Genya Ravan Talks with Garagerocktopia (Part 2)

As you know from reading part one of our feature on Genya Ravan, she faced more than a few challenges as she carved out her place in rock and roll history – starting with the founding of Goldie and the Gingerbreads, the first all-female group to be signed to a major record label. That all by itself should probably have netted her a piece of real estate in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But for Ravan, that really was just the start of a career that would include other firsts. All too often, she was not exactly greeted with handshakes and smiles – or if she was, they weren’t always genuine. Ravan quickly figured out that demure wouldn’t always get her where she needed to go.

“I got a reputation as being a tough chick,” Ravan said. “That went on through my whole (effin’) career. Someone told me I always looked like I had nails for breakfast. You have to ask yourself why I always looked that way, and it was because it was the persona I needed just to defend myself.”

But along with all the scrapping to carve out a place behind the scenes in the music biz, Ravan made some fine music during the ‘70s. Perhaps her most poignant effort was the self-titled Goldie Zelkowicz album in 1974. Using her birth surname was a tribute to her father in 1974, who had recently died. The album is one of the most critically-lauded of her solo efforts. Jay-Z sampled Ravan’s cover of the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post” on his song “Oh God.”

Perhaps Ravan’s definitive album, though, was one which she also partly produced. Urban Desire, released in 1978, featured some scorching rockers, including “The Knight Ain’t Long Enough” and her version of “Back In My Arms Again.” The sound and feel of the music strongly betray her Rolling Stones and Stax/Atlantic soul influences, but the look and attitude suggested to many a nod to the ascendant Punk and New Wave movements. Yet acceptance was not automatic.

“Urban Desire was a great recording, but it was vetoed at a lot of stations,” Ravan explained, “yet it was added as much as Bruce Springsteen was in Cashbox and Billboard. I wrote it, and I produced it. I sang it, but as a producer, I could also step back and say that the vocals weren’t me, they were the singer.”

Beyond making great music, Ravan was about to head-butt another glass ceiling into smithereens. In 1977 Ravan became the first female producer of note. But like so much else in her career, she wasn’t exactly greeted with flowers and chocolates on her way to the sound booth.

Hilly Kristal

“Being a producer was harder than starting a group,” recalled Ravan. “Nobody trusted me with a budget – they thought I was going to get the money then go out and buy a washing machine.”

One person, though, who did take Ravan seriously was Hilly Kristal,

the owner of the CBGB, the acknowledged manger of punk rock. The Dead Boys were one of the club’s mainstays, and Kristal recruited Ravan to produce their album.

“Hilly Kristal wanted me to produce them,” Ravan recounted. “He knew that I knew what I was doing, and he was right. We finished their album in two days.”

The results continue to speak for themselves. Young, Loud and Snotty to this day routinely shows up on lists of greatest punk albums from both fan and critic alike. In contrast to the more cerebral, artsy wing of punk personified by the Talking Heads or Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Young, Loud and Snotty is an exercise in primal ferocity that rocks as viciously as anything this side of the Sex Pistols.

“It was one of the easiest productions I ever had,” said Ravan. “They listened to me and they trusted me, and when you’re working with artists, that’s the key. They have to be able to trust you. I told them you will hear it, and if you don’t like it we won’t do it.”

One of the album’s best songs is the oft-covered “Sonic Reducer.” It’s no accident that the cut stands out, thanks to the tenacity of Ravan and the band to get it exactly right.

“On ‘Sonic Reducer’ I changed every arrangement and every background until we got what we wanted,” said Ravan. “I fired three engineers because they didn’t bring out the sound that we wanted. With production, it’s all about the casting, the direction, everything involved in making the music.”

As a producer, Ravan had a zero-tolerance policy for hooey and let nobody get in her way, even if they were big and scary with a reputation for violence.

“At one point I threw some Hell’s Angels out,” said Ravan. “The Dead Boys couldn’t believe I did that. The Hell’s Angels didn’t believe it either, though one of them asked me for my phone number after I did it.”

The recording of Young, Loud and Snotty figures prominently in the 2013 film CBGB. Though not well received critically, Ravan said star Alan Rickman – at first blush, a curious choice -- turned out to be perfect. The movie did more or less correctly capture aspects of what the seminal club was like at that particular time of its history.

Stana Katic as Genya Ravan in CBGB

“I had no input in what went in the film,” Ravan said, “but they questioned me a lot.  For what I was doing with the Dead Boys, it was accurate. I love Stana (Katic, who portrayed Ravan in the movie). She did the best she could, but they should have gotten Juliette Lewis – she really does sing and play.”

In one standout scene, Ravan chews the Dead Boys – recent arrivals from Cleveland -- a new one for sporting nazi (note: lower case is intentional) tattoos. For many, punk, at least in its early days, was all about making jawbones drop and looking a little scary along the way. It was clear to Ravan – who, remember, lost family members during the Shoah -- that the Dead Boys probably slept through all their history lessons about the nazis.  Ravan pointedly reminds the band – in a scene she said was accurate except for being way underplayed -- that she, and Kristal, and several others whom were trying to help them make the big time were in fact Jewish. Ravan said the band quickly shed the nazi nonsense.

Over the last three decades, Ravan’s musical endeavors have not let up. She has put out several other albums, including And I Mean It, For Fans Only and Undercover. She has also worked with and produced many other artists, including Ronnie Spector; and she has collaborated and performed with the likes of Buddy Guy, Lou Reed and the Blue Oyster Cult. 

A scene from Cheesecake Girl

Some critics have dubbed her 2013 album Cheesecake Girl her best yet. In fact, she has written a musical play about her life by the same name. Talk is also brewing about a possible film biography.

Ravan also hosts two radio shows on the Sirius/XM satellite radio station Little Steven’s Underground Garage: She hosts “Chicks and Broads” featuring female artists both legendary and obscure, and “Goldie’s Garage,” a showcase for unsigned bands.

In fact, Ravan will soon be releasing some new music, and it won’t disappoint. “Fool For a Pretty Face,” with its pounding keyboards and Ravan at her soulful best, sounds like a pilfered recording of  a secret summit between my Riverside, California, homegirl the late Etta James and one of Ravan’s past collaborators, Ian Hunter. “Fooled You” is a slow jam that pushed Ravan even deeper into her R&B roots.

How big has Ravan become?

For the record, here at Garagerocktopia, “big” means that you influenced other artists regardless of how many people may or may not have bought your record. Check one for Ravan on that score. “Big” around here means that 30, 40, 50 years after you put out an album, people still ask about it and still want to hear it. So mark a check for Ravan on that one, too.

But for Ravan, it’s not just about our definition of big. By any reasonable standard, Genya Ravan has made it “big.”

“When people ask me 'why didn't you make it bigger,' It bothers me,” Ravan confessed.   “It was a fight all the way. I am a pioneer of sorts, I guess. So I did make it big. More people remember who I am than I even know.”

“Also, I think when you have made your money in the music industry for as long as I have, I would consider that making it big. I am now working with Little Steven for the Underground Garage radio station these days, and I’m making singles and CD's, so I'm a happy camper.”

And why, as we always have to ask here, are people still listening to Ravan so many decades on? In our humble view, it’s for the exact same reasons that people are listening to the other great artists we have featured on this blog.

Maybe it’s because we live in this age of exhaustively researched playlists, an era of digital perfection, a period with the now-accepted practice of playing and singing that’s completely divorced from the heart, and in a time where the end-all-be-all has become to make music that appeals equally to the girl at the frozen yogurt shop and the college dean. Ravan and all of the other folks we have tried to honor on this blog, stand out as true artists, ones who seldom fail to give us a glimpse into their very souls.

“The whole idea of rock and roll is that it’s a living, breathing music that’s supposed to make you feel something,” said Ravan. “I am an artist and a musician and I’ve grown in front of my audience. I live off feeling, not off words. I always go back to the basics. It’s pure, aggressive rock and roll. It’s just good music.

There’s nothing phony about me – it’s all from the soul. At times, I’ve been embarrassed because I’ve revealed so much of my soul on stage. But you’re supposed to get carried away.”

“My niece has kids that listen to rock and roll from that era (swinging London in the early and mid-‘60s), and like so many other teens and kids in their ‘20s, they love our genre of music. Why do they love it so much? Because it’s rock and roll and it makes them feel something.”

By sticking her neck out and shoving her way into the boy’s club of Rock and Roll, Genya has changed rock and roll and perhaps, by extension, our society in general. Next year in the U.S., we enter a political campaign season where the presumptive favorite for one of the parties – like her or not – is a woman. Ravan would probably not try to claim credit for that.

But art, and especially music, has long been an engine for positive change. In looking at other social changes around the world, it’s hard not to imagine that hip hop, as it built on past accomplishments of artists performing jazz, blues, funk and other forms of music, has helped unite people from different walks of life under one musical banner.

One would have to also acknowledge the role that music – from Billie Holliday to, recently, Taylor Swift -- has played in affecting the lot of women in America and other places. Yes, we still have a ways to go, but Ravan is proof that things do change. And she cannot be denied her share of credit for that change.

“I was a stepping stone, but so was Van Morrison, so were the Pretty Things, so were the Rolling Stones,” said Ravan. “I get written to so often by women who say I inspired them. I inspired a lot of tough chicks through rock and roll.”

Garagerocktopia next week goes in yet another new direction. Thus far, our artist interviews have all been with people whose careers started in the ‘60s. As much as we love that groove, the intention was never to be just about that decade. These days, the Scandinavian countries are making amazing garage rock, and we'll have a feature story about one of Norway's the very coolest, The Dogs. If you're not familiar with this group, you sure should be, and you'll be an expert after you read our story next week.