Sky high

Sky Saxon anchors all-star garage rock-stravaganza

By Newt Briggs

Contrary to popular opinion, it takes more than an abandoned storage shed and an analog four-track to make garage rock. Garage rock is a style, man--a way of life even. It's skinny guys with shaggy hair, hugging up on little girls in striped skirts and platform boots. It's guitars that buzz like an industrial drill press and drumkits that are a cymbal crash away from exploding like Keith Moon's did in The Kids Are Alright. It's a sound that harkens back to a simpler time--an era when songs were about real things, like cool sunglasses and making out. It's music that owes its origin to a man and a band that have largely faded from the annals of rock history: Sky Saxon and the Seeds.

"To me, Sky Saxon is the godfather of garage," says Rick Collins, who was a Seeds fan long before he became the band's guitarist a few years back. "He predated Iggy. He predated Jim Morrison. The Seeds were the first rock band to sell out the Hollywood Bowl. They headlined over the Jimi Hendrix Experience in New York. Garbage covered one of their songs. The Damned covered one of their songs. Joey Ramone said he never would have sang if it wasn't for Sky Saxon. He's touched a lot of people."

Saxon would no doubt say these things himself, but he's off in London, shacking up with the owners of a vintage clothing store. It's probably for the best, since Saxon has a habit of enumerating plans to print his own currency and then breaking off into frothing tirades about George W. Bush. Like the British purveyors of garage rock--the Animals, the Yardbirds, etc.--Saxon straddled two worlds: the anti-establishment devastation of rock and the peace and love of psychedelia. The split manifested itself in his music, which might best be described as flower punk--particularly 1966's Web of Sound. After that, Saxon did an album of blues covers, 1967's A Full Spoon of Seedy Blues, which was universally abhorred by critics and fans. He followed up with the similarly reviled Future--although it's now considered a masterpiece of the psychedelic era.

"Sky started doing a lot more acid, and he didn't really keep up on his career," Collins says. "He had a big house in Malibu, and he was styling for a while. Then he let all these hippies live there, and he just stopped making his mortgage payments."

Saxon subsequently moved to Hawaii and joined a cult, where he assumed the name "Sunlight." According to Collins, he also took on three wives and had "16 or 17 kids"--some of whom still appear at shows and introduce themselves to their dad. Saxon only re-formed the Seeds two years ago--partially because he was broke and partially because Collins nagged him until he relented.

"There's not many people left like him," Collins says. "He could be in a museum. He still acts like it's 1966."

The Seeds will be just one of a host of classic and contemporary garage bands performing at the weekend-long Las Vegas Rockaround at the Gold Coast. Among the notable newcomers are the Greenhornes, whose drummer and bassist formed the rhythm section for Loretta Lynn's much-heralded, Jack White-produced 2004 comeback, Van Lear Rose. Country rock isn't necessarily the Cincinnati trio's first love, but they made it work because, as drummer Patrick Keeler notes, they're "bad-ass motherfuckers." Influenced by the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and even the Seeds, the Greenhornes are garage rock to the core--from the mod haircuts to the occasional Yardbirds-esque harpsichord. Or not.

"It's a buzzword," says Keeler. "Garage rock is one of those terms that can be used to describe all sorts of dissimilar things. It's really just an easy way for lazy people to categorize something they don't understand."