Good Luck, Chuck

Just looking at Chuck Mosley, you can tell that nothing comes easy
for him.

As he steps out of his silver Escalade EXT in front of Ante Up
Studios one afternoon in early July, he’s a frazzled mess. His
trademark medusa-like cornrows are even more disheveled than usual, his
Hawaiian-print shirt is wrinkled and unbuttoned, his Dickies sag and
his work boots aren’t laced all the way up. He’s been sick recently and
has just returned from a bureaucratic odyssey, applying for a new birth
certificate and Social Security card — he lost both — so
that he can get a new drivers license — also lost — so that
he can fly to a gig in Milwaukee.

Mosley cracks open an early-afternoon Blue Moon and then quietly
excuses himself to clean up the floor after it fizzes over.

“The way I walked in here, I looked like I was all fucked up,”
admits Mosley as he slouches on the studio’s leather sofa. “I’m just
tired. I’ve been sick and didn’t eat all weekend for like two and a
half days. We practiced last night, and that was like the first day I
felt OK. I’m not on drugs; I don’t have the energy for drugs
anymore.”

But, at 49, he still hasn’t lost his passion for singing. The former
frontman for the avant-metal band Faith No More has finally finished a
10-years-in-the-making solo album, the aptly titled Will Rap Over
Hard Rock for Food. Despite Mosley’s long layoff, the album
is getting some national attention. Billboard magazine has
already covered it, and AOL is streaming tracks prior to its release
next week. And that Milwaukee gig is opening for Korn in front of 5,000
fans.

But this recent success was hard-won. The tale behind the L.A.
native’s journey to Cleveland is full of twists and setbacks and
just-missed opportunities. Just talking about it adds to Mosley’s
exhaustion. As we listen to the album, which has just gone through
final mastering, Mosley nods off, even though studio owner and engineer
Michael Seifert has the speakers cranked up so that the studio walls
are practically shaking.

Born in Hollywood, Mosley was given up for adoption before he even
had the chance to meet his parents. He says he has since discovered
that his mom was Jewish and his dad was African American and Native
American. (In a strange coincidence, his adoptive parents were of the
same ethnic backgrounds.) He studied classical piano for 10 years and
was also a motocross enthusiast.

By his late teens, Mosley was hanging out in Venice Beach, spending
as much time near the ocean as possible. Later he started attending
shows in East Hollywood and joined a band called the Animated with
Billy Gould. That lasted a few years, until Gould left for
UC-Berkeley.

Gould would go on to form Faith No Man, which evolved into Faith No
More, an art-metal band that had a rotating cast of singers. “They
liked somebody and would be enthusiastic until they decided they didn’t
like them anymore,” says Mosley of the band’s treatment of vocalists.
But the guys liked Mosley, who sang with them whenever they played
L.A., so they asked him to join the group. He replaced Courtney
Love.

“They had three shows booked and had gotten rid of her,” says
Mosley, noting that Love had become involved in a complex love triangle
within the band. “I did those shows in San Francisco, and I just came
out really aggressive. We might have even practiced for those shows.
Their fans liked me, and other people around them told them I was good
enough. Then it came to going in the studio and actually singing. I
could croon a little because I liked David Bowie, but I couldn’t do
much else.” Mosley says he simply “rapped over the stuff where I
couldn’t hear a melody.”

The band’s first album, 1985’s We Care a Lot was issued on
the indie label Mordam and generated a bona fide hit with the
anti-anthem title track. (It’s now the theme for the cable reality show
Dirty Jobs.) Looking back, Mosley says his voice was a work in
progress.

“When it came to the stuff that required more singing, I had to
really focus to get in tune,” he says. “I hear myself out of tune a
couple of times on those first two records. You couldn’t adjust
anything. It was just whatever you could get. [Producer] Matt [Wallace]
was good at getting the best out of me.”

Right after the release of the equally ambitious Introduce
Yourself in 1987, Mosley was booted from the band. He says that
contrary to rumors, his drug problem began after his dismissal, not
before.

“When we were in the band, I didn’t have a drug problem,” he says.
“I would do drugs. But after the third show and the band became
serious, I realized I couldn’t do drugs because of the energy output.
Whenever we were working, I didn’t do drugs. Sometimes people offer you
stuff on the road, and sometimes I take it. You know, mushrooms and
acid and a line of coke. It was on downtime when I got bored that I
would go off and do stuff. But that wasn’t why they fired me. They said
I quit, and I told them they can’t say that. Then rumors started up on
the Internet, and I became a real terrible person. It became a
liability on the business side. That hurt me financially when I wanted
to get a record deal.”

It turned out that band couldn’t just fire Mosley; it had to buy him
out. Still, that was little comfort when “Epic” — sung by
Mosley’s replacement, Mike Patton — reached No. 9 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1990 and powered the album
The Real Thing to platinum status.

Meanwhile Mosley got back together with his pre-Faith No More punk
band, Haircuts That Kill. In 1990, he was asked to go on the road with
Bad Brains, to replace singer HR. Mosley calls that two-year
arrangement “boot camp for rock ‘n’ roll.”

“It was tough,” he says. “Those guys were the hardest on me. They
made me look at myself as a singer. I never took myself too seriously
until then. I still kind of don’t. I’m an OK singer. Mike Patton is a
way better singer. But I have my own style. I can beat everybody else
on originality. I know my limits. [Bad Brains] told me I was worse than
anybody else, but that made me try harder.”

After his Bad Brains stint, Mosley put together a hard-rock band
called Cement that released a couple of albums and toured, until a
horrible auto accident left Mosley with a broken back. The injury,
combined with other life changes (most notably, a girlfriend and
daughter) prompted him to leave the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle behind.

In 1996 Mosley decided to leave L.A. for Cleveland (“cheaper real
estate,” he says) and music for cooking, at least temporarily. His
“five-year plan” involved bonding with his daughter and recording his
first solo album. “I was cash-broke by the time I got here,” he
recalls. “I’d been living off royalties since 1990 or whatever. It’s
always been enough to pay all the big bills, like the rent and the car.
I needed to get a job to pay for the record. I wasn’t rich. I’ve never
been rich.”

While working at restaurants in Cleveland, Mosley heard about the
up-and-coming Michael Symon and hoped to join Symon when he opened his
own place, Lola. But that deal took too long to materialize, and Mosley
went instead to the High and Dry (now the South Side) and eventually
became manager there.

Mosley laments the missed opportunity with Symon. But with his
musical career now on the rebound, Mosley says his service-industry
days are behind him.

Two years after moving to Cleveland, Mosley teamed up with Cobra
Verde/Uptown Sinclair guitarist Tim Parnin, Cement drummer Doug Duffy
and Abdullah bassist Ed Stephens and started working on some tracks, a
few of which he had demoed in L.A.

Parnin had seen Mosley perform with Faith No More back in 1987, at a
Halloween show in New York City, and had kept in touch with him ever
since. After that initial meeting, Mosley played with Parnin’s band
Sons of Elvis a few times.

“He’s been calling me every day about this album for, like, 10
years,” says Parnin, who works as a web designer at Cleveland-based
Telarc Records. “I’ve been so busy with other stuff, I keep saying, ‘My
schedule does not allow for the hypothetical right now. You have to
give me a when and where. I will drop what I’m doing and be there.’
People would be like, ‘How’s the Chuck thing coming?’ I would say, ‘Let
me give you a barometer. My son Eric is five years old now and the last
time we played was before he was born.’ I thought my son would be in
college before it’s done.”

Despite the scheduling frustrations, Parnin still loves playing with
Mosley.

“He’s a great friend of mine, and I love jamming with him,” he says.
“Chuck’s one in a million. He’s a living, breathing rock star. He’s
completely nuts and cool. He’s a trainwreck and genius, all wrapped
into one. He’s like a diamond. You have to chop away all this mud and
gook and stuff. Once you dig in, you see the kernel of talent. He has
killer songs, and he has his own style.”

The road has been long and littered with obstacles. Early recording
sessions with Mosley’s band, Vanduls Ugenst Allliderasy (the fucked-up
spelling changes constantly), went nowhere. Mosley says the record’s
producer ripped him off to the tune of about $15,000. Seifert stepped
in to produce, but the studio he took them to turned out to be “a
disaster,” says Seifert. “We walked in one day, and the board was
disassembled in the middle of the room. It was the worst session I’ve
ever been on in my entire life.”

“A total nightmare,” adds Mosley. “I got a shitty demo for
$15,000.”

Seifert always liked the songs, however, and promised Mosley he’d
get the record out one way or another.

Seifert eventually built his own studio, Ante Up Audio, in a strip
of warehouses off St. Clair in the East 30s, and invited Mosley to
record there. That was two years ago. In the past six months, he and
Mosley have focused on finishing the album, adding guests like Marilyn
Manson/Rob Zombie guitarist John 5, Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Michael
Cartellone and Korn singer Jonathan Davis, who names Mosley as a chief
influence.

“I think Chuck is a genius writer and has been underestimated over
the years,” says Seifert. “For me, that was the driving force. I felt
bad that he got ripped off, but that wasn’t enough for me to want to
make a record. I just really liked his songs and thought people should
hear them. We had a lot of fun making the record. We didn’t want to
make some cutting-edge, super-modern-sounding album. I think it’s a bit
like an ’80s or ’90s record, but it doesn’t sound dated. It’s just a
big, unapologetic rock record.”

The album kicks off with a psychedelic orchestral intro that sounds
like music you might hear at a haunted house. Then it lurches into
“Enabler,” a dense, White Zombie-like tune that finds Mosley paired
with Davis. “Let’s turn your life around, baby,” he beckons over a
sinewy guitar solo.

A bit schizophrenic at times, the album could be separated into
acoustic and electric halves. But the one constant is a sonic density.
Seifert’s production is meticulous, with songs like the slow-building
“Tractor” and the punchy “Punk Rock Movie” carefully balancing
screaming and singing. Mosley describes “Sophie,” a ballad about his
daughter, as “half homage to her coming into existence and half apology
for bringing her into this world like this.” The tune certainly shows a
more sensitive side to a guy known for his sarcastic dismissals.

Mosley says Faith No More invited him to join their reunion tour
that’s currently traipsing across Europe; the guys even asked him to
sing the Peaches and Herb tune “Reunited” at the kick-off date. But the
lost birth certificate and Social Security card prevented him from
traveling overseas.

“What are you gonna do?” he shrugs. “Sometimes I feel sorry for
myself, but I can’t be like that forever. I’m getting too old for that.
Plus, when I get focused on playing, all that stuff goes away. It’s not
even an issue for me.”

Mosley hopes he can get back out on the road once Will Rap is
released. He dismisses the notion that he has some serious work ahead
preparing for the rigors of touring.

“I’ll be the same way I’ve been since my 20s,” he says. “You sleep
all day, and by the time the show’s over, that’s the one time I don’t
feel any pain. You’re all amped up and can’t sleep. The only difference
now is that I’m playing guitar more. It’s my name on the band, so I
can. I just like to stand there and look cool on the guitar. I depend
on feedback and wah-wah and delay and stuff like that. A lot of people
don’t like that because I’m not jumping around and breaking my head
open. But I think I’m ready for the road. If I can just make a living
at it, I’ll be happy.”

jniesel@clevescene.com

Will Rap Over Hard Rock for Food is available now through local
label Reversed Image Unlimited’s website (reversedimageunlimited.com) as
an exclusive deluxe edition and hits retail stores on August 11. The
release party will be held at the Beachland Ballroom on Friday August
14th with Red Giant and The Bomb Selleck.

This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2009.