The Cowboys: 1980s Seattle Rockers who helped make playing cool, original songs possible at a time of Cover-Band stranglehold.

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IN TRIBUTE to IAN FISHER:

1956-2007

A True Rock ‘n Roll Cowboy.

In 1998, Chuckie-Boy Records was pleased to release “Jet City Rockers", the first collection to gather up a bunch of The Cowboys' various songs, photos, and a couple great and illuminating essays into one rockin' package. BOB NEWMAN, of "Details" Magazine and "The Rocket" (legendary Northwest music paper), and noted Musician, Journalist, and Certified Contrarian JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER (Thrown-Ups, James Bong, The Bats) told the tale of how The Cowboys helped blaze the Trail.

A small quantity of the original pressing of "Jet City Rockers" is available--Details on the ‘Shop’ page.

Meantime, a brief excerpt from JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER’S tale, “The Ones With the Arrows in Their Backs”... from the “Jet City Rockers” CD Booklet:

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“The Pacific Northwest has always cranked out hard-rocking musicians. Ray Charles in the '50's. The Sonics, The Kingsmen, and Jimi Hendrix in the '60's. In fact, the rock explosion emanating from these precincts in the late '80's and early '90's was no big surprise, in light of Seattle's illustrious past.

The only mystery is: what the hell happened in the '70s? During this Great Darkness, the biggest things going were Top-40 cover-band abominations. I'm telling you, there, was nothing going on.

But as the dismal decade ground to a close, seismic activity deep below the cinder cone of Northwest music began to register once again.

New wave, punk rock, power pop, whatever you wanted to call it. A distant echo of The Sonics was resonating back at the source. London was calling, and Seattle was answering the phone. Bands like The Moberleys and The Girls appeared on the scene, and even dared to put out their own records.

The Cowboys contribution is best understood in this context: At the time, the fact that a local band would even try to write high energy, creative, original music was revolutionary., and that they could attract fans for that original music was ground-breaking.

The fact is, The Cowboys also inspired literally hundreds of other musicians, many of whom the world has since come to know well.

The Cowboys helped blaze the trail in a way that woke everyone up...”.

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From The Seattle Times, Nov.13, 2007:

The Cowboys’ singer had spirit of rock ‘n’ roll

On some nights in the early 1980s, jumping and gyrating on stage at yet another Seattle rock club, putting every bit of energy into belting...

By Erik Lacitis, Seattle Times staff reporter

On some nights in the early 1980s, jumping and gyrating on stage at yet another Seattle rock club, putting every bit of energy into belting each song, Ian Fisher would sweat through three or four sets of clothes.

Sometimes, when he peeled off drenched, tight leather pants, the black dye covered every bit of the lower half of his body.

During the half-dozen years ending in 1986, when his band, The Cowboys, disbanded, few individuals represented the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll here as well as Mr. Fisher.

“I’m a rock and roll cowboy!” Mr. Fisher would scream out in one of the signature songs of his band, a group that played British-inspired power pop. Young women — and young men — filled the dance floor and shouted back the lyrics to original tunes that fused New Wave, reggae and roots rock ‘n’ roll.

Mr. Fisher died of a heart attack early on the morning of Oct. 23 on Samui Island in Thailand. He was 51.

Mr. Fisher was staying at the Ubon Villa, a low-budget collection of bungalows on Maenam Beach, which for about 20 years he visited annually during the Seattle fall and winter.

After The Cowboys called it quits, Mr. Fisher took up house painting, earning enough money working for a half-year in Seattle to spend the rest of the year trekking through Tibet, Cambodia and Laos and then ending up at Ubon Villa.

Eventually, the rock ‘n’ roll life got to Mr. Fisher — the endless club gigs and earning maybe $100 or $150 a week after expenses for the four-man band.

He said in a Seattle Times interview in 1998, “I gave it everything. Then I got tired. If you’re looking for a tag story, it’s about having that fire in your belly. I couldn’t care about it anymore.”

But while it lasted, it was magic.

His legacies

He was credited by younger musicians as their inspiration for taking up rock ‘n’ roll.

Another of his legacies is that because of The Cowboys’ success and that of another local band, The Heats, in playing their original songs, Seattle club owners in the 1980s could no longer insist that bands play covers of groups such as Led Zeppelin.

Among Mr. Fisher’s many fans was Charles R. Cross, author of biographies of musicians Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, and editor in the 1980s of The Rocket, a now-defunct Seattle music magazine.

Cross remembered hosting a 15th-anniversary party in 1994 for the music magazine, inviting numerous music celebrities who live in the area.

“The irony was that a lot of those guys were extremely impressed to meet Ian Fisher, the person there who had the least amount of commercial and financial success. He was the one who acted most like a rock star,” Cross said.

“At a different time and a different place, he’d have been in the Billboard charts. But the difference between talent and stardom is luck. The Cowboys had talent and they lacked luck.”

By the time The Cowboys dissolved, a new rock genre was taking over — grunge.

Both Mr. Fisher and Kurt Cobain, lead singer for Nirvana, which led the Seattle grunge scene, were born in the blue-collar city of Aberdeen.

Mr. Fisher was born on Sept. 26, 1956, the third of five children. His first job after high school was in Kent, making ladders for $600 a month.

He lived in a studio apartment, and in his spare time, wrote about 120 songs.

In early 1979, Mr. Fisher had met three other rock musicians who wanted to start a band.

By then, Mr. Fisher had changed his first name from “Scott” to “Ian”, believing a British-sounding name would make him more noticeable.

And, for a time, said his brother Pepper Fisher, of Port Angeles, Mr. Fisher also took “to faking an English accent to get attention. … He wanted to get in a band.”

Besides his brother Pepper, Mr. Fisher is survived by his father, Robert Fisher, of Hoquiam; his mother, Shirley Evans, of Olympia; two sisters, Susan Fisher, of Seattle, and Bobbi Douglas, of Olympia; and brother, Ernie Fisher, of Seattle.

Remembrances

A memorial for Mr. Fisher, with members of The Cowboys, as well as band members of other rock bands from that era, will be held at the Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave, N.W., beginning at 7 p.m. on Dec. 2.

Mr. Fisher was cremated at Samui Island, and a Buddhist ceremony was held at a local temple.

Some of the ashes “will be scattered at the sea and some will be sent to his brother in Seattle,” Kwanjai Jitmung said in an e-mail. Her family owns the Ubon Villa.

And, she said, according to Buddhist tradition, some of Mr. Fisher’s ashes “will be put in a bowl and put inside a small house at the temple. … We love him like our family, and we will keep him in our heart forever.”

In 1998, Mr. Fisher wrote for The Times a stream-of-consciousness remembrance of how it was for him in the 1980s.

Fisher wrote:“Young people came out in droves, wearing New Wave gear from head to toe, shoes man, the chicks wore the sexiest shoes back then, the hair, the asymmetric cuts, big hair, colored hair, bleached, waxed, sprayed, buttons and belts and zippers, a lot of zipper clothes, black checked shirts, thin lapelled jackets, skin tight skirts, pants you had to paint on to wear them, yuppies, dudes, punkers, wannabes, divorcees, coke dealers everywhere, man it was insane, and the whole thing rolled and rolled ’til finally the wheels fell off and a lot of the bands and fans crawled back home exhausted, some of them realized they had husbands and wives and kids and jobs. … “

Above: Live Video of The Cowboys ,at Astor Park, Seattle, as seen "live" on KING-TV's "REV" show...introduced by Marian Seymour, a noted radio personality on KZAM-FM at the time. Video from Kris Lilly/Digital Carousel.

Ian Fisher: Tribute to a Seattle rock star

By Gene Stout, Seattle P-I. Dec.3, 2007.

Ian Fisher’s spirit loomed large Sunday night at the Tractor Tavern.

Friends, fans, fellow musicians and ’80s scenesters gathered for a noisy tribute to the former Cowboys frontman, who died in late October while living in Thailand. (Check out our video of the opening remarks by Seattle radio veteran Stephen Rabow and Fisher’s brother, Pepper Fisher, below.) Attendees are also posting comments on the Cowboys’ Web site.

The event was like a big, boisterous high school reunion for Seattle’s rock scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Despite sadness over the loss of one of the city’s most flamboyant rock singers, the mood was buoyant and celebratory. Many reconnected with friends from the heady days of Seattle’s power-pop scene.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” said guitarist Ernie Sapiro, who traveled from Denver to attend the tribute and play with other former Cowboys as well as musical guests from other bands.

“It’s surreal. He was like a brother,” Sapiro added wistfully.

People described Fisher as “one of a kind,” “a beautiful spirit” and “a real gentleman.”

Many acknowledged that a Nov. 2 Big Blog post about Fisher’s passing had helped friends, fans, family members and fellow musicians reconnect with each other and organize a tribute just a few weeks after his death.

The evening included opening remarks by Seattle radio veteran Stephen Rabow (who flew in from Florida) and Fisher’s brother, Pepper Fisher; a 15-minute video of Fisher’s life and career (created by Krys Lilly, wife of Keith Lilly of The Heats), and a raucous, 20-song set featuring such songs as “Girls Like That”, “Standing in the Rain”, “Jet City Rockers” and “Roll ‘n’ Roll Cowboy”, one of The Cowboys’ signature songs.

“Ian wouldn’t have wanted a moment of silence,” Rabow said before leading a cheer.

The Cowboys, who broke up in the mid-’80s, laid a foundation for the grunge explosion that followed in the late ’80s. The band, along with other power-pop groups of the late ’70s and early ’80s, convinced club owners that their original songs — and not just popular cover songs — could draw large crowds.

The video included footage from a 1997 Cowboys reunion show at “A Pain in the Grass ,” a summer concert series at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheatre.

“Pain in the Grass” producer Jeff Gilbert, who was among the more than 300 people crammed into the Tractor, recalled working hard to make the reunion happen.

“You’re not going to make me do this, are you?” Fisher told Gilbert. But when other band members agreed to do the show, Fisher was completely behind it.

“He was a good sport,” Gilbert said.

In other video footage, Michael Stein of Seattle’s Chuckie-Boy Records (the Cowboys label) said, “Ian, you’re singing lead vocals in a great band in the sky.”

The Presidents’ Dave Dederer, who was one of the performers, had been a fan of The Cowboys when he was a teenager. He quipped that he had to prove to the doorman that he was old enough to attend the show.

It was amazing how well The Cowboys songs have held up — and how good the band and its guests sounded. The tribute band included Dederer, Sapiro, Jack Hanan, Jeff Cerar (now living in Los Angeles), Don Kellerman, Marty Waychoff, Paul Brownlow and Mark Guenther, as well as singers Rick Smith (of The Lonesome City Kings), Steve Pearson (The Heats, Rangehoods) and Jim Basnight (The Moberlys, Jim Basnight Band). Joey Reid took over production on a chaotic night.

Smith, who lives in Austin, Texas, and has worked with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Don Walser, capably handled most of vocals and brought a fiery enthusiasm to the show that recalled Fisher’s unforgettable performances.

As several noted afterward, “There was a lot of love in the room.”

The COWBOYS:
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IAN FISHER—Vocals

JACK HANAN—Bass/Vocals

JEFF CERAR—Guitar/Vocals

MARTY WAYCHOFF—Drums

• DEAN HELGESON – Drums

• ERNIE SAPIRO—Guitar/Vocals

• MARK BORDEN—Drums

• MARK GUENTHER—Drums

• PAUL BROWNLOW—Keyboards/Vocals

Ride On.