Through the 60s and 70s, singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer Johnny Rivers was one of the most consistent hit-makers.

Born in New York City, Rivers (born John Henry Ramistella) moved with his family to Baton Rouge, where he was raised. There he soaked up gospel, blues and R&B influences. Moving to Los Angeles in the early 60s, he established a reputation as a songwriter.

Then his gift for electrifying audiences with a scorching brand of rock ‘n’ roll created a sensation. The album “Johnny Rivers Live At The Whisky A Go Go,” which included his smash version of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis,” made Rivers a star.

He followed with more hits, such as “Secret Agent Man” ( the “Danger Man” TV series theme penned by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri), “Maybellene” (another Chuck Berry tune), “Mountain of Love,” “Midnight Special,” Willie Dixon’s “Seventh Son” and “Rockin Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.”

Rivers proved he could be equally effective with ballads, enjoying tremendous success with “Poor Side of Town,” “Summer Rain” and “Swayin’ to the Music (Slow Dancing), as well as covers of Motown hits “Baby I Need Your Lovin’” and “Tracks of My Tears.”

He founded his own label, Soul City Records and won a Grammy for producing The 5th Dimension. He helped bring Jimmy Webb into the national consciousness, with The 5th Dimension’s recording of “Up, Up and Away.”

Rivers’ latest releases, “Greatest Hits and More” and “Live at Cache Creek,” celebrate his many enduring hits.

In 2013, 13 years after this interview was conducted, the 70-year-old Rivers continues to perform, thrilling audiences at every show.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
When you play, does the audience just want to hear hits and more hits?

JOHNNY RIVERS:
This could go for anyone, Elton John, Bob Dylan, anyone, if they start playing too many songs that people don’t know, they get real bored, real quick. Most people want to hear songs they’re familiar with. Songs they’ve heard either in your albums or on the radio or whatever.

PCC:
How do you keep it fresh for yourself? Do you try different arrangements?

RIVERS:
We don’t change them that much. My tunes, personally, they’re just fun to play. They’re fun rock ‘n’ roll songs. So it works. A lot of it has to do with the energy of the audience. It’s just like The Beach Boys, doing ‘California Girls’ or whatever. How many times have they done that? It still always seems to look like it’s fun, because the audience is into it.

PCC:
The lasting popularity of 60s music, is that due to the sense of fun, generally, that might be lacking in the contemporary scene?

RIVERS:
I don’t know. It’s hard to say. The quality of the songs, I think a lot of those songs were more melodic and stuff. And they were a little more roots-oriented than a lot of new music. And some of the new music is very technical, more into a rhythmic feel thing, programmed with drum machines and stuff. And there’s almost a backlash now, people want to get into some real music.

PCC:
Artists, as well as audiences?

RIVERS:
Yeah, both. I think that’s the reason for the popularity of the 60s music. And even artists like Roy Orbison, coming back so strongly, the success of The Traveling Wilburys, which is basically a real 60s sound. And the new Little Feat. You hear that Little Feat album, that’s an 60s, early 70s Eagles/early Little Feat sound. And the kids today love it.

PCC:
As a producer, were you concerned about allowing technology to take over?

RIVERS:
Well, I never did let that happen. I mean, I used some of it, but very sparingly. I didn’t feel honest, getting into that. It just wasn’t my thing. I just prefer playing with live musicians. So I never really got into a lot of the techno-pop stuff.

PCC:
You started playing guitar at the age of eight?

RIVERS:
Eight or nine. My dad played. So there was always a guitar around.

PCC:
Early on, did music really click with you or was it something you grew into?

RIVERS:
I sang. I used to sing in school choir and stuff, in church and whatever. I had an outstanding voice at the time. I kind of had a soprano voice. The teachers and music directors would always call my Mom or Dad in and say, ‘You know, this guy’s really got a good voice.’ And blah-blah-blah. And ‘encourage him to keep singing,’ blah-blah-blah.

And there was always music around. So it was kind of a natural thing for me. Plus, I grew up in south Louisiana, so I was influenced a lot by gospel and the rhythm & blues sound. When I was going to junior high school, it was during the transition from rhythm & blues to rock ‘n’ roll. It was right at the beginning. Guys like Fats Domino played at our junior high school dances and stuff. Jimmy Reed. People like that.

PCC:
So when you started out, what was the big dream? Did you want be a teen idol when you were playing in bands as a teenager?

RIVERS:
Well, we just wanted to play. It was fun. And then Elvis Presley hit. And then everybody wanted to get on that trip. And then Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and whatever.

PCC:
And you actually met Alan Freed? I would imagine half the kids in the country were trying to get to him at that time. How did you manage it?

RIVERS:
It was really funny. It was like a scene out of a movie. He was at WINS and I just went out and waited for him in front of the radio station. He came walking up with this guy who was his manager and I just introduced myself, told him I was from Louisiana, was just in town for a few days and I wrote and played and had a band. They thought it was really cute. And they said, ‘Well, here’s our card. Come see us tomorrow at the office.’ And so I did. They liked my stuff and he got me a recording contract and I cut some singles. It was a company called Gone Records. They had The Dubs and The Chantels, kind of an R&B label out of New York.

PCC:
Did Freed make a lasting impression on you?

RIVERS:
Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, he saw me play at the Whisky, this was about a month before he died, and actually saw me achieving success. And it really made him feel good. It made him feel like, even though we didn’t have success several years earlier, when I was in New York, that he still had a real good eye for talent and sound, because there I was, becoming successful. And he got to see it. He stayed there the whole evening. We got to talking. I never saw him after that. About a month later, I read that he had died in Palm Springs.

PCC:
So, despite all of his legal problems, he was more of a victim than a user?

RIVERS:
Oh, I think so, yes.

PCC:
Was it that around the same time that Rick Nelson chose one of your songs, ‘I’ll Make Believe,’ to record?

RIVERS:
That was around ‘58 that Ricky did that tune. I was friends with James Burton, his guitar player, who was from Shreveport, Louisiana. And I wrote this song and I gave it to James, when he was back in Louisiana on vacation or something, and he called me about a month later and said, ‘Rick’s going to cut your song.’ I said, ‘Well, maybe I’ll come out.’ So I saved up some bucks and flew out and hung out for about a month and kind of got the California bug. And I wound up coming back out here in about ‘61.

PCC:
Nelson always seemed to be underestimated as an artist, prior to his passing.

RIVERS:
And especially on those early records, when he was using James Burton. And, you know, his bass player, became my bass player, Joe Osborne, played on all my old stuff. He played on ‘Memphis.’ He opened the Whisky with us in ‘64.

Rick had a great band, first of all. They really had a good sound. He had more of the authentic Elvis Presley original Sun Records sound than Elvis had, because Elvis lost that fairly quickly, once he joined RCA. And Rick managed to capture it with James Burton and these guys from Louisiana. And he kept that for quite awhile. Some of those old records really had that sound and it was really good.

PCC:
And then you got into those football games with Rick and Elvis?

RIVERS:
Oh, just a couple of times. I’d go out there. I knew Elvis. They’d play on Sunday afternoons at this park and everybody would show up.

PCC:
So you did know Elvis before that?

RIVERS:
Well, first time I’d met him was in my hometown of Baton Rouge, when he was coming through there with a country music show. I met him out behind there. I was just hanging out. We were just standing around talking. He wasn’t even a big star then. He was just still getting started. It was a Grand Ole Opry show or something. I saw him and said, ‘Wow! This guy’s great!’ As a kid, seeing something like that, a guy gets up in a pink suit, starts jumping around on stage [laughs], it was like, ‘Yeah!’

And then I knew some of the guys who worked for him. So I hung with him a little bit, when he was out here, when he was doing those movies in the early ‘60s.

PCC:
Did he become isolated after that or did you remain in contact over the years?

RIVERS:
Well, I saw him in Vegas, when he started playing there in the early ‘70s. I went up to see him a few times up there. And then, the last few years, I kind of lost contact with him.

PCC:
Were you concerned that he was losing contact with everything?

RIVERS:
Well, it was pretty obvious. You could see it.

PCC:
Did that serve as a kind of lesson, in terms of keeping things in perspective in your own life?

RIVERS:
Well, I never had a tendency towards drugs or anything like that. I managed to miss all of that. I was just never attracted to it. I guess it’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to survive. I wasn’t even into it in the 60s. I did very little experimenting with that stuff.

PCC:
What about the scene at the Whisky? That must have been a pretty magical time.

RIVERS:
Yeah, it was just a great period. Even after the first year that we played there and then I was gone on the road and I’d come back, the Whisky just kept going as a great venue here, for all kinds of acts. You could go in there and one night, the Buffalo Springfield would be playing, the next night, Jimi Hendrix, the next night The Doors or Chicago and on and on.

PCC:
How quickly after your Whisky debut did you record the live album there?

RIVERS:
We did that pretty quickly. I probably cut that six weeks after we opened, because it was a smash from opening night. And I had built up a following at another place, so I kind of brought the following up there.

PCC:
And that venue introduced the discotheque concept?

RIVERS:
Yeah. Well, the original one was in France. Elmer Valentine, who was one of the owners of the Whisky, still is [he passed in 2008], had gone to Europe on vacation and saw the original Whisky A Go Go in Paris, which was just a disco. And he got the idea, the concept of people dancing to records, but he didn’t think that that alone would make it here in L.A.

He started coming down to the place I was playing at, this other club [Gazzarri’s]. At the time, I’d met Lou Adler and Lou and I were hanging out. Elmer said, ‘We’ve got this opportunity to get this club up here on Sunset and I’d like to call it the Whisky A Go Go. I saw this place in France. And I’d like to play records in between your sets.’ We did three sets a night. ‘So people could continue dancing, even when you’re not playing.’ And I said, ‘That’s fine with me.’ They offered me more money and gave me like a year contract. And it was just a smash from opening night. There was a lot of publicity on the place. Plus we had already had the following at this other club and it was already the hottest spot in town. So it was a natural. It just clicked. It worked.

PCC:
The sound on the live record just jumped out at people, especially when music was getting pretty tame at the time, outside of the explosion from England. What made your sound so distinctive?

RIVERS:
Well, we had a lot of energy going. It was fun. All the ingredients were there. It was the right spot, the right place and I really felt good about what I was doing. Plus, I was playing all old songs that I had played in junior high, with my old band back in Baton Rouge, all the Chuck Berry tunes and this and that. And there were no bands out here that were doing that at the time. Rock was pretty much asleep in that period. Pop artists like Patti Page and Andy Williams were kind of dominating the charts at the time. And just about the same time that ‘Memphis’ hit, along came The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand.’ Then it was gone. The whole thing took off.

PCC:
Was it like bucking a big trend, being American, when the British Invasion hit?

RIVERS:
Actually, I think it kind of helped me in a way, because it just gave rock music a big shot in the arm. It just brought extra excitement to anything that felt good, that you could dance to, that had a real beat to it.

PCC:
Having so much success as such an early age, how did you keep things in perspective, keep your head on straight?

RIVERS:
Well, I don’t know. I just did [laughs]. We were just working so hard. We were working all the time. I mean, at that point, when I started producing and got involved with Jimmy Webb and The 5th Dimension and all of that, that was at the same time that my records were really doing better than ever. The same time that I recorded ‘Up, Up and Away,’ all those records with The 5th Dimension, ‘Poor Side of Town’ was a number one record. So all we did was eat, sleep and play music.

PCC:
Was it difficult to decide how to divide your time, between producing and performing?

RIVERS:
Yeah. Eventually, it became obvious that I had to make a decision. I couldn’t do both. And it was a hard decision to make, because, on the one hand, it was fun working in the studio with Jimmy Webb and a lot of these musicians we were working with and arrangers, guys like Michael Omartian, Larry Knechtel and on and on. So I had to make a decision whether I wanted to do that and give up being Johnny Rivers, performer. And I couldn’t. Even though the studio stuff was gratifying, it didn’t give me what performing live did, which I’d done all my life. So I made a decision to just go ahead and sell the company and continue on, go back on the road and keep recording.

PCC:
It’s just that certain charge you get from being on stage?

RIVERS:
Yeah. And everyone around me said, ‘You really have to make a decision and you’re a great artist and people really love your music and want to hear more of it. And it wouldn’t be fair to just give it up.’ And it was good advice.

It’s really funny how it turned out. Everyone said, ‘Later on, 10 years from now, you can just start producing records.’ Well, now it’s been 20 years and I’m still performing [laughs]. And actually probably making a lot more money at it than I did back then. All of a sudden, this music is so popular.

PCC:
The covers you did, like the Motown stuff, they were so distinctive. You made them your own, rather than just doing remakes. Was that a challenge?

RIVERS:
Well, it just happened. ‘Baby I Need Your Lovin’,’ I was playing the song with my group a lot, even on my gigs, before I recorded it, and getting a good reaction to it. It felt comfortable. People just loved it. And no one even thought like, ‘Why is he doing a Motown song?’ They just liked the way I did it. So when I went into the studio and cut it, it was just natural. Like you said, it was like I had written the song.

PCC:
Was there a special feeling when you had hits with songs you had written yourself?

RIVERS:
Well, sure. It’s an extra charge. But having a hit of any kind is great [laughs], whether you write it or someone else does.

PCC:
Do you still hope to record another hit?

RIVERS:
Well, I haven’t put any records out in a long time. I’m still writing now. I started writing with Will Jennings, who wrote ‘Higher Love’ and all those tunes with Stevie Winwood. And we’ve come up with a couple of really good tunes. So I’m going to keep writing with him and see what happens. If I get enough songs together that really feel good, I’m probably going to go in and record another album. And, if I have some luck, I could probably have another hit, because everywhere I go, people, deejays, say, ‘We’d sure like to hear another record of yours.’ Radio stations are saying, ‘Give us another Johnny Rivers record, we’d really love to play one.’ And I say, ‘Well, I’m working on it.’ I can’t say that it wouldn’t be nice to have another hit on the charts. I hear my songs on the radio all the time. It would be nice to hear something new.

PCC:
Will it be difficult to balance what works for Johnny Rivers with what’s happening commercially in music right now?

RIVERS:
Well, I don’t think I will. It’ll just sound like Johnny Rivers. Of course, it’ll have the modern sound. It’s like, when John Fogerty did his last album. It still sounded like Creedence Clearwater. I mean, I wouldn’t go in there and try to sound like Stevie Winwood or something like that. It’ll still be me.

PCC:
As for long-range goals, would you consider going back to producing?

RIVERS:
Well, that could always happen. That’s always there. I’m not really thinking very much about that right now. I’m just enjoying playing, touring with my band.

For the latest news and tour dates, visit www.johnnyrivers.com.