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Creature from the Black Laguna
from: EagleHerald Marinette
by ERIC LaROSE
For every famous musician there are thousands who work behind the scenes. Most, while they make a decent living, never really become household names, but some become legends in the business.
KENNY LAGUNA is one of the legends.
In a career that dates back to before he was a teen, Laguna has worked on some on music's most famous pop songs, like "Candida" from Tony Orlando and "Yummy Yummy" from the Ohio Express.
In the 1970s, when pop music all but died, Laguna found that he could modify his bubble gum-pop sensibilities for a new form of music developing in England: punk rock.
In the late '70s, he began a legendary alliance with JOAN JETT, who had just left the all-girl punk rock pioneers, The RUNAWAYS. It's a relationship that remains strong, unlike many musical partnerships.
With Jett, he has traveled the world, played for occupying troops in war-torn countries, campaigned for a presidential hopeful and racked up the hits.
On June 29, he and Jett, along with the BLACKHEARTS, will be playing in Green Bay. For Laguna, it's another stop on a musical journey that has no signs of slowing down.
Will play for $20 a day
Music was pumping through Laguna's veins from an early age, and growing up in a house of artists his interests were nurtured from day one.
"I came from an art family. Both of my parents were accomplished in 'art' art. My mother is an oil painter and I had an aunt that was a famous piano player. Her name was Lucy Brown, she's the Lucy Brown who was in "Mack the Knife," said Laguna. "So the pressure was on to do that, and to do that you had to start very young. They had this vision that I was going to play classical music. And there were people like Leonard Bernstein at my house when I was a kid. And then I saw an Elvis movie."
Classical music was left in the dust. Since Laguna was in New York, he found that he could work in the music industry immediately, and at the age of 12 he was already a professional musician.
"I was in New York, at the time about 95 percent of the chart was coming out of New York, so there was a lot of opportunity," said Laguna. "There was a radio station, the WMCA Good Guys, and I'd do all the songs and I'd work for $20. And in those days they didn't care. Everyone was connected, there was no child law problems, and I knew the songs and I'd work for whatever they wanted to pay me. I didn't care."
He went on to back up the Shangri-Las, Tony Orlando, Screaming Jay Hawkins and eventually became the lead singer of The Critters when Don Ciccione's (the lead singer) father made him join the Navy during Vietnam.
"Here we had a record that was No. 12 on the charts and this poor kid had to join the Navy for four years," recalled Laguna. "That was very unusual during the Vietnam War. Most rockers were not joining the Navy when they had a hit record."
But the Vietnam War would also bring a change to the music industry. While Laguna was writing hit pop songs, new groups that shunned pop music were evolving.
"I had this string of hits in the late '60s running into the early '70s and then bubble gum music died. I might of played on 50 hit records, but then it died in like a week, and I was completely without a way to make a living. The business is very cold. I was like 19 or 20 and I was already a has-been," he said. "Everyone in the business was saying that my kind of music was over, I better find a way to make a living, but it was too late in my head to go to college because I already passed on that option."
Laguna fumbled around for a while, taking odd jobs loading boxes, until he found out that across the ocean in England there was still an appreciation for his brand of music.
He went to England.
The rise of punk
Laguna found work as a producer in England. Most of the bands were guitar bands, so Laguna would help out with writing and producing and at the same time would lend his talents as a guitarist and a keyboardist to their musical arrangements.
"All of a sudden I got hot in England," he said. "I was really grooving now, all of the new wavers were digging me because I played on "Yummy Yummy," and that's what everyone hated me for in America. The Crosby, Stills and Nash generation, they hated bubble gum music. But the punks, for whatever reason to this day, they loved bubble gum music. Probably because it's simple."
By chance, he met an American publicist who, with his partner, were managing Blondie and the RUNAWAYS, JOAN JETT's original group.
"He kept telling me about this group The RUNAWAYS, and it sounded really interesting to me. The whole idea of five really wild girls, I just kept hearing that they were really wild, and I thought working with five wild girls would be a real trip," Laguna said. "I was always convinced that I could have a hit record with whoever I worked with, because if they didn't have a good song I could bring one."
Before he met with them, the RUNAWAYS lost their lead singer and broke up. Laguna moved to California, and then back to England where he would make up bands in the studio and churn out hit singles.
Fate took over.
Jett off to California
"This guy calls me, asking if I could go to California. They were about to be sued. The RUNAWAYS completely broke up and they owed this movie company six songs and they knew I could do it fast," said Laguna. "My wife said to me that I should go meet JOAN JETT, that she had good things about her."
Jett was the only member left of The RUNAWAYS, the group that also kick-started the career of Lita Ford, and she was trying to fulfill the group's commitment to the studio.
"She was very down then, because the band had broken up and it meant a lot to her," Laguna said. "I went to California and I met JOAN JETT. We wrote eight songs in three days. We really hit it off. She was so great. She could scream and she went into this song 'You Don't Know What You Got,' which was the first one that we recorded and she goes 'Oh Baby' and I was like wow. I was like whoa, what is this! This is amazing! I'm going to get you a record deal."
But nobody wanted the record. Even though Laguna was very well-connected, making a lot of people a lot of money in his career, he couldn't hook Jett up with a record company.
Punk music had a bad reputation. But where there's a will, there's a way. He had some pull in Europe and found a deal for her there, on two labels, but nothing for America.
"We started our own label. I borrowed some money, and we started making the "Bad Reputation" record," said Laguna.
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS were eventually signed to CBS (Sony) and Laguna went on to produce every single JOAN JETT album and play with her touring group.
It's a partnership that is rare in the industry.
"We still get along, and every day is like the first day," he said. "We totally believe in each other. There aren't that many partnerships that last that long."
Live shows, bullets flying and presidential campaigns
Jett and Laguna have long been supporters of troops deployed overseas. In early worldwide tours, they would regularly make stops at bases for live shows, often without an invitation or so much as a warning.
"Joan just started visiting bases just because she was there," he said. "And they'd come to our shows and we'd feel great seeing our American buddies, and then we'd go see them on base. We developed a relationship with the military. Now, a lot of times, we're the first non-combatants to go into the war zones. It's been that way for 10 years."
It wasn't always pleasant. There were times when both he and Jett were under fire, ducking bullets in war-torn nations. Laguna said it was worth it.
But what they didn't realize is that the political arena could be much more dangerous.
During Howard Dean's bid for the democratic nomination, Dean's party learned that Jett had contributed to his campaign. They approached her to join the campaign.
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS were on stage the infamous evening when Dean screamed following the Iowa caucus, and they were there for the aftermath.
"It was nothing," said Laguna of the scream heard round the country. "The crowd was in a real state, like a football game or a fight. And his reaction was very normal in the room. When you strip away the crowd and the beginning of the speech and the end, the crowd of kids who were disappointed were screaming "Dean, Dean, Dean." It's a television game, someone pulled that out and destroyed him with it."
Laguna still speaks highly of Dean, and both he and Jett are supporting Democratic Candidate John Kerry.
More Laguna for the future
As a producer, Laguna's influence is mythical, being at the forefront of two musical revolutions.
He recently released a collection of unreleased tracks from artists he worked with in his career on BLACKHEART RECORDS, which includes the song "Stairway to Gilligan's Island," called "Laguna Tunes."
And while he can look back on an amazing career, he is still looking forward.
"I did more with Joan than anybody else. I had a hit with Bow Wow Wow ("I Want Candy") and I had a metal hit with Metal Church in the 1990s ("Gods of a Second Chance")," he said. "Now I'm working with a group called The Eyeliners, an amazing little punk band, all girls from New Mexico. They've been on the Warped Tour the last few years, and they have a good following."
And his partnership with Jett is still going strong. They currently have a hectic tour schedule, the only thing Laguna would like to alter. For the partnership of Laguna and Jett will never change if he has his way.
"We'd like to plan an easier life. I'd like to spend the winters in a warmer place instead of Iowa and New Hampshire like we did this year," he said. "But we're just warming up. We have a resurgence of respect in the business and we're just going to do more stuff."
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