HOW DO YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART?

EIGHTEEN YEARS AFTER THE ALBUM’S DEBUT, PAISLEY POP HAS DUSTED OFF THE BROKEN HEARTS’ LONG OUT OF PRINT WANT ONE? WITH ELEVEN ADDED BONUS TRACKS. FORMER MEMBERS MICHAEL MAZZARELLA, JAMIE BECKETT, TOM BITTEL AND PATRICK YOURELL REUNITE TO TELL US HOW THEY PUT IT ALL TOGETHER.

In October of ’82 Michael Mazzarella read through the classifieds of The Hartford Advocate. Equivalent to New York’s Village Voice and Los Angeles’ L.A. Weekly, the Advocate has long been a place where locals can scour columns of ‘musicians wanted’ ads in search of employment, enjoyment or almost any other activity related to playing music. One notice in particular caught the young Mazzarella’s interest and within days he found himself in Morrison McCarthy’s basement making plans to expand the new duo’s line-up. Weeks later, drummer Bobby Monroe (real name Giovino) would also answer a bulletin in that same paper to become band member number three.

As the year’s page quietly turned over to 1983, the newly christened Broken Hearts worked up a set of songs consisting of mainly originals with a few obscure covers thrown in, soon committing a batch of them to 4-track tape recordings. Months later, while the threesome appeared on Annie Ramone’s college radio show one evening, Jamie Beckett listened intently from his Bolton, CT apartment. Calling the station mid-show to congratulate Mazzarella, guitarist Beckett quickly offered his services to play the bass, an instrument he didn’t even own. Here, the first line-up of the band was born.

Rehearsals, gigs, more radio and television shows would follow. Monroe’s sudden and unexpected departure left a brief hole in the picture until Morrie made a call to drummer Chas Schmidt, a former member from an earlier band. In less than a year, McCarthy would get tossed out and take Chas with him. With momentum being everything, the Mazzarella-Beckett team needed players and fast. Using old reliable The Advocate once more, an ad was placed. Enter drummer Patrick Yourell. Shortly thereafter, lead guitarist Tom Bittel would hop on board. It was now 1984. The Broken Hearts would become college radio favorites, sell out rooms, play on the same stages with international stars, record an album and relocate to New York City. Sadly, they disbanded in 1987. While Mazzarella ran off to live in London, Beckett remained in NYC. Bittel and Yourell went home to Hartford. End of story? Well, almost.

What were you doing prior to the Broken Hearts?

Tom: In September of 1983 my brother Dave and I had a trio called Nice Young Men that played old rockabilly covers and related early rock ‘n roll stuff.

Jamie: I was writing music but not finishing the songs for the most part. The music scene in the Hartford area wasn’t very conducive to musicians who were writing and performing original material.

Michael: That didn’t matter to me. I played in numerous bands and was notorious for introducing them to my songs. I thought to myself ‘Who wants to play in a cover band?’ That’s paint by the numbers. I was always looking for a situation where I could play my work with other guys.

Patrick: I was mostly playing with friends. On weekends, I was playing in an Irish wedding band.

How did you guys happen to join the band?

Michael: A little guy named Morrie McCarthy ran an ad somewhere that seemed promising. I rang him, we met and decided to work together. He had a big cellar with a lot of gear and good recording equipment. I played him some of my work which he dug, and we decided to seek out other guys to get a band going. Bobby joined…then Jamie.

Jamie: Michael and I met while we were living in the same apartment complex. I was out on the lawn, playing guitar and he passed by me on the way to his laundry in another building. He stopped on the way back to ask me what kind of guitar I had and we were fast friends within a few minutes. I’ve never felt as much of a bond with another person so quickly. It was a remarkable experience.

Michael: (Smiling) All of that in the name of tidy underwear.

Jamie: Michael joined The Broken Hearts, who at that point were without a bass player. Listening to WRTC one night…I think Michael told me they would be on the Annie Ramone show. I was blown away by the sound and the excitement of what they were doing. The fact that they didn’t have a bass player come with them to the interview…I think I called the station to congratulate Michael…

Michael: During the interview I actually said over the airwaves that we were looking for a bassist and if there were anyone listening who’d be interested to call in.

Jamie: I called to tell him how pleased I was and if they really couldn’t find a bass player I would be willing to give it a shot. Michael arranged the audition, which took place in Morrie’s house. He had a rehearsal space permanently set up in his basement. Bobby was bouncing off the walls like a true caffeine junkie and was smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

Michael: Up to that point the three of us had cut a number of demos on Morrison’s 4-track deck and Bobby played drums AND bass on those recordings.

Jamie: Because he knew the bass parts to those songs, he taught me When I See You Looking My Way (later re-recorded for Want One?) in about a minute and a half and we went into it. I played a Mustang bass borrowed from Morrie, since I didn’t own one at that point. The Broken Hearts officially hired me the next day by phone.

Didn’t some of those recordings get released around that time?

Michael: Well…yeah…in a dubious manner. I think it was just before Jamie came on. Bobby took it upon himself to have four of the songs put onto a cassette tape, two songs per side with really bad artwork.

What did it look like?

It was a black and white silhouette of Big Ben. To me, it looked like a Joy Division bootleg or something. Anyway, he had hundreds of these made without consulting me or Morrison and the next thing we know they’re being sold in record shops in Hartford, New York and Boston…and…getting quite a lot of college airplay. It didn’t hurt anything but…it looked horrible. Even back then I always wanted everything to look professional.

Jamie: An interesting side story is that Bobby told us all that his name was Bobby Monroe.

Michael: After Marilyn, he later told me.

Jamie: We didn’t know his real name for months and I once went to his parents’ house to pick him up and addressed them as Mr. And Mrs. Monroe. They looked at us with the oddest expression on their faces.

Michael: I loved Bobby and there was a period where we were very tight…did everything together…but I always had a suspicion that deep down somewhere inside of him…darkness lurked. I don’t mean like someone who would commit crime or anything but…some insecure and dysfunctional thread ran through him, and at times it would manifest in the oddest ways.

What happened to Bobby and Morrie?

Michael: Well, (long pause, deep breath) Bobby left…girl troubles…something about a pregnancy…or something. (Long pause, snapping fingers) Just like that!!! No warning. We had shows booked, perhaps a TV spot at that point, I’m not sure…

Jamie: This caused a rift between him and the rest of the band that lasted for quite some time. Oddly enough, he came to our next gig that we played with a drummer named Chas, who stayed with us for several months. Bobby sat in the audience looking lonely and a little bitter.

Michael: I remember that clearly like it were yesterday. We played to a full house and Bobby took a seat right in front. I did the ENTIRE show looking him straight in the eyes without ever turning away. I stared at him the whole time, even as I sang lead vocals. The audience must have wondered what was going on but I wanted to let him know that I saw right through him, at that time. I watched him squirm in his seat…very uneasy…and I loved every lousy minute of it. How dare he leave us when we had commitments to fulfill without any notice? And then to have the audacity to show up at the next gig like we were supposed to pretend that it’s fine and have a drink with him…I was pissed off.

Jamie: Michael, Bobby and I got over our troubles and renewed our friendships years later. He died at the age of 34 from an asthma attack. He was home alone when he died.

Michael: Jamie rang me right away. It was very shocking because you never expect for anyone to pass away at 34 years of age…especially a friend.

Jamie: I lived close by and was asked to wait for the mortuary to come pick up his body, which I did.

Michael: Long live Bobby Monroe. (Long pause) As for Morrison…(shaking his head) boy could I tell YOU stories…anyway, we fired him. It’s gets a bit tricky when your bass player can play better lead guitar than your lead guitarist. It got to the point where Morrie couldn’t even play lines that he came up with himself! We gave him an ultimatum or something…gave him options…I can’t remember what.

Jamie: We told him that if he didn’t take lessons and improve his musicianship he would have to go. It’s worth knowing that Morrie was less of a musician and more of an actor.

Michael: Right. He was more into clothing and a "look" than to playing an instrument well.

Jamie: He loved the idea of being a lead guitarist. As a matter of fact, that was the only slot he was willing to fill in a band which led to a great deal of frustration as Michael and I began bringing in songs that he couldn’t play.

Michael: I remember that we gave him a window of time to improve or at least show some determination to practice and straighten out.

Jamie: After a particularly painful television taping where Morrie couldn’t seem to get his parts right on much of anything, we dumped him.

Michael: The show wasn’t sent out live so they filmed additional takes of songs upon our request, hoping that he’d play them well enough for broadcast. He didn’t. If my memory serves me well, I believe Tom’s band was on that same show…The Dead Or Alive show.

Tom: My previous band Nice Young Men shared a video taping with them for a TV show called Hartford D.O.A. in September of 1983.

Jamie: I distinctly remember Michael and I exchanging looks and a few quiet comments that the guitar player in this other band was far better than ours.

Tom: When we showed up for the taping, we saw that this other band was also there to do the same. They were nice enough to let us use their sound equipment and soundman. At that time, Michael and Jamie were in the band with Morrie and a drummer named Chas. I remember them playing I Want To Be Sure by Michael, a song that later became a staple of our live set. Nice Young Men really went nowhere after that and my brother and I decided to drop the band. In February of ’84 I saw a classified ad in the Hartford Advocate looking for a lead guitar player with vocals for The Broken Hearts. I thought ‘I know these guys’ and immediately called. I left a message and soon got a callback from Michael. He remembered me too, and suggested that I come in for an audition. The next thing I knew I was a Broken Heart. By then they had Patrick on drums…

Patrick: I had dropped out of college and was looking for something to do. I opened up The Hartford Advocate and there was the ad…funny thing, I had never opened up that paper before.

And you auditioned?

Patrick: I met with Michael and Jamie at, I believe, Michael’s house.

Michael: It was in the cellar of my aunt’s house, actually.

Patrick: There was no playing, just a meeting. We talked and they gave me a tape to practice to. I think they were surprised to see this kid who looked fifteen.

Michael: We borrowed my friend Brad’s rehearsal room for the audition.

Patrick: The actual audition was simple, show off your best and go home. I wasn’t expecting a call back. I just lacked experience. I think they chose me because I kept calling.

Michael: We chose you because you could play…you were good.

Did you know anything about them beforehand? They had already done numerous radio and some television appearances prior to you joining. Were you aware of their track record?

Patrick: Prior to the meeting, no. I was not in the scene.

Tom: They had recorded some demos including That Kind Of A Girl (now on the Want One? re-release), which I had heard on college radio.

Patrick: We went to a house to record them.

Michael: Jamie’s parents’ place.

Patrick: If I remember, the house had an addition being built. That’s where we recorded. I had a see-through blue Vista Light drum set.

Michael: (Laughing) Vista Light sounds like something one would smoke.

What were your goals for the band?

Patrick: I just wanted to play, to tour and put out good quality music.

Michael: I think at that time I just wanted to be Rockpile.

Tom: I really wanted to find a situation where there was original music being made, and where I could develop my songwriting in a group setting.

Jamie: I wanted to have the opportunity to play with talented, creative people who would push me to do my best. It’s easy to punk out and live an average life, with average results. I always had the attitude that I would drive myself to do things that threatened me. To some degree, I think we satisfied those
goals within the first few months of the band.

Michael: It’s very hard to articulate the feeling you have being in the eye of a creative hurricane. There were so many songs suddenly appearing from the writers…it was exhilarating. There was always a certain calmness inside of me, but I knew that something…very forceful…was swirling around all the time. Maybe in the end my personal goal was met just by working with the other guys. I know it helped me in my future endeavors.

Tom: None of us had aspirations to be a "rock star." We were just hoping to earn a living doing what we loved most.

Where did the name The Broken Hearts come from?

Michael: Morrie actually used that name for another band he had been in before he met me. His hero was Johnny Thunders and the name was a spin-off from Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers…you know…The Broken Hearts. He asked me early on what I thought of the name and it was cool enough for me…whatever…

Did you guys write many songs prior to playing with the band?

Jamie: I had been writing while I was playing in other bands, and I think I’d managed to play one or two originals out in public. Usually the bands I was with wanted to be playing Alice Cooper or Rush or some other covers from the radio.

Tom: I had been writing songs for some time, but I realize my writing really matured through my association with The Broken Hearts. I was really excited about bringing in my own tunes. The first one was Just Love ‘Ya which appears on Want One?. It just sort of exploded from there and we began our ongoing "gentlemen’s songwriting competition."

Michael: I was writing songs…or playing at writing songs before I knew chords. As soon as I taught myself three chords with a relative minor it was all over. I knew from the start that I didn’t have much interest in singing other peoples’ songs. Don’t get me wrong, the bands I worked in did just as many cover versions as any other groups but as I said, I was always pushing my work down their throats. By the time The Broken Hearts happened, I had a pretty good catalogue of songs under my sleeve…up my belt…

With the rare luxury of having three singers/songwriters under the same umbrella, how did you determine which songs were chosen for the band?

Jamie: It was a pretty sophisticated system, really. In our rehearsal space in Manchester, CT we stuck index cards with song titles on the wall.

Patrick: I remember the index cards on the wall.

Jamie: We had them sectioned up into Tom’s stuff, Michael’s and mine. Then we’d play with the pacing or selections, shifting them around on the wall like a TV programmer might move around the week’s prime time schedule on the big board.

Tom: Periodically we’d have "new song day." The band would work with three new tunes, one from each for a couple of rehearsals. Depending on how each tune went, either its title would be written on a 3x5 index card and tacked to the wall or it would be abandoned.

Michael: (Proudly) I still have all of those cards somewhere.

Patrick: Like a dart to a dartboard, they would all come in with ideas and I would put a rough beat to it. We had no shortage of material. It’s very hard to find good songwriters and I don’t think I took it for granted. I knew it was rare.

Jamie: The most important thing to us in all honesty was that we brought our strongest material out to a live show.

Tom: We continually revised our A-list. Distribution-wise, we were totally democratic. Each live set, and of course, the album were divisible by three. Michael, Jamie and I got our third. No more, no less.

Michael: And the only reason this arrangement succeeded was because we had the songwriters to make it work. We’d have been foolish and unrealistic to always keep things equal if inferior songs were being delivered.

Was there pressure to come up with songs in that situation with three gifted writers?

Patrick: I wrote them all!

Tom: Big time creative competition, but friendly competition.

Jamie: It was fierce, but friendly competition for me. We were incredibly competitive but always in a respectful way. There were plenty of times when one of us would bring in a song and the other two would look at him right in the eye and say ‘It’s not your best work.’

Tom: We would always give each other’s new tunes a sporting chance. Occasionally a song here and there would fall out for good reason. Mostly because it was replaced by a newer, better one by the same author.

Jamie: We were just really honest and supportive of each other. It drove us to be better and to keep up as we all got stronger and more productive.

Michael: You know, it’s funny because I don’t think that I ever felt pressure while in the band. Writing songs is something that I’d been doing for quite a while prior to any of that. To me, my duties in The Broken Hearts were just an extension of what I’d always done on my own. I never thought of our contributions as a competition as such because…I think I was cocky enough, or confident enough in the other guys’ abilities to feel that they would always hand in quality work. As hyperbolic as this may sound, for everyone to continue to come up with good songs…seemed normal. I probably didn’t realize it at that time as to how rare a situation it was…but honestly, I wasn’t thinking in terms of quota. It’s incredible that it was always divided equally, probably due to our work ethics. I do feel now that my writing skills were greatly accelerated under those extreme circumstances.

Patrick: We locked ourselves in for a year or so practicing three times a week.

Jamie: We had an incredible string of success that you just have to accept as rare and unique. I was so privileged to work in that band with these three guys. I’ve never had another experience like it.

Patrick: It happened fairly quickly after that.

When the guys would bring in new songs, how did they introduce them to you? How did their approaches differ?

Patrick: I dealt with everyone the same way. I would let them begin, then get a feel for it and bounce it off each individual member. The beats are already there…you just have to find them. Sometimes there would be tapes given to me. It was very simple.

What were you guys listening to prior to and into your time with the band and who were your individual influences?

Michael: I’d like to think that it was the same then as it is today for me. I try to be open and accept everything. I mean, at that time, R.E.M. were breaking and their sound was influencing me to consider new directions in approaching songwriting. I was buying (Cyndi) Lauper and Culture Club albums, a lot of diverse music…Black Uhuru, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, The Milkshakes, The Prisoners…Hasil Adkins…and that was on top of all the obvious music I knew prior to playing with The Broken Hearts.

Patrick: I loved Big Country, The Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello, The Cars…good Irish Celtic beats…The Alarm. I enjoyed a lot of the new wave stuff. It was new and different. I got into Rockpile. I became a bigger Beatles fan than I had ever been. I remember being a big Police fan and Stewart Copeland was a big drum influence, although you’d never know it from my style of playing.

Tom: I’m really steeped in the hit records of the late ‘50s through the late ‘60s, especially those by The Beatles and all the other Beatle-like British and American groups. I also owe big debts to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley for guitar style. I also had a collection of pre-1930 78 rpm records that I’d torture my friends with occasionally. I guess my influences are all over the place.

Michael: That’s why I love you, Tom.

Tom: On the more current side I was really into Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Marshall Crenshaw and Dave Edmunds.

Jamie: I was certainly listening to the obvious staples like The Beatles and Stones. I was taken with Tom Petty and was a big fan of Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. I was also listening to The Clash, Mott The Hoople, The Tubes, Pretenders, Bowie and who knows what else. I was so fascinated with how other bands sounded and how they constructed songs. As a bass player, the two I emulated the most were McCartney and Bruce Thomas of The Attractions. As a writer, Michael and Tom were very much my most powerful motivators and motivation is a great source of influence. I never attempted to be anything like them.

Michael: That’s why it worked well. We had three individual styles that were compatible.

Jamie: Writing in a band with three writers and singers is a nonstop process of exploring your own abilities and limitations.

Rooks’ fans are aware that Michael is not known for his writing collaborations. I notice that there exist a number of Beckett-Mazzarella compositions. How was that initiated and how did it usually work?

Jamie: You Won’t Find Me (Want One?) was a case of me having a song that I thought had promise without being able to finish it. Michael and I were so much on the same wavelength that he was the obvious guy to ask to help me, which he did. I think the song is better for his input.

Michael: Thank you, James. In every case where our names share the same authorship line it was simply Jamie asking me to help him finish something he’d already started. We never sat down to compose nose to nose…from scratch…(smiling) if you will…that sounded kind of funny. Only once did we join together pieces of our existing songs to create something.

Jamie: That Kind Of A Girl. We had done a TV show and they told us that they would be shooting something the next day and were looking for new material. Michael and I got together at my little hole of an apartment and we started playing to each other what we had that we might use the next day. He had a great verse worked out with no bridge or chorus to fill it out. I had a completely different sort of song in a different key no less. We thought they could fit together well and found a way of bridging the verse into the chorus and back again. That’s why there’s a key change from the verse to the chorus.

Michael: We actually did show up for the next day’s taping and the producer of the show was amazed that we went home the night before, returning in the morning with a new composition. I remember that we did the song on the show but I’m not sure if it ever aired.

How many originals did you guys hold in your arsenal?

Tom: We seem to have different memories here. I thought it was in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty between us.

Jamie: I thought we had about ninety originals by the time we moved to New York.

Michael: (Smiling) I should count the index cards!

Jamie: Whatever the number, I would be comfortable in saying that we had more original material ready to go than any other band in our area and I’m only counting the ones that we could actually play at the drop of a hat.

Was anyone instrumental in your early local success?

Tom: Michael was the main contact for a lot of those people. We were a band with many friends in radio, record stores, booking agents, club owners etc.

Patrick: I guess the University Of Hartford radio station helped…

Michael: We did know a million people and I’d hate to slight anyone, but if I’m going to name a person who stands tall in my eyes she would be Annie Ramone. When Morrie, Bobby and myself recorded a handful of demos early on, she played them on her show. They were crummy little 4-track demos, man! She had, for me, hands down the best radio program in town. Breaking bands months before they would come into the public’s consciousness. She plugged our gigs, once hosted a TV show that we performed live on, came out to support the band and turned into a beautiful friend. That’s my girl. Go, Annie!

Jamie: She played our music and did everything but march people down to our shows at gunpoint. She really supported us more than anyone I can think of and I’ll love her till the day I die.

Michael: Mark Delorenzo too. He was supporting us from the start as well…the Marky Monster. Another great radio personality to this day. He’s always there, man…love that guy...a great friend.

Patrick: Michael, Jamie and Tom were instrumental to me. You are my musical brothers. Thank you, guys.

What was the musical climate in Hartford at the time?

Jamie: The word "dead" comes to mind.

Michael: Well, there was a decent scene in Hartford prior to The Broken Hearts’ birth with the Lit Club (Lithuanian Club) and a few others. There was a nice little punk scene going down for a while. (Sarcastically) Fortunately for me, it was dying right around the time I bumped into Morrison. By the time Jamie joined the band things were stagnant.

Patrick: The scene was new to me.

Jamie: There was a core group of people who were working really hard to make something happen. Bands like XY Eli, Motive 8…

Tom: The Bell System, The Cleavers.

Michael: I dug The Cleavers. They dressed like The Clash and were better than many pop bands out then…great melodies. Jack Tragic and the Unfortunates, Chronic Disorder…The Intrepids…good scene for a while. Mike Parent and Rick Banz promoted shows with what little the city had to offer them as far as clubs that would cooperate was concerned…but…as good things regarding a "music scene" in Hartford go, it soon died.

Patrick: I don’t think things have changed much. It’s hard to find places to play if you are an original band.

Was it difficult for a band that performed exclusively original tunes to book gigs?

Tom: There happened to be some clubs that were looking for exactly that, so we stuck with those venues. Michael was the guy in the band that did the business side. He’s good talking with people and making deals. We all had secondary jobs in The Broken Hearts. Jamie was the main speaker during gigs. He has an easygoing, humorous way about him.

Michael: Jamie did his share of band business as well. I may have booked more gigs but…

Tom: My other duty with the band was to create all the graphic design materials like posters, flyers, the album cover, logotype and even set lists. I also later designed The Rooks logotype for Michael.

Michael: The famous Rooks logo. Thank you, Tom.

Jamie: We were limited in the venues that we could play in. We ended up having to travel to New Haven, Massachusetts and New York City. We were really starting to get a buzz going that we might be a band to watch.

What made you decide to record an album?

Michael: I remember telling Marshall Crenshaw one night in some dressing room that we were really thinking about recording an album for real, no more demos. He told me that by any and all means we should pursue it. In fact, his exact words were "It will be your calling card."

Jamie: It was mostly a case of being ready to move on and move up and recording was the next step to take.

Tom: We wanted to do that at the outset. We were going to record the old fashioned way. Our friend Mark Delorenzo had a 4-track machine. We actually laid down nine or ten backing tracks with him.

Michael: We never finished them and later recorded our album in a 24-track studio.

Tom: We were presented with the opportunity to borrow enough money to record at a proper studio and we jumped at it. We knew we didn’t have enough money to record twelve songs, so nine would have to do. And then, even those nine tracks would be fairly basic, not enough time for fancy arrangements.

Michael: That explains why the mixes are so sparse. We simply ran out of money. We cut the tracks live as a band and added minimal superimpositions.

I’ve heard rumors that Nick Lowe was going to produce your follow-up to Want One?. How did that come about?

Michael: I spent a night or two drinking in New York with Nick and Dave Edmunds near the time I met Morrie. Years later it was arranged somehow that Nick agreed to produce our next album. I remember getting a call from his publicist Julie telling me that we would have to fly him to New York from England and supply him with all the alcohol he could put away. Unfortunately, that second album never got recorded.

Why not?

Michael: Because we splintered, broke up…(sad tone) too bad.

What made the band decide to leave Hartford and move to New York City?

Michael: It’s New York City, man…home of The New York Yankees. That was good enough for me.

Tom: Michael and I were roommates in the West End of Hartford. We called the apartment on Evergreen Avenue "Broken Home" and it became the band’s headquarters. I hated to leave that place. Michael and I had written many of our best songs in that apartment. I believe he wrote Circle Of Fools there. We knew we would never go anywhere in Hartford, so New York City it was.

Jamie: It was the next step to take if we were going to progress as a group.

Patrick: We decided to go for the brass ring. Although very popular in Hartford, people thought we were nuts leaving when we did. We would have run out of gas in Hartford. We wanted to see what would stick in New York…no regrets. You can’t regret what you don’t try.

Jamie: We found an apartment on Bleecker Street…

Tom: At the Bleecker Street apartment there was an infestation of water bugs. They looked like h-u-g-e black cockroaches. The guys had three of them literally nailed to the wall in the living room and labeled them "Manny, Moe & Jack." I found a separate place in Hoboken. I had lived in the city some years earlier and wanted to try Hoboken this time.

Patrick: As far as we knew, Tom was probably having Beef Wellington at his own place.

Michael: (Laughing hysterically)

How was it living in New York as a band?

Michael: Bleecker Street was a zoo. Sometimes we’d have six or seven bodies sleeping on that floor. The Smithereens, Pete Ciccone from the Vacant Lot…everybody. Steve Forbert was up there…Jaco Pastorius, under very sad circumstances. Insane. Good fun, though.

Jamie: Living in an apartment with a group of single men in our early to mid-twenties was an adventure. (Smiling) When you throw in the fact that we were all in a band, then you have the ingredients for a sit-com. In the total time that Michael, Pat and I lived on Bleecker Street we collected a furniture suite that consisted of a single chair and a single bed mattress on the floor.

Patrick: It was our own personal closet. Room for three bodies on the floor.

Michael: We had no furniture to sit on, just the floor.

Patrick: No food…I remember not eating or seeing a vegetable for months.

Michael: No beds…amps and gear all over the place. Our shower was in the kitchen and the toilet was outside of the apartment, down the hallway…without heat.

Jamie: The tub was in the kitchen…

Michael: If you needed to have a shower while friends were over you’d better not forget a towel…or it was (smiling) show time.

Patrick: The whole concept sounds easy. Move to New York, live together and become rock stars. History is filled with bands that have tried. That’s the key word, tried. It was hard and sometimes easy. We played and lived in an area that has produced legends and I can hang my hat on that. I played the clubs on Bleecker Street. We opened for some cool bands. You know what? I miss it!

Jamie: (Smiling) My funniest story involves Michael.

Michael: Uh-oh.

Jamie: He went out to a show with a friend of ours on a Friday night. I had to work the next day so I stayed in. Late that night I heard them come back, quite loudly, with female voices accompanying them. It’s hard to judge time when you’re trying to sleep and I have no time frame of all the commotion that came from the living room. (Laughing) Whatever was going on was happening only a few feet from the door that I was sleeping behind.

Michael: Stamp collection.

Jamie: When morning came I woke up and stumbled out into the kitchen. There, just beyond the doorway were Michael and our friend dead asleep on the floor, side by side. Michael was dressed exactly as he was when he left the night before…shirt buttoned all the way up, tie on straight, still wearing his jacket.

Michael: (Laughing) I must have gotten cold.

Jamie: Our friend, on the other hand was wearing sunglasses and holding a beer by his side. Other than that he was absolutely naked. He stirred, realized I was standing nearby, raised his head and his beer, said "Cheers, mate," took a hit off his beer and dropped dead asleep.

Let’s talk about Want One? for a bit. With so many originals, what made you guys decide on those nine songs for the album? Did each writer choose his favorite songs?

Patrick: I still have bruises from all of that. Tom would use martial arts, Michael…whiskey and Jamie would weep uncontrollably. It was all very effective.

Tom: We started the album project after being together for about eight months in 1984. We were still finding our voice as a band and had not yet generated the huge volume of material that we later cranked out during 1985.

Patrick: I think we went with our strongest and best crowd response songs.

Tom: I think that if we had waited another six months, at least half of the song choices would have been different.

Michael: That tells you how productive we were during that period.

Jamie: We collectively discussed which songs were the strongest and which fit together best.

The credits read: "Produced by Jonathan Freed and The Broken Hearts." What was behind that arrangement and would Tom, for example, have input into a Jamie song?

Jamie: Prior to making our album, none of us had done any recording on anything more sophisticated than a simple 4-track deck. When we got into 24 tracks, two-inch tape, a mixing board the size of my apartment and a huge selection of microphones, we knew we needed some help. Jonathan Freed owned the studio and was experienced. He helped walk us through technical aspects of the recording process and that contribution got him listed as a co-producer.

Tom: When it came time to the final mixing of each song, only the song’s author and Freed were in the control room for the set-up. I think he suggested that as an efficiency move. When we got ready to run a final mix, the other guys would come into the control room for input.

Jamie: We had a very strong, fairly unified idea of what we were there to do and how we wanted to present the songs.

Tom: I think Freed got the idea for the backwards thing at the beginning of Play That Song Again. He was fooling around with the tape, ran part of the chorus backward and thought it sounded like "Hey, c’mon I saw them choosing it."

Michael: I thought it said "Pat is dead."

Tom: We thought that was cool and had him splice that in at the beginning of the tune.

How long did it take to record the album?

Michael: It seems like three or four days to me now, not including mixing…very quick nonetheless.

Jamie: I think it was over in a few weeks. Not really long at all.

Patrick: It was finally out in a few months.

How did finally having an album released help the band? Did it change anything?

Tom: It legitimized us to a great extent. We had a product that we could distribute to CMJ (an industry trade magazine) and other places to get heard. We had something to sell at record stores.

Jamie: The biggest change was the perception other people had of us. Once we had a piece of vinyl out with international distribution we were finally treated differently.

Michael: (Marshall) Crenshaw was right for the most part. It did become our "calling card" for gigs, radio spots, opening slots for major label acts.

Jamie: When we were fairly new to New York City I was dating a flight attendant who used to travel to Europe a lot. She stopped into the Virgin Megastore in London in the spring of 1986 and found a Broken Hearts bin there.

Michael: I used to go in there all the time when I lived in London. I don’t think I knew beforehand that we had our own rack card, though. I went to the B’s section and assumed that we would be in B-miscellaneous. Nowhere. Asked the guy at the front if they stocked it and he said "You’ll find that filed under The Broken Hearts." I checked back and there it was. They even had in-store posters on the walls. It was a very cool thing to happen to a kid from Hartford.

Jamie: Here we were, a band that couldn’t get gigs because we wouldn’t play Journey and Boston songs and we were suddenly in the bins of the world’s biggest record retailers on a whole other continent. It’s still one of the biggest achievements of my life.

What are you doing musically these days?

Tom: My present band is called See Jane Run. We’ve been together over ten years and put out our first self-released album in 1994 and are just finishing up ten songs for album number two. I also have a solo project that I call Dad’s Noisy Basement and I’ve released one self-released album of my songs including Do Or Say and It’s No Joke that go back to the Broken Hearts days. Do Or Say is on the Want One? re-release (as a bonus song).

Jamie: I have five guitars on my living room wall hanging up just like if they were in a music store. I still have the two primary basses that I played with the band as well as the white Telecaster that Michael used for some of the studio work on the album. I pretty much play for my own amusement these days, though. The one thing I learned most in The Broken Hearts is that I don’t need to prove anything to anybody. I loved what I did and I love what I do. That’s enough for me. What more could I ask for out of life?

Michael: I play in The Rooks. What more could I ask for out of life?

Patrick: I recently moved to Ontario, Canada. I am trying something new, trying to find my way. No band yet but I do play to keep my up chops. I feel it wouldn’t take long to get back in the saddle again. I visit the clubs and the scene a bit.

Any regrets?

Jamie: Not a single one. It was a great ride and an experience that I would have been a much poorer man had I missed any part of it. Even the hard parts were a joy to be involved with.

Tom: That second album would have been a killer!

Michael: I agree. I wish we could have recorded another one as well. Many of the songs we wrote or worked up properly later on would have made a great little follow-up.

Patrick: We didn’t do another record and we never had a final gig. It all kinda ended…

Michael: Well…maybe one day.

Any favorite band stories to tell our readers?

Jamie: None that I’d share with somebody I didn’t know really well. Living on Bleecker Street was so weird and wonderful as you could possibly imagine.

Michael: (Laughing) He’s right. The really good stories are too scandalous! A fun one for me was when we opened for Katrina & The Waves right at the time when Walking On Sunshine was number one in the country. This was in Hartford and believe it or not we got the gig to generate sales. We started to pull in some good crowds and the promoter rang me up to see if we could do the show, to maybe get more bodies into the hall. We played very well that evening and I’ll always remember their guitar player Kimberly Rew standing in the wings giving us the thumbs up sign repeatedly throughout our set. Rew was formerly in The Soft Boys and I was a big fan of that band. It’s a nice memory.

Tom: While still in Hartford, we got a gig in New York City with The Smithereens in some club. We rented a van and schlepped all our equipment down and back the same night. It was a cargo van with just two front seats. Jamie and I took turns driving and Michael and Patrick were stuck in the back. Michael, in a flash of inspiration brought along an aluminum/web lawn chair. I can still see him sitting back in the van in the chair. Good thing we never had to slam on the brakes, he would have gone flying!

Patrick: There are many (stories). We had been living at our (Bleecker Streeet) place for about a month. I was out of money, no job…and hungry. There had been two eggs in the fridge when we moved in. The previous tenant had left them behind and they were off-color and in a warm fridge when we moved in…they were funky. When you’re hungry you will sell your soul. Michael dared me to eat them. Let me tell you, I still haven’t passed them through my lower intestine. He laughed and laughed. Meanwhile, he was eating pancakes without milk, butter or syrup. Jamie was busy losing thirty pounds…and not by choice!

Michael: Right, Jamie almost landed in the hospital because he dropped thirty pounds in something like…three, four weeks? We starved.

Patrick: He was fond of those pretzels on the street…a fine delicacy. Ramen Noodles were considered a feast. We had fun and there was always enough money for beer. I would like to give a shout out to Jamie’s change jar. That helped a lot. He tried to hide it, to no avail. Good times for all!