Heavy Culture: Suicidal Tendencies’ Dean Pleasants Talks Upbringing, Jimi Hendrix, and More
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The post Heavy Culture: Suicidal Tendencies’ Dean Pleasants Talks Upbringing, Jimi Hendrix, and More appeared first on Consequence.
Heavy Culture is a column from journalist Liz Ramanand, focusing on artists of different cultural backgrounds in heavy music, as they offer their perspectives on race, society, and more as it intersects with and affects their craft. The latest installment of this column features Suicidal Tendencies guitarist Dean Pleasants.
Suicidal Tendencies are a band with a strong presence, legacy, and vigor dating back to the 1980s. Guitarist Dean Pleasants joined the band in 1996, and is now the second longest tenured member of the crossover thrash act, only behind frontman Mike Muir. Heavy Consequence caught up with him to talk all about music, culture, and so much more.
Pleasants took us through his journey of growing up as a kid and bouncing around from place to place due to his father being in the military. In addition to being encouraged to play guitar by his family and high school band director, he was also inspired by icons like Jimi Hendrix and Prince. His journey is one of depth, perseverance, and a lot of heart – much like the music of Suicidal Tendencies.
The band kicked off this year with epic performances on the ShipRocked Cruise. They have festival dates in September, including the Muddy Roots Festival in Tennessee, the Blue Ridge Rock Festival in Virginia, and the Rifflandia Festival in Canada.
Read our interview with Suicidal Tendencies guitarist Dean Pleasants below.
Tell me about your cultural background…
I am like most people in America mixed with everything. So I’ve done the genealogy thing and I’m predominantly African American, French, there’s German, there’s Portuguese, all that. I always tell people I’m Black and French predominantly.
My grandmother had a lot of German ancestry, if you saw her, she looked Native American. She was dark and beautiful and her hair was down to her feet. She lived to be 99, died right before her hundredth birthday. She was just an amazing woman, Laura Jay. So yeah, I’m a mix of a lot of things, like everybody else in the world is.
Did your family influence your love of music?
Well, that I will give credit to my dad. He was in the Air Force and he loved music, he would always go to the record stores and buy records. And in my house, I was the firstborn – I had three siblings, an older sister and two younger brothers. On the weekends, my dad would play Carlos Santana, Steppenwolf, Marvin Gaye, he played everything – so I was exposed to that as a kid.
When I started getting to the to the point where I was on my own with music – you know how you discovered something and you’re like “This is mine” right? My first heroes were bass players, Bootsy Collins and Larry Graham. My dad gave me a cassette one day, it was Jimmy Hendrix and he was like “Check this out!” and I wouldn’t listen to it because my dad gave it to me – I was like 12.
Then, I’m driving in the car with him and this song comes on and it’s “Little Wing,” the live version. It was the most beautiful song I’ve heard. I went home and looked on the cassette with “Little Wing.” So I put the cassette in and I put it in the car – I left the cassette in the car by accident and it melted. So I went and bought another one, my dad laughed at me. So buying this cassette again, it really gave me an appreciation for Jimi Hendrix. But my dad still gets the credit because he gave me the original.
So when you first experienced Jimi Hendrix, how did that make you feel?
That started my whole thing. I knew about Chuck Berry, but I didn’t know Hendrix was like this amazing Black rocker. I was blown away. He was left-handed. His guitar was upside down. His whole look, his whole vibe. It was just like, ‘This dude is amazing.’ I love his voice, he’s a poet, he’s a storyteller. He’s all these things, and then Prince came out and that was it. [Laughs] I met a friend who played guitar and he was listening to Judas Priest, KISS and Van Halen, so it all got meshed together. So I had Prince and Parliament funk over here and I had like Judas Priest cassettes over here and then I just put it all together. I was like, “You know what? I can love all of this stuff and still be me.”
What was your early experience as a guitarist like?
My dad was in the service, we traveled a lot. I lived on Guam, Hawaii, New York. We just bounced around wherever he was stationed. So I was a shy kid because when you move a lot, you lose your friends. But I always had friends that were into music. I played trumpet, my sister played violin. My sister and my dad kind of played around with the guitar. I’m playing trumpet and my band director in high school was a bit of a rebel and he was kind of crazy. His name was Charles McKinney and he did things very differently. He came into our school [Sam Houston High School] on the first day and said, “Some of y’all faces I’m looking at right now won’t be here tomorrow. Those of you who stay, you going to learn about life.”
And he wasn’t lying. Some kids weren’t there the next day. A lot of teachers came to work just to make a paycheck. He goes, “I don’t do that. I’m going to teach you how to survive out there.” He was deep, he was a good teacher. He treated us like young adults. If you got in trouble, he’d kick you out. Then you’d be thinking about it and you’d go knock on the door and if you apologize, you’d be back in. He kicked me out several times. [Laughs] I would go apologize to him and he’d let me back in. He bought a bass, a strap, a keyboard and some other instruments for our band. I was looking at this guitar and just thought it was amazing.
He said we needed a new guitar player for the stage band. “Does anybody play guitar?” I raised my hand. I lied. I didn’t even play guitar. [Laughs] I go in his office, he goes, “You play guitar?” I said “Well, I’m trying to learn.” I didn’t do anything with guitar before this. He goes, “Christmas break is coming up,” and he hands me two sheets of music. “If you can play this when you come back, you can take the guitar home.” So I go home, I show my dad and I said, “I need to learn the guitar.”
I took the music and I took a book and I wrote down all the chords and during the whole two week Christmas break, I sat there and played these chords till my fingers bled, right on a Yamaha acoustic with nylon strings. Then the day came where it was just me and the teacher, the most frightening thing you could ever do and I just started playing. He’s looking at me and he just starts laughing and he goes, “Alright, you can take the guitar home this evening.” I couldn’t wait for the end of school. I walked home two miles with a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender twin amp, with my books in the Texas heat all the way home. [Laughs]
What did your family think of your decision to pursue a career as a musician?
My mom passed away in 2010 but I was so fortunate to have parents like that who encouraged me. They were so happy.
I left home when I was 19 and I was in medical school for a couple years when I got out of high school. But I started playing in nightclubs when I was underage, I was 18, playing in blues clubs with the older bands. They were paying me, so my parents were really impressed with that.
I told them that I have to go to California and try this [music] thing out. They both started crying and my mom said, “Son, go follow your dreams.” She said, “I don’t want you to be 50 years old and say, ‘I could have been a guitar player.’” She didn’t want me to have any regrets in my life.
It was hard, a year later I played on my first record, which was Mickey Howard and then I played for The Jacksons in session gigs. I was broke, but I was still playing. [Laughs]
Suicidal’s album 13 is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Can you tell me about a favorite memory from creating or recording it?
There’s a song on there called “God Only Knows… Who I Am.” Every time I hear that record and I hear that song, I get emotional because, a few years before the record came out, I had broken my finger playing basketball. My finger looked like a pickle, I thought I’d never played guitar again.
A friend of mine told me to get a tennis ball and you know, squeeze it. So I did all this stuff, I used to soak it and we were in the studio recording. I’m playing and in between takes I’d be like in the bathroom in tears, because of my hand. It was crazy. So when I hear that solo, if you listen to that song – when you hear the solos in there, I did all of that and my finger could barely move. So that’s what I think of when I think about that record. [Laughs] I got through it, my hand works but five knuckles look a little funny.
But you know, every time I get onstage, I think of it as my last time getting onstage. I want every person in the audience to experience the best of me.
You’re very much part of Suicidal Tendencies legacy, and this year is also the 40th anniversary of the first album. Were you a fan of Suicidal before joining?
I was watching TV one day at home and we had gotten cable TV up in Texas. A movie comes on called Repo Man, and “Institutionalized” is playing. I was like, “What is that?” It was the coolest, I’d never heard anything like that. And this video comes on one day on MTV and there’s that song, and I’m looking at these guys and I’m like, they look like hood dudes. I had to find out who Rocky George was, a black man soloing. And I was like, “that could be me, he looks like me!” and that was it.
So I was a fan of them. And then I moved to California and I met all of Mike [Muir’s] friends before I met him. In fact, I was in a garage band with Robert Trujillo and he introduced me to Mike.
What does Suicidal have coming up that you can talk about?
We’re working on music always. I can’t say too much, but we have so much music. This lineup we have now, I just really love it. Having [Robert Trujillo’s son] Tye Trujillo [in the band now], it’s like looking at his dad standing next to me.
Heavy Culture: Suicidal Tendencies’ Dean Pleasants Talks Upbringing, Jimi Hendrix, and More
Liz Ramanand
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