What was your first guitar, and how did you get into music?
My first guitar was a Stella acoustic that had a huge crack along the body, 
My stepfather repaired it and told me that if I learned to play it he would 
buy me a good guitar. The strings were almost an inch off the frets and after 
I had taught myself some chords from some folk singing books after about a year
I got a Fender Mustang for Christmas and a small amp. My first band was formed 
in Sacramento California, called The Rogues and my first gig was at the Gold 
Horse Saloon in Folsom Ca. We did all kinds of things from some Country to 
Surf music, but it went over well, so we kept playing and got pretty good for 
a bunch of kids, I knew then that I wanted to make this my life. My formal 
training was 4 years of piano lessons starting when I was 7 years old and I was 
doing recitals in churches and things like that, I also sang in the church 
choir. I had to stop because we moved from Maryland to California and I couldn't
take my piano with me, so that's why I took up guitar, it was portable. I had 
already started to write some songs and felt good about that.

What did you use in the Maypole years and after? Also, talk a bit about the
band, the album and the scene.
In the Maypole years I had a '53 Telecaster that I later sold to Mike 
Bloomfield. I used a Fender Super Reverb with 4/10's and a Vox Tone Bender 
for a distortion pedal, for live and recording the album. Later I started 
using a Gibson ES-335 and a Gibson Firebird with a reverse headstock. Various 
amps were an Acoustic 360 with 2X15's and a horn, and a Sound City with a 4X12 
cabinet. 

In those days I wasn't the lead singer but I wrote 90% of the material and 
most of the album was arranged by me and Paul Welsh, the drummer who committed 
suicide in 1988. He said in his note that he was tired of dealing with all 
the assholes of the world. The biggest thing was he had lost his left thumb 
in an accident and it was too painful to play anymore and I think he lost hope 
because of that. We were fucking dedicated musicians who lived and breathed
music and it was everything to us. I carry on to this day partly because of him 
and the values we believed in and I still do. We called it "The Real". 

Maypole was formed in late 1969 in Baltimore Md. after I had returned from 
England after being deported for overstaying my visa and having gone to Boston 
and played with Moulty and The Barbarians who stole me out of Van Morrison's 
band. After I left there I returned to Baltimore and hooked up with Paul Welsh, 
Steve Mace, Kenny Ross, and John Nickels. We rehearsed in John's tiny bedroom 
with all our equipment and six months later we got a contract with Colossus-MGM 
to do an album. We recorded it at A&R studios in New York in 1970, across the 
hall from where Paul McCartney was recording his first solo album. The 
conditions were weird, Paul (Welsh) had Hepatitis and was yellow with a high 
fever, but he wouldn't have missed it, and the album was recorded in 19 and 
a half hours. 

The music was recorded totally live in about two takes and later the vocals 
were overdubbed, and that was all the overdubbing there was. The first side 
was like a rock opera, no breaks. It was recorded on an 8 track Scully. I 
wasn't able to help mix it at first but then two days later because of the 
complex 4&5 part harmonies they sent for me, but I didn't like the way the 
sound was going, they made everything too smooth and nice and it was supposed 
to be much more raw and heavy. It needed more balls. Anyway a record was made,
but by then I was pissed off and didn't give a shit. 

Then some Bozo with a pointy head had the big idea of combining two songs
for the single, an instrumental that Paul had written "Glance At The Past" 
and "Show Me The Way" that I had written and he had spliced the two together. 
It was awful, which infuriated us even more. We refused to promote it but the 
other side "Johnny" was ok had a pretty shit hot guitar on it, so we decided 
to promote that. The album was released and received good reviews and we were 
hailed as the "American Led Zeppelin", whatever the hell that meant. We did 
some TV shows, toured with the Bob Seger System as it was called then, "Grin",
Nils Lofgen's old band, and Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Kingsmen, Bill 
Haley and a lot of other bands of the time. We got alot of radio airplay and 
I remember one day we were riding in the car and we were punching the buttons 
on the radio and all you could hear was "Johnny" on any station that we pushed 
the buttons. It was quite exciting. We were pretty popular on the east coast 
and we sold alot of records in San Antonio Texas, for some reason.

Later we went to Holland to play as most of the other groups on our label came 
from there, The Shocking Blue, Tea Set, and The George Baker Selection. We had 
a management team of three guys two of whom were brothers and very effective, 
the other was a famous drug smuggler who, went to jail in Mexico and later broke 
out and came back to the states. These were some very crazy days believe me.
The band was always stoned or tripping on something and we played many a concert
tripped out of our minds. We were primarily a live band, so people would go nuts 
when we played, guess they were tripped out too. Then our lead singer decided 
to get hooked on Methadone and he became totally useless, everything went to 
his head, and we decided to kick him out. I then became the lead singer, which 
was weird because I'd always been happy to sing harmony, and that's how I became 
the lead singer, which I still am to this day. We then changed Bass players to 
Jeff Lutz who I had played with a couple of years before in a band called "Good 
Grief". This lasted about a year and then we decided to call it quits after 3 
years. We were burnt out, our management was in a shambles and our label went 
bankrupt. It was time to move on.

Thoughts on psychedelic music...
In the old days we were in the middle of the whole Hippie movement thing, 
it was a time of "Do your own thing" and we did it basically by dropping acid,
mescaline and other psychedelics and playing our asses off. We might start a 
jam with a phrase and play it for 8 hours or so without stopping, until we had
explored every possibility, total mental and physical exhaustion can yield some
very interesting things. By pushing the envelope we discovered many things that
we could have never found otherwise. Of course there were pseudo musicians of
the time who copied this and I guess by being straight but our method was I
guess more radical, but more authentic. It was nothing for us to go onstage
completely fried on acid and play for hours. I was always a leader and not a
follower so I rarely looked back. I got a reputation of a crazy son of a bitch
who could play like a demon, and that was that. 

Of course we had a lot of guys playing with feedback and stuff like that but 
it was a state of mind that I can get back to, anytime I want, even now, but 
I doubt there are many people around today who can appreciate it or understand 
what it meant to play free and without limits or restrictions. The one great by 
product was at the end of the day we really got to know our instruments and 
could improvise at the drop of a hat, which is what I am more or less known for 
to this day. I never work out ahead of time what I am going to play, I just do 
it, it always turns out ok, and so it keeps it interesting for me, and because 
I am not bored, maybe that's why it is exciting for the audience also. It's 
never the same way twice which is why I love it so much.

What were some influences on your playing?
My early influences were actually groups like The Ventures, The Beach Boys, 
and later John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, The Yardbirds, with Jeff Beck
and Clapton, Cream, When I ran away to New York when I was 15, I jammed with 
Jimi Hendrix when he was known as Jimmy James at the Cafe Wha. I quit school 
to play guitar full time which didn't go over well with my Mom, who has since 
supported me in so many ways throughout the years and still does. I couldn't 
have make it without her belief and dedication to me. Later I ran across many 
fine players that I worked with like Carl Flipiac, Roy Buchanan, and other guys
from the D.C. Virginia area, working in a lot of Georgetown bands at the Crazy 
Horse, The Bayou, soon though ,I was just as known as they were in my own 
right. The Stones were a big influence, as were the Who, The Kinks, The Moody 
Blues, Procol Harum. 

What did you do after the maypole years?
After Maypole, I joined Renaud and The Junction, another Baltimore band that
I was friends with that had a huge following on the east coast.It was a ten 
piece band, that played soul and funk and R&B. I am still close friends with 
Renaud after all these years and our families are very tight also. Renaud is 
probably one of the best showman, frontmen I have ever seen to this day, he 
made Mick Jagger look like a beginner. We have been writing songs together for 
over 30 years. We got a contract with Motown and we went on tour as the opening 
act for the Jackson 5 on an 18 city tour. They changed our name to "Contraband".

The management was pretty dodgy so we got fed up and I was antsy after a year 
to do other things so I quit and went to Holland with a drummer friend of mine 
Larry Lundy and we started a band there called the "Denny Romans Group." I had 
been know as Denny Romans since the start of my career. We lived in Amsterdam 
on a boat of a friend of mine from Boston who had moved there and invited me to 
live on the boat. In the winter we froze our asses off, but we played all over 
Holland and I fell in love with the place.
  

 

What was the strangest gig you ever played?
The weirdest gig we ever did was we played on a float in a parade in Baltimore 
with a generator, and we were there trying to sing into mikes wobbling down 
the road. We didn't want to but we were representing our local record 
distributor so we were obliged to do it.

What are you up to these days, and how did you end up in Germany?
I am living and working in Germany where I live with my new girlfriend, I have
a Band here called "Demian Bell & The Blues Mekaniks." One of my oldest friends
is "The Bass Mekanik" on The Pandisc Record label, we have been writing and
producing together for over 25 years and he is an incredible engineer and 
artist in his own right. That's where the Blues Mekanik comes from. I started 
doing Bass and Techno music on Midi equipment in 1991 and Neil and I have put 
out a lot of product over the years in the Car audio field on Pandisc Records. 

I started working with midi in 1991 and started to make all kinds of music 
from new age type stuff to techno and then because I am a big film freak 
decided to concentrate to film scoring and did some documentaries and a film 
Manosaur starring William Smith (A veteran of more than 50 films) and Vernon 
Wells (Mad Max, Commando). I am working now on some documentaries filmed in 
Nepal this year by a German filmmaker.
     

I love all music if it's good, and could give a fig about genres, more about 
that later. About a year and a half ago my marriage broke up with the Spanish 
woman I was married to for 16 years, so I went back to Spain to live, moving 
from Florida, where I had lived in the 80's working with guys from Los Bravos 
"Black Is Black". I worked a summer thereon the Costa Brava and started playing 
with a German drummer Tommy Brendel Jr. and after the summer we decided to go 
up to Germany to start a band. I had been named musician of the year there in 
1981 by The Aachener Bild Zeitung so I was curious if things could work. 

I recorded a new CD this year at Merlin Sound Studio, in Neuwied, Germany on 
a Logic 6 system with Peter Dümler engineering, it turned out pretty good so 
we are in the middle of promoting that. I have been touring this year opening 
for Albert Lee and Hogan's Heroes and other bands and also I play in Spain in 
the Barcelona area, where I am well known having played there over the last 20 
years. I have a lot of gigs lined up for next year 2004 and I also play 
solo in a lot of smaller venues, and I keep pretty busy. I really like the 
venues in Germany, the places remind me of the old days and the people seem to 
have a very good music background to handle just about every kind of music. 
It's also a very beautiful country.

What are your thoughts on the business of making music?
A lot has changed with music in general thru the years.. I don't think it 
carries the same meaning as it used to. The songs are much more superficial,
more throw away, more insignificant than the music we made in the 60's and 
70's. The disco era ushered in the era of crappy lyrics and less than dynamic 
artists, who seemed to be selling sex more than music and the great artists 
everyone reveres today like the Beatles, Elton John, Pink Floyd and others 
would never be able to make it today because everything is pigeonholed into 
strict genres which wasn't the case in the beginning. They wouldn't know
which rack to put them in today, at the music stores. 

That's my biggest complaint, no freedom to create, everyone is controlled 
in a fascist, dogmatic way that makes the whole idea of music rather stupid 
and just a commercial enterprise. Today all the bands copy one another's 
production values to the point, that they all sound alike, it's all so canned, 
like Musak. Individualism is pretty much dead, as a social idea these days and 
reality mirrors the art and there is very little of either. It's now tits 
and asses verses Manly Hunks and posers. Image doesn't always translate into 
talent and what makes it into the charts is so cutesy, so clean and sweet 
compared to the music that we played which had balls and feeling. We were 
free to try different things without worrying how many BPS a song was, what 
felt right, was right. Creativity really suffers under these conditions. I am 
not completely sure that the record business isn't already dead and just won't 
lay down. I think that is the reason there is so much interest in the old 
days, now they only cater to a minority that doesn't know any better, and they 
long for something real. The record companies only buy finished product that 
fits a mold and is in the end, fucking boring. 

The days of great a&r depts. are gone, and only lawyers and bean counters 
are in charge now, and they only play it safe with their little circle, what 
does it say when they sell only a million or so records or even 10 million, 
when there are over 6 billion people in the world, and most of them are music 
fans, but don't like what they are being offered, so in my view it is only 
being produced for a minority. I think that's why the business is doing so 
poorly and why people are downloading so much music from the web, they don't 
wish to pay for the new crap, they produce and they value what they know is 
good, but can't get any other way. They don't offer it anymore in the record 
shops. Gone are the days when the companies invested in groups that were unique 
and individual. The music "Nazis" rule the world as conglomerates who control 
the media, the radio, the TV and shove down everybody's throat what they think 
is good and they don't have a clue, but tits and asses always sells to the 
airheads who confuse art with tart and can't seem to get it. 

Now the most absurd thing is that DJ's have been elevated to the level of 
musicians, which is totally stupid, imagine guys who sample real players are 
spinning records and making money as if they had spent years of study and 
practicing their instruments, using their creativity to write songs, and in 
the process because greedy club owners would rather pay one guy instead of a 
group, and gullible people fall for this and in the end get cheated out of
what is the greatest art form in the history of man. Rap music is the perfect 
example of this, very few use live musicians because most that I know wouldn't 
like to be involved in it anyway. The only thing about that impresses me is 
how far they are able to milk a monotone. Also it's all down to how cool your 
car is and how expensive their sneakers are, and designer clothes. They dress 
in the uniform of the corporations that sell them, and care little of having 
their own look and style. What the hell does this have to do about music. 

We never knew what kind of car Mick Jagger drove or what brand of shoes he 
wore, nor did we give a shit. People gotta wake up someday and discover how 
they are being ripped off by Wall Street and get a life of their own. 
There I said it. 

What guitar do you play these days?
I got an endorser deal with Andona Guitars and I did the Frankfurt Music
Messe, demonstrating the guitars and there is now a "Demian Bell Signature 
Model" guitar.

Name five albums that you consider essential to the soundtrack of your life.
Five albums that changed my life. 
Pink Floyd-Piper At The Gates of Dawn
Procol Harum's first album
John Mayall And The Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton
The Yardbirds, Over Under Sideways Down
The Who's My Generation.

If there's anything you'd like to offer about your name change, we're all ears!
About my name change. I was known as Denny Romans for 12 years of my career
which is the last name of my older half brother, and I guess I wanted to feel
closer to him and I like the way it sounded. In 1977 I was going through a lot 
of changes in my personal life, I had recorded a new album after having written
it in Amsterdam, where I had been taking a lot of psychedelics and a friend of 
mine, Dave Brubaker an artist who did the album cover for me, suggested a new 
name and he came up with Demian Bell a variation of my legal name which is 
Dennis Tobell, it sounded good so I have used it ever since.

Is there a website with more information about you and your music?
My Website is www.demianbell.4t.com

Super Big Thanks to Demian, who got the questions back like greased lightning
and really painted a detailed picture for us all. Everyone go to his site, and
anyone with a copy of Maypole's album willing to make me a copy or donate it
to the Site Stash (for a plug on the site), please contact the webmaster.

And thank you again, Demian!



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