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 2 OH-406 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. 3 OH-406 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.