Photography by Leonard Drorian
I hate to say it, but we need more rock stars. We need more artists willing to embrace showbiz and glamour; it’s necessary for the survival of rock ‘n’ roll, and damn near critical for the evolution of today’s West Coast sound, which seems buried beneath a thicket of Tascam 388-recorded noise that sounds too ’60s garage, too proto-punk, too uncooked to serve any purpose beyond losing your mind at a show. The recent West Coast garage revival, dripping with psychedelic and Krautrock influences, is suffering from repetition; stoner rockers signed to labels like Burger, Lolipop, and John Dwyer’s Castle Face are raw, but too similar-sounding to crossover with a record that has a human element but also a grand vision, like Bowie’s Station to Station or The White Stripes’ Elephant. The scene seems too crowded with bands stuck in the prototype phase of development — borrowing their sound from garage and surf compilations like Crypt Records’ Back from the Grave and Posh Boy Records’ Beach Blvd. without ever dipping their toes into the shark-infested waters of rock ‘n’ roll virtuosity, driven by guitar showmanship and glittery performance art. In that sense, the scene needs a new rock star to shake things up a bit.
It’s taken about six years, but Laguna Beach-born, San Francisco-cultivated garage rocker Ty Segall seems to be the guy. Sure, he’s a revivalist, but like Tarantino borrowing from Japanese horror, Segall takes his various influences — Black Sabbath, Aladdin Sane-era Bowie, Neil Young — and adds layers of grit and runs it through a chaotic funhouse mirror of influences as varying as Grand Funk and Mudhoney. Like Tarantino, he doesn’t connect to the modern world, which shows on a dozen or so releases in the past six years through various bands (Fuzz, Ty Segall Band, Sleeper Band), EPs, splits, and an endless web of collaborations with kindred spirits like Mikal Cronin, White Fence, and King Tuff. A workaholic, Segall’s output is a dizzying showcase of his influences, inviting you to listen in, dig through your record collection, and check out ’70s rock records by bands like Hawkwind and Deep Purple, rather than streaming synthpop KCRW.
At 27, Segall has already released a handful of concept albums, including last year’s Sleeper, a weird, acoustic meditation on death, and now with his seventh solo effort, a 17-track pivot from his garage rock roots, Manipulator, Segall finally seems to be clearing the static towards a classic rock sound that seems to belong to a new identity — a reluctant rock star floating off into space, evolving into a Starchild, a new species of garage rocker who seems destined to be what Jack White once was: a hero for the freaks, a transcendent figure who sets the tone for his peers to follow.
During four nights at the Echo (August 28-31), Segall would wield his fireglo Gibson Les Paul into the smoke-filled air of L.A.’s underground fun factory, swinging his arm around like Pete Townshend, and finger-tapping as sweat dripped from his left hand (covered in an eyeball tattoo), as if he was crushing volcanic rock into a diamond. Everyone paid witness to his magic, including the likes of Mac DeMarco, Jessica Clavin of Bleached, and Max Kuehn of FIDLAR, as Segall ascended into a new stratosphere where his Lennon-like vocals screamed through a thick sludge of fuzz and flashy guitar work. The combined effect was a big bang of noise that was unnervingly loud, shaking the two gothic chandeliers lighting the Echo’s parquet courts. Segall would tear through two guitars and a couple amps before he was done.
Originally a drummer, each night Segall would stomp on his Death by Audio fuzz pedal like a drummer pounding a bass drum — releasing screeching solos instead of crashing copper. The Ty Segall band, which includes Emily Rose Epstein on drums, Charlie Moonheart on guitar, and Segall’s high school buddy and accomplished solo musician, Mikal Cronin, on bass and synth, would play through nearly every track off Manipulator, followed by an encore that included rarely played Segall cuts like “Imaginary Person”. On each of the four days, I sat next to Segall’s Fender Quad Reverb amp and listened to each note, every flurry of twisted solos, and witnessed the evolution of Segall during a turning point in his career, floating off into the cosmos with his Manipulator band.
