Fastball Reveals How It Found 'The Way' To Success

03/22/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(3/22/99, 1 a.m. PST) - A day after Fastball dominated the annual Austin Music Awards on March 17, taking the honors for band of the year, best pop band, song and single of the year ("The Way"), album of the year (All The Pain Money Can Buy), singer/ guitarist Miles Zuniga was seated at a panel along with several music industry veterans discussing the band's rise to success.

The afternoon panel, which was part of the 13th annual South By Southwest Music Conference (LAUNCH, 3/18), was an appropriate venue to discuss the rise of the trio. Not only did Fastball emerge out of the Austin club scene, it was at the conference last year that the band established a buzz that helped push "The Way" into the upper regions of the charts. The momentum subsequently helped propel the band's second album, All The Pain That Money Can Buy, to sell more than 1 million copies in the U.S.

However, Fastball's rise to the top wasn't necessarily smooth, as Zuniga recalled. Prior to Fastball, he recorded an album with another band. "With Big Car we thought we were on our way," he said. "We got to spend a lot of money and make a record, and 20 people bought it."

His future bandmates, drummer Joey Shuffield and singer/ bassist Tony Scalzo, suffered an even worse fate. They recorded an album with Beaver Nelson that was never even released. Yet from the ashes of those two ill-fated projects, Fastball was born. Zuniga said that the band's formation had a lot to do with their shared influences. "I went to Tony's and admired his record collection," he noted.

Although Zuniga said that the trio was "originally my band," he soon realized that Scalzo had too much talent to merely be a sideman. "We both sing songs, which works out well, because if you're touring six nights a week, it can drain your voice. With two singers, you only have to sing half of the set."

Initially, however, Fastball didn't have success, even in Austin. Zuniga recalled that the "same 60 people came ever time the band played." In spite of that fact, the band found a champion in Hollywood Records A&R executive Rob Seidenberg, who signed the band almost immediately after seeing them before at an Austin nightclub.

Sidenberg, who was also on the panel, admitted that at the time Hollywood Records signed Fastball, it had no success, except for its reissues of the Queen catalog. He felt that Fastball could help Hollywood begin to establish a tradition of signing quality, long-term career artists.

Still, signing with Hollywood was a gamble for the young band. The band took a bit of a cynical view of working with the label, admitted Fastball manager Russell Carter. "It was a label so bad it could only go up," he said. "There was no way that a label financed by Disney could fail forever."

In spite of that philosophy, Fastball's first album, 1996's Make Your Mama Proud, was a failure. Zuniga noted that producer Jerry Finn, who had just come off successes with Green Day and Rancid, was more interested in going to lunch, watching movies, or "taking trips in his new Range Rover." In addition, the band didn't have the best working conditions. "We were in this sh-tty studio in the butthole of the Valley to overdub," he recalled. "It was like Grandma's house."

Once completed, the album suffered from inadequate promotion at the time. There was no single or video and the band began to look for a way to end its association with Hollywood. "We were trying to get off the label," Zuniga admitted. "There was this overall stigma about the label that was unbelievable."

However, with a change at the top of the label's management, Fastball reassessed its position and had its option renewed by Hollywood.

It was during this period that the band began working on All The Pain Money Can Buy. "There was no pressure, because no one at the company was really paying attention," Zuniga said. However, once the band delivered the album, expectations started to rise.

During that period, the label was still in turmoil. "It was like a rutterless boat with no president," Zuniga recalled. However, the uncertainty worked to the band's advantage. The label's head of promotion, feeling his job was in limbo, attempted to save "his ass" by breaking Fastball at radio, Seidenberg said.

Those efforts were successful, once the label zeroed in on "The Way" as the single. Once airplay started to kick in, the band soon found itself courted with lucrative offers by music publishers, who had previously shied away from the band because of its affiliation with Hollywood.

Still, as Zuniga and his bandmates soon learned, the battle had just begun. "The myth of the rock 'n' roll life was shattered," he recalled. "The first three months [of promoting All The Pain That Money Can Buy] were brutal." The band often had to survive on three or four hours sleep. After finishing their gigs in the wee hours of the morning, they had to wake hours later to make morning show radio appearances.

When an attendee asked Zuniga about the toll of touring, the musician donned a wrinkle-faced rubber mask. "By the end of the year we looked like this," he quipped. "We didn't look elegantly wasted like Keith Richards, we just looked tired."

Now the band must overcome the perception that it's a one-hit-wonder. "I don't worry about it," Zuniga said. "In the end, if we only have one hit song we'll come out of it better than when we started." In an attempt to transcend that stigma, Zuniga said the band usually plays "The Way" early in its set. "If people want to pay $10 and leave after five songs, more power to them." However, he added, "most people don't leave."

Features on Fastball, Rancid, and Green Day are available now on LAUNCH.com.

-- Craig Rosen, Austin, Texas

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