Mayall] Bluesbreakers' album.

I thought, "Well, this sounds like a good band.." So I met up with Kim the next day, and he showed me the set list, and I said, "Yeah, I know that, I know this, I know that one." And we went out on the road with no rehearsal, for about three months, because at that time, it was no originals. It was obscure blues things that people hadn't heard. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy, and I knew most of it because I was, at that time, very much a collector.

Goldmine: How did you first meet Roger Earl and Tony Stevens, who are with you now and who were part of Savoy Brown?

Dave Peverett: It was at the end of 1967. We'd had our equipment stolen, and Hughie Flint had his drums stolen and was still thinking of doing something different anyway, so that was kind of the last straw. Bob Brunning left at the same time and I think Kim wanted a change and so we auditioned and roger Earl came to auditions and he got the gig. The first time he came with a bass player friend and they auditioned together. We weren't keen on the bass player, so we passed on that rhythm section, and the next day, I said, "How 'bout that drummer, I thought he was good." so we called him again and he got the gig. We got a bass player called Rivers Jobe. He was very young, about 15 or so. And that was the lineup for the "Getting To The Point" album.

Goldmine: When we're talking about Savoy Brown, we're talking about 15 or 20 musicians that were involved in the band at various points, right?

Dave Peverett: Oh yeah, at least. I remember Bob Hall (keyboardist) used to play mainly on weekends, 'cause he had a good day job and didn't want to give that up. And then when Rivers left, Tony Stevens joined, and that band was permanent until Chris Youlden left in the beginning of 1970, I think.

The last album we did with Savoy Brown was the "Looking In" album. That was without Chris Youlden and I did the vocals for that. But since we left the band, I think there's been about 2,000 members since! (laughs) I think they have the Guiness Book Of World Records for the most people in a band.

Goldmine: Foghat didn't get started until January 1971. Tell us your first impressions of Albert Grossman? He came to the Country Club to hear you play?

Dave Peverett: We were rehearsing there, but we sort of set up an audition, really, for him to hear us. He was over there with the band, and our manager, Toy Outeda, who is American, and still our manager, was a guy we'd met and was working with one of the promoters. Tony had gone to see Savoy Brown in 1971 and we weren't there anymore, and he asked Kim, "Where'd those guys go?" And so tony called us up and we were all kind of out of work at the time, and he became our manager.

Tony had met Albert Grossman a few years before that, and he found out that Albert was coming to England with the Band, so he contacted him and told him about us. Albert came down and liked what he heard.

Goldmine: At that time you were more blues-based than you eventually became?

Dave Peverett: Yes. Actually, when we first left Savoy we were looking to rock out a bit more, and we were still finding an identity by jamming together. We were doing pretty blues-based stuff, even the stuff that I thought was commercial. It was commercial by oustandards. Stuff like "Leaving Again" and Sara Lee," which is one of my favorite songs that we've written, but it's more a rock song than a blues song. He liked us, and I think he'd been into bluesy roots kind of stuff anyway. Woodie Guthrie and Blind Willie McTell.

Goldmine: Foghat was signed to Bearsville, Grossman's label. In addition to Todd Rundgren, who else was with them at the time?

Dave Peverett: I think Butterfield was, and Janis's [Joplin's] Full Tilt Boogie Band was with him, but I don't think the record was ever released. Jesse Winchester was on the label, and Sparks and Bobby Charles and a couple of other obscure bands. It was a very small label.

Goldmine: By the time you formed Foghat, much of the excitement of the late '60s blues boom in England and America had faded. Was it difficult to continue to play blues in those early years? 1974 was the beginning of disco.

Dave Peverett: When we formed the band it was very much the end of it, and it was the James Taylor and Carole King kind of era. And any band that had amplifiers, they didn't want to know about. They didn't want to know about rock bands anymore, so we had a bit of trouble getting work in England.

Luckily, Albert Grossman was interested in us, and when the first album came out, we worked the States pretty much exclusively. But it was funny, even in the disco era, it was some of our best years. The disco years were the best years for Foghat. It was almost like a counter-movement, counter-culture, and the whole "disco sucks" thing. We were headlining arenas and people didn't realize how big the band was until the live album came out. That kind of cemented it for the media. Although we'd had gold records, as far as the media were concerned er were very much one of these boogie bands that tours around. And there were a bunch of bands in that fold, your Edgar Winters and your Humble Pies. J. Geils was also a big name by then, too.

Goldmine: In retrospect, what would you say led to the band getting heavy airplay? Was Grossman that powerful?

Dave Peverett: I think what it was, was our commitment to touring. With the first album, which was actually released in 1972, "I Just Want To Make Love To You" was a hit, and there was an interest with the Savoy Brown connection. When we left Savoy Brown we were headlining and doing pretty good.

I think what it was, was the people at Bearsville. It was a small company, and a young company and they worked hard to call up the radio stations. And that first album got played on a lot of college stations and it was a slow process, but we came over and worked everywhere the record was being played. If the record was getting airplay in Chicago, we'd go to chicago and play a free show or whatever.

We worked in conjunction with the company and we'd always put on a good live show, and the combination of the record company being behind the band and the band being behind the record company just worked and snowballed. We just developed a reputation as a good live band. For years we were an opening band for everybody.....Jethro Tull, J. Geils, Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter, just everybody. We were sort of known as the biggest opening band! (laughs)

We did that for years, just building up, playing in front of a lot of people and luckily they liked it. We built our reputation on our live shows, and that was good, because when we did make it big, it was not like we weren't used to playing in front of a lot of people.

Goldmine: Grossman already had the contacts, since he was a manager, to put Foghat in as the opening act for Jethro Tull?

Dave Peverett: Funny, at that point, he'd sort of almost semi-retired. He'd done Bob Dylan and Janis and had made plenty of money and he had a nice place up there in Bearsville. He had a restaurant that he'd opened and a theatre he was gonna open up. He pretty much left it up to Paul Fishkin, and Paul, in conjunction with a budding agency, was the secret to our developing a following.

At that point, we were coming out of the 1960s, where you had the underground scene with the Fillmores and all that and it was getting to be a bit bigger than all that. When we were in the U.S. with Savoy Brown, the Fillmores were the big places to play. The rest of the time we were playing hockey rinks and small clubs. In the beginning of the 1970s it was starting to get bigger than that. In the early '70s, bands like us never played arenas unless you had a hit record.

I'm not sure what we're earning, but I know we weren't asking for too much money, and we developed a reputation as a good band to have on a show. It wasn't too hard for us to get on bills.

Goldmine: Were your albums for Bearsville recorded at Bearsville studios?

Dave Peverett: No, almost every album was done at a different studio. All we did at Bearsville studio was started work on the second album there with Dave Edmunds and that didn't really work out at the time. Dave was a bit laid back at that point, so we did a few tracks there but most of it we did in New York City or L.A. Each album we did in different places. The first album we did at Rockfield in Wales, and then the Rock 'n' Roll Outlaws album we did in Wales again. Dave Edmunds had a kind of a part share in that studio.

Goldmine: Could you give us a brief history of the personnel changes you've made in the band over the years?

Dave Peverett: We had the original lineup, which we have now, until 1975. That's when Tony Stevens left. He was replaced by Nick Jameson for about a year, for the "Fool For The City" album. He left and Craig McGregor joined then, in 1976. Foghat stayed that way intil Rod left the band in 1980. And after that is when I kind of think the Foghat sound chenged irrevocably. We had three albums after 1980, after the "Tight Shoes" album, which was the last album we had with Rod. After that we had "Girls To Chat, Boys To Bounce," in 1981 with Eric Cartwright on guitar, and then we had "In The Mood For Something Rude," and then "Zig-Zag Walk." Those last two albums were done with Nick Jameson, who came back on bass and Erik Cartwright on guitar.

By 1983, we had stopped touring.

Goldmine: What did you all do in the interim?

Dave Peverett: Rod Price pretty much retired from music for awhile, a couple of years he wasn't doing anything to do with music. Then he got started into playing again with local blues bands up in New England. I went back to England and Roger Earl started to do some gigs as the Knee Tremblers, doing rhythm and blues material and they had a manager that kind of pressured them into doing Foghat, and it became this bogus Foghat band for awhile.

So Roger and I were actually involved in some legal fighting for a few years there, but that's all in the past now. I was in England for a few years and it took me awhile before I found out about it. I went to England and had a little home studio. I was writing and when we did split up we kind of left it open. "Let's call it a day for now and in a few years time we'll sit down and talk about getting it together again."

I had some things I was writing that didn't really fit in with the Foghat sound, and I had various experiments with writing and demos. We all just did other stuff for awhile. When you include Savoy Brown, we'd been on the road together from 1967 to 1983. That's a long time, and we worked a lot. We were called the hardest-working band in show business, you know, we got that from James Brown, the hardest-working man, and it wasn't really far from the truth.

And all of this was before video, whereas, in the '80s you could go on MTV and make one appearance and it'd be like doin' a tour. Luckily, the kind of band that we are, we just thrive on our live shows, and the interaction with live audiences.

Back in the 1960s I used to go to all the American touring acts that came to England: Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Guy, Gene Vincent. And I was at all of these shows, front and center, and that's really what our band enjoys doing. There's a thrill involved in the immediate feedback from a live audience, which we try to capture in the studio, but it's harder. I enjoy writing and some aspects of recording, but I don't really enjoy it until it's finished. It's the satisfaction of the record being finished and listening to it.

I get satisfaction out of writing a new song or coming up with a new arrangement, but the interim thing in the studio can get boring, 'cause you're setting up mikes and getting levels. Once you're playing it's alright, but most of the recording process is getting sounds and stuff and the playing aspect takes five minutes.

With Foghat, we play live in the studio as much as possible, and keep as much of a live feel as we can.

Goldmine: What's your favorite Foghat album?

Dave Peverett: It's hard to say now. Once an album is finished there's a big sigh of relief that we've done it and that the tapes didn't get lost or destroyed. But listening to them now, I enjoy the first album a lot. At that time, we were struggling, and were pretty much broke. We'd had a bit of money from Savoy Brown but that had pretty much gone by the time we were into Foghat.

There was an 18-month period between that time and the time of our first album coming out, and we'd tried a number of things in the stidio with a guy who had engineered some Savoy stuff, and finally we did some stuff with Todd Rundgren and then we did some stuff with Dave Edmunds which ended up being the album. but we were very much in the process of discovering what the band was at that point. I get a lot of pleasure out of listening to that album and hearing what we were attempting to do, and when it worked and when it didn't. Even stuff I can enjoy now. There's still some stuff I could have done better.

Dave Edmunds produced most of it and some of the Todd Rundgren tracks we re-mixed. There's bits of Todd Rundgren stuff in there, and a couple of the tracks were re-mixed my Nick Jameson, who did "Fool For The City."

As far as good albums, I think the "Fool For The city" album and "Rock And Roll Outlaws" are my personal favorites.

Goldmine: You did a benefit concert for the New York Public Library blues record collection in 1977. This was with Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and others, and it was held at the Palladium?

Dave Peverett: I have a video of this, and a decent soundtrack as well. The recording quality on the video that I have isn't very good, so I'm looking for a better one. I do have some cassettes of mixes of the show, and there's a lot of stuff that we didn't use on the video. But it was one of those nights when I think everybody was good, and everybody just peaked that night. Other people on the bill included Johnny Winter, Eddie Kirkland, Honeyboy Edwards, Otis Blackwell, Paul Butterfield. I hope I haven't forgot anyone else.

There was an article about it in "Rolling Stone," and we had more coverage for that concert than any of our other things we did. It was a highlight of my career.

Goldmine: What do you see in the near future for Foghat?

Dave Peverett: The reaction to the album has been very good, surprisingly good, and I think we've got certain things to overcome; we've got to make people aware that we're back and we're still playing. I think this album is as good as any of our other albums. And we want to work, and we're almost like the blues guys that go on forever.

I would like to be able to do that, like they do. I still enjoy music and I would like to be able to do it for as long as people want to listen. I think there's a young audience out there now, who are just discovering the band through old records and through that "Dazed And Confused" movie, because "Slow Ride" was featured in that. A lot of 15 and 16 year-olds saw that movie, it's a big movie with them, and it's about the 1970s. It's about teenage kids growing up in the '70s.

We used to play [Elmore James'] "It Hurts Me Too" in the late 1970s and people would sort of yawn. But in the last 10 years we've had people like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton bring blues to the forefront again. The music is not so foreign to people now. It's nice for us because it gives us the opportunity to play more blues, which we always liked doing. Before, we would play blues, but we'd keep it to a minimum.

There are still enough people who support the band to make it worth our while to work. Generally, with a few exceptions, we've been getting real good turnouts for our live shows.

---Richard Skelly

Richard Skelly is a Central New Jersey-based music journalist, disk jockey and record producer. He writes about blues, jazz, folk music, and roots-rock for the Home News & Tribune and for the Asbury Park Press. He regularly contributes stories to Goldmine, in which this interview appeared, as well as Sing Out!, Song Talk, Grammy Magazine and Pro Sound News. He has hosted "The Low Budget Blues Program" on WRSU - FM, the radio station of Rutgers University, on Thursday nights for the last 14 years.

Interview notes: "The night of this interview, Foghat played at Club Bene in Sayerville, N.J., where Jon Bon Jovi was born and raised. After the interview was over, I gave Dave Peverett a ride to his hotel, so he could shower and change to catch the band bus back to the show. As we drove, the conversation continued. I remember telling Dave that several famous blues people had been in the front passenger seat of my car, including John Lee Hooker, the poet Allen Ginsberg (who loves blues as poetry) and Paris-based guitarist Luther Allison. The whole time we spent together, Dave Peverett was the perfect gentleman, very articulate and very sharp, taking time to explain early British blues scene history from the 1960s. I knew that day I'd found a new blues friend, a humble person, but also an incredible musician who is much a fan of blues and blues rock, as he is one of the idiom's major stars."