Steel Notes Magazine
February 2017
Alexxis : Ok , gotcha !
Dennis : You know , they ’ re very disjointed . It ’ s like when somebody tells you about their dream that they had and it doesn ’ t make any sense .
Dennis : So these are like that . It ’ s just me telling people dreams and you know most of them aren ’ t that coherent . Some of them are . And some of them are only coherent because it started out by me being inspired by the dream while I was just sort of waking up enough to be able to write something down and then as I started waking up more then it started turning into more of a conscious effort to make it more coherent . Therefore , the dream would fade you know or the veil would cover your mind or whatever . So you know dreams can dissipate as soon as you start to wake up .
Alexxis : Oh yeah .
Dennis : Once in awhile there is a very vivid one . You know everybody has vivid dreams and people have recurring dreams as well , so this is what it was . It was me in the middle of the night and I actually sort of trained myself to wake up whenever I would have a dream I would sort of wake up enough to write something down . You know there was very little sleep anyway out on the road back in those days .
Alexxis : Oh , I ’ m sure ! So you and Alice actually had a mutual admiration of art from artists like Salvador Dali , right ?
Dennis : Right . We liked Chagall , Picasso , Dali and also all of the pop artists and everything that was coming out of New York City . We liked happenings and I don ’ t know if you are familiar with this picture but most people who have seen it would remember it . But it ’ s Salvador Dali and somebody throws a bucket of water then somebody throws a cat and with all these things the camera stops them in mid air . And Dali is in the middle he ’ s like jumping up and this water is frozen in the air in front of him and the cats flying across and everything . So we liked the concept of that .
Alexxis : Yes that was very avant garde !
Dennis : Things were going on in New York City at the time , Andy Warhol , Pop Art and when I was nothing but an artist , that ’ s all I cared about ever since I could remember . In grade school a lot of kids didn ’ t even know my name , they called me “ The Artist ” or ‘ The Artiste ’.
Salvador Dali
Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : So when we decided to start a band that was an artistic idea . We wanted to incorporate these ideas of things going on , a crazy hell ’ s a popping kind of experience with the band and that ’ s really the root of what we ended up doing .
Alexxis : So basically it was pretty much always your dream to turn your inventions of your art world and apply it to the rock band ?
Dennis : Right . It wasn ’ t easy to find these other guys who could play instruments like Glen Buxton who was a tough guy from Ohio , you know ? Our drummer was a tough guy on the cross country team , so to talk them into doing these ideas , wasn ’ t easy . You know when Michael Bruce got in the band , he didn ' t want to have much to do with it . He was like a football player and he liked bands like The Buckinghams and more clean cut kind of groups . The only thing that helped us talk them into doing these ideas is that we were having so much fun with it . Of course Alice and I together were very persistent and overly enthusiastic about it to where it was hard to say no . [ Laughter ] So , the next thing you know we did a Halloween Dance in 1965 , and we had a guillotine on stage , giant spider webs , and coffins .
Alexxis : Now was that when you had the Spiders or was that the Earwigs ?
Dennis : This was actually still The Earwigs at that point , but when we became “ The Spiders ” we used the same spiderwebs on our stage and we called it “ The Spider Sanctum .”
Alexxis : Sounds cool .
Dennis : This guy that ran the popular club in Phoenix , Arizona at the time and was very kind , I always thought of him like Dick Clark , you know the wholesome kind of clean-cut guy who wants to know what ’ s popular with the kids . What ’ s this weeks flavor of what kind of music they like and all of that , but he was radio savvy . So we would come up with crazy ideas and he would come up with crazy ideas and then he ’ d just plug them like crazy with radio spots all week long . The Spider Sanctum , that was his idea . We decided we were going to build a stage and the next thing you know on the radio all week long we hear “ The Spider Sanctum ..
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