The Trust Fall

Cris Cohen: I get that. Although, what you said earlier, I never thought about it, but now that you mention it, it seems that being on stage in a band is like one of the world's biggest trust fall experiments. You know those trust falls where you fall backwards into someone else's arms? They use it for team building exercises. It seems like a band is one of the ultimate versions of that. The singer is falling backwards into your beat, your groove, your rhythm, and they just have to know, “He is going to be there. He will catch me.”

Sandy Gennaro: Right. And that is why you have rehearsals. That is why a lot of musicians don't get the gigs they go for. And sometimes during rehearsals, everything is hunky dory and there is that trust of falling backwards into somebody's arms. But once you get out on the road and there's no net, so to speak, that's when stuff tends to happen, especially after a certain initial period where the musician gets used to the arrangements and doesn't have to think that much about what's coming next. 

Then they tend to maybe embellish. Or maybe that's the point where your mind tends to wander, where you're attracted to the girl in the fifth row making googly eyes at you or you're thinking about what you're going to have to eat after the gig or whatever. You end up playing more than you have to play. You start getting busy. That's when the singer starts thinking, “The falling back into your arms? You just let my butt hit the floor.” You know what I mean? 

That happens a lot. It happens a lot where, on a lesser scale, Kenny Laguna, Joan Jett’s manager used to give us all the recorded versions of the material and say, Okay, guys, listen to the songs in the set on these original versions, because it's time to get back to basics.” 
​
Because after a while, like I said, you get used to the whole thing. Everything becomes real comfortable. So you're apt to tend to take liberties that you really shouldn't take.

[Full interview]