O’Neal and Busboys Are Making Up for Lost Time

The Busboys appeared poised for stardom six years ago. Already at the forefront of the L.A. new-wave scene, the group had two albums on Arista Records and a flashy appearance in the Eddie Murphy smash film “48 HRS.” that looked like a sure path to national attention.

Then the Busboys hit the wall.

“Money Don’t Make No Man,” due out next week, is the band’s first album release since 1982--a period marked by protracted arguments with their record company over the quality of their material.

You’d expect the band’s leader Brian O’Neal to be bitter over the Busboys’ fall from grace, but the lanky singer/keyboardist insists that’s not the case.

“I didn’t get soured on the business, I got hip to it,” said O’Neal, 30, sitting in his Silver Lake home. “A large portion of what didn’t happen in terms of greater success for the Busboys had to do with the fact there were things I just didn’t know. I came out of my mother’s garage and did the first album. There’s nothing like experience, believe me.”

O’Neal--who leads the Busboys in concert at the Palace tonight--hopes to recover some of the ground lost over the last six years, a time that also included a series of personnel changes--among them the exit of O’Neal’s bassist and younger brother Kevin.

This turn of events seemed unlikely in 1980 when the Gardena-based sextet was a local favorite. With their two Arista LPs, “Minimum Wage Rock & Roll” (1980) and “American Worker” (‘82), the mostly black group tried to bridge the then-gaping rift between rock, R&B; and quirky pop.

So what happened?

“I was submitting material to Arista and the response was less than enthusiastic,” O’Neal explained of the post-”48 HRS.” period. “But there were a lot of dynamics to the situation. Arista president Clive Davis and I sought ways to make the Busboys happen and we couldn’t find enough common ground. I’m always very hesitant to comment on the Arista situation because people naturally want to assume there’s a smoking gun and that there was this negativity, and there never was.

“About two years ago, I realized I’d been there for so long without having product--I’d had a lot of material (turned down)--that we’d reached a stalemate. When it was time to go, I just called Clive and said, ‘Please, my friend, I have a life to lead.’ ”

While the previous Busboys albums were rock-oriented and attracted a mostly white audience, the new “Money Don’t Make No Man”--one of the first releases by the Capitol-distributed Voss label--offers a harder funk edge--even though the band is now more racially integrated than before.

“I gotta grab a lot of the people that lived around me in South Central L.A., which is where I was for most of the Busboys’ career,” O’Neal said. “They can play it in their cars real loud. The Busboys became an equal-opportunity band but the music got blacker.”

O’Neal claims he’s not bitter over the Busboys’ lack of recognition as one of the first acts to cross-pollinate rock and R&B; in the late ‘70s. “I can remember when we were doing our early club gigs and Prince would come hide in the back. I know what kind of impact we had, but I don’t want a trophy for it.”

He’s also not concerned that many of the bands with whom he shared a Roxy or Whisky stage in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s have moved on while his career seemed to stall.

“It’s all a matter of perception,” he argued. “ ’48 HRS.’ was probably seen by 50 million people. We performed for another 2 million. I’ve managed to keep my health and sanity and make a little bit more money every year. It would always seem funny to me when people would say, ‘X has made it really big.’ To me, they were just out there doing their job too.”

O’Neal doesn’t feel he has anything to prove here in his hometown, even if many of the tastemakers wrote off the Busboys years ago.

“The bottom line is I have so much confidence in myself, my group and my record that, quite honestly, I don’t have to prove anything but that I’m still here to entertain and that I’m still rockin.’ ”