WBCN: 16 March 1994

Transcribed by Alison Cummings

WBCN: ... Gary has joined us now.  As I told you, he's here in the building and was in the other room recording Dark Side Of The Moon, and he's come into the - Hey Gary, how are ya!

GARY: Good.

WBCN: Good!  It's nice to have you.  It's Gary Cherone, ladies and gentlemen, lead guy, the big lead singer from Extreme, and it's nice to have you here.

GARY: Yeah, they're still doin' overdubs on Dark Side Of The Moon over there.

WBCN: Yeah, I know you're doing some stuff for us to hear from Jesus Christ Superstar, which is of course the Tim Rice thing that's been around for a long time, right, that came out -

GARY: About twenty years.

WBCN: Yeah, in the '70s, and um , yeah, '70s, '80s, yeah.   Introduce your friends here, so that I don't have to do it.

GARY: Jodi Sussman, who plays Mary -

WBCN: Hi Jodi!

JODI: Hello!

WBCN: How ya doin', Mary?

JODI: Doin' well, thanks.

WBCN: Great.

GARY: And Doug Thoms, who's Judas.

WBCN: Yeah, he makes a good Judas too.

GARY: He is a good Judas.

JODI: There is no other Judas.

WBCN: From that band - what's your band?

DOUG: Fleshflower.

WBCN: Fleshflower.  So they're all here and this weekend at the Middle East is this production of Jesus Christ Superstar.  Gary, as we've mentioned to you, was pegged to be Jesus.  Now, was this like a Biblical kind of thing where they say "Let's look around the rock scene, find out who is the most like Jesus, who would play the part of Jesus perfectly"?   Have you acted before?

GARY (who's been trying to get a word in): It was an accident.  They were looking through a fanzine, and it was one of the pictures where I had a beard, and uh, that's how it worked out.

WBCN: So you get to be Jesus.  You've never been Jesus before, right?

GARY: No.

WBCN: Have you done this yet, have you been rehearsing this?

GARY: We've been rehearsing, we had our first dress rehearsal last night.  We've been rehearsing for about a month now, so we're ready.

WBCN: Yeah, and as Jesus, you have to do a lot of the singing, because he would be the superstar in this particular show, right?  I've never seen the show, I mean, I'm trying to remember back to my drug-encrusted '70s. The storyline was of Jesus Christ -

GARY: Jesus sang a lot.

WBCN: Jesus sang a lot -

GARY: He sang a lot.

WBCN: So that would be you.

GARY: That would be me.

WBCN: Right, and how many performances of this particular thing are gonna happen?

GARY: Originally four, but we added two shows -

WBCN: Added two.

GARY: And we got six.

WBCN: So, and this will start when?

GARY: This Saturday, the 2nd.  We got on the 2nd and 3rd, 6th and 7th, and 10th and 11th.

WBCN: And are tickets available for this or are they gone, or what's the story on that?

DOUG (can't be heard in the background, so comes up to the microphone): Hi - the voice of Judas.  Tickets are available at the Middle East cafe in Cambridge, where the show's being held, and also at Strawberries, and they're goin' fast, 'cause of the Messiah!

WBCN: And it's Easter, so it's perfect, it ties in with the Easter thing.  This is downstairs at the Middle East, now what does that room hold?  A few hundred?

JODI: Three hundred I think.

DOUG: Three hundred and twenty, something like that.

WBCN: Will this show have like, scenery and sets and all of that?  Or will you just nail Jesus to the cross?

JODI: We'll just nail him up and you look at him for two and half hours - it's quite a sight.

WBCN: You're being sarcastic - you guys be straight, alright, otherwise they'll think "They're both telling the truth," and then no one will go. (Jodi etc are laughing in the background).  So let me be the wise-ass and you play the straight role, or people'll say "There's nothing happening, we won't go to this thing".  You know what I mean?

JODI: You've never seen Gary on the cross.

DOUG: It's worth two hours of -

WBCN: I've seen him at the Orpheum, but never at the -

DOUG: Was he shirtless at the Orpheum?

WBCN: How's it going with Extreme?

GARY: Extreme's doing real good.

WBCN: Now, you guys wer in the studio for a while, and you'll be ready with an album when?

GARY: Just finished the record.  We were in Florida for five months, and it's coming out this summer.

WBCN: Tough!  Doin' it in Florida in the winter time, huh?

GARY: Yeah, we missed the winter.

WBCN: So this'll be, the new album'll be out when?

GARY: This summer, we got a single coming out.

WBCN: Do we have a name for the album we can give away yet?

GARY: Aah, we've been playing with the title Waiting For The Punchline.

WBCN: Waiting For The Punchline.

GARY: We're still waiting.

WBCN: And there's, around the industry, talk that you may accompany Aerosmith to Europe.  Is this true?  Will Extreme open for Aerosmith?

GARY: Yeah, before the record comes out, we'll probably release a single in Europe and we got about 18 dates, about five weeks with Aerosmith in Europe.

WBCN: I think a lot of people though that should've happened before now, that you guys should've opened for them before -

GARY: We thought that!

WBCN: Yeah, that's right, you guys!  I knew it was someone!

GARY: We started that rumour!  We're gonna get 'em in America in the summer hopefully.

WBCN: That'd be great, they'll be doing Great Woods and stuff.  So, um, uh, well, damn!  If we had that stuff you guys were in there recording for the last hour, this'd be the perfect spot to play it, wouldn't it!   Because we have Gary actually singing one of the great songs from Jesus Christ Superstar.

JODI: Isn't this how great drama's made?

WBCN: They came in early to do it, we had production guys, and now it seems to be bogged down in some radio crap.  So, I dunno! ...

Later...

WBCN: Gary, are you nervous?   This is like a different thing than Extreme, which, I mean, you're great at that, you know how to do that.  But I mean -

GARY: Yeah, singing has been very comfortable, but doing this acting thing... I dunno.

WBCN: Do you have to speak words, as Jesus?  He has to walk in with a Jesus-swagger... "I'm Jesus!" -

GARY: Jesus doesn't dance.

DOUG: It's an opera.  There are no spoken words.

WBCN: No, right.  Of course, there would be no spoken words.  Oh, no.