Markus chats with Li'l Fanzine about Flesh, albums, touring...
and, among other things... Extreme set lists?

by Alison Cummings

Welcome to the wonderful world of Flesh! Featuring Mark Cherone and Paul Bettencourt - the respective 'Flesh N' Blood' of Gary and Nuno - this is a band who wants to succeed on its own terms. Obviously though, there's gotta be some interplay between the two bands. True, in the name of self-sufficiency, they could stop speaking to each other - but wouldn't that be like... ignoring each other across the breakfast table? On the phone from Boston late Sunday (Monday morning in New Zealand), Mark filled me in on the history of Flesh, and the finer points of the Extreme-Flesh relationship...

"Actually," says Mark of Flesh's beginnings, "Nuno introduced me to his brother Paul, who was in a band with Stephen Powell, our bass player. They were together in a band, and he introduced me to them, and he asked them if I could join as a second guitarist".

Once he became a member of this band, "we broke away from them and got a new drummer, and started Flesh".

Flesh is an interesting name, with all sorts of connotations - how did it come about, I ask.

"We had a handful of names," he replies, "and we got a show, short notice - and we played the show under the name Flesh and we were gonna change the name to something better, and we haven't gotten around to it yet! So, it just came about".

Sensing something more to this, I ask how exactly it came about... most bands have a tale to tell as to how they got their name - and Flesh, as it turns out, is no exception.

"It's interesting - when we started out, we didn't have things you're supposed to have, like equipment and rehearsal space," explains the junior Cherone, casting his mind back to the days before Extreme had even released their first album. "So we leaned on Extreme a lot, and we'd go to their practice room on nights they weren't there! And there's an interesting story - I told Gary that I had a band and it was coming along good, and I was looking for a name; and he said, 'Well I have an idea for a song, but I don't think I'm gonna finish it, so why don't you use it? It'd make a great name for a band'.

Aha!

"So he said, 'Call the band Kid Ego'. So I did... so we were Kid Ego for about a week, and then Nuno - I went to their rehearsal space, and Nuno had four-tracked a song; and he played it back, and it was 'Kid Ego'. And I said, 'Oh, we can't name the band Kid Ego, 'cause I don't wanna have our name - I don't wanna be related to Extreme; it's bad enough, y'know, I don't wanna name the band after one of their songs. We actually were there first!"

"So," he continues, "that spawned a bunch of jokes about 'Wouldn't it be horrible if we were called Teacher's Pet, or something related to Extreme' - and one of the jokes was, 'Wouldn't it be horrible if we were called Flesh N' Blood'... and they had a set list in their rehearsal space, and 'Flesh N' Blood' was on the set list - but it was only written 'Flesh', 'cause it was abbreviated - and then we looked down and said, 'Jeez, y'know, Flesh isn't really bad - Flesh N' Blood is kinda gory, but Flesh is kinda cool'. And that's actually how the name started; it was a joke, because we thought Kid Ego would be the worst thing to name this band," he says and laughs - adding, "We're trying to get respect as our own band, and not, y'know, Extreme this and Extreme that - and so we joke about it a lot".

"We used to tell people that we hate Extreme," he remembers, "and we would do interviews and say that they steal our stuff - y'know, 'cause we talked about Extreme so much that it got to be tedious - but we do have a lot of fun with Extreme. We're family; we're all friends, so we borrow their equipment and do all this stuff, so we have a lot of connections with Extreme - obviously - but that's actually where the name came from. An Extreme set list. But," he adds, "I try not to tell everybody that, because I'm afraid that everyone will think 'Extreme, Extreme, Extreme'".

Fair enough! But surely it's not all bad being related to Gary and co?

"There's been pros and cons. The benefits is that they've been able to get our demo tapes to people - record companies - because they're in the limelight, they're able to get our tape around," Mark concedes. "But we didn't get signed for a long time," he adds, referring to the trouble Nuno had in shopping the Flesh demo. "We got rejected. The downfall is that sometimes people come to us saying, 'I expect them to sound like Extreme because two of the guys are related to Extreme'; so I feel that we kinda get sleighted. But, um, people don't give us - come into the show with a clean slate. They kinda have assumptions about us. I can't do anything about that," he says shruggingly. "I don't wanna sound defensive, but we're our own band, we write our own songs, and we do the work. We do our own shows and, I think now though, we have our own style".

"In the beginning, we have similarities, because we all grew up on the same record collection," Mark explains. "We all like the same bands. We have a lot of the same influences, and I respect Nuno as a guitarist, greatly, so y'know - there's definitely been similarities, and they still linger on, but I think we have our own identity now. I think the second album's gonna show you that we've grown into our own sound a lot more - and some of the songs on the first album are actually kinda old, and uh - but I think we do have similarities but we put our own twist on it. I mean, I totally stand behind everything we do; I just think it's a shame that some people look at us like Extreme's brothers, instead of just Flesh. But there's nothing I can do about it - I can't run around chasing everybody telling them that we're our own band. They'll learn it for themselves one day - hopefully!".

And people are learning it; some even preferring the Flesh CD to Extreme's latest disc. Dragging the subject away from Flesh-Extreme connections, I ask Mark about his - and the band's - musical influences.

"My biggest influence, I think, is Pete Townsend," replies the guitarist. "I love just about everything he's done; and I also love Joe Jackson and Todd Rundgren, and - I love all those classics, y'know - AC/DC and Led Zeppelin... all those great people. And Alice Cooper, Kiss, Cheap Trick, Queen... you can edit that down - I know that was a list - but my band is actually, my band members like Genesis, Kansas, and all these bands that I wasn't really into as a kid, and Yes... there's actually a lot of influences. They don't really show up on the album though," he laughs.

And what about the songwriting? The CD inlay credits Markus as the "pen" - so, is Mark Cherone the sole 'composer' in the band?

"I would write 'all songs written by Mark', or maybe 'all songs written by Mark and Steve', because Steve helps me for the most part," he offers. "But I feel that, looking back, I've really gotten help from the whole band and that it was unfair... I write the songs, but they arrange them. We all play 'em out til everyone's kind of gone through the machine of everybody else, so I think 'all songs written by Flesh' is fair; but, it starts with me," he confirms.

And now to the album! Some of the tracks were recorded in 1990, some in 1993, and some in 1994 - what's the story on that?

"We were shopping some demo tapes for the longest time, and we went out to California in '91, and we didn't actually make any tapes for a year," Mark explains. "We came back to Boston in '92 and made some more tapes, shopped them to record companies, got rejected; '93, we made some more tapes and shopped them, and then when '94 came around, Colorblind approached us - y'know, 'lets do this' - and, we didn't wanna re-record some of the songs, like 'Dancehard'".

"We didn't wanna re-record it," he says, "because we felt that there's a certain vibe when you record a song, when you first write it; you're most excited about it, it's very, y'know - our voices weren't as mature as they are nowadays, but - it was a young sound - but it had a hunger that you can't duplicate, you can only get once; and so there was no need to re-record half the album, so we kept a lot of old demos. And," he continues, "I don't wanna disregard the songs, because I think we put songs on the album that work live, as opposed to some of the more intricate songs. So we just kept this album very rock, just basically rock - except 'Into My Sea' is kinda weird. But everything else is very straight ahead and can be performed live and it all sounds similar".

Live performance is a medium in which Flesh have made an impression on many Extreme fans - in the support slot for part of the Punchline tour. How was the tour from Flesh's perspective?

"That was the best," Mark replies appreciatively, "because we'd never toured before, and we did, like, 26 cities with Extreme - and it was a great challenge, 'cause we play out here, but we only play a couple of times a weekend, but on tour you play about four or five times a week, for weeks in a row, so it was a challenge for us to sing every night. And, y'know, you couldn't party too much because you'd wake up hung over and you wouldn't be able to sing the next day; so I think it was just great we had to be disciplined and we had to work hard to whip the band into shape".

As the interview winds to a close, we talk about Flesh's second album - intended for release in January 1996 - and, after the tape is switched off, we chat briefly about the first album, Jesus Christ Superstar, and various other things (yes, fans of the Cherone brothers - I asked what you wanted to know! - Mark does have a girlfriend; and Gary has "a girl who's a friend"). All in all, the interview went well; and hopefully, you'll be seeing more of Flesh in upcoming issues!