Gigolo Meets Ringo - From Boston's Phoenix Archives
The Gigolo Aunts are one band who have never hid their love for the Beatles, so you can imagine how singer/guitarist Dave Gibbs felt recently when he found himself singing with one. During a recent stay in Los Angeles Gibbs was drafted into the sessions for Ringo Starr's next album, doing back-up vocals on two songs, even sharing a mike with Ringo and Eagles member Timothy B. Schmidt. Gibbs was part of a guest cast that will range from Ozzy Osbourne to Aerosmith's Steven Tyler (on drums!) to Paul McCartney on an album slated for release next month.
Gibbs was in LA to write songs with ex-Go-Go's member Jane Wiedlin, a meeting that was set up by his publishing company. "I went out because I needed a vacation and that sounded like a good idea," he explains. A friend suggested that Gibbs meet up with producer Mark Hudson, a name Gibbs knew from the mid-'70s Hudson Brothers albums, which are much liked by pop cultists today. "It turned out he was producing the Ringo album. I'd never met the guy before I got to Village Recorders, and the first thing he says was, `Too bad you weren't here yesterday, because Ringo was here.' I was thinking, `Good -- I would have been so nervous that I would have shit my pants.' Then a half-hour later, Ringo walks in."
Were Gibbs's pants okay? "Yeah, but I was hyperventilating. I had to leave the room and run for the phone, calling anyone I knew to say, `You won't believe it: I'm in the studio with Ringo Starr!' "
Gibbs was eventually invited up to add some vocals to a track, and as he recalls, "I was thinking, great -- this will probably be the one time that my voice gives out. But it worked out fine. I didn't feel too confused, because one thing the Gigolo Aunts can definitely do is harmonies. The word that comes to mind about Ringo Starr is `gentleman.' He bought me lunch and everything. I showed him a picture of our band and the first thing he said was, `Your drummer looks like me.' "
The song he wrote with Wiedlin will be on the new, as-yet-untitled Gigolo Aunts album, which was recorded over the past two months with Mike Denneen at Q Division and is due for release in June on a Geffen-distributed imprint owned by the Counting Crows' Adam Duritz. Gibbs reports that the disc takes a new turn for the Gigolos, who have been going for an extra-loud big guitar sound in recent years. "A lot of people may be confused by its general tone of mellowness and sadness. I don't want to call it acoustic, but it's a lot darker than anything we've done before. There are a lot of new songs that we haven't played live yet."
Although the band have discarded a lot of the material they've been playing in recent sets, they've kept the obvious single, "Super Ultra Wicked Mega Love." But Gibbs says, "It's radically different now -- not the grunge-rock novelty version we've been doing. We used acoustic guitar and slide on it, and we tried to think of how someone like Lenny Kravitz might record it -- a '70s boogie kind of thing."