Hans Olson INTERVIEWER: Joyce Vesper DATE: December 5, 2014

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TEMPE HISTORICAL MUSEUM ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

INTERVIEW #: OH-406 NARRATOR: Hans Olson INTERVIEWER: Joyce Vesper DATE: December 5, 2014

HO = Hans Olson INT = Interviewer ______= Unintelligible (Italics) = Transcriber’s notes

Tape 1, Side A INT: This is Hans Olson. It’s December 5, 2014. We’re at the Tempe Historical Museum. My name is Joyce Vesper, and I’m the interviewer.

Welcome, and thank you for coming to the Tempe Historical Museum, and for offering up all this interesting information about you that I know we’re gonna get.

HO: It’s my pleasure.

INT: The first question I have for you today is how long, if ever, have you been a resident of Tempe?

HO: Well, I lived here on and off. I think I first moved to Tempe in 1972, and I stayed there until around 1979, I think. And I kind of bounced around from Scottsdale to Phoenix and back to Tempe, but I’ve lived here on and off quite a bit.

INT: What do you like most about Tempe, what brought you back?

HO: It’s the fact that it’s got the college, so there’s a lot of kids, and they’re more into live music than older people.

INT: Really? That’s surprising.

HO: Or I don’t know if that’s true, but they go out more.

INT: Yeah, I think that’s true.

HO: Older people don’t go out. OH-406

INT: They just kind of stay home and listen to the television or something?

HO: I guess; I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re not going out to bars, that’s for sure.

INT: Does your family live here? Your family of origin, as opposed to . . .

HO: No. Both of my parents have passed away, but they actually lived in Scottsdale.

INT: And when you were a youngster, were you interested in music?

HO: I was. My father was a musician, and . . .

INT: What did he play?

HO: He played guitar, and he actually had a radio show in South Dakota that he did.

INT: What was it called?

HO: I don’t remember. But he died when I was five, and my mother would say, she encouraged the music. And that’s what it takes, is for your parents to say yeah. And in the ‘60s, of course, it was such a revolution, a lot of the parents didn’t want their kids to play music; you know, after Elvis, it became scary. But my mother would always say, “Your dad would really like it if you played guitar,” so it was an encouragement for me.

So I got my first guitar when I was twelve, and then I got my first band when I was thirteen, and actually made money.

INT: Wow. Did you arrange that band yourself?

HO: No, it was funny, because I was really tall, and I looked a lot older than I was. And I auditioned for this band, I didn’t think about it, and they were all over twenty-one and they were playing in bars. And nobody asked me if I was twenty-one, and I didn’t think about it, and they hired me as the singer.

INT: And your voice was already settled in, at thirteen?

HO: Well, it was much higher, which was good for the rock ‘n roll.

So, yeah, I was interested in music when I was really small. And it was funny, because the first time I thought I wanted to be an entertainer, which is a whole different thing— playing music or actually doing it for a living are two different things—and it was a story I always tell about, I saw Gene Kelly dancing with the softshoe, and he had this great rhythm going, and it was like a drum solo with his feet. And it amazed me, and I said, “I’ll bet I could do that.” So I actually went out into my garage, and I put salt down, and I started dancing. Which is funny, because I’ve never danced again. But I thought, “I got

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rhythm,” you know, “I love this, I love doing the rhythm thing.” And I immediately thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to be an entertainer?”

INT: And did you think that you would ever dance, or you thought you’d just play music and sing?

HO: I didn’t know what I was gonna do; I just suddenly started thinking of myself as somebody in the entertainment business. And I was singing, I was singing with my older sister from the time I was tiny. We’d do shows every Christmas and sing Christmas songs, and it was a performance.

INT: For the family?

HO: For the family, yeah. And it would be time for our show, we’d plan it all year.

INT: Wow. Did you make a stage and a set and everything?

HO: No.

INT: You just got up and sang your songs?

HO: Right.

And my sister was actually the reason I got in that first band, because she was a great singer, and she would sing around the house, and I said,”She’s gonna be famous, and I better learn to play guitar so I can back her up, and I’ll be her manager,” or whatever. I said, “She’s gonna be a star,” I just was really amazed by her. And so I realized the first thing I need to do is get into the music business somehow, so when I saw this audition for a singer, I said, “I’ll meet these guys.” And I didn’t really think they’d hire me, and then they did.

And I told them right away, “If you think I’m good, you have to see my sister; my sister should be singing.” And right then, there were a lot of females singing rock ‘n roll— Janis Joplin and Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane—so there were women doing it. And they said they would audition her, and when she came into the audition, she started singing, and all of a sudden, all of the color went out of her face, and she got dizzy and she said, “I have to go outside and get some air.” And I went out and said, “What’s the problem?” She said, “I can’t sing in front of people.”

INT: Even though she’d done the Christmas shows?

HO: Well, that was just for the family, you know? She could not sing in front of these people. It was the worst case of stage fright . . . . I even brought the microphone outside, we were outside the room, I said, “There, you’re not even with them now, you can still hear the band, just sing a little.” She couldn’t do it, and I was so angry. And the guy said, “Well, we want you anyway.” So I continued on with that band.

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And I had like an anti-stage fright philosophy from then on. I said, “You know, everybody wishes they were up here,” this was my feeling. I said, “You know, they think it’s cool that I’m up here.” I never got that, never had any stage fright, ever.

INT: Even when you were trying something new, or something for the very first time?

HO: I figured it out years later, when I was a professional, that I’d get a little nervous before a show, and I realized what it was, was worrying that something would go wrong. And so what I did, I said, “Get a spare set of guitar strings, a spare harmonica, think of all the things that could go wrong, and know what you’ll do.” So I was just preparing, and once I was all prepared, I said, “No matter what goes wrong, I can still go on,” and I never got nervous again.

INT: There are a lot of musicians, I’m sure, who would like to have that gift.

HO: You know, I once heard that public speaking was the scariest thing; they had talked to people, and public speaking scares people. And I thought, “This is my gift, that I’m not afraid to get up there.” I always knew that. And then when you walk out, when I played the big shows—the biggest show I ever played was 22,000 people—and you walk out there, and that is an energy thing, that if you let it get you, it will. But I felt better in front of 22,000 people than I did in front of five, and I said, “I should be in this business.”

INT: You made the right choice.

Is there a family story that the family tells about you, about when you were a little boy? Anything that they talk about whenever they say, “We remember Hans because . . . “

HO: I really don’t have any family any more, nobody here.

INT: Did your sister ever tell any stories about you?

HO: I think the story my sister tells the most is she had a Chatty Cathy doll, and I was mesmerized by how that worked, you pulled that ring and it talked. And so one day when she wasn’t around, I decided to go in and see the mechanics of it, and I destroyed her doll, and she’s never forgiven me. I couldn’t get it back together. I was always taking things apart, and that’s usually what they talk about.

INT: So you were either gonna be a musician or an engineer.

HO: I was gonna be a mechanic, that’s what I went to school for. After high school, we had no money for college, so I thought I’d go to a trade school. And so I went to mechanic’s school, I got three diplomas. Then when I went to do it in the field . . . actually, when I was in school I figured this out, that this old mechanic came over to me once and he said, “Boy, you got bad torque.” Torque is how tight you tighten things. And I still to this day, my wife has to remind me all the time, “Remember torque,” because I can’t feel

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pressure. Somebody once told me there’s a medical name for it. But my mind just says, “I don’t know how tight that is,” and snap, I would break off bolts. And then after I broke a lot of bolts, and it was really hard to get them out, you have to get the bolt out, then I’d be afraid, and I’d say, “Well, I think that’s probably tight enough,” and then it would fall off. So no matter what I did, it was either too tight or too loose, and I just wasn’t a good mechanic because of it.

And I loved it, I loved being a mechanic, ‘cause it’s like a puzzle, a car would come in, they’d say, “What’s wrong with it?” To me, it was like a puzzle, you figure it out and you fix it, and I loved that. But it just wasn’t to be. And one day, I realized I made more money playing music this week than I did being a mechanic, and the mechanic work was really hard. And I thought, “Jeez, if you can make this much money playing music,” and I just shifted, never was a mechanic again.

INT: Never looked back. All right.

Did you go to public schools?

HO: I did.

INT: And was that here in Arizona, or was that back in California?

HO: I moved here in 1969, I was a senior in high school.

INT: At Tempe High?

HO: No, at Coronado in Scottsdale, we moved to Scottsdale.

INT: Anything you remember about that? Were you in any bands there, were you in any shows there at all?

HO: I immediately, within a week, I met a musician and got in a band the first week I was here. And the guy lived in my neighborhood, as it turned out, and we started getting a band together right away, it was amazing.

And we lost our rehearsal hall, which was at one of the kid’s houses, and the mother said, “You can’t play here any more.” And one of the kids said, “You know, they got this park, Papago Park, where they have these ramadas with lights and power.” I had never heard of such a thing; in California, I had never seen that. And I said, “What are you talking about?” We went out, and there was a nice place to set the band up and plug in the amps, and we started playing, rehearsing.

And then we heard another band on the other side of the park, so we drove over there, and they were guys that lived in the area, and they were doing the same thing. And I said, “You know what we oughta do”—‘cause I’ve always been a promoter—“we should both play at the same ramada, and have a party, and invite people, and have like a

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concert.” So we did. And that continued every Friday and Saturday night my senior year, we played there.

And at the end, we had some of the most famous bands in town showing up to jam, and like a thousand people. A thousand people. And we could stay there ‘til four in the morning, we had bonfires. And I was from California, and when I first was gonna move here, I thought, “Jeez, it’s just an old western town with nothin’,” and I was used to Los Angeles, and I said, “I’m gonna be really bored there.” But then I told my friends, “You’re not gonna believe this, but we’re jammin’ and having parties all night on the weekends!”

INT: And the park rangers never gave you grief?

HO: They never came; there was no curfew on the park back then. They eventually closed the park at ten, and no electrified instruments, they passed all kinds of rules against it. But for that whole year, it was the funnest time of my life.

INT: Yeah, that sounds like it was great.

HO: It was fun. And I was sort of the ringleader of it, ‘cause I made sure there was always bands there, so that was cool.

INT: It’s interesting to look back, and you can see your history, as it’s coming forward. And it was music, music, music, and it just kept getting more and more and more.

HO: One thing I do remember about Coronado is . . . . The school I went to in Rialto, California, the high school I was going to, was huge, it was four times the size of this one in Scottsdale, and the windows were all broken out, and it was a tough school, and they had armed guards at the school. And I went to this place, and it was brand new, and all air-conditioned and beautiful, and I just thought, “How could anybody complain about going to this school, it’s so beautiful?”

And the first thing I noticed was there was hardly any Black people, maybe one, and maybe two Mexicans, in the whole school. And where I came from, it was like one-third Black, one-third Mexican, and one-third White. And I never even thought about that Whites were a majority, until I got to Scottsdale, and I said, “Where’s all the Mexicans?” And they said, “Well, they live over on this side of town.” I said, “Where’s all the Black people?” “They live over there.” So the cultural thing hit me right away, and I said, “Well, what a bummer that you don’t have that excitement.” Because it was the Black music that got me the most interested, and it was the Mexican family culture that I thought was the best, I thought those people, they loved their families. So it just kind of upset me that it was such a White town.

INT: I was watching, as I said, some of your videos on YouTube, and you at one point had said—now, you were young, you were a teen—and you said that somehow or another you were associated with Hell’s Angels? How?

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HO: The town I grew up in was the original . . . in fact, I actually ended up living in the original clubhouse in Fontana, California. And when you’re a kid in that neighborhood, that’s your heritage, you know, you want to be a Hell’s Angel when you grow up. It was much different when I was young; they were not bad people, what they did was beat up bad people, pretty much.

INT: Oh, so they were like vigilantes?

HO: They were like vigilantes, they were like the people’s police force, sort of. And I just thought they were cool, that they policed the bad people and kept trouble from happening. And it was right about the time that I got hooked up and actually was gonna be able to—it’s called being a prospect—and I was fifteen. And that’s when they started doing drugs, and selling guns, and getting into prostitution and just crime, they became criminals, it was a criminal thing. And I said, “No, I thought this was a bunch of guys getting together and beating up jerks,” which I just thought was kind of cool. In fact, the whole first year I was here, I was saying, “When I finish high school, I’ll go back, and I’ll join the Hell’s Angels,” that was gonna be what I did.

And that was the year that Altamont happened in California (December 1969), when the Rolling Stones played, and they got the Hell’s Angels to police the concert, and they killed a bunch of people, the Hell’s Angels, but really they were doing their job. And it’s in a movie the Rolling Stones made, where a guy pulls a knife—no, he pulled a gun—and a Hell’s Angel killed him with a knife. And I said, “That’s just something that happens, it was stupid of them to hire them in the first place.” But the bad part was, there was no security, no professional security; you’re supposed to have a buffer around the stage, and there wasn’t one, the people came right up to the edge of the stage. In fact, they put their motorcycles in the front, that was the only security, and people just knocked them over. All these people, it was like Woodstock, it was huge, and all these people were pressing forward, and the Hell’s Angels just went crazy. But they were on stage, and they punched out Marty Balin from Jefferson Airplane, just ‘cause he said, “Hey, you guys gotta mellow out,” and they went (punch).

So I heard about all this, and I went back the week that was happening, and nobody was there. And there was a woman there who told me they were all in San Francisco, with the Police and a Rolling Stones concert, and I almost hitchhiked up there. I was just a kid, I was seventeen. So then one of the guys came down, he said, “Oh, yeah, we’re beatin’ up the musicians and we’re killin’ people.” And I was, “What the heck?” And it was right then I said, “You know, if you guys are gonna be jerks, I don’t know if I want to be part of this.” I said, “I gotta pick a side, ‘cause I’m a musician, and you were punching musicians.” And it was right then I said, “I gotta take a different path.” But if I would have stayed there, I would have had to do it, ‘cause it’s like the Mafia, once you’re involved.

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And I said, “What could I do?” And I said, “Well, I got all these contacts and things going in Arizona.” And I always say this thing, as an historical thing, that it was such a redneck place in the ‘60s . . .

INT: You’re talking about . . . ?

HO: Phoenix.

. . . that the musicians, the long-haired hippie musicians playing rock ‘n roll here, were persecuted really badly by the environment here.

And the first thing I heard when I moved to Scottsdale, they said if you have long hair in Scottsdale, the cowboys will pull over and they were shaving their heads with straight razors. It was terrifying for these guys. And I didn’t have long hair, really; I was more of what they called a greaser. I wasn’t a hippie, but I was a musician. And I said, “So, if I grow my hair long, I’ll be able to fight these cowboys?” And a bunch of us did it, a bunch of tough guys in Scottsdale, right at the same time, started growing our hair long. And then the cowboys would go, “You look like a girl,” and they expected pacifists. And we had gang fights and everything in Scottsdale, I couldn’t believe it that Scottsdale had that kind of thing. And we pretty much ended that in Scottsdale; the cowboys were afraid then, because they got beat up so bad. And it was a cultural change that happened. But by then, all the best bands had left.

INT: Because of the cowboys?

HO: Yeah, I think so. And because there was no . . . . Well, actually, we did have a great musical industry here, that people don’t even know about. You could actually break into the big time from here, and a few people did. But the general scene was just so scary . . . and I don’t know if they would say that now, I don’t know, I’ve never talked to the guys that left about it, but I’m thinking the fact was, they were gone. And when I went to a music store and said, “I want to go out and hear your best musicians,” they said, “Well, we got Alice Cooper, but he’s gone; and we got Goose Creek Symphony, but they’re gone”; I mean, every single band they named.

I said, “Well, who can I go see?” And there was one band called The Beans, so I went to see them at a park, they did a free concert in a park, there were thousands of people there. And these guys were some of the best musicians I’d ever heard. And I said, “Okay, finally, you guys do have some great music here.” They left the next month, and became The Tubes, and they were gone, they were gone. And I said, “So who do you got here? You got nobody.”

There was one guy named Mike Collins, who actually did my thing, I finally found out he was the guy I had to beat if I wanted to be somebody. He played acoustic guitar and a harp-in-a-rack, and he was a much better singer than me and a much better guitar player, but I was a better harmonica player. So I said, “Maybe I got a chance.”

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And I know this probably shouldn’t go on record, but he did drugs, and I didn’t do drugs, or cocaine, in particular, was the drug that killed the music industry. And I was an alcoholic already and I would smoke pot once in a while, but that cocaine thing, I just said, “I don’t get it.” I actually tried it, and I didn’t see what it was. Somebody said that some people it doesn’t work on, so maybe I was just lucky, that chemically, it just didn’t . . . all it did was make my nose numb, and I didn’t feel any other difference. So I was lucky to not do that. And Mike was doin’ it, and every musician was doin’ it, and it was just sad. I was watchin’ these guys all get to where they couldn’t play any more; without drugs, they couldn’t play at all. And I says, “Well, if I just don’t do that, I can just keep on trucking,” which I did.

And it was funny, ‘cause Mike Collins, I had a moment with him, where he was playing an outdoor show somewhere. And I was thinking, “Wow, I wish I was doin’ that,” I was like, “I want to be right where he is right now, and be revered like he is as the guy, the solo act.” And this gorgeous girl that I was with—I was drunk—starts screamin’ at him, “You should let Hans Olson play!” It was really embarrassing. “Oh, no, the first time he hears about me!” At least she was good-looking, but . . . . I thought, “I hope he didn’t notice that,” but I think he did, because then later, we did a show together, and I was so excited to meet him. And I went up and I said, “Mike, I’m Hans Olson,” and he just looked at my hand and walked away. And I thought, ‘Well, what a jerk.”

And then right at that time, he opened for the biggest concert that was happening, which was Janis Joplin, at the Tempe Stadium, I think. And I said, “That’s the gig; I wish I could have got that gig.” That was the gig. And just a year or two later, he had gone down, and I had gone up, and I was opening this giant show for 20,000 people. And I thought, “I’m gonna walk around in the crowd and just get the feel of it before I play.” And I walked out there and I saw Mike, and I said, “How you doin’?” He said, “Not good, I don’t have any gigs.” And I said, “Well, I gotta go,” and he said, “Where you going?” I said, “I gotta go to work.” He said, “Where you playing tonight?” And I said, “Right here.” And that was the day I took his spot. And I thought, “As long as I don’t do coke, I’ll probably stay goin’ on.”

INT: Yeah, because all that stuff, not only does it ruin your brain, it also ruins your voice.

HO: I think so, ‘cause guys did get worse. And it’s all about energy, and to go on stage, you do have to get an adrenalin rush, because there’s so much energy you have to put out. Well, they found out if you do cocaine, it did that artificial; but then if you didn’t have that cocaine, it’s like your body forgot how to do it, and guys couldn’t go on stage without “I need to have some coke.” And I went, “Eew, so unattractive.”

INT: You’ve seen quite a bit.

HO: And a lot of those guys moved back here, years later, but by then, I was established; I mean, it was like they couldn’t kick me out.

INT: Did Mike stick around, or did he . . . ?

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HO: He’s still around. He’s an actor, too, he does a lot of plays. And he’s a great musician, and after a long time, I think, his wife said, “Okay, you can do gigs, but they have to be in the afternoon.”

INT: So she regulated him?

HO: Yeah. So he just didn’t do that many gigs after a while.

INT: Okay. What’s the most memorable gig that you’ve ever done? Is it that 22,000 one? Do you remember anything that happened when you were playing that?

HO: There’s been so many. I know, I saw that question, and I said, “There’s no way to do that.” But, yeah, it would probably be that one, ‘cause it was the biggest show I ever did.

And so many things happened at that show; in particular, I had just gotten management, and management is very important, and I’m the worst businessman in the world, I just hate it, and I don’t like that side of it, so I had got myself a manager. And right at that time (September 1973?), I got booked to open, it was the Allman Brothers Band and Boz Scaggs, and it was at the Feyline Fields, I don’t know if you remember that; it’s the baseball park that’s on the freeway and Broadway, it’s right off the freeway, down that way, and I don’t know what it is now, or even if it’s still there—(now Tempe Diablo Stadium)—but it was a baseball park then. It was a ballpark, and this guy named Barry Fey from Colorado made it into this huge concert facility, and they called it Feyline Fields, and I played there many times.

And on that one, with the Allman Brothers, there was a guy named Bill Graham, who was the number one rock promoter in the world; still to this day, he’s the most famous rock promoter. And he was from San Francisco, he did the Fillmore (Auditorium). And he managed people; he discovered Carlos Santana, so if for no other reason, he was great. And he was just like the guy, the impresario of rock ‘n roll, he taught ‘em all how to do the big tours. So he was there, and I was more impressed by him than I was by the Allman Brothers at that point.

And so I met him just before I went onstage, and he said, “Hi, I’m Bill Graham.” And I go, “I know who you are, I’m actually from California,” and he’s a legend there, and I said, “It’s so great to meet you.” So then, he didn’t realize that I lived in Arizona, he thought I still lived in California, ‘cause I had said I’m from California. So he goes out on stage to these people and he says, “Ladies and gentleman, I want to introduce you to a really good friend of mine,” and I had just met him (laughter), which was so cool for him to say that. And he said, “Hans Olson!” And I go up, and I did a great set, and then I got an encore.

And then when I went off stage, Bill Graham came over, and he was shaking my hand, he goes, “That was really good!” And he said, “I need to talk to you about some business stuff.” And I said, “Absolutely.” And I had an amplifier that was one of very coolest

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vintage amplifiers you could possibly have, a 1954 Fender Pro amp, and it was out there on the stage. And I put my guitar down and I said, “I gotta go get my amp.” And he goes, “I got fifty guys up here that I’m paying to do that, and you don’t need to.” And, you know, I hadn’t got a roadie yet, you know? And I said, “No, really, I want to get it,” and he was holding me, physically, he didn’t want me to go back out there and do my own equipment when he’s got all these guys, and I didn’t realize it’s not professional. And one of those roadies picked up my amp and started walking, and he slipped and he dropped the amp. And Bill Graham let go and he says, “I am so sorry!” I went and got my amp, and I said, “I’ve never dropped my amp.”

So then he says . . . . This tour was the Marshall Tucker Band, Boz Scaggs, with the Allman Brothers headlining, and somebody in the Marshall Tucker Band got ill and they couldn’t finish the tour. And the tour, from Phoenix it went to San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, so that’s the entire West Coast; I would have been a legend, right? . . . . So he said, “Would you like to finish this tour, since Marshall Tucker can’t do it?” And I think I was twenty years old, and I said, “Absolutely, I want to do this tour!”

And they were paying me, I think, $400 or $500 for the show, for that one show. And what a guy like me should get, nobody really knew, I was unknown. There was no rate, my manager just said, “Would you give us $500?” and they went, “Sure,” so who knows? But then he found out the Allman Brothers was the first band to get $100,000 per show, and this was in ’73, and he went, “Wow, and they’re only giving him $500?”

So Bill Graham said, “I want to talk to you about this tour thing,” and I said, “Well, I’d like it if you’d talk to my management,” and he said, “Absolutely, I’d rather talk to the management.” So I hooked them up. He asked for $5,000 a night, which evidently was way out of line. And later I told my manager, “We should have paid them $5,000 a night; this was worth a million dollars to us, this would have made my career.” Next thing I know, Bill Graham opened my dressing room door, and he said, “Your manager’s an asshole, and he blew the deal for you,” and he walked away. So that was a pretty memorable show. And I told him, “Don’t do that next time!”

INT: You kept him?

HO: For a while. He was just learning, he was new at it, and I knew I had to teach him.

INT: Wow, that’s a story and a half.

Any special friends from your time here in Arizona that you recall? People that stick out in your mind, or that you’re still friends with today?

HO: Actually, I did have one friend named Jim Hopla (sp?) who I met in high school, and being that I came from a violent environment, the first thing—it’s kind of like when you go into jail, you find the biggest guy and either beat him up or make him your friend— and I made this guy my friend because he was the biggest guy at the high school. And it

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turned out, he had a car, I didn’t have a car, and he and I would get together. And then it turned out he was a drummer, and so he was my drummer for ten years. He lives up in Payson now, I do see him once in a while.

INT: Does he still drum?

HO: I don’t think so; he had an accident, hurt one of his legs really bad.

INT: Have your travels and your various gigs influenced your view of Tempe as a community? Did you see Tempe differently after you traveled?

HO: You really do see things from a different perspective when you see more places. And the one thing is—all of Arizona, and I don’t know why, is different from almost every place I’ve gone—where the nightclubs here, when they have live music, they say, “How about we charge $1 to get in,” and people complain. So there is no cover charges here; it’s weird. So, of course, the bands don’t get paid much, ‘cause that’s sort of how the band gets paid everywhere else. But you go to any other city, and they seem to have a tradition where people that love music go to bars and they don’t mind paying $10, and they support their local people.

And that’s sort of the reason I stay here. I always wondered, that you gotta be really tough to live here, because they don’t help you. It’s a really tough environment, I don’t get support; still, to this day, I don’t get any support in the nightclubs. But if I go up to Flagstaff, I’ll pack a place; if I go to Tucson, I pack a place. In Phoenix, they just go, “Well, he plays all the time, we’ll go see him next time.” I don’t know what the deal is, and I’m just used to it, ‘cause it’s always been that way.

And I could do like a major headlining tour of Europe, and I come back . . . . In fact, I did one. I had a series going at the Valley Art Theatre, called the Valley Art Thing, that I put on, and I would get large art, because the ceiling was so high, and guys would have large art they don’t get to show very often, and I said we could put in 30-foot high pictures. So we’d have an artist, and then music. And I did one when I came back from my very first European tour, and you would think a big homecoming thing would be in order, and I think ten people came. I just said, “Oh, that’s right; they don’t support you here.” It’s just weird.

INT: And if you go to . . . well, there’s not that much in terms of publicity, because we don’t have that many newspapers and such.

HO: And it doesn’t matter. And I remember when some of the television stations started letting musicians come on, Channel 3 especially. And I got in really good with them, and sometimes they would just call me and say, “Do you have anything you need to promote? We’d like to have a music set.” So I’d think, “Well, yeah, I’m playing this gig tonight in Tempe, I’d like to go on there and talk to a quarter of a million people.” And you would think, out of a quarter million people that are seeing you and hearing you play, and then

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you say, “Tonight, I’m gonna be there,” wouldn’t you think you’d get at least ten people maybe? And I’d get nobody; nobody would come.

In fact, that gig I just told you about, the 22,000 people—my management owned The Library bar in Tempe and I was playing there all the time, and I was playing there that night—this was an afternoon concert, it ended at dark. So to this crowd of 22,000 people, that I had just got an encore in front of, I said, “Hey, everybody, after the show, come by The Library!” And my manager flipped out, and called more security and a couple more bartenders; he said, “Hans just invited 22,000 people to the club.” I don’t think we got more than ten extra people. And it was just down the road, it was like a mile or two from there.

INT: That is really an interesting dilemma; it doesn’t make any sense.

HO: It makes no sense, but I’ve just accepted it.

INT: Now, is that true in just the Phoenix metropolitan area, or is it just true in the Tempe area, or . . . ?

HO: I would think it’s the whole town here. It’s an attitude. The people that live here, it’s strange that the people that are natives kind of keep to themselves, and the people that aren’t natives don’t have any interest in their culture. It’s just a theory I have. There’s gotta be a reason they don’t support the musicians here at all; they don’t.

INT: Yeah, that is quite curious; I’d never heard that. That’s very intriguing. I wonder why that is.

HO: Of course, there are exceptions, there are bands . . . . And it’s a matter of your target audience, and if you’re a young, rock band that appeals to the college, those are the people that go out. And when that was my age group, I did pack places. But still, this was in ’73, and I was playing at a college bar that night, and nobody came. So I just said, “Well, if you try to figure it out, you never will, so I don’t know why.” And I’ve seen some bands in this town do really good, but not for long, because it’s based on a cycle of the school year, and for like four years. And kids get here, they’re freshmen, they find a band they like, they support them for the next four years, they graduate, they move away, and that band is done.

INT: That’s interesting, ‘cause as I pass by the Marquee Theatre, I see all the names up there which don’t mean anything to me, and yet, when I talk to some people, I guess they’re more in their mid- to late-30s, they will know some of those bands, but they won’t know all of them; you talk to the younger kids, the 20-somethings, they know those groups.

HO: I don’t know how. There’s such diversity now, because of the internet and everything, there are so many different styles and genres. It used to be, you had like four genres and that was it. And now, just in blues, you have fifty different kinds. And it’s so fragmented, I think that’s why there isn’t a big base of support, because there’s so many

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different styles. When you say rock music, there’s a hundred genres of rock music. When I talk to a guy and I go, “What kind of music you play?” They go, “Prog rock,” which is some kind of weird thing; I go, “I don’t even know what that means.” But somehow, it still goes on.

INT: Well, I’m a fan of your music, so . . .

HO: Well, thank you.

INT: Have you started any organizations, either in Tempe or elsewhere? Since you’re a promoter.

HO: Yes; many. I always felt like, I felt guilty that people paid me to play music, when I realized, “I’m making my living, and I’m doing the funnest job in the world.” And then you have all day to do nothing. And you don’t work that much, usually it’d just be on the weekends, so I had a lot of time to do nothing. And I said, “I’d like to do something for the community, to give back.”

And I think the first thing I did, the big organization, was the Phoenix Blues Society. And a woman started that, and she did everything wrong. And there was a Tucson Blues Society that already had 400 people in it, and I was a member. And then she started this Phoenix Blues Society, but she called it the Arizona Blues Society. I said, “Well, that’s wrong right there; you have 20 people in your organization, there’s 400 people in the other one? Let’s just be the Phoenix Blues Society; the people in Tucson would appreciate it.” Because people in Phoenix always call their thing “the Arizona something,” and Tucson goes, “Wait a minute, what about us?” and Flagstaff. And since I’ve been playing the state now for 47 years, I play every city, all over this state, I’m always thinking, “Let’s remember there’s a town called Tucson, and they are important.”

So we changed the name to the Phoenix Blues Society, had to kick her out, and get a new board. And I started learning about corporate structure, and nonprofit corporations and how to run them. And to me, that’s the same as being a mechanic, it’s like a little puzzle—and especially ‘cause it’s got people, and the dynamics between people are really hard to do, and especially when they’re volunteering and not getting paid—so I just always thought that was interesting. And I have a knack for it, that organizational thing, and I enjoy it, so I become the guy that they go to to say, “How do we put this together and keep it running?” So the Phoenix Blues Society was sort of mine, I was on the board.

And years later—no, right after that, when I realized I could organize things—I got a political thing, I became an environmentalist. And they had these huge rallies and they’d want music, so I was playing, and while I was there, I’d listen to the speakers. And I’d hear all this stuff and get all the literature, and mostly I became an anti-nuke guy. That was a worldwide movement, and I just said, “You know what, really, until you can figure out what to do with the waste, then you shouldn’t be making the waste. The waste is so dangerous, and until you can neutralize the waste, don’t make the waste.” So I was totally against nuclear power.

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And then I had a very strange experience, where I was taken on a whirlwind trip to Europe—the first time I went to Europe—by a crazy man who had been in the Weathermen. And he had become a machinist after that, and then he inherited a bunch of money. And he said, “I’m gonna go visit” . . . . ‘Cause he had met other people, that was a worldwide thing, the Weathermen, it was a worldwide revolution, people don’t want to talk about it. Like in France, they actually took over the country, I didn’t realize that ‘til I started playing in France, but in the late ‘60s, the French overthrew the government, it was that revolutionary, and they became Socialists. And I thought, “How come we never heard about that here?” They didn’t want us to know that here. But this guy said, “I want to go visit all my old people, but some of them are still radical, and some of them are still . . . “ (end of tape)

Tape 1, Side B HO: Somehow this guy met him, and he said, “I’d like to take you to Frankfurt, Germany, and Cape Town, South Africa.” And Joe Walsh said, “Yeah, that sounds fun.” And he said, “It’ll be first class everything.” So at the last minute, he went to call Joe Walsh, and Joe Walsh said, “No, I can’t go on this trip; what are you talking about?” And he already had all the tickets bought.

So he had met me for like just two seconds—I don’t want to get too far off the track here, but he pertains to organizations that I set up—and so he had met me for three minutes one time, backstage up in San Francisco, this guy had tried to come backstage and the security guy said, “No, you can’t come back here.” And then he looked at me and he said, “Man, I really dug your set,” and I said, “Thanks.” And he said, “Could I come back here?” And I go, “No; I don’t know you.” And it wasn’t my backstage anyway; I was opening for somebody, and the headliner owns the backstage. So I said, “No, I can’t authorize you to be back here.” That was the extent of me meeting this guy, but he remembered me, and somehow he got in touch with me, and he asked if I wanted to go on this trip. And I said the only way I would do this is if you pay me what I’d normally get working, making the same money, and if you give me a round-trip ticket to go, then I can come back if it goes south. So I said, “Okay, I’ll go.”

It was nutty. And when we were in Germany, it took us almost two weeks to get the information to find out where these guys were, ‘cause they were underground, and wanted by the government in Germany. So we go there, and it turns out they were Green Party people, and I heard all about the Green Party from these guys, they were the guys that started it in Germany. And I loved everything they said. It sounded like the revolution made legal. And I learned about the government; in Germany, it’s proportional representation, so if 10% of the people are registered Green, the government’s required to have 10% representation. And I said, “Jeez, that makes sense; everybody should get their percentage of representation from wherever they are. If 1% of them are Nazis, they should have 1% of the government be Nazis, because that’s the fair way.” So I just said, “I love this.”

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I came back to America, and I said, “Why don’t we have the Green Party in America?” Which they did, but it was still pretty underground. And I asked around, all the radicals I knew, and they said, ”Actually, there’s a Green group that meets at the co-op in Tempe”—at Gentle Strength, they had some meeting rooms out in the back—and they met once a month, or whatever. So I went there, and they were just called the Green Coalition, or something. And I said, “Well, is anybody interested in starting a political party?” And we did start the Green Party, for this little group, we met there in the beginning.

And it went even farther, to where . . . . As far as an organizational puzzle, that was the greatest one for me, ‘cause then I had to learn about the laws of political parties. And I said, “We gotta do everything by the laws, so that we can legally represent people.” And I said, “We have to start at the top and work our way down, even though the main tenets of this party is to start from the grassroots, start from the individual voter,” but I said, “You can’t do it that way; you have to build it this way, and then we’ll go back up.” So I said, “Let’s start a, we’ll call ourselves the State Board, and then we’ll find a Representative from each County, and they will be the State Board. And then we’ll get the Districts from each County, and they will . . . .” And I said, “This is how you do it.” I learned about Precincts and everything. so then we get down to the registered voters, and they tell us what to do. So I said, “This is the way it should be, this is democracy, and I like it.” And our main focus would be the environment, and I said, “If we don’t have clean air and clean water, nothing else matters, so let’s clean that up, and then we’ll fix the other problems.”

And it was very interesting that we looked and said, “How do we get on the ballot? How do you get a political party on the ballot?” And they said, “You have to get 48,000 signatures.” And I said, “Well, that would be a little hard.” And they said, “Or, if we run a candidate for a statewide office and they get 6% of the vote, they’re automatically on the ballot the next time.” I said, “Really? Well, if we could find somebody that would run for office, I think we could get them 6% of the vote, that’s not a lot.” And then somebody said, “Well, why don’t you do it? You’re known all over the state.” Which I am; you know, in every little town, I have fans, so I said, “They’d all vote for me.” And it was just a joke, but I said, “Yeah, I could absolutely get 6% of the vote; I’m probably better known than McCain.” And so I said, “Okay.”

And right then, I had filed bankruptcy, so the United States Bankruptcy Court had given me a piece of paper saying “this is exactly what you’re worth,” they determined, through all these ways, and it was zero, I was worth zero, I had no money, I had no assets. And that’s the hardest part about running for office, is the financial statement, and I go, “You know what, I could do that in an hour; just zero-zero-zero-zero-zero, I don’t have anything; that would be easy, so I think I’ll run.”

So I went to a state meeting, and we were still pretty idealistic, and they had run this on 100% consensus thing, which you can’t get. So I changed that rule, and I said I wanted 70%, which is kinder than 51%, you still have to get more people; but 100% is

OH-406 unattainable. And I said, “If 30% of the people are mad, it’s still a better system.” So I said, “70%, on everything we did, it had to be 70%; but on this,” I said, “I want 100% consensus. I want every County to go back, talk to their people, and if every single County will back me on this idea”—‘cause I smoked cigarettes, and a lot of people hated me—these really Green natural people said, “You can’t represent us, you smoke cigarettes.” I said, “Well, then vote no, and I won’t do this. One County, if I don’t get every County, I won’t do it.” So I said, “Go back and talk to people.”

Well, there was an AP reporter sitting there, and he just thought that was the most amazing thing, that I was saying I would run for Governor—it was gonna be Governor; it could have been Mine Inspector, or any State office, but I thought why not just go for Governor?—and the fact that I knew about publicity, that’s what I brought to the whole thing. I said, “You know, this is what I do; P.R. is a music business thing, and I’m good at it, and I know all the reporters, and I know all the radio station people, and the TV,” and I said, “I can get on TV with this.” So I said, “We’re gonna get on the ballot.” And he reported that I had announced my candidacy, which I didn’t; I said, “I will announce my candidacy if everybody votes yes.” And he put it out on the AP wire, and it came out on a radio station in Tucson, they said, “This is interesting; Hans Olson, musician, is running for Governor.” And a guy down there knew the laws, and he said, “We’re one of the three states that doesn’t have the 6% law, so whoever told you that was wrong.” So I said, “Good, then I’m not running.”

But all of a sudden my phone lights up, and everybody wants to interview me. So I go back to the Board and I say, “Okay, I’m not running for Governor, but this is a perfect opportunity to get our word out, and I’ll go do the interviews and tell them ‘I’ve decided not to run, but let me tell you about the Green Party’.” So I did that. And they would say, “So, you’re running for Governor?” And I already told them I wasn’t. And then at the interview they’d say, “Hans Olson, candidate for Governor.” I’d say, “I’m not running.” And to this day, people say, “I voted for you, man, when you ran for Governor,” and I’ll say, “Well, that’s funny; I didn’t.”

But that one was the biggest one I started. And right after that, I started the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame. And somewhere in there, I owned a nightclub, and it became a corporate nightmare, I wasn’t supposed to own it, and because of a corporate thing I did that I didn’t understand, I suddenly owned the bar and we owned the land and everything, I owned the land, and the guy that was supposed to was gone, and I was left legally owning this thing. So I had a lawyer, who really was a big fan, and he had helped me out of a management agreement—that guy that you said, “Did you get rid of him?” I finally got rid of him, but it was the messiest divorce I’ve ever heard of in management. So I needed an attorney, and I went to him and he says, “I’ll do this pro bono.” That’s when I first heard what pro bono was. And he was my lawyer for like twenty years and never charged me a dime. And he said, “Everything you’re doing is righteous, but this guy is screwing you, and you’re in the right, and you’re the artist, and he’s just a businessman, so I’ll represent you in this,” and he did.

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Then when I had my nightclub and I got m______, he says, “You can’t afford to pay me to do this, and I can’t afford the time it’ll take, so I’m gonna teach you corporate law,” and he gave me like a crash course in corporate law. And I thought it was just mesmerizing, I loved it, I loved how it was set up, it just made so much sense to me, and I got it. So I manipulated the thing to where I was able to get myself out of that deal.

But then I had corporate knowledge, and non-profits aren’t that much different, as far as there’s certain laws, so I would help these organizations when they’d come along, like the Blues Hall of Fame. I put together their corporate, I’d get the 501(c)(3) and all that, I loved doing that stuff. But then, I ended up having to run them, and I didn’t want to run them. I said, “No, I was your paralegal, I put this together for you.” I didn’t want to run it, because people don’t get along; that’s one thing I learned, they just do not get along, and I don’t like sitting at a table with people that don’t get along. So I made my contribution by putting the organization together. So I moved on from that; now it’s being run by some Tucson guy.

And then, the one I’m currently doing is this Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. I got drafted into that because I had done the Blues Hall of Fame. And I was the only one that thought about “what has to happen here in a hall of fame?” You have to get people nominated, and they have to vote them in, then you have to induct them, it’s a three-step thing. So I got involved in that, and it’s just been a nightmare. Fourteen years I’ve been doing it and we still don’t have a hall.

INT: You don’t have a physical plant?

HO: And it’s interesting, because it was supposed to be, when I first got involved, at the Celebrity Theater, and I thought, “What a perfect venue.” It’s an historical place, first of all. That downstairs bar is boring, but it’s huge, and I immediately said, “Yes, we could put a museum down in here.” And I signed on, and I said, “I’ll do your corporate thing, I’ll do your 501(c)(3),” and I did all that for them. And then the guy that owned the Celebrity Theater turned into the biggest jerk I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with the biggest jerks, and nobody on the Board could deal with him. And we were all volunteers, and he was a super-rich guy that was used to getting his way, and we were all poor artists. And you know what, you can’t buy guys like us. We’re the guys, that if we cared about money, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. So you’ve got a whole room full of people that couldn’t care less about money. And he’d say, “You’re all lying, everything’s about money!” And we’d say, “Okay, well, you worship your god and we’ll worship ours, but don’t be . . . .” He didn’t get it, and we had to leave there. Twice. He tried to screw us, and he lied and said he wouldn’t be like that anymore, and we went back, and we had to kick him out again. Twice.

And then at one point, it was gonna be in the Dodge Theater, and that all fell through.

INT: Where’s the Dodge Theater?

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HO: I don’t even know what it’s called now; it was the Dodge. It’s that giant 5,000-seat place on Fifth and Van Buren or something, downtown (Phoenix), it’s a huge concert hall, the biggest one down there.

But then, bringing it back to Tempe, I found the Arizona Historical Society, which I love that building.

INT: Yeah, over on College.

HO: And that’s in Tempe. So I had some political people here in Tempe say, “Wow, that would be great to have that Hall of Fame in Tempe,” and I said, “Well, if we make this deal.” And it turns out, it was the hardest negotiation I ever did, a year-and-a-half, I went there maybe three or four times a week, to talk to these people. And I’d say, “Well, what about this?” And they’d say, “Well, we’ll have to get back to you.” And it would go into committee, and then another committee, and like two-three weeks later they’d come back and say, “The answer is yes.” I’d say, “Okay, why don’t we move on to the next thing?” And it was just horrible.

After a year-and-a-half, I get the contract finished. By this time, I’m really wanting out of this. And my wife has suffered through me having to do these things, she goes, “You don’t make any money doing this, and you spend hundreds of hours doing this stuff.” And I said, “As soon as I get this deal and build the museum, I’ll resign, because then everybody will want to be part of it. It’s getting it built that’s hard, but once it’s there, I’m positive that the State will support it.”

So I go in with the final contract—there was nothing else we could do, everything had been figured out, and I bring in the contract to sign it—and they said, “We’re gonna add one little thing.” I said, “What could that possibly be? We’ve gone through everything.” And they said, “Well, we want you to pay $5,000 a month rent.” And it was like a moment when, I think I cried. I just said, “Are you kidding me? This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. We’re the most exciting thing you could ever have in this museum, you’ve been excited about it for a year-and-a-half, we’ve been negotiating, we’ve got all the plans drawn, everything’s ready to rock.”

And the problem was, we had done some work for them. They have a 300-seat theater in there, and I said, “We’ll use that for our formal induction ceremonies.” And in their outside courtyard, you can put 2,000 people there, I was already designing a stage to go there. In fact, you can put another 1,000 people on their sidewalk that’s in front of the front door; nobody had ever even looked at that, they could actually see the stage from the back, so I could put 3,000 people there.

And the theater was closed, and I said, “Why?” And they said, “We have major electrical malfunctions in that room.” And that’s one of the things I know, is electricity, and I said, “Really? What could it be? It’s a theater; how hard is the electricity?” And they said, “We got a $40,000 bid, and we just didn’t have the money, so we closed it.” I said, “Well, could I take a look at it, and you show me what’s wrong?” So we go in there, and

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there were a few lights that were out. And I was with the director and the maintenance guy there, and I said, “Have you checked the bulbs?” And they went, “No.” I said, “Well, I’m glad you didn’t pay $40,000 if this is your problem, that you have some lights that are out.” Because my first thought is “check the bulbs.” I couldn’t believe it. So I said, “Your maintenance guy is an idiot,” I told the director, I said, “I don’t know who this guy is or what he’s getting paid, but he’s not doing the job.”

And I said, “I represent the Hall of Fame, we have hundreds of volunteers that want to help us, this is a community thing. I could get a couple of electricians for free, to come in here with me, and we’ll go through this thing and figure out what’s wrong.” We went through it, and fixed everything in one day, and it didn’t cost them a dime. And I asked my guys, “What would you have charged for this?” And they said, “About $5,000.”

So I went to them and I said, “See? This is what you will get with the Hall of Fame. And we want to fix this all up, it’s to our advantage. We will put all our resources in it. And when we have these big shows and make big money, what do you think we’re gonna spend the money on? Fixing up your place. So it’s a win-win.” So they said, “Well, can you guarantee you’ll do at least $5,000 worth of work every month?” I said, “No, you cannot guarantee volunteers; but can’t you see what we just did, and that’s what we want to do? Why would we not?” But I said, “No, I can’t guarantee it.” So they said, “Well then, how about you just pay $5,000 a month?” And I said, “If we wanted to do that, I could get a commercial building, and not have to go through the crap you’re putting me through.” The red tape. Even the way they designed the exhibits was so intensely weird; they had standards. I said, “No, we’re just gonna put up a box and put a guitar in it.” They go, “No, you have to have identifiers and . . . .“ I just said, “It’s gonna be really hard here, and now you’re asking me to pay for the privilege of doing this?”

So I even got Marshall Trimble, he’s one of our inductees, and I told him, and he said, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” And I said, “I know; would you come down and try to talk sense into them?” And he talked for 45 minutes, about how we are the best thing that museum could possibly have. And they’ve never charged anybody, ever, for an exhibit in there. The exhibit that was in the room that we were gonna replace, they paid the guy $20,000 to get that exhibit, and it was a boring exhibit that had worn out its welcome in Mesa. And I said, “You gave them $20,000 just to get this exhibit, and you paid for building the exhibit? We’re paying for our own, we’re gonna build the exhibit and build it ourselves, this isn’t gonna cost you anything.” It was just totally unreasonable. Then finally, at the end of it, they said, “$5,000 a month,” and Marshall said, “That’s not gonna happen.”

Then I made a deal the next day with a bar I work at in Scottsdale—and he wants to expand it into about a 400-seat nightclub, it’s a 100-seat nightclub now—and he said, “Why don’t you put the Hall of Fame in here?” And I went, “It would be so much easier than dealing with the State, and he’s gonna build a big stage for us,” so I said okay. That was three years ago, and they just started construction last week.

INT: But it’s gonna happen?

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HO: Maybe. He says he doesn’t have the money. And he’s saying the same thing to me, “Why don’t you call Steven Spielberg?” who is in our Hall of Fame. And I said, “No; I know these people, you can’t say ‘Give us money, we might do something.’ You have to do it, have them come and look at it, and go, ‘It’d be better if I gave you $100,000, right? You could fix it up.’ But they won’t give you money on a ‘maybe’.” So I said, “Open the doors, and let me invite Wayne Newton and Alice Cooper and Steven Spielberg, and see if they want to get behind it. I’ll be surprised if they don’t, but they’re not gonna give you money up front.” So that’s where that stands. I’ve been in a lot of organizations.

INT: All right. I’d like to ask you some questions about making music. I am not a musician, so I apologize up front if I say things that don’t make any sense to you.

How do you get so much music out of your guitar? I mean, when I came to watch you when you put on your performance here at the oral history exhibition, I walked all over, I was wandering all over, trying to figure out how in the world you get so many different sounds out of one instrument? How do you do that?

HO: What I use now is a thing called a looper, and it’s a recording device, they invented this. And I always just played guitar and the harmonica, but what I’ve always wanted to do was play lead guitar, ‘cause that’s really fun, and I couldn’t, because the rhythm would stop if I tried to play lead. So when I got this, I said, “I can put the rhythm, I can record it, with my foot.” I can just start the recorder, play in the rhythm sections, and then I hit it again, and it plays back, exactly like what I was doing. It’s a digital recording thing, it sounds exactly like what I was doing. Then I can play lead over the top. In fact, you can over-dub on it. I could actually put a bass part, if I wanted, and then I could put the lead part on it, and then I could play another lead part over the top.

INT: And you do that all while you’re performing, you don’t have to do that ahead of time, like you program a computer or something?

HO: No, I don’t. You can. This machine, you can put pre-programmed songs in it, but I just record it right then, because I don’t believe in bringing music in. A lot of solo acts, in particular, use drum machines, for one thing. But I say the true nature of music can’t be achieved with an electronic device playing the rhythm, because music has to flow with life. And when you’re in a nightclub, you’re supposed to be aware of what’s going on in the room, and if the energy level in the room starts going up, you start playing a little faster and a little louder, you go with it, you’re supposed to go with it. And if everybody kind of mellows out, you mellow out.

INT: So you don’t set the ambience in the room; you let it set you?

HO: Hopefully. If you’ve got a good crowd, if there’s something going on, that’s exciting, and you work with it. But if it’s just a bunch of people talking, you do what you gotta do.

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INT: That’s another question that I have for you, because I’ve been to performances in clubs or something like that where the audience is not at all connected to the performer. And I can’t imagine sitting on stage, having to perform for people who aren’t listening.

HO: Right; it is the hardest thing. In fact, when I retired . . . about fifteen years ago, I quit the road. And up to that point, I had been doing what I called “the music business,” making records, touring to promote them, trying to get famous, trying to make the big money. And I made good money, I made a good living, but I never made that big money, and there’s nothing in between—you can either make a good living at it, or you get that next step where you’re making really, really good money. I said I’d like to get to that point so I’d have some sort of retirement, ‘cause I’m just at that point where I barely get by, but getting by in this business is amazing. So my wife figured out, she said, “Why do you keep touring?” I said, “They pay me so much more, everywhere else.” But she said, “Yeah, but then there’s the travel expense, the long-distance phone calls, and . . . .” She actually sat down and said, “You know what? If you stayed home, you’d make more money, because you don’t have all those expenses.”

And I suddenly realized, “Yeah; who makes it after they’re 50 years old? Nobody.” If you haven’t made it by the time you’re 50, you pretty much are gonna say, “I wasn’t meant for a commercial success; but I’m an expert at being a honky-tonk musician.” That’s what I call it, you’re selling beer; you’re not even selling beer, you’re not doing anything but adding to the ambience of the club. And there’s no end to those jobs—I could work seven days a week, I could do ten gigs a week, there’s day gigs—you can work all the time, as much as you can take. But I had to shift my thinking away from, “I’m Hans Olson, buy my records, I wrote this song, what do you think?,” playing the audience. And I’d go in and I’d realize, nobody is listening, nobody. And it was hard in the beginning, and I said, “I can’t do these kind of gigs, I just can’t.” But those other kind of gigs, you can’t get unless you’re in “the music business” and you’re putting records out and you’re touring. I said, “No, I have to learn how to do this.”

That’s when I got that looper, too. In fact, I tell this story all the time, when I put a rhythm into in, and then I was just testing to see how you put the lead guitar over it. So the rhythm and the lead were both playing, and I stopped playing, and I’m looking at the audience, and nobody—one guy, that I knew—was watching me. And I just put my guitar down, and I got up and I went to the bathroom, and I came back, and nobody noticed. And I said, “Well, that just proves that this doesn’t matter.” And the job is, they want music, you give them music. The owner of the club wants some music, my deal is with him, he wants to pay me money to play music, and I’m gonna do it regardless of what’s going on.

INT: So you have just a very different attitude about it?

HO: And what really happened was, my love for playing music came back. I had actually lost it; I had played for so long that it became a job, where I said, “I gotta go up there and try to sell CDs.” The pressure is intense, to try to get their attention, and then promote yourself to them. That’s gone now, I don’t care. They don’t care who I am, and I don’t

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care about telling them who I am, because they’re not gonna buy the CDs anyway. So I said the only way to survive doing this is I’ll play things I want to play, not in regard to commercial success, just a song that I don’t care if anybody wants to hear it, I want to hear it. And I’d play it, and I’d feel good, “Oh, I loved playing that song.” Then I started saying there’s a bunch of those songs that normally I wouldn’t play, ‘cause they don’t promote me, other people’s music in particular, and I just started really enjoying it again. And I said, “I can do this forever then, now, ‘cause I have the attitude.”

INT: It’s almost like if they’re not listening, you’re playing for yourself, and you’re entertaining yourself.

HO: Exactly. I’m entertaining myself, and I really enjoy it. And having that looper took the pressure off, ‘cause when you’re playing rhythm all night, it’s an energy thing, I never got a break from that. But now, if I put that in there, I’m just going doot, doot, hitting a couple notes. And I keep watching the crowd; I say, “If anybody looks at me, I’ll stop, but if they don’t look at me, I’ll just keep practicing this lead part until I get it good enough.” I can go a half-hour with an instrumental thing, where I’m not singing. The harmonica’s really hard to do. But I can go without singing or playing harmonica for like a half-hour, having fun, learning how to play lead guitar; and I’m doing my job, and I’ll get my paycheck at the end of the night. So it’s something I can do forever now, I think, because I don’t care.

A lot of guys cannot play to a room. And the sports bars are the worst, where they have giant 60-inch screens blaring a game, and then on this wall another one with a different game. And the cacophony that’s in a sports bar, that kind of sound . . .

INT: And they still want music in there?

HO: Yeah; and why, I’ll never know. And they pay good, and they can be a regular gig, too, these guys, because it’s usually a corporate office somewhere makes the decision, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have live music?” So you get there, and the manager goes, “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here.” Then he looks at his memo and he goes, “Oh, yeah, you’re supposed to play, and I’m supposed to pay you this money; well, we’ll move these two tables . . . .” You know what I mean? There’s no stage. And I go, “Nobody wants me here, not the manager, not the clientele, nobody but some guy in a corporate office.” So I say, “Whatever; I can do it.” And it’s kind of funny to me now, because the pressure is off, and I don’t have to impress anybody. In fact, they want me to kind of be quiet, ‘cause they can’t hear the game. And why sports bars have music, I’ll never know.

INT: And do you alter the kind of music that you play?

HO: Yeah, I have. I’ve gotten a lot of different . . . I’ve actually done more commercial stuff, I think it’s commercial, but it’s old. Stuff that I wouldn’t have played back when I was trying to be cool, but I thought they were great songs, I’ll play those now. And those are

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the ones that people go, “Oh, I’ve heard that one,” and I go, “I’m glad you enjoy it.” (laughter)

INT: How do you . . . again, this is a question from a non-musician. As I was watching the videos of you, so much of your body is working; I mean, you’ve got your feet working, you’ve got your lips working, literally, you’ve got your lungs working, you’ve got your hands working, I’m sure you’re also watching the audience at times. So, literally, you’re an athlete.

HO: I’m glad you noticed that. It is physically hard.

INT: And does it take its toll on you? Because . . .

HO: Absolutely. In fact, I used to have a closing song that I did every night, and I wrote it to wrench out everything I had, you know what I mean? I said, “At the end, I’m gonna give them everything I’ve got.” And then I won’t be able to play after that, I’ll be tired. I want to do something that will take me to the limit of my physical ability. And I don’t do that anymore, because I said, “It doesn’t matter, they don’t care, nobody watches.” In a concert, it was very effective, where you gave them a really good show, and then at the end, you’d say, “Oh, yeah? Well, you haven’t seen anything yet; now I’m really gonna give it to them.” It’s called the grand finale. I don’t do my grand finale.

And harmonica playing, I think, is more of a workout on your lungs than running, people don’t realize that. After a really hard harmonica song, I’ve just run a mile, and now I gotta do it again, and do it all night. So having that lead guitar to fill in the spots where I don’t have to play harmonica all night has really helped, because I used to have to do all night, either singing or playing harmonica all night; now I can get a break.

But it’s a physically hard thing. In fact, at this point, I was just telling somebody last night, what people don’t realize is you have to set up equipment in these bars, they don’t have P.A. systems. So you travel with your own P.A. system, and you have to set it up, and it takes a long time. So I tell people sometimes when they say, “What do you do for a living?” I say, “I set up technical electrical equipment,” which is what I do. And I tell the clubs, “You know, you’re paying me to set up all this stuff, and then I have to hang around all night and take it down at the end of the night, so I might as well play while it’s up there, so it’s like I’m playing for free, the music’s for free.”

And I have this whole mindset about it, “I’m a roadie; my job is to get this equipment to the nightclub, set it all up.” And then, to get a change in mindset, I change from comfortable shoes to cowboy boots, and immediately I get the mindset, “I’m a musician now.”

INT: You’ve changed uniforms.

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HO: Yeah. And then I’m able to do it. And then at the end of the night, I go take those boots off, and I’m a roadie again, I go back to doing the equipment. That’s really what we do, we move equipment.

INT: Yeah, I saw that on one of your videos, where I saw you actually pulling on your boots.

HO: You saw the weird one then, Stronger Than the Devil.

INT: That was a very interesting video.

HO: Did you hear that story?

INT: I heard that story. If you want to tell it, you’re certainly welcome to do that. But that was one of the very strangest stories I had ever heard.

HO: That’s on the internet, so if anybody’s hearing this, you could go to YouTube and see it.

INT: Yeah, it’s called Stronger Than the Devil.

HO: That was a true story, unbelievable. It changed my life, and it made me want to come back to Arizona, too. Being in Los Angeles at that time was really a negative experience. You get to this point, what do you want in life and what are you willing to do for it? And when you’re around all these people wanting to be “stars,” it’s sad.

INT: What was interesting to me was how you—again, this is talking about the video—but you talked about all the hookers on each of the corners.

HO: Yeah, there were a hundred hookers.

INT: And what I was wondering when you were talking about that was how many of those are wanna-be starlets, how many came out . . .

HO: 99% of them.

INT: It’s almost like Midnight Cowboy, it’s that same kind of . . .

HO: The pimps hang out at the bus stations, waiting for the girls that are coming to Hollywood to become stars. And one-millioneth of one percent . . . . You don’t become stars. I have a great quote in my studio that I got from Matt Kramer, who was in management in L.A., and it says, “The illusion that you’re gonna become star”—I can’t quote it exactly—“is propagated by managers, lawyers, . . . “ You’re not gonna be a star. And even me, at this point, I’m a legend, which is different; I’m not a star. A star has money.

INT: I was just gonna say, legends don’t necessarily have money.

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HO: Exactly. And I came to grips with that. Somebody wrote a thing saying,”This guy is known to all the musicians.” All the musicians know me, and worldwide, they’ve heard my name, and they say, “Oh, yeah, that guy.” But like a guy said to me once, a big-time producer, said, “You’re the very best at what you do, and there’s no market for it. Nobody cares. That harp-in-a-rack thing, there isn’t a harp-in-a-rack audience.”

INT: Not any more; there used to be, though.

HO: Not really; there never really was, ‘cause all the guys that did it were not good. There’s only been a couple of accomplished harmonica players that played it in a rack, and I know all the guys in the rack that are . . . . And there are people that say I’m the very best in the world at it. And I know the guy that I think is second-best, and he’s famous.

INT: And who’s that?

HO: John Hammond. And I’m better than him at it, and he’ll say that. He’s more authentic than me in the music he plays, but as far as being dexterous on the harmonica, I do more. But like they said, “Who cares? Nobody know; nobody cares.” Other musicians look at you and go, “Wow! That’s amazing!” And then they move on. And I say, “Well, I amazed these musicians, that’s pretty good.”

INT: I copied off here a list of music that you’ve written for TV and for film and for stuff like that, and I was just wondering if you want to talk a little bit about where you can hear your compositions, or where we’ve heard your compositions, whether they’ve been on television, whether they’ve been for commercials, or something of that nature?

HO: There’s nothing . . . I can’t say, “On this show, this episode,” ‘cause I never wrote it down. The only thing that I know—and I didn’t write the song—was the Evening Shade television show, which has been off the air for many years, but that was Burt Reynolds, and I sang the theme song. So if they do have it on DVD or whatever, I can tell people, on the first season, that’s me singing. But I didn’t write the song, or I would have made a lot of money. Singers don’t make any money, but the songwriters do.

And then all these other ones, unless you get like a theme song where it’s on every show, I can’t say where they are or what episode. But I’m on a lot of them.

I signed with . . . . There’s a great organization here in town, they were called Wild World, and now they kind of have branched out into a bunch of different things, but now they have Fervor Records. And what they do is sell songs to television shows, and what they do is they commission people . . . . It’s a really good business model, where they said, “If we’re gonna sell songs to TV, we should have some rock music, we should have some jazz music, we should have some country music, we should have some blues, so when we go to a music buyer for a TV show and say, ‘What do you need?’ and he says, ‘I need some blues,’ we’ll have some blues to show to him.”

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So they were just putting their catalogs together when they called me, and they said, “Here’s the deal; we want you . . .”

And I owned all my publishing on all my songs, from all the records I’d ever done, because everybody told me if you make it big, that’s where the money is, so keep your publishing, own the songs, that’s the main thing. So I did, and I had never made any money, ever, with any of them. But I said if anything ever happened with one of these songs, I’d make the money, because I own it, but nothing ever did.

So these guys said, “We’re gonna be the publisher, we’ll own 50% of the song; you’re the songwriter, you own the other 50%. And then if we put it on a TV show, you make half the money.” And they said, “We need ten blues songs from you.”

And they wanted generic blues songs, which I don’t do, and I had never done. And to me, it was like there’s a thousand bands that sound just like that, and it bores me to death. And they’re trying to sound like the great bands that sounded like that originally, and it was an original sound for them. But like the Muddy Waters band, in particular, there’s five thousand bands that sound exactly like that. And I could do it; it’s the easiest thing in the world, because I can play the instruments. But I said I don’t want to. If you’re not doing your own thing, what’s the point? So my thing, the traditionalists listen to me and they go, “Wow, that doesn’t sound like Muddy Waters.”

And, actually, I have an interesting story on that, where I met Muddy Waters—which was, of all the gigs I’ve ever done, playing with Muddy Waters was my Holy Grail—and he said to me, “I really like your music, because you’re playing my music and you’re not playing it anything like me.” I said, “Exactly.” And he said, “You know, when I was young, everybody said, ‘That Muddy Waters, he’s playing Son House music, and he doesn’t sound anything like Son House’.” He said, “Today, I’m Muddy Waters, and everybody wants to sound like me. So do it your own way.” I said, “All right.” So now when a guy comes up to me and goes, “You didn’t play that song anything like Muddy Waters did,” I think, “Well, I’m not gonna go into the whole story here, but I know I’m in the right. And thank you for telling me I didn’t play it like him, ‘cause I was trying not to.”

Anyway, so I make these ten blues songs for these guys. I didn’t consider it an album, ‘cause they said, “We don’t make CDS out of this; it’s just ten songs that we will then shop to these people.” So I say, “Okay, good, so it’s not an album, so nobody’s gonna hear it, my fans aren’t gonna hear it, and you want generic blues, so I’ll do generic blues.” And I did, and that album has made me more money than all of my other albums put together. Because then I didn’t see in the fine print, because I’m old, that they have the right to do downloads on line. I didn’t even know that that meant at the time. And I didn’t also see that if I wanted to make CDs of that album, I could, and they didn’t even want any of the money, which they should have got half of the money, because they said nobody buys CDs any more, which they don’t, and I said “whatever.”

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Well, suddenly, a guy says to me, “I just bought your new album.” I said, “I haven’t done an album in fifteen years,” and they said, “Naw, you got this new album, I just downloaded it.” So I go online and I look, and here’s that album. And they’ve got cover art, which I’ve never seen, they’ve titled the album, never heard of it; actually, it was named after one of the songs, so I recognized that. And the guy said, “You finally learned how to play like all those other guys.” I said, “Thanks.” And I thought, “I’m gonna make it big now, because everybody’s gonna listen to me, sounds like everybody else.” (laughter)

But now I’ve done like four albums with these guys, and the interesting thing, on an historical perspective, is they realize I have all these old albums that are out of print now. And what they’re realizing is they do a TV show that’s set in the ‘60s, the music . . . (end of tape)

Tape 2, Side A HO: . . . but they’re looking for ‘60s and ‘70s music, that was recorded in that time, so they came to me.

Actually, a friend of mine inherited all these master tapes from this great studio in Phoenix, an old studio that used to do all the big people here, and tapes just get lost and forgotten in the archives. So they decided to get rid of all these old tapes they had, and this guy, John Dixon—you might know of him, John Dixon—they said, “We’ll give you these to administrate, if you find anything on these tapes.” So he goes in there and he finds like Waylon Jennings recordings and stuff, and he goes, “Wow!” And he gets them all digitized, and he said, “Now what do I do? I need somebody to market these things.” So he knew I was with these Fervor Records guys, and he called and he said, “Are these guys good guys?” And I said, “If it wasn’t for them, I’d be out of this business; the quarterly checks I get now from this stuff is the only thing that’s keeping my head above water.” I said, “If this hadn’t of happened, I would have had to got out of this business.” So he signed with them.

And they just loved the sound of these old recordings, and they went, “All you guys got old things.” And now they’re making so much money, these two kids that run this place, and they got enough extra money to buy new material all the time. So they came to me and they said, “Can we buy all this old stuff of yours?” And I said, “Absolutely.” I’ve never made any money off it before, and they gave me a bunch of money up front, then if they place it I’ll make more money. So I said, “Sure, you can have all my stuff.” They now own all of my old recordings, and they’re buying up everybody, all the old guys like me in town, they’re buying their records. They own the musical history in Phoenix now, this one company.

INT: Wow, that’s very interesting. Yeah, I do know John Dixon; actually, he and my husband were schoolmates.

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HO: We started this because of Johnny, the Music Hall of Fame, ‘cause he had a heart surgery, and I talked to him right after that and he said, “Hans, I was just thinking, what if I die? What happens to all my stuff? It’d end up in boxes in an ASU basement, if that.” And so I said, “John, we need to have a thing where all this historical stuff ends up, the music.” And then one day he came to me and he said, “I just started the Arizona Music Hall of Fame.” I said, “Really? Where is it?” He said, “It’s at the Arizona Historical Society, that building.” That’s when I first heard of that building, and I’d been driving by it for thirty years and never even thought about it. But I said, “Well, I want to go see this.”

So I went there, and I walked all the way around it twice, and couldn’t find it. And I had to go back to the desk, and I said, “I’m looking for John Dixon’s music exhibit,” and they said, “Oh,” and they had to take me up, you had to go around a corner, that’s why I hadn’t seen it. And it was like four album covers push-pinned to the wall, and two listening stations with headphones. It was the most embarrassing thing, and as an Arizona musician, I just got mad. I said, “If you came here from Chicago and you looked at that, you’d say, ‘Phoenix has no music history’.” And I called Johnny right away and I said, “That is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen, and you have to just take it down.” Which he didn’t, and I think it’s still up there.

But I said, “No, we gotta do a bigger thing, a bigger and better thing,” and so I got involved. Then now he has disowned us. It’s like, “Why are we even doing this, if the guy that it matters to”—‘cause he went to the MIM (Musical Instrument Museum, in Phoenix) and they paid him to do an exhibit that we were supposed to do, the Hall of Fame was supposed to do.

INT: The Arizona musicians?

HO: Yeah, the “I Am Arizona.” We were gonna do their Centennial event, and then they just screwed us. And then they found Johnny, and said they could pay him to do it. He called me and said, “They’re paying me to do it,” and I said, “Well, that’s good.” I said, “Could we, at least, when you have a Duane Eddy”—actually, Duane Eddy’s not in the Hall of Fame, but—“on Waylon Jennings, could we put a little plaque saying he’s in the Arizona Music Hall of Fame, just to sort of advertise us?” And he said, “No.”

And it’s all because of Duane Eddy, and you gotta hear this story, I gotta get this story on tape. Because when John agreed to do it, he said, “I’ll do it, if Duane Eddy is the first inductee.” And I said, “As far as I’m concerned, he is the true son of Arizona, and he did all his stuff here.”

INT: I didn’t know he was from Arizona.

HO: Absolutely. And I said, “This is the stuff we need to get out there, that the Duane Eddy stuff came from here.”

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In fact, the sound of his guitar was so unique, and it spawned everybody from Eric Clapton to Jimmie Hendrix to me. When we heard his guitar, there was something about it, that it was an explosion in guitar, people wanted to play guitar. And the reason was it had reverb on it, and there had never been reverb on a guitar. And they invented reverb in a studio in downtown Phoenix; it was a big water tank, where they put a speaker in it and they ran the sound through it and put a microphone on the other side, and that’s what the reverb sound was. I said, “That’s historical stuff; we need to put that down, that studio, the engineer, Duane Eddy.”

So I said, “Okay, let’s do it,” and then I put the organization together. And then I called Duane Eddy and I said, “We want to put you in this Hall of Fame,” and he hung up on me. And I thought, “That’s weird.” And then he called back the next day and he said, (said in a drawl) “I was just thinking, Hans, maybe you’re not a businessman that’s trying to rip me off,”—‘cause all musicians have been ripped off—and he said, “Maybe you’re a musician just trying to do a good thing.” And I said, “That’s exactly what I am; I don’t get paid for this, we’re not trying to make money off you, we’re trying to write the history book of Arizona, and you are one of the most important pages in that book, we just want to honor you.” And he says, “Does that John Dixon guy, is he still on your Board?” I said, “Yes, he is, and he’s your biggest fan, he knows everything about you.” And he said, “Well, he thinks he does,” and he said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with John Dixon.” I go, “Really?” ‘Cause John Dixon is the biggest authority on Duane Eddy in the world, and I thought that was weird. He said, “Then I see you’re putting that Al Casey in at the same time,” and I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “I hate that lyin’ son of a bitch.” I said, “Well, okay.” Then he said, “And then I see you’re putting Jessie Colter in there, too,” and I said, “Yeah, Jessie Colter.” And he said, “Well, I used to be married to her, and I don’t want to be in the same room with her.” And I didn’t know that, you know? And I said, “Well, Duane, you seem to have three really good reasons why you don’t want to be in this Hall of Fame, but I guess we could wait until the next event, when Jessie’s already in.”

So I called John right away and said, “John, what’s the deal here? He hates you.” And he said, “Well . . . .“ And the story is that they were doing that they were doing a session, and this guy Al Casey was Duane’s mentor, a great guitar player, taught him how to play and was his band leader, and they were playing this song I believe he wrote, on Duane’s guitar, through his amp, in the studio. They had just invented four-track recording; before, everything had to be done live, but now you could put the rhythm tracks on two tracks, and then you had separate tracks. So Al recorded the song on one track, then he brought in Duane and said, “Now play exactly what I played,” and then they were gonna take out Al’s and put Duane’s in, and that would be the record. And Lee Hazelwood— who is famous, and he’s in our Hall of Fame—he was producing this session, so he’s the one that does the mix. And he does the mix, the record comes out, it becomes a number one hit worldwide.

And by this time, Al Casey’s left the band and he’s in Los Angeles, and he’s the number one session guitar player in Hollywood, the number one guy; and he’s Frank Sinatra’s guitar player, and that’s first chair, only the very best get that, and it was Al Casey. So

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Al Casey doesn’t need Duane Eddy anymore, but he calls Lee Hazelwood and says, “That’s not Duane playing on there, that’s me; you put the wrong track on there.” And Lee Hazelwood goes back and checks and says, “Oh, I did.” “Well,” he goes, “nobody’s gonna know.” Only Al noticed, really, ‘cause Al was an expert. He goes, “We just won’t tell anybody.”

But then years later, Duane goes on to be so big, and Al’s star goes down, and Al ends up back here in Arizona, and John Dixon goes to interview him, and he says, “Tell me some stuff about Duane Eddy.” And he goes, “I’ll tell you one thing, that’s not him playing on that song.” And then Johnny goes, “Really?” He loves that kind of stuff, you know, so he writes it down.

Right then, a label in Germany puts out a Duane Eddy box set and they said, “Who’s gonna write the liner notes?” They go, “Well, there’s a guy in Phoenix, Arizona named John Dixon that knows more about Duane Eddy than anybody.” So he writes the liner notes, and he puts it in there! Which is a big mistake, ‘cause Duane denies it, and he will to the day he dies; he says that’s him. So he sued them, and they had to take it out of there, from what I heard. And then John got mad about it, and then he does like a scientific study of wave forms of guitar and plays it to scientifically prove it’s not Duane, and puts it on YouTube! Which makes Duane hate Arizona even more; he’s living in Nashville, and he hates Arizona.

And so, that’s why he’s not in. But I’ve made a deal with him now, and we’re gonna induct Al Casey’s wife, Corky Casey was her name then, now she’s married to a good country songwriter and she lives down the street from Duane, and they get together and bash Al Casey, that liar who said “he’s not playing on there.” (laughter)

So we’ll get Duane eventually, and maybe John will come back. We inducted Wayne Newton first, and then Alice Cooper, and then we had a huge show and put twenty-four people in on one deal.

Then I found out Jessie had dumped Duane for Waylon Jennings, as she tells the story, and it’s so sweet. I don’t know if you ever met Jessie, but she’s really sweet. And she was married to Waylon all those years, and they lived here in Arizona, this is what people don’t know. People thought he lived in Nashville, people thought he lived in Texas; he lived in Chandler all those year, he hid out here. And he loved Arizona. And she tells the story where Duane heard of this new guitar player named Waylon Jennings, and he wanted to go see him. She says, “He shouldn’t have took me to see Waylon.” (laughter) She dumped him like a hot potato and married Waylon.

INT: That’s a funny story.

Okay, we’ve been at this a while . . .

HO: I’m sorry; I talk too much.

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INT: No, no; it’s just, I’m sure you’re getting tired.

I’d just like to bring it all to a close, and that is, for you, what do you think your biggest achievement has been? When you look back over your career and everything you’ve done—and, good grief, you’ve done a ton—what do you think your biggest achievement has been? What would you like to be remembered for?

HO: I couldn’t come up with a good answer for that one, either; there’s just too many things. There isn’t any one big thing, you know?

I think just the fact that I survived as a musician in Arizona for forty-seven years is quite an achievement. (laughter) I mean, because it’s the toughest market I’ve ever seen. And I’m still doing it.

INT: And you haven’t moved.

HO: No. Well, you know, I did move four times, I left Arizona four times, and I went to Los Angeles twice, San Francisco once, and Austin, Texas once. And every time, for some reason, I just thought . . . . I have a theory that the dust that causes Valley Fever is addictive, and I think anybody that’s spent any time here, breathing that in, is addicted. ‘Cause you hear people all the time, they move from back east, come here and live here a year or two, and then they don’t like it and they leave. And then they move back, and they say, “I don’t know why I came back.” I say, “I think you’re addicted to the dust.”

I don’t know what it is. It’s a wonderful place to live, but culturally, they have big problems. It’s because everybody’s from somewhere else. It’s not really Minnesota, it’s not mid-western. I’m part of the California invasion, there’s a lot of people from California that came here and sort of said, “Let’s make it like California.” But then there’s a lot of people from Chicago. So you have all these different kinds of people, nothing has really jelled here, I think. There isn’t a pervasive attitude here. It’s weird.

INT: Yeah, that’s true. And it’s all so different, ‘cause if you go, like you talked about, Flagstaff is very different from Phoenix, Phoenix is very different from Tucson. And then you go to the smaller areas, like Prescott or Sedona or Patagonia or something like that, and it’s an entirely different state than what we’re living in here in Tempe.

HO: I don’t know why that is. I think it’s because of the media, which is one of the reasons I like this Hall of Fame idea, because the media people say there’s never been any real music cultural achievements here in this town. And I go, “Wait a minute; go to my website.” Have you seen our website?

INT: Yes, yes.

HO: Look at that list, right there we’re saying we’ve had as many famous people come out of here as anywhere. You can’t say we haven’t created music.

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INT: But I don’t think, when you say the media, I don’t think it’s been promoted, I don’t think people, you don’t hear that kind of stuff on . . .

HO: Yeah, and the people in the media aren’t from here. So they come here, and they don’t know that Waylon Jennings lived here; the musicians here don’t know that. But now with this exhibit, that’s what I love about that, people go, “Did you know Waylon Jennings was . . . ?” I go, “Shoot, I knew that back then.” When I first moved here, I went to JD’s (nightclub in Tempe), and I said, “This guy Waylon Jennings is gonna be huge.” And then he was, and I said, “Do people know?” You didn’t hear it around town, “That’s our boy,” you know what I mean? Like, he did it in spite of the town.

INT: Yeah. But that goes back to what you talked about in the very beginning, is that they don’t promote their own, they don’t even have cover charges to pay the musicians, so it is a strange environment.

HO: ‘Cause it used to be different here, we used to be like anywhere else, the big nightclubs here, people paid ten bucks, back in the ‘50s, to get into the shows. And then now here, it’s like, “We’ll go somewhere else that doesn’t have music if you’re gonna charge us a dollar to get in,” I’ve heard this before.

INT: It’s so strange. And do you think it’s for all kinds of venues, all kinds of music, or do you think it’s just certain types of music that that happens with? In other words, a blues club might be able to not charge, but a jazz club would?

HO: No, blues clubs actually do charge, and people do pay it. Blues fans are more . . . they’re older, for one thing, and they love the music, love it, so they don’t mind paying. The Rhythm Room in Phoenix has a pretty hefty cover charge most of the time, and people do pay it.

INT: And it gets promoted with Bob Corritore on KJZZ (Radio), so . . .

HO: But that’s one club; I can’t think of many more like that. I don’t understand it, but . . . . Then I wonder, right now, are there young rock ‘n roll kids playing in clubs that I just haven’t even heard of, that are packing it and people are paying cover charges for, ‘cause I don’t go? I mean, I’m out of the loop at this point, so I gotta remember that I don’t know what’s going on. Now I live in downtown Scottsdale, and they have such a young nightclub scene down there, it’s amazing how many clubs and kids, and they must be coming from everywhere. But I just don’t get it; they’re just all sports bars, they’re not live music clubs that people are going to see live music in. They couldn’t care less—it’s about drinking and meeting somebody, and that’s it. So I don’t know if it’s a dying art, but it sure isn’t doing well.

INT: No, I don’t think it’s a dying art; I think it’s changing. And I think part of it is changing because of the downloads. I think part of it is changing because of the iPod, you can take music wherever you go. So I work out in the gym, I can listen to music; I go shopping, I

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can listen to music. So it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to go to a club anymore to hear it; you can download it, take it with you wherever you go.

HO: And it used to be an album was a big deal, it had a lot of information on it, I mean, just holding it was a big deal. The artwork on it was good, because you had a big medium. Then when they came out with cassettes, I saw that change, because now you have this little tiny thing. And now that they’ve got CDs or that little box, it’s like everybody says, “I don’t even need the box, I’m just gonna download it, I’ll download the credits and the picture and go.”

And I get reports on my sales—I do sell CDs online, but I don’t sell that many—and I notice these things like Spotify, where somebody would listen to it and have to pay one- tenth of one cent, or something. But now I get the report, and it’s like four hundred pages of one cent, one cent, one cent, one cent, one cent. And it’s actually adding up so I can see it, and I go, “Oh, maybe that is gonna be something.” Yeah, the technology, who knows?

But what I do is old school, and the kids don’t get it, and it makes them uncomfortable. They go, “What are you doing? You’re playing and singing at the same time?”

INT: But your music is, to me, your music is complex, because you’re one person, and all that sound is coming out of one person, it’s not individual instruments. You’re your own band, if you will.

HO: One-man band.

INT: Yeah, you are; all you lack are the cymbals on your knees. (laughter)

HO: In Europe, they have so many of those guys that have bass drums, and cymbals, that’s a big thing over there. I just have one clicker on my foot, trying to keep time.

INT: But the kids are used to, they’ll tune into an instrument or a singer or something like that, and it’s different.

HO: I keep thinking, right at about the time I don’t get to play anymore, when I’m too old, the kids are gonna discover what I do and think it’s great, and I won’t be able to do it anymore.

INT: Well, take a look at the university now; what do they have? They have jazz programs, and how long was jazz not popular? So now jazz is popular, and it’s coming around more and more, they even have The Nash downtown (Phoenix). So maybe—actually, didn’t blues come before jazz?—so maybe the next one will be blues.

HO: I always see jazz as just blues guys playing way too many notes. (laughter)

INT: Well, unless you have another piece of information you think you need to share . . . .

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I did get one question that I was told to ask you, and then you can close this down. And that was, there’s something that happened in Candlestick Park in San Francisco that you have a story about. Do you know what that is? Somebody told me to ask you that.

HO: The only think I know is when I was living in San Francisco, my agent couldn’t get me any jobs. And then I heard him talking about he ran crews that parked cars at Candlestick Park, and he asked me if I wanted to do that, and pick up trash, too—after the games, the same guys that parked cars would make money picking up the trash. And so I did that for a while. And I remember saying to somebody, “I know somebody’s gonna pull in there, with me going like this, and they’re gonna go, ‘Whoa, it’s Hans Olson!’” But nobody ever did. And they had the earthquake, while I was living up there, and at Candlestick Park, you know. So I don’t know what the story would be, except that I parked cars there.

INT: You didn’t save any souls there, like you did in L.A.?

HO: No, no.

INT: Okay. Well, I want to thank you very much, Hans Olson. This has been a wonderful, enlightening talk. And you are a walking museum yourself of the history of music in Arizona. I would imagine that you have even a lot more to share. So I really appreciate the time you’ve spent, and I hope that you’ll keep playing, playing, and playing.

HO: I’ll do it as long as I can. And I’m glad Tempe is caring enough to get this stuff in the history books, because we gotta preserve the history.

INT: Yes, we do.

HO: And Arizona’s famous for not preserving the history.

INT: Or re-writing it.

HO: Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much.

INT: Thank you so much, I appreciate it. (end of recording)

Transcribed by Susan Jensen December 2014 U:\CommunityServices\MUSEUM\OH Transcriptions SJ\OH-406 Olson, Hans.docx