When it comes to the finest voices in AOR, Mickey Thomas is amongst the cream of the crop. From Elvin Bishop’s breakthrough 1976 hit, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”, to a slew of hit singles with Jefferson Starship and subsequently Starship, Thomas’ signature tenor vocals dominated the airwaves throughout the ’70s and ’80s. These days, Thomas still creates new music, as well as celebrating the hits of yesteryear with the current incarnation of Starship. We had the honor of sitting down with Thomas to discuss life aboard Starship and beyond.
Greetings Mickey and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Mickey Thomas: I’m pretty good! How are you?
I’m doing good as well. I’d like to start by thanking you for taking the time to do this interview. It’s an honor and a pleasure.
MT: Well thank you!
In just a couple weeks, Starship will touchdown in Lansing, Illinois. When did you first play the Chicagoland area and are there any shows in particular that stand out to you from playing here over the years?
MT: Well, the first time I recall playing there was probably 1979, the winter of ’79. It was my first tour with Jefferson Starship and I was in Chicago that night, the night of my 30th birthday *laughs*. We had a show and I was able to celebrate my birthday and party in Chicago that night. There was an early snowfall that happened. It started snowing, so it was a great, memorable night for me.
I hope the city treated you well despite the snowfall!
MT: Oh yeah! I’ve had great times in Chicago over the years. I love the city and have always had a lot of fun there. I’ve been there so many times now. I couldn’t even tell you how many times its been, but I always enjoy it.
What can the fans expect from this upcoming show? With a career as vast as yours, I imagine it becomes a task to put together a setlist that’ll please everyone, is it not?
MT: Well, yeah, to please everyone, probably. Obviously for us, there are songs that are the cornerstones of the set that we have to include every night. Every night’s gotta be “Jane”, “Find Your Way Back”, “We Built This City”, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, “Sara”. I still do “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” every show from my Elvin Bishop Band days. That was the song that started it all for me and opened so many doors for me. We do all of those and then sometimes I’ll interchange certain songs: “No Way Out”, “It’s Not Enough”, “It’s Not Over (‘Til It’s Over)”, “Wild Again” from the Cocktail soundtrack, “Layin’ It on the Line”, “Stranger”. “Stranger” we do every night because that’s one that gives the band a chance to really stretch and jam and show off their chops.
“Stranger” is my favorite Jefferson Starship song, so I’ll be looking forward to that.
MT: Oh cool!
Who currently plays with you in this lineup of Starship and how does being in the band today compare to that of the ’70s and ’80s?
MT: First of all, the people in the band today, most of them have been with me for a long, long time. My drummer, Darrell Verdusco, and my keyboard player, Phil Bennett, have both been with me for 30 years. The bass player, Jeff Adams, has been with me for 25 years. My guitarist, John Roth, has been with me for 12 years. Our newest member is our female vocalist, Cian Coey, who has now been with me for 3 years. The core of the band has been together longer than any other incarnation of the band going all the way back to the ’60s. I don’t think anybody played together for 30 years *laughs*. We’ve been together a long time. Obviously, we have a great chemistry onstage.
As for how it compares, I would just say that overall, this is the best band I’ve ever been in. The musicianship is outstanding. The vocals are great. Almost everybody in the band sings and has really good voices. Aside from Cian, our female vocalist, my bass player Jeff has a great voice. Our drummer Darrell has a great voice. It’s probably the most talented band I’ve ever been in. You trade that off with the band of the past who obviously had more of a recording history, and maybe more personalities that people knew when you talk about Paul Kantner and obviously Grace Slick and Craig Chaquico and Pete Sears and Aynsley Dunbar, people I played with when I first got in the band, were more iconic figures.
That’s kind of different, but this band, it’s comfortable for me because I was kind of able to pick and choose who I wanted to play with and put together a group of people that I really like and has a great chemistry together. Whereas back in the day, when I joined Jefferson Starship, certain people would come and go in the band. In some respects, it was almost like a lot of hired guns would come in *laughs*. This is more of a band-friendly band, I’d say.
I’ve seen videos of you performing live recently and I’m speaking for myself and many others when I say we’re in awe the way you manage to sound exactly like you did on record. What is your secret to maintaining such a powerful voice after all these years and what advice do you have for aspiring singers?
MT: Well, first of all, I’m lucky *laughs*. I guess the biggest thing is that my parents gave me some good genes, otherwise I can’t really explain how I’m able to keep doing what it is that I do. I do try to take care of myself, try to stay healthy and keep my strength up. I only have one vice now and that’s Chardonnay. I love my wine. That’s probably my only vice. Sometimes, I have certain vocal exercises that I like to do on the road. I find that hot steam showers are real good for the voice. You gotta stay hydrated, so lots of drinking and steam showers and those kinds of things because travel’s the hardest part. When you don’t get enough sleep, that’s what takes the biggest toll on my voice. The advice I would give to singers out there is try to get as much rest as you can and hydrate.
It just crossed my mind that in Geddy Lee’s autobiography, there’s an entire section about when Rush would be on the road and how sometimes he’d have to sing around a cold. How would you combat a situation like that?
MT: That’s really tough to do. It’s hard for me because the nature of my voice. Obviously, I sing in a very high range, very clear voice. It’s kind of hard to maintain that standard every night. If I do have a cold, hopefully…sometimes the early stages of a cold, it’s not so bad. It’s the later stages when it gets into your chest and your throat where it’s harder to sing through that, but I’ve been very fortunate over the years with the timing of getting colds and getting sick. I’ve probably only had to cancel, in the last 45 years, maybe 3 or 4 shows. I’ve been really lucky in that regard.
Prior to joining Jefferson Starship, you sang for Elvin Bishop and scored a massive hit in “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”. Did you ever cross paths with the members of Jefferson Starship, whether it be on the road or behind the scenes, prior to joining the band? Furthermore, what events took place that led to your audition?
MT: No, I didn’t really know anybody in the band before I joined Jefferson Starship. Actually, I take that back. I had briefly met Marty Balin. Marty and I crossed paths back in Marin in the mid to late ’70s. Of course, Marty and Grace had both left the band before I got in, which is what led to me being able to get into Jefferson Starship in the first place. The audition, that was kind of a phone call out of the blue. I was living in the San Francisco area, which is where Jefferson Starship was based. I had just left the Elvin Bishop Band and I was making preparations to go to Miami and start recording a solo album when I got the call from Paul Kantner asking me if I would be interested in coming and meeting the guys, hanging out a little bit, and possibly singing with the band if it worked out.
I was a little hesitant at first. Like I said, I had my own plans to go make my solo album and my musical background was very different from what my perception of what Jefferson Starship’s music was like at that point in time. Through most of the ’70s, it was “Miracles” and “Count on Me” and “Runaway”: The ballads that Marty made famous. It was a real different musical style than where I was coming from and what I was accustomed to. I was wondering, “How the hell is this ever gonna work?” *laughs* “How am I gonna fit in?”
I think that because of my hesitancy, it kind of made them maybe want me to come by even more because they kept calling me. The more I hesitated, the more they called. I think they thought maybe I was playing some kind of a game or something at first, which I really wasn’t, but you know. I talked to the producer I was going to do my solo album with, the famous Bill Szymczyk. He said, “Give it a shot! Go meet ’em, hang out. If it seems like something that would be a fit for you, we could work around it. We could make both things happen.”
I eventually went and met the guys and we hung out a little bit. They started playing me a rough version of “Jane” and I started singing on that. I thought, “This is not what I expected from Jefferson Starship!” That peaked my interest, when we started working on “Jane”. I started to think, “Wow! This might just work out!” As crazy as it was for me from my style, where I was coming from with the new harder edged, hard rock background that the band wanted to do, we did it. “Jane” sold me, so “Jane” became the first song that we recorded and the first song that was released as a single. More than anything, that’s what led to me getting into the band.
That’s a perfect segue into the next question. This year marks the 45th anniversary of the first Jefferson Starship album you sang on, Freedom at Point Zero. What memories stand out to you from the recording and subsequent touring of this album, and which songs are your favorite?
MT: Making that album was a great experience because it was a fresh start for the whole band. Grace Slick leaves. Marty Balin leaves. The drummer, John Barbata, gets into a terrible car crash, so Aynsley Dunbar comes in as the new member right before I join the band. We had two new members of the band, who wanted to completely reinvent themselves at the time musically. We were able to get a great producer to produce Freedom at Point Zero, a guy by the name of Ron Nevison, who was a great producer and really great to work with. It was a fresh start.
That was the reason for the name of the album. We felt that we were starting over at point zero, so that was how the name Freedom at Point Zero came about. It was just a great experience making that album. We did the bulk of it in Los Angeles. It was just a great experience working with those guys and working with Ron Nevison and “Jane” came out of that album. Some of the other songs that I particularly like on that album is “Rock Music”, which I’ll do quite often in the live show now as well. “Just the Same” is one I liked a lot, “Fading Lady Light”.
Jefferson Starship was one of the first bands to capitalize on MTV with videos for “Finds Your Way Back” and “Stranger” off the aptly titled Modern Times. For you, as someone whose career went back to the ’70s, what was that transition to the video era like and what would you attribute the band’s success of said era to?
MT: I think several things. First of all, we were very fortunate in the fact that our manager was very good friends, very close to one of the founders of MTV, a guy by the name of Les Garland. We had a great relationship with Les, so that kind of maybe gave us a bit of an advantage as far as getting our videos played on MTV in the early days *laughs*. Also, it was a whole new process, making music videos back then. It was something we were all interested in and intrigued by. By that point in time, when we started making the videos, Grace Slick had returned to the band, so obviously Grace brought a very strong, animated presence to the videos, theatricality to it with her iconic presence there.
It was something we enjoyed doing. We really got into the process of making the videos. It was like making mini movies, and that was something we were all interested in and we really enjoyed it, especially in the early going. The videos were really fun. As it got to be more of a thing, as MTV became more popular, it became as soon as you put out a single, you had to have a video to go with it. Then, a little more pressure was added to the process because you had to make the obligatory video. The budgets kept getting more and more expensive to make the videos. The videos became more complicated and more of a process. In some ways, by the mid ’80s, it took a little bit of fun out of making the videos because it became, as I said, an obligatory process rather than a creative one.
Speaking of Modern Times, that album closes with one of my favorite diss tracks of all time, “Stairway to Cleveland (We Do What We Want)”. Do you recall who first read the Rolling Stone review of Freedom at Point Zero that inspired the song, and how soon after said review was it written?
MT: It was, pretty much more than anything, Paul Kantner’s reaction to the negative review. At that point in time, Paul and I discovered that we both had a mutual interest in the punk rock movement and the post-punk movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s, that kind of anti-authoritarian attitude of the era. We found out, before we even knew each other, Paul and I used to hang out at Mabuhay Gardens, which was a punk rock club in San Francisco in the mid ’70s. There was an element of that attitude in the song as well, “F you, we do what we want!” We don’t care what you think or what you write or what you say! Some of the same attitude was also prevalent in “We Built This City”, I think.
I always found it ironic that when you look at the plethora of bands Rolling Stone slammed in the ’70s and ’80s, everyone’s still listening to those bands. Everyone’s still buying the records and going to catch them live. It’s rather an ironic twist of fate, don’t you think?
MT: Rolling Stone hated Led Zeppelin. What does that tell you *laughs*?! That kind of sums it all up. We had that situation too in the late ’90s, which was pretty much like 15 years after the fact when “We Built This City” came out. Blender magazine put out their infamous “Worst Songs of All Time” list and put “We Built This City” at #1 on there. You know, it’s just peoples opinions. As The Big Lebowski said, “That’s like your opinion man.” *laughs* Like they say about opinions, it’s like an a-hole: Everybody has one. I didn’t really take that too seriously because I think that people who put down “We Built This City” never really took the time to listen to the lyrics of the verse of the song, which I think are some of the best pop rock lyrics ever written because they’re written by the great Bernie Taupin.
Prior to rebranding as Starship, I read that the band played a handful of shows under the moniker Starship Jefferson. Do you recall exactly how many?
MT: No! Actually, I’m trying to recall that. Starship Jefferson…hmm.
Or could that be a tall tale?
MT: It could be, because I don’t recall that. If we did, it might’ve been just when we knew Paul was going to be exiting the band. It was right after we had finished the Nuclear Furniture album and before we started Knee Deep in the Hoopla. I think we did 2 or 3 shows with Paul still in the band, but it was a little awkward and kind of uncomfortable because we knew he was leaving. I don’t know. Maybe that might’ve been when that happened, or maybe somebody came up with that moniker to represent the fact that it’s Jefferson Starship, but not really *laughs*.
In hindsight, would you say the shift from Jefferson Starship to Starship was a dramatic one or a natural musical evolution that would’ve occurred regardless?
MT: I’d say it was a drastic one. I would say at that point in time, after Paul left the band, the rest of us, we all kind of felt like a weight had been lifted off of our shoulders, just with the constant struggle and butting heads. We knew that we wanted to again reinvent ourselves at that point in time. We knew that we wanted to go into the Knee Deep in the Hoopla album with a whole new attitude towards the process of making music, incorporating a lot of the new things that were available to us in the studio at that point in time: The synthesizers, sequencers, sampling. It was really the transition from the analog age to the digital age. We really wanted to jump on that full bore and come out with a completely new sound for Starship. We knew it was a gamble, but it was gamble that we all wanted to take and were willing to take. Fortunately for us, it paid off with “We Built This City” and “Sara” being back to back #1 singles.
You’ve gone on record to say your favorite Starship album is Love Among the Cannibals, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. What is it about this album that stands out to you above the others?
MT: We kind of went from the late ’70s, early ’80s Jefferson Starship into the mid ’80s segue with Starship. We did two Starship albums, Knee Deep in the Hoopla and No Protection, which were more of the, as I mentioned, going into the digital age. I felt like when we got around to Love Among the Cannibals, we wanted to incorporate all the elements that we had been using in the last 10 years. To me, it’s almost like a hybrid between Freedom at Point Zero and Knee Deep in the Hoopla. I felt that we were getting back to more of a rock n’ roll sound with Love Among the Cannibals. I think all the songs are really strong. I think the production is great on the whole album.
We were able to work with Tom Lord-Alge, who was amazing to work with. He did about half of the album. Then, we did it with Mike Shipley, who was a protégé of Mutt Lange. He produced about 3 of the tracks. Mutt actually had a hand in the production of a couple of the songs too. Mutt produced some of the lead vocals that I did on the album, so that was a great experience. Just the overall album, to me, song-wise, if you stack them all up, every song on the album is really strong. The production is great. Sonically, when I listen to it today, I think it really holds up sound-wise. After 35 years, it still sounds fresh to me.
Obviously, I was disappointed that it didn’t do better than it did as far as sales. There were a couple of things that happened there. Grace had, of course, left the band before we started production on Love Among the Cannibals. After Grace left, some people didn’t really want to accept the band without Grace being a part of it. We had the situation with Donny Baldwin where we had a really *laughs* extreme situation that happened between the two of us and then he exited the band.
I wasn’t able to perform for a few months there. I had some reconstructive surgery and all that kind of stuff, so there were some elements that were stacked up against it. We did have one really nice hit from the album. “It’s Not Enough” peaked at #12 on the Billboard Top 40 and the video was very popular on MTV. That was good, but the follow up single, “I Didn’t Mean to Stay All Night”, we were expecting big things for that one and it just didn’t happen. I still love that album.
Your music has been featured in a plethora of films over the years, whether it be “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” in Mannequin and “Wild Again” in Cocktail, or “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” in Boogie Nights and “Jane” in Cocaine Bear, just to name a few. Do you have a favorite use of your music in a movie?
MT: Ironically, “Fooled Around”, maybe the first 3 or 4 times it was in movies, it appeared in Boogie Nights as you mentioned, which was a very unromantic scene *laughs*. It also appeared in Summer of Sam, about the Son of Sam. It was playing on the radio when we see the first victim of Son of Sam. I guess a lot of the directors of those movies had a real flair for using it in a paradoxical way. It appeared in The Devil’s Rejects. I think the most appropriate use of any song, I loved it when “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” appeared in the first Guardians of the Galaxy with the kiss scene. It also introduced the song to a whole new younger generation. I think I would pick Guardians of the Galaxy.
I’m 25, so I knew the song already from hearing it around the house growing up. That said, I think I was 13 or 14 when that movie came out, so you’re right. It opened up the floodgates.
MT: My son is just a little bit older than you. He was probably 17 or 18 when it came out, so I made a lot of points with his friends. Whenever they’d go to see Guardians of the Galaxy, he’d go, “Hey, that’s my dad!” *laughs* That was cool.
In closing, what does the rest of 2024 have in store for Mickey Thomas and Starship?
MT: Well, we’re gonna be touring a lot. We’re real busy the rest of July. August and September are really busy. For me personally, at the end of the year, at the end of November to the end of December, I’m gonna be in Germany for a month performing on a tour called Night of the Proms. It’s an annual event that they have every year, so I’ll be over there performing 4 or 5 songs a night for 16 shows with a full philharmonic orchestra. I’m really looking forward to that. Spending Christmas in Germany is gonna be fun. Right after that, the first of the year, we’re off to Australia and New Zealand for some shows. It’s gonna be a fun time. The end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 is going to be very exciting for me. Oh, and I have a new Christmas album coming out! I was just listening to the final mixes on it this morning. We’re looking at November 4, or something like that, for the release date…yeah! Monday, November 4!
Starship featuring Mickey Thomas will be playing Fox Pointe in Lansing, Illinois on Friday, August 9. Tickets can be purchased here. For more information on Mickey Thomas and Starship, visit www.starshipcontrol.com.