The 45's Formed in early 1989, the 45's consisted of Luther Russell on vocals and guitar, Barrie Maguire on bass, Tobi Miller on lead guitar and Scott Kail on Drums. The 45's came together after an earlier band, The Bootheels (consisting of Luther Russell, Tobi Miller, Jakob Dylan and Aaron Brooks), broke up after Jakob left to go to art school in New York. Luther Russell recalls how Barrie Maguire came to join The 45's: "After the Bootheels broke up, Tobi and I discovered Barrie at the Anti-Club [a club in West LA] after it was decided I would play guitar from then on. He was a kook and a brilliant musician." It turns out that Luther wasn't the only one to switch instruments. Barrie adds to the story of their first meeting: Tobi walked up to me and asked me, "Do you play Bass?" I said " Yeah, why?" He explained that they were looking for bass player. Now, I hadn't really ever played bass in a band before, I was always a guitar player in all my previous High School bands. But I had recently bought a bass for fun. So I pretended I was a bass player." Besides the personnel changes, there were other differences between The Bootheels and The 45's. The 45's played a more aggessive type of music and Luther switching from bass to guitar was "quite a drama at the time", he recalls. What didn't change was Luther's attention to songwriting mixed with plenty of co-writing and collaboration from the other band members. Although the band played mainly original material, cover tunes weren't out of the question and the band often covered Sly and the Family Stone's "Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again". The band played wherever they could around Los Angeles in 1989, although finding gigs during the time was a tough job. "Everything was 'Pay to Play' and it was hard to get a gig in L.A. until the early 90's", Luther remembers. The 45's disbanded in mid 1989. Tobi Miller, Jakob Dylan and Barrie Maguire went on to form "The Apples, and eventually, The Wallflowers." Luther Russell formed The Freewheelers which put out recordings in 1991 and 1996. Special Thanks to Luther Russell for the interview... See also: |