Based in Jackson, Mississippi, Tim Lee and Bobby Sutliff - known collectively as the Windbreakers - came along at just the right time in 1983 to ride the great U.S. college-rock mini-boom for as long as it lasted. Though you might have totally missed the boat if you only been listening to what passed for pop radio at the time (you should have been tuned to your local college-radio outlet instead) it was a thrilling era that, among others, saw the flowering of such great Southern bands as Let's Active, Pylon, Sneakers, Guadalcanal Diary, the dB's, Jason & the Scorchers, and, of course, the only combo in the barrel to score life-changing financial happiness, the law firm of Stipe, Buck, Mills & Berry.
To paraphrase Marlon Brando's character, speaking to his brother, played by Rod Steiger in the 1954 film On the Waterfront, the Windbreakers might be heard to mutter these days: "I coulda been R.E.M., Charlie, I coulda been R.E.M." Fortunately for the even-keeled Tim Lee anyway, there's not a trace of rancor that he hasn't yet broken the bank from a still thriving rock n' roll career as a solo artist, not to mention his occasional appearances these days with Sutliff as the Windbreakers. I met Lee recently through mutual friend Matt Piucci at the live debut of Piucci's new band, the Boat Club, at a tiny San Francisco nightspot. Lee agreed to spill the beans on the Windbreakers once he returned to his current home in Knoxville, Tennessee.
How many times do you reckon you've told the Windbreakers story over the years, Tim?
Well, I haven't done it too often recently (laughs).
You and Bobby Sutliff are both from Jackson, Mississippi, I believe. Is that a college town?
Yeah, Bobby and I both grew up around Jackson. It's not a college town, actually. Well, Jackson State University is there, but that's a traditionally black school. They had a recording program for a while there, and I tried to go there for that, but they didn't have enough people signed up. Jackson's the capitol city and the biggest town in the state. And, in my lifetime anyway, there's always been this undercurrent there of people who were very hip to music. When I was a teenager in the '70s, everybody in jackson knew who Big Star was or who Richard Thompson was. By everybody, I mean everybody I knew. There were a lot of people there hip to Captain Beefheart and a lotta free jazz. It was a unique place to grow up.
How did you first hook up with Bobby?
I knew who Bobby was. He was a couple or three years older than me. I'd see him working in record stores. We met in the front row of an Alice Cooper concert in '75 or '76 with Suzi Quatro opening. We started talking during her set. Bobby was really impressed with Suzi Quatro's guitar player's Epiphones and I was really impressed with her leather jumpsuit. We'd see each other around and by the end of the '70s, we were in competing cover bands. He had a band called the Oral Sox and I had a band called the Occasions. When they broke up, we started playing together and started doing more original stuff. But we were still playing Beatles songs too. I do remember that, early on, we played Big Star's "When My Baby's Beside Me" and "September Gurls." We were also very aware of Sneakers, that pre-dB's stuff that was coming out.
It was a great time to be from the South 20 years ago. Lots of wonderful stuff bubbling under down there.
Yeah. The first time we went to North Carolina to Mitch Easter's to record, we heard the rough mixes of (R.E.M. debut 12-inch) Chronic Town. I thought it was really exciting stuff, something different. And that was the thing: it was easy to be different back then. R.E.M. was totally different from Jason & the Scorchers who weren't anything like Pylon. It was kind of an easy time to slide into it, not like now where there are a million bands trying to do it. Back then there were maybe 50 in the entire country. For us, it was encouraging that there was stuff going on in places that weren't that far away.
An entire network of clubs, record labels and magazines grew up alongside this new scene.
Yeah, all of the sudden it wasn't just New York or L.A. There was a club circuit developing around the country for these bands. And stuff was definitely happening in the South. There was a band in Birmingham, Alabama, that was really good called the Primitons. And you could exchange ideas with these other bands, sort of like a support network. And there were labels that would put the music out.
How did you find out about Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem?
We read a story about him in New York Rocker that said he had a studio. We knew the Sneakers stuff and we liked it. We went to directory assistance, got his number and called him up. It must have been a complete shock to him to hear from these goofy kids in Mississippi who wanted to record with him.
Anything you've heard lately give you the same feeling you had 20 years ago?
It's funny about music these days. It's so novelty-based. People will say about a new record, "Wow, that really sounds weird." But you hardly every hear anybody go, "Man, those people write great songs." But the ones who do, those will be the people that'll still be around 20 years from today.
The '80s was a funny decade. You hear people today slag it off as useless because of the crap they played on the early days of MTV, I guess, but there was plenty of great stuff being made too, flying under the radar: the Southern stuff, the Australia/New Zealand scene, the Paisley Underground.
Yeah, but that's true of any era. For people my age it's become fashionable to bash the '70s. But so much of my favorite music was made in the '70s, whether it be Patti Smith or Roxy Music or Mott the Hoople, my favorite band of all time!
With all the solo stuff you've put out recently, you must still have the bug, another case documenting what Dr. Cyril Jordan once told me: "Hey man, if you're playing music after you're 30, you're in it for life."
Yeah, well, even for me now. I'm 44, but I enjoy plugging into an amp and playing with three or four other people was much as I ever did. That's still the best part of it. I don't have to do this. I choose to do it. Bobby's approach is completely different. He doesn't make records very often and when he makes records, he does it at home and plays all the instruments himself. And that's cool, a totally legitimate approach.
As I tried to tell you the other night in that noisy club, last week I dug up my original copy of your 1983 mini-album Any Monkey with a Typewriter, in its paper sleeve, and it sounds pretty damn good.
That's still my favorite Windbreakers record. We were kinda naive and young. I was 23 when we made that. It was the first time we worked with Mitch and that was really educational and entertaining and fun. We didn't have any expectations. We just followed our instincts and went in and made this record. We communicated with Mitch and came up with these crazy ideas. I've joked in the past that it's kinda like a redneck XTC record (laughs). But I think it's really a charming record. We'd done a 7-inch before that: horrendous. It was something we recorded at a gospel studio in Jackson with an engineer who didn't have a clue. The blind leading the blind.
How the hell did Richard Barone of the Bongos - a great band - wind up on the sessions for Typewriter?
He just happened to be hanging around the studio. We showed up and he and Jim Mastro were recording that Nuts & Bolts side project. He was there and we were Bongos fans and just asked him, "Hey wanna play on this song?"
And it was a time when he'd just say, "Sure." Yeah, that's how Don Dixon wound up playing on the next album, Terminal (in 1985), just because he happened to be hanging around the
studio. Rarely were these things planned out. It was pretty much whoever was around got drafted. And I still record like that.
When you picked a name for the band - a totally inspired choice, by the way - did most people get the joke or did they think you should be wearing matching jackets onstage?
I think most people got it (laughs heartily). It was just one of
those bad jokes that we've had to live with ever since. Bobby and I used that name one night when we were still in separate bands and we put together something to play at a party. We called it that, because we thought it would b funny, and somehow it stuck.
I think Roy Loney said they picked Flamin' Groovies because it was the worst name on their list and that it'd be gone in a couple of weeks. Guess again.
One of the good things about Windbreakers is that it's one of the few band names where I don't think I've ever come across another band that goes by that name. I mean, how many bands back in the '80s used the name Arms Akimbo? There must have been a hundred of 'em. It's amazing that our bad joke wasn't picked up on by more people. Most of 'em must have thought it was distasteful enough to stay away from.
The Rain Parade guys played on Television's "Glory" on Terminal. How did that come to pass?
We had the same booking agent and we booked them a show in Jackson. They came and stayed at our house and we hit it off immediately. Kindred spirit thing. It was a pretty spontaneous recording session. I can remember writing the arrangement out on the back of a sandwich bag. It was part of that era where stuff did happen spontaneously like that.
Why did Bobby drop out of the band for a while?
There was a point where Bobby got out and it became my project for a while. It started when it came time to tour with Terminal and he just said he couldn't do it for one reason or another. So I basically took a band out and toured as the Windbreakers. Finally he just decided to step aside and it would become my thing. That lasted about a year. It's only recently that I've gotten musically active again. I took most of the '90s off. I just go tired of beating my head against the wall and went back to school to get my education degree.
Are you teaching now?
No, I edit an auto racing magazine. It's grassroots stuff, dirt-track racing. I've run the gamut of careers and such. But it's a great job and I really like what I do. And it allows me to go out and play long weekends pretty regularly.
Over the years, how have you seen the differences in Bobby's songs and your own?
Bobby has always been a pretty straightforward pop songwriter. That's what he does well. He continually refines that. Bobby writes with the arrangement of the song in mind. That's one reason it's easy for him to play all the instruments himself on his songs. I'm a little more open-ended. I like to see what other people bring to the table. That's when I have fun, when other people are involved. So my songs ten to be all over the map. I don't think style or genre when I'm writing. I could do what Bobby does (playing all instruments) but that wouldn't be any fun for me. I'd know exactly what the song would sound like. Bobby wants to know, and I don't want to know what it's going to sound like. I want something to happen. It's what I thrive on.
Were you aiming at a particular sound for the Windbreakers when you first got started?
We were both enamored with the Flamin' Groovies and Big Star. We looked around and realized that nobody was much doing that and we thought it would be cool. I mean, there were bands around like 20/20 that we thought were pretty cool, but nobody was trying to sound like the Dwight Twilley Band.
OK, it's time to bring the dead chicken out of the sack. The
Windbreakers, along with all the bands you mentioned, are loosely grouped under the category power pop. And many of them don't like it. Tommy Keene once told me he thought it was a label for losers, that it made him feel like he was walking around with a target pinned to his shirt.
In the media it became that way. I have a history with the term
"power pop." I was just like Tommy. I bristled and I thought it was horrible and got tired of being pigeonholed. There was kinda this negative connotation and you were considered wimpy. Mitch and I have talked about it a lot because we both came along as rock guitar players. And just because we did something different didn't mean we couldn't cut loose with a blazing guitar solo.
Do you still feel that way?
Well, in cutting my newest record [the excellent No Discretion] I had Don Coffey Jr. [drummer in Superdrag] produce some tracks. He's a power pop fanatic and he used the term all the time. Now I've come full-circle. It's just a phrase. You can still do anything you want within it, like folk music or country. It just occurred to me during the sessions that, to paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, it was time to stop worrying and love the power pop.
