Roger Earl, Foghat’s original drummer and the only member to appear on all the band’s albums, is a transplanted Englishman living on a houseboat on the north shore of Long Island with his wife and manager Linda. When he’s not fishing or enjoying a glass of Foghat wine, the timekeeper behind classics like “Fool For The City” and “Slow Ride” continues to tour and record regularly with the band. Their last album, Last Train Home, was released in 2010.
It was on this album that the band recorded the instrumental “495 Boogie,” which is now available with vocals featuring lyrics penned by Foghat fan Phil Dessinger. The song is now called “The World Of Rock n’ Roll.” In the following interview, the drummer tells the story behind the song. He also had lots to say about Foghat’s legacy along with a few bits about his own illustrious history.
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Let’s talk about “The World Of Rock n’ Roll” and how that all came about. It’s quite an interesting story.
On Last Train Home, which was basically an album of songs Lonesome Dave (Foghat’s original lead singer and rhythm guitarist who died in 2000) and I wanted to do for a long time, so the band picked a bunch of those tunes as well as writing three or four songs. One we wrote was the instrumental “495 Boogie” that my brother Colin more or less brought to the table. D.J. Charlie Ocean put some words to it calling it “Big American Blonde,” but that would never have gotten on the radio — not that the radio plays much of our new stuff anyway — but we thought it was a good tune. Unfortunately, Charlie died in July 2011 and in his honor we decided to have a competition for somebody to write another lyric to it.
That must have been an interesting process, judging the entries.
We were blown away by the standard of writing, even the voices of the people singing the demos! We had entries from all over the world, from men and women, kids, even a Colonel in Afghanistan. We narrowed it down to three, than decided on a real road positive song about playing on the road. The lyric was written by Phil Dessinger.
You said radio is not really playing new stuff by you guys, which is true of most classic rock acts. Any thoughts on that?
Our stuff like “Stone Blue,” “I Just Wanna Make Love” — it gets played, but you know I believe every dog should have his day; every generation has its music. We were a 70s/early 80s band, and we still get a bunch of airplay. The main thing is the band is still going strong.
Yes, you guys keep pretty much gigging.
Last weekend, we played in Santa Cruz, two shows to seven, eight thousand for every show. I have a few days off ,then we’re jetting out to Idaho to play. We have to pretty much turn down work. The band’s doing great, we do one to three dates a week, not 365 days a year like it used to be where I’d come home and the kids would say, “Whose that funny looking man over there?”
With the death of two key members and then others coming and going in other ways, was there ever a time you thought “Hell, I’m gonna pack this in”?
INah, I love what I do. It keeps me out of trouble. We’re a bunch of happy drunks…well, we don’t drink before we play. Afterwards, we have our drink of choice. I just really enjoy playing, I always have. When I was a kid I started at thirteen taking lessons, I always enjoyed it. Playing was always about the music, the money for me was always secondary.
I’ll tell you a story. When I was 20 I was offered a gig in Savoy Brown. This would be 1967 or so. I didn’t get paid for the first couple of weeks playing for them though. I had a day job as a commercial artist and was doing real well, had lots of freelance work, overtime and stuff. But after a few weeks playing with Savoy and not getting paid, you know coming into my day job real tired from playing the night before I went to office to talk to the band’s manager Harry Simmonds, Kim’s brother.
So I said, “Hey Harry, I haven’t been paid yet,” and he said: “You haven’t been paid yet boyo? We’ll see about that then.” And another two, three weeks goes by, I’m still juggling that day job. Then it comes to four weeks and I say to Harry, “Hey Harry I haven’t been paid yet.” And he said the same thing: “You haven’t been paid yet boyo? We’ll see about that then.”
This went on during this period. I’d go into work in the morning all tried from playing and then Chas Chandler called me up. I had been in a band he managed when I was about 18. He asked me if I’d like to audition for Jimi Hendrix. I said, “Yeah, I’d love to do that,” as everybody had heard about Jimi. So I went down, my brother helped me bring my drums up from my dad’s car I had borrowed that day and Jimi was really kind — came up to me, started talking about the songs he wrote the night before, and then when he started playing I had never heard anything like it before. It took me a little while to come to grips with what he was doing. I even sat in to play with him a couple of times later in LA and in NYC.
Anyway, six weeks in now I start looking for work elsewhere though I was enjoying the Savoy gig, but I’m not getting paid, giving it my best, though. So I go to Harry with the same tale of woe and finally I got paid a week or so later, I’m not sure I got back-pay though. See, we used to get to play for free, charities and things and it never has been about the money; it’s about the music really.
Do you think your drumming has changed through the years?
I still hit ‘em fairly hard. One of the joys of playing drums is you can get a little bit of ‘agro’ out. (Laughs) I think I’ve improved. I practice an hour on the pads, work on my feet. The other thing is a drummer has to stay healthy to keep up in a rock and roll band. Other than the fact that I’m right-handed, my left hand has improved quite dramatically. There, of course, are the usual aches and pain that creep in but that disappears once you start playing and the energy takes over and it’s just a joyous thing.
How about new Foghat music, is there anything in the pipeline?
We were down at the band house in Florida, a place in the middle of nowhere on 10 acres. You can practice your gold swing, go swimming and we can play real loud and never disturb our neighbors. They’re so good to us really they keep an eye on the place when we’re not there even. So we just set up there, there’s no red light on, we just jam, work on things and we started three or four songs for release next year.
So, basically you’re not stopping drumming for Foghat anytime soon.
In the immortal words of Lonesome Dave: “I’m gonna roll ‘til I’m old and rock ‘til I drop!” I love my job, are you kidding, I’m in a rock and roll band!
