Mazzy Star was responsible for the early 90’s sleeper hit Fade Into You.
Featuring David Roback, who wrote most of the band’s music,
he was a talented multi-instrumentalist. He would be joined by singer Hope Sandoval who
wrote most of the band’s lyrics, a breathy vocalist with a haunting yet hopeful voice.
Fade Into You would be released on the band’s 1993 sophomore album “So Tonight That I Might See.”
There was something pure about the band’s sound and their recording process.
In a 2020 interview with Refinery 29, Sandoval said:
"I like to hang out in restaurants and cafés, eavesdrop on people's conversations
and collect new stories. Then I go home and spend the evenings embellishing them."
Part of the band’s magic came from the soulmate-like connection between
Roback and Sandoval. In a 2018 interview with Double J, Sandoval would say that:
"Half the time we don’t even really need to speak to each other, we use tele-pathy."
The pair was rumored to briefly be a couple around the time of recording their debut album,
The song Fade Into You became an anthem for lovelorn teenagers in the 90’s.
Hollywood loved it too. The song was licensed to more than 30 movies and television shows.
Ben Harper, Kelly Clarkson and Dinosaur Jr have all covered the song. But whatever
happened to the group’s frontwomen Hope Sandoval and what has she been
doing during the pandemic. That ‘s what we’re going to discuss in today’s video.
There would be an eight year difference between Hope Sandoval and David Roback.
Roback always viewed himself as an outsider telling the Guardian "I was fairly different
from the other kids, I didn't get on with them," "We didn't have many common interests.
My hobbies were psychiatry and history … I'd psychoanalyse my friends." He found
himself in New York in the late 70’s wanting to become a painter telling the LA Times in 1990
“I went to New York mainly to be part of the art scene,”“But I gradually found myself getting
more inspired by what was happening in music than in art. . . . People like Patti Smith and
Television.” But while he identified with artists who were instrumental in the punk rock scene
the sound he soon started developing was anything but saying in the same interview I felt like a
punk,” he said of his early interest in rock. “That’s the attitude I identified with. But when
I picked up the guitar and started playing it, the music didn’t come out sounding punk.
It was something else. . . ..” he'd say. After brief stint in new york he headed back to LA.
Roback and Sandoval both started off in other bands before coming together to form Mazzy Star.
Roback went to UC Berkeley studying art and started his first band with his brother Steven
called Unconscious with Susanna Hoffs, who would later be known for co-found The Bangles.
The two brothers started their next band,
Rain Parade, in 1982, and they gained popularity in the L.A. indie scene.
The soft spoken Sandoval came from East LA where her father was a butcher and her mother
worked at a potato chip factory and she was the youngest of ten children being born to a mexican
american family. The area she grew up in was pretty rough telling the Guardian My brother
was involved with gangs, and everybody knew that in the neighbourhood so nobody messed with you.
In a separate interview she’d tell the LA Times “We lived on the most popular drug
street”Despite turmoil around her, she grew up in a musical household telling the LA Times
“There was a lot of music in my house growing up,” she says. “My sister loved country music.
My mother loved Spanish music. And my dad was into big band music and jazz.” She was given her first
guitar at age of 13 and she would take inspiration from Exene Cervenka of the LA punk group X
and The Rolling Stones.. Side note I’ve done a whole video on the band X the Link is below.
She would tell the Telegraph 'I was a massive Rolling Stones fan, and I wanted to play music
like. . . they do. . . were doing. . . ' 'And I thought I might. . . do that.'
Sandoval's parents would separate when she was just a child
and she would primarily be raised by her mother.
She struggled in school and was not really social with other students
and was at one point put in special education classes. She would eventually ditch classes
and listen to records at home telling Daily Telegraph it's just like anybody else—some people,
most people don't wanna go to school. They just don't want to",
"I was just somebody who got away with it... There wasn't really anyone watching" she'd say.
The school she attended gave her parents an ultimatum either she comes to class or
she should be home schooled. Sandoval would be homeschool for a short period of time,
but things didn’t work out. After all, her parents never graduated so they never had a leg to stand
on.The nights would see Sandoval sneaking out of her house out to clubs to watch local bands play.
She would form the group Going Home while she was still a teenager with friend Sylvia
Gomez in the early 80’s. The duo’s third gig happened during the early part of the 80’s
opening for both the Minutemen and Sonic Youth at the Anti-Club in Hollywood
with Sandoval recalling to the LA Times “It was a crazy, crazy crowd. We just thought, ‘What are
we doing here?’ But they were so sweet to us. Everybody stayed really quiet and listened.”
Both women were big fans of Rain Parade, so they decided to make a bold move to get on their radar.
After a 1983 Rain Parade concert, Gomez snuck backstage to give David Roback a
demo tape. At the time, Roback was under contract with Rough Trade records while
Going Home was still unsigned, but doing gigs around LA. Upon hearing their demo,
Roback offered to produce the group's first album and play guitar on the record, but it has yet to
be released.. Sandoval would tell Quietus her reaction to getting a phone call from
Roback after giving him the demo saying I felt I was the luckiest person ever",. "I could not
believe that he wanted to join our band. He called me and said: ‘I really love your music,
and I want to play guitar for you guys.But things wouldn’t work out quite as Sandoval anticipated.
It was also during this time that Roback left Rain Parade and Los Angeles and retreated to Berkley
not feeling a connection to the city's music scene.
Roback briefly joined a musical collective called Rainy Day, and then went on to form
his third band Clay Allison (which was renamed Opal shortly after) with
vocalist Kendra Smith. Together they released 1987’s Happy Nightmare Baby,
but Smith departed the band during their tour with the group The Jesus and Mary Chain.
Roback was mid way through a two record deal with Rough Trade, so Sandoval took over Smith’s place
on vocals. Both Sandoval and Roback Coming from different musical backgrounds and influences.
Sandoval would tell Quietus ‘David definitely knew more about music and equipment than me",
"He knew more about the Velvet Underground; I didn’t really know their music. Sylvia was
really into them and I was always saying: ‘Turn that off: it’s too noisy’. But when I
started working with David, he turned me on to them. I liked modern stuff like Soul II Soul,
along with Syd Barrett and the Rolling Stones. So it worked, even though we were coming from
different places." IF you’ve read interviews with the pair then you’d know they’re quiet, reserved
and can be socially awkward. Geoff Travis who worked for Rough Trade would tell Uncut magazine
“they’re not your normal rock n’ roll people. I really do think they live in their own world."
Dave and Hope toured as Opal for two years, and worked on the planned second Rough Trade
album called Ghost Highway, but they ended up scrapping the material. Sandoval was unhappy
with the quality of music that the pair came up with and wanted to start fresh so, they formed
a new group called Mazzy Star and headed to Hyde Studios,where they recorded 7 new songs.
These tracks became the basis for Mazzy Star’s debut record,, 1990’s She Hangs Brightly.
A former employee for rough trade would tell the telegraph what happened when
Hope and David flew to britain to 1989 to play one of Opal’s final shows telling the
telegraph “ .Hope and David sat in the Rough Trade office all day long, smoking
and silent. They weren't horrible or anything - they were polite - it was just difficult to
know how to please them. They were only there for two days but it felt like an eternity.'
The band's debut album landed them a spot on Billboard’s alternative songs charts with
their cover of the Slapp Happy song Blue Flower which would peak at number 29. Sandoval’s first
bandmate Sylvia Gomez also penned the song “GIve You My Lovin.” Not only that, but the album would
be one of the strongest debut records of 1990 making the Top 10 on the CMJ New Music Report
survey of college and alternative-rock radio station play lists. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain even
listed the album as his top 50 favorite records. The album still made a mark four years later
when Fade Into You hit it big the track Halah charting as well on the alternative rock charts.
The band’s sound seemed to be heavily influenced by the Paisley Underground,
a California movement that combined psychedelic sounds with rich vocals, that was influenced by
60’s groups like “Love” and “The Byrds.” The band also drew many comparisons to the
group Cowboy Junkies, more specifically their double platinum 1988 album The Trinity session.
But Roback pushed back against these comparisons telling the LA Times
“I’ve never even heard the Cowboy Junkies record,” “But then, I don’t listen to a lot of contemporary
music. I kind of purposely try to avoid it because I don’t want to be influenced by it.
I prefer the Rip Van Winkle approach to art.” In a separate interview Roback would tell the Seattle
Times how song writing actually worked between the pair saying Once Hope and I have a song,
we get together with people in the band; each song's a little different, and we experiment.
A lot of the times it comes together the first time we play it with people" he'd say.
When it came time to promoting the band’s work, Roback did 90% of the talking as Sandoval
was very reserved not talking much about her own personal life or lyrical themes.
Roback would discuss Sandoval during an interview with the Times
“I think Hope deserves a lot of attention,” I think she is a great singer and a great
songwriter. When I first heard her, I though she could be someone like Bob Dylan, someone
who could speak for a lot of people her age.” “I see a lot of hope in her songs,” he said. “It’s
like that movie . . . ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’ Something nice can come out of
a very caustic environment. . . . Something that tells you all isn’t lost" he'd say.
While the band experienced some success with their debut album, they were also suspciious of it
with Roback telling the Independent I think a lot of it is frivolous," "It's like being
popular at school. What does being popular at school mean? It means nothing." Sandoval
meanwhile refused to discuss her lyrics, turned down autograph requests and hated performing live.
However her autograph policy seems to have changed in recent years. She would reveal in an interview
Personally, I have a hard time playing live,” “A big part of it is because the
lyrics are really private. . . . Iseems like a lot of the times
the audience isn’t ready for that,” she said. “A lot of them are just hanging out,
drinking. (There are times) when you can hear the girl alongside of you (in
the audience) talking about her wardrobe or something. It gets that way when you get kind
of popular. You get all these different kinds of people, and some don’t care.
“I used to get really hostile about it,. “I used to just lose my temper
and tell the audience to shut up she'd say. And that was something you could recognize
reading a lot of interviews with the pair. Getting a straight answer or even much of
an answer at all seemed difficult. So why were they press shy to begin with. Well
Sandoval would tell NME it's difficult," "Sometimes they feel like job interviews.
You don't really know the person referring to interviewers you're asked these questions
with Roback adding I just don't think we really feel any need to explain it to anybody,". "Or,
for that matter, to ourselves or each other." referring to the group's music.
Soon after the release of the group’s debut album,
the US branch of Rough Trade records folded, and in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy
the band was traded to major label Capitol records . The band spent the next couple of years
working on the material that was to become their sophomore hit hit “So Tonight That I Might See.”
The album would produce the band’s biggest hit “Fade Into You,” but it may surprise you to know
that many people have misinterpreted the song and the pair never anticipated the single to
take off like it did. The dreamy song whose lyrics talk about heartache and longing, accompanied by
piano and slide guitar is not actually a nostalgic song as Roback would tell Australia News
“It was never intended to be a nostalgic song. Unless you were meant to think about nostalgia
for the present because it really was about the present,”“We used to walk on the beach a
lot and walk around the city, “It came almost at the same time. We weren’t trying to write
a hit song — we were just writing a song.” According to Roback in the same interview,
the music came together pretty quickly with the pair writing the song in one day. The
song would push So Tonight I might see to go platinum selling over 1 million copies
and the song would peak at number 3 on the modern rock charts in america. The single also had
crossover appeal waking at number 44 on the hot 100 charts. Unlike bands who hate their hit songs,
Mazzy Star wasn’t didn't feel that way. David Roback would reveal to Australian News:
“It’s just one of our songs. We play it because we want to play it.”
To many across the pond in the UK, people’s first exposure to the band was in 1994 on the
Jools Holland show in 1994. Also appearing on the show that night was the man in black Johnny Cash
who expressed admiriation for mazzy star’s music and even asked Sandoval
to perform with him on stage, but she declined, citing her nerves.
It was during the mid 90's Sandoval dated the Jesus & Mary Chain's William Reid for three years
and sang on the band's song Sometimes Always. Even after Mazzy Star's success with their 1994
sophomore album the band never looked to the mainstream for cues, let alone understood where
they fit in with the popular music with Roback telling the baltimore sun in 1994 "I don't really
look, personally, to contemporary radio myself to find any kind of a meaningful definition of
accessibility," "We've always just had the attitude that we weren't going to be played
by radio. So we never really tried to fit in. And it still doesn't really seem like we fit it.
So, what happened to the group after their secondalbum?
The band still was kept in the public eye. In addition to touring and television appearances,
the label landed the band some high profile slots appearing in the films batman forever
and stealing beauty. As the band’s label saw it, these two films kept the band in the public eye
while also book ending their demographic with Batman forever appealing to the college
crowd while stealing beauty appealed to the baby boomers.
In 1996, Mazzy Star released their highly anticipated follow up “Among My Swan.”
Upon releasing the album, Capitol Records head of marketing Clark Staub spoke to billboard magazine
and discussed how Mazzy Star’s demographic crossed generations telling the publication “you’re not
just selling to 14 year olds and you’re not just selling to 35 year olds.” in the same interview
Staub pointed to the band’s favorable press coverage with NPR, People and Time Magazine and
surprisingly Martha Stewart Living which included the group’s sophomore record as one of the best
albums to play during a dinner party. Staub would say with a laugh “we didn’t ask for that.”
Among My Swan would be a commercial disappointment for Capitol Records peaking at No. 68 on the
billboard album charts and it would sell less than a ¼ of it’s predecessor. It was during
this time that Sandoval reportedly begged the band’s label to be released from their contract
feeling like a commodity and were tired of record label interferecne revealing to About.com in 2011,
"It seemed record companies wanted bands to be creative because they didn't know how to
manufacture underground music. We could do our own thing and go at our own pace. But that changed
when major labels started wanting bands that would sell 7 million records. They had a formula.
And suddenly all these people wanted to come to the studio to keep track of what we were doing
and make sure we were following that formula. So we got out.” She would tell the LA times in a
separate interview They wanted me to work with big producers. I wanted to produce my music,
and they weren't having that. I'm sure they were happy to let me go." In a separate
interview she would tell Vice she would reveal how bittersweet it was leaving capitol saying
We were really happy, but we were broke. We ran out of money, quick. It was back to the old days,
after that. There were some hard times, but everybody experiences hard time" she'd say.
The band stopped releasing music publicly for almost 13 years and the group went on
a temporary hiatus. Sandoval continued to work with Roback on music during the hiatus but pair
would tell the Guardian “We weren’t really in the mood to release music.”
After Mazzy Star went on hiatus in 1997, Sandoval and Roback drifted into other musical projects.
Sandoval would collaborate with other groups including massive attack and the chemical brothers
She would also start the band Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions with Colm O Ciosig) the
drummer for the reunited My Bloody Valentine. The two began working together after being introduced
by the Jesus and Mary Chain’s William Reid. Hope and Colm would share a house in Berkeley,
where a lot of their first album Bavarian Fruit Bread was recorded, with additional sessions
happening in Ireland and Sonoma County. It was a dream come true for Sandoval
who playhed with an idol over her’s Bert Jansch. She would tell Quietus
"Bert and I did play some guitar together because he was under the impression
that that would be part of the recording process. I just thought he was going to play on his own.
So when he got to the recording studio, he wanted me to play guitar with him,
which was really scary for me. In the end, we just took my guitar parts out and kept his in!"
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions would release several more albums
including 2009’s Through the Devil Softly and 2016’s Until the Hunter.
By the end of the 2000’s questions would come up about Mazzy Star’s future and
how the band had influenced many other groups. Sandoval telling an interviewer:
"We're sort of... sheltered in our own little bubble," says Sandoval. "We...
don't really know... what... outsiders are thinking."
During their hiatus Roback relocated from L.A. to Norway, collaborating with other artists
and even contributing music to art installations. Then in 2012,
Mazzy star finally reunited They completed an 18-date tour of California and Europe
with some dates in 2013 as well. Roback confirming that the band was recording a new album called
Seasons of Your Day. The album was officially released in September 2013. It was a career
high for the band peaking at No. 24 on the UK albums chart and number 42 on the billboard
album charts. However tragedy would strike when Mazzy Star's drummer drummer Keith Mitchell,
who had played on all four of their albums, died on May 14, 2016 after a short battle with cancer.
It had been five years since the band had reunited for a performance, and they would
come together again for a three night series in 2018 at the Sydney Opera House for Vivid Live.
That gig would get media attention because some fans walked out mid performance since hte entire
concert was done in the dark and concert goers expressed their displeasure on social media. The
same month, they released an EP called “Still.”
Roback kept in touch with old Opal bandmate Kendra Smith, and was p,anning on a re-release
of Happy Nightmare Baby and a compilation of their early EPs called “Early Recordings.”
Sadly, he passed away from cancer in Feb, 24th, 2020 before they were released.
Roback was mourned by many fellow musicians an following his death,
Hope Sandoval shared a poem on social media remembering her bandmate saying
“what will we do now that you leave me here. Even though the dark blue
sky is still radiant and filled with comorting sadness that holds us together.”
On the subsequent anniversary of his death she would psot tribute to her friend on social media
In the last year Sandoval would give an interview to rockandrollglobe revealing
what’s been up to lately. In that interview she praised Miley Cyrus cover of Fade Into You
and discussed future plans for music saying Colm and myself haven’t really
talked about what our next plans are as we are both working on other projects,
but I do look forward to doing some more music with those guys. They are all such amazing
musicians. I feel so lucky to know them and have created such great songs and sounds with them.
Just before the pandemic hit, we suffered the loss of David and it was a massive blow.
So everything shut down for me at that moment, and then when the world shut down, it was like
now let’s add fear and loneliness to the grieving. What a nightmare it’s been for everyone she'd say.
She would end the interview with a somber reflection of being 55 years old saying
I’ve suffered a lot of losses and it’s been really difficult … I want to be more like that little
green lizard that loses its tail, then something beautiful happens and her tail grows back and
everything is balanced again. That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure
to hit the like button and subscribe and we'll see you gain on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.