CRR: Was this around the time of his first album?

Gary: Actually his second album was out at the time which was self titled but we refer to it as the Red album. Just before he did that album, which was around the time that Scott died, he was going over to England to do it. He asked me if I was available and again asked me over to jam but then called me up a few days later and said that he d been working with another guy named Dave Lewark and he promised him that he would do the album over in England. He told me that if he still needed somebody that he d give me a call when he got back. Shortly after the album was done they came back to the States and Lewark quit for whatever reason, so Sammy calls me up again and says "Let s get together on Tuesday". Monday he calls me up again and tells me he ran into this old buddy of his, I can t remember his name, and that he d hired him instead.

CRR: He went through a few guitarists on those first couple of albums.

Gary: Yeah he went through a half dozen of them on those early albums. So I was reluctant to join him figuring he was going to kick me out after a couple of weeks. This other guy joined for about a month and then he quit. The third time was when I went down for the two day rehearsal before the Thin Lizzy show. I ended up staying with Sammy for the next 8 years until he joined Van Halen.

CRR: Sammy was known for writing songs about UFO s and other beings and I know he was talking about that recently in an interview but I heard him tell this story back in the late 70 s as well. Did he ever tell you about these experiences and did you think he was nuts?

Gary: Yes he did. When you hear him say it, he has a lot of conviction. He did do an interview recently in a paper where he talks about this but it was the same story he told us back then as well. To make it brief, he in essence was asleep and in his dream he felt like someone had contacted him and tapped into him. These days he uses the word downloaded, he felt that they were somehow tapped into him and they were taking information from his brain because they wanted to learn more about earthlings. Apparently he woke up in the middle of this and I can t remember if he said he saw a white light or whatever but he felt like he saw something. He was shaken by it and to him it was as real as anything could be.

CRR: I think that s where his song "Silver Lights" came from.

Gary: Right, to him it was a very moving experience. If nothing else it gave him a bigger world view like maybe there s something else out there. He s always been a spiritual person in some form. I don t know if that s what started it. In a song like "Three Lock Box" he invokes the trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I think a lot of people could relate, I was brought up in a fairly religious home so I could relate to it. Since we lived through the 60 s, The Beatles had tried transcendental meditation and people were looking towards Eastern religions and the path to enlightenment, the environment in California (laughs) had something to do with it as well.

CRR: You played on so many excellent albums of his, like Standing Hampton, Three Lock Box and VOA. It seems like he really hit his stride when he moved to Geffen. What stands out for you most about your time in the band?

Gary: I d have to say the live performances. We never felt like we captured the feeling of playing live on record in the studio. There are a couple of reasons; Sammy is such a great live performer that it s tough to bottle that in the studio. I mean even if some people listen to the live stuff and think it s not that good, the band sounded like we were rushing or the sound wasn t that great, it was all about being there in the moment, his spontaneity made him so fun to work with. You never new what he was going to do onstage from one night to the next, he was an absolute ball of energy onstage. One of his best guitar solo s was on a track called "Young Girl Blues" which was a Donovan song and it was a slow ballad type of song and his solo was never the same twice (laughs), but great each time. It was very much his voice singing through the guitar. It was necessarily technically difficult, just very soulful. It was a pleasure to hear him do that one every night. Back when we were opening for bands like Boston it became the highlight of the set which almost seemed unusual for us because Sammy was the red rocker and we usually came out and played about as fast as we could play, then right in the middle of the set we d do that song and I think we gained a lot of respect because people thought we could really play. Now that I think of it that was my first impression of him as well. I mean the Montrose stuff is great hard rockin music but after you d see him do a song like that I realized he was much more dimensional than I d thought.

CRR: It made you realize that he was a bit underrated?

Gary: Yeah that really stood out. We made our very records very quickly. The last record that we did together VOA was done in 12 days. We did the basic tracks in 4 days, we all played together in the same room and we played through the songs. He was singing along with us for a scratch vocal just so we d know where we were in the song. The next 4 days he, Jesse (Harms) and I did all the vocals, Sammy doing all the leads and Jesse and myself doing the backgrounds. We had 4 more days to do the overdubs, adding solos or whatever and we were done.

CRR: You hear the level of spontaneity in those records.

Gary: Yeah. I remember doing a solo with him, we were trading off solo s and he said "O.k. Pihl let s go", so we had the backing track blasting in the studio and there we were trading off solo s. It wasn t a question of let me this mine or let me do that one over again. It was back and forth and that s how it always was, if we were going to trade off we d do it live because there s nothing like that. In our live shows when we would do "Bad Motor Scooter" we would trade off on that one. It was a case of gimme your best shot.

CRR: Trying to go one up on the other.

Gary: Exactly.

CRR: Did you do a lot of leads on the albums or were you doing primarily rhythm?

Gary: I d have to say he d do about 70% and I d do 30% something like that. The first single off of VOA, "Two Sides of Love" didn t sell real well but that was my solo. He wanted a prettier more melodic solo so he said "You do it".

CRR: Do you still keep in touch with Bill Church and Chuck Ruff who were in Montrose and later played with you in Sammy s band?

Gary: A few years back Sammy managed to get back together with Montrose for some shows with Ronnie, Denny Carmassi and Bill. Sammy s band would do a full set and then for the final 15 minutes Montrose would come out and play. It just so happened that we were in Minneapolis and we had a night off. We found out they were playing that night so I thought I gotta go. I didn t even remember Montrose was scheduled to play; I just wanted to go say hello to Sammy. When Montrose came out I was blown away because I d completely forgotten that they were doing this, so afterwards I got to go and say hi to Bill whom I hadn t seen in quite awhile.

CRR: Did you get up and jam with them at that show?

Gary: No it was Montrose that was enough. Sammy s brought me up with his ban ebony porn d a few times. Sammy would hand me his guitar and I d play with his other guitarist Vic (Johnson). He s the nicest guy. Bill was keeping busy in L.A. doing session work and Chuck had re-formed The Chuck Ruff group and he was based in Reno where he was from. At one point we had we had everyone from Montrose except Ronnie in Sammy s band at one point or another, Denny Carmassi, and Alan  Fitz Fitzgerald who played bass at the time.

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