Alfredo Hernandez Interview Transcript Me: Where about did you grow up in the desert?

I was born in Palm Springs. Born and raised there. My parents were there in 1958 and never left so I pretty mu h grew up! "with that# musi s ene. Me: What are your impressions of alm !prings as a city? $s a ity% It didn&t have anything from ba ' in the early 19()s* really +dead&. ,ust a bun h of people from outside ame in and pa 'ed it up and it be ame more li'e a va ation spot li'e going -awaii or something but without the bea h. .ots of golf ourses. /he pla e is growing but it&s a lot of li'e!. It&s a bit bigger. /here&s nothing wrong with that but before we "0yuss# got big we were probably in the middle of! the musi s ene had probably been going sin e the mid1late 19()s and the 2)&s and so the I got into the musi s ene around 81183* growing up listening to pun' ro '. Me: "A bands li#e $lac# %lag? 4eah* I was going to shows li'e 5ir le6er's and 7 in the early 8)s and a lot of the pun' ro ' ame from .$ and we were only a ouple of hours away from .$ so we would either go to .os $ngeles or San 8iego to see pun' shows. $ll the bands! /S9.* y&'now everybody. $nd everybody I met from the area grew up listening to that and we were a bun h of people that listened to the same musi and started hanging out and doing...uh...playing together and stuff. Me: Which #ind of people were you hanging out with? :h* people that listened to pun' ro ' as well. /here weren&t too many in the beginning so it was very new but little by little people started oming out and they were all basi ally musi ians. So we all grew up together and onne ted with the musi s ene* the pun' ro ' s ene and realised we all wanted to play in bands. I realised I wanted to play when I was li'e 5 but I was old enough to buy my own drum set and really get into it when I was li'e* 1(. $nd pun' ro ' is what started all that and it spread from Palm 8esert to Indio to 5at 5ity!everybody had a band ; a pun' band. Me: What are your e&periences of being in the desert? 'o you ever thin# about the landscape? <ell* the thing is we have a lot of mountains around us so they don&t get a lot of bad air. It&s always lean air and one thing that I noti e is that all the elebrities ; we grew up with a lot of elebrities and presidents and stuff oming to Palm Springs u= it was a spot everybody would go to be ause it&s always ni e weather and it 6ust has an oasis* an island feel but hotter> /here&s not humidity or bea h* it&s a weird feeling. My dad moved there be ause he thought it would be good for the 'ids in a small town and a lean environment. It&s untou hed. ?verything is untou hed. /here aren&t really houses in the mountains* it&s 6ust a really ni e area and gives you a good feeling

about being alive. 4ou an get in tou h with reality there. But there was a lot of nothing for us to do as little 'ids so we had to find something to do> Me: 'o you thin# that the way that you play music has been influenced by the desert? I have to admit y&'now* there&s a lot of open spa e and a lot of room to get reative y&'now% $nd you loo' at the s enery and the mountains and the really blue s'ies and sometimes you won&t have a loud and it 6ust puts you in the mood y&'now% $ natural high. $nd we were p"laying pun' ro ' and not thin'ing about the outside but then I started playing in a ro ' band and everything started hanging. <e started playing from inside to outside 6ust be ause we wanted to amp out and play somewhere. $nd I thin' on e we noti ed how beautiful it was to play musi in that area it hanged our lives for sure. Me: Was that perhaps embodied in the generator parties? 4eah. <ell* we only did the generator parties be ause we ouldn&t play at lubs. /here weren&t lubs for us in Palm Springs or Palm 8esert for bands to play plus we&re all underage. So we ouldn&t play in a lub to all the people who wanted to see us. <e had a big rowd ba ' then in 83 or 8@! Me: What bands were you playing in? I had a band alled Mutual -atred ; my first pun' band that I played in for about 51( years. $nd it was 6ust four of us all 1A or 15 years old. 9ur first show was opening up for Sui idal /enden ies in .$. $nd it was li'e +we&re all underage&. But at home we had nowhere to play. <e&d play in a garage and the ops would ome and brea' us up. <e&d have parties at peoples houses be ause of not having lubs and they would get bro'en up so what we de ided to do was go and play where we ouldn&t bug anybody. But little did we 'now the impa t that would have. Me: 'id it start to turn sour towards the end? 'id the feeling drift from what the parties were originally intended for? 4eah* it got different. 5u= the musi was really a bun h of talent! a lot of people who played instruments that were really good ; there were a lot of them. Bow the parties are more te hno and raves and spinning re ords and shit. It&s got it&s own vibe but I thin' when it first started in .$ ; a friend of ours* 8ave from the band we had was doing generator parties out in .$ be ause they were going through the same thingC not being able to play anywhere or have parties y&'now% $nd he had film eDuipment and would film all the outdoor parties and that&s when we started doing the generator parties. /hey started in .os $ngeles for us and then a friend of ours brought it to the desert. I thin' our first generator party was in 8A185 and it was li'e something we&d never done and everybody would ome and it was li'e an outdoor festival. Me: Would you say that there(s a )desert sound( then?

I thin' there has to be sound. I play in a band alled +4awning Man& as well and people say that it sounds li'e the desert. 9f all the bands we&ve done it was 6ust what we had to do. <e 6ust went out and played and what we played somehow ame out sounding li'e the desert!. Me: *ou also played in +rchestro 'el 'esertio? 4eah* the first album. Me: Was that specific pro,ect -uite desert inspired? I thin' it was a bun h of people getting together and 6amming out and people had ideas and it turned into a band. <e started playing y&'now* but it was 6ust a bun h of friends getting together* it wasn&t anything to do with the desert be ause it was 6ust something ool to do. $nd we alled it 9r hestro 8el 8esierto be ause there was no other band with that 'ind of name. <e put a lot into it and y&'now* it wasn&t aimed to sound li'e the desert* it was aimed to be a 6am session pretty mu h. I thin' the name brings a little desert to it but I don&t thin' it&s! I&ve heard more deserty albums than that. Me: !o do you thin# the location. the geography of the desert has e&pressed itself in any of your music? <ell* 6ust by growing up and be oming an older person with more eEperien e and if you don&t stop playing you 6ust get better y&'now so I thin' as you get older you use the environment and what you have. <hat I do a lot when I&m playing inside a studio is I open the door so I get the sunshine in y&'now* so I an get that feeling of being free. $t night you don&t feel as free but in the day1time it&s wild with all the spa e. I thin' it 6ust progressed with everybody as they got better with their instruments. <ith the band 4awning Man we did a lot of 6amming* a lot of long1playing songs and I thin' that sometimes it was hot and we didn&t are* we 6ust played and sometimes it was old and you&d get weird sounds be ause of the old weather. 4ou 'now what you an do and what sounds you an get out there!really eEpress yourself. Me: How do you feel about people calling your music stoner roc#??? I don&t 'now what that means y&'now% I mean* we did do some 'ind of smo'ing or whatever but I thin' if you&re gonna name that sort of ro '* it&s been around foreverC Bla ' Sabath* Blue 5heer y&'now% Me: Hendri&(s $and of gypsy(s stuff/0 4eah* -endriE man* I thin'! Brant and I were tal'ing* and to us it&s more li'e +8esert Fo '&. It&s got its own sound and its own vibe and it&s different to a lot of things for some reason! Me: !toner roc# has sort of come to basically label to bands/mostly 1yuss and bands who sound li#e 1yuss and bands with people who used to be in 1yuss 2 a really narrow thing but at the same time. it(s used to describe very different bands li#e 3rowbar 4sludge band5/

4eah* I mean the people that I&ve wor'ed with* the people that we wor' with they seem to 'eep that sound!from 0yuss to G9/S$. /he first G9/S$ still had that desert! a lot of desert sound. <e re orded it in Palm Springs. I guess we managed to 'eep the sounds that we dis over or figured out and 'ept it as it should be!. Me: *ou heard the new 6+T!A album? .istened to it% Bo* I don&t pay attention. $fter I left I didn&t follow up. <hen I was in the band and we had a hemistry going on that you an&t repla e and you have to reinvent it with other people. Hor me* G9/S$ was what we had to do and now it&s something else I thin'. Me: 7osh seems to have a different idea for every album and different people fit into that/0 I mean that&s ool to reinvent a sound* that&s fine. I have respe t for that but I thin' the first album is out there on its own. /he later albums all have their own!different drummers and their own sound y&'now!. Me: there seems to be a lot of cross8collaboration in a lot of the different bands0 %or e&ample. I had no idea you were coming on this tour. yet seeing you here doesn(t seem too surprising0 It seems with a lot of bands from the desert you get musicians ,oining different bands and dropping in and out of bands0 !cott 9eeder and 7ohn :arcia all doing several bands y(#now? 'o you thin# that(s something specific to the desert scene???? :m* I thin' what it is* is that there are ertain people who onne t really well and then they swit h into other people and sometimes they don&t have that in other bands. In my bands we&ve always felt a strong musi al onne tion. I thin' it&s hard for some people to ome out of that and find something again. I thin' S ott IFeederJ has um! I&ve been playing with him sin e we were in high S hool. <e 'new ea h other in ,unior -igh and he&s one of those people who&s 6ust all about musi . Musi first y&'now. -e an do what we did with 0yuss in another band and he an bring what we had in 0yuss to another band and ma'e it good. Me: Wasn(t !cott nearly in Tool? 4eah* S ott tried out for /ool and I thin' he would&ve been great on that one. I thin' with trading bands* I got lu 'y being a drummer. I get along with people on the same level* we want to ta'e are of business and get things done and there are a lot of people who want to do that* and I have a handful of friends of musi ians so I&m lu 'y to have that. I play everything* I don&t dis riminate but y&'now* I don&t play rap or te hno or anything! I have the ability to play with almost anybody so I use that in my bands be ause I get to do things li'e* I&m here travelling ?urope with Brant and 8ylan. <e had a blast last night in 4or'K ool bars and old pubs... <e get to go around and meet people!. I ame on va ation ?urope in 1989 ba 'pa 'ing and I went all over and learned what I li'ed about different parts of ?urope. ?verything had something good about it but I

'new where to go. I was here for A15 wee's and went ba ' in love with ?ngland* Ireland and said my dream was to ome ba ' with my friends and my band touring and ma'ing a living from selling musi and touring. 4&'now* getting your bus ti 'et paid for and your plane ti 'et paid for and 6ust doing that with your friends is an adventure. It&s an adventure for yourself and with your friends you&re sharing this thing and there&s nothing li'e it. I appre iate it so mu h be ause that was my dream and the first band I ame with was 0yuss and it was ama=ing the response we got and the treatment we got. <e 6ust ame and gave em what they wanted every time and they paid for it> Me: I was wondering how you thin# the desert scene has affected bands internationally0 <ell* what 0yuss hadK the sound and the live sound Iwhi h was different to the albumsJ* we played it all over ?uropeC up to S andinavia* Italy everything but Spain Ialthough that would&ve been greatJ and it made an impa t y&'now% I ame ba ' about A years after 0yuss with G9/S$ in 1998 around ?urope and the bands we were opening up for all sounded li'e 0yuss> It was ra=y be ause everybody loved that* everybody was into that and to this day bands who open up for us have this! it&s not 0yuss* it&s more li'e a 6ammy sound! raw* pun hy* bluesy y&'now. I li'e the blues* 5ream* 4es* they 6ust had a really good sound. /here&s a sound we put outK turning it up* playing it hard. I play a drum set the same si=e "in Brant B6or' and /he Bros as in 0yuss# but I hit it twi e as hard and we were 6ust full volume. It made something be ause people 6ust ate it up. 4&'now* Sabbath had that. <e were li'e!tran e y&'now% Me: I thin# that(s where the )stoner( thing comes in/ 4eah. 9ne thing that I did with G9/S$!.ugh* with 0yuss* people were 6ust so into what we were doing. /hey weren&t even moving y&'now* 6ust wide1eyed and into what we were doing* trying to figure out what the hell we were doing>