Been There, Done That : The Call Singer, in O.C. Tonight, Reached Way Back to Lift ‘80s Fog

There’s a standard joke in films about floundering athletic teams that need resuscitation, inwhich the new coach confronts his unpromising troops and decides to start with plainest basics: “Gentlemen, this is a basketball.”

Michael Been’s rock ‘n’ roll career wasn’t necessarily on a losing streak at the end of 1990, but his band, the Call, was exhausted after years on the road and needed a break. Been, who had felt generally uninspired by the musical climate of the 1980s, decided that he needed to recharge his musical spirits by going back to the plainest basics he had learned when he was 9 or 10 years old. For Been, who plays tonight at the Coach House, music began with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and Moby Grape.

“I got my vinyl records out, the things that first really, really excited me,” Been recalled recently over the phone from a tour stop in Denver. “I needed a new inspiration that I wasn’t really finding in current music. I was trying to recapture a lot of those first feelings. Not to go back and make a ‘60s record, but to go back and fall in love again.”

Been’s sessions with his turntable seem to have helped. His first solo album, “On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough,” is full of crunchy rock vigor and high-reaching lyricism. Released in April, the album offers plenty of fun for listeners who like to play the name-that-influence game. Isn’t that a hybrid of Muddy Waters and U2’s groove-oriented “Achtung Baby” style on “Us,” the leadoff track? Is that Cream or Canned Heat or Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” he’s quoting in “This World” (or maybe all three)?

Elsewhere one detects a Doorsy touch here, a glimmer of Pink Floyd there, some husky Springsteenian emoting on the lament “Worried.” On “This Way,” a lean, sinewy and anxious momentum pays obvious homage to another of Been’s favorites, Joy Division. In the middle of it all is a cover of the Yardbirds hit “For Your Love.” It’s one of rock’s mustiest bar-band oldies, but Been gives it the kind of juice that shakes off the dust and makes you hear the song afresh as an epic statement of high romanticism.

Been said his new record company, Qwest/Reprise, had originally expected an album by the Call, which had turned out seven albums from 1982 to 1990. The Call had gained extensive album-rock play for such songs as “Everywhere I Go,” “I Still Believe” and “The Walls Came Down,” winning a reliable following on the national club circuit.

With the Call taking a break, Been spent 1991 working on his first film score, for the Paul Schrader-directed “Light Sleeper” (Been says he got the gig in unlikely fashion: Schrader got turned on to the Call by a favorable review in Playboy magazine, written by Chris Hillman, the former Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Desert Rose Band member).

In 1993, Been resumed recording with two other Call founders, drummer Scott Musick and guitarist Tom Ferrier (a fourth member, keyboard player Jim Goodwin, had left, citing road-weariness). But the new songs sounded sufficiently different to merit a new designation as solo works by Been, who had been the Call’s singer and songwriter.

“We did it as a solo record, rather than live up to or down to anybody’s expectations,” Been said. “I didn’t want to disappoint people who expected a Call record, and I wanted to play with other people. (Calling it a Michael Been album) allowed a bit more freedom.”

For one track, Been recruited Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen, the original rhythm section of one of his favorite bands, Gang of Four. Ralph Patlan, a guitarist Been had met in Texas during a Call tour, played a prominent part, and has joined Musick and Ferrier in a touring lineup behind the bass-playing Been (whose name rhymes with “seen”).

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Unchanged from Been’s Call period are his lyrical themes, which are full of self-examination and yearning for some sort of transcendent connection between lovers, or between the earthly and the eternal.

Been, whose twangy Western accent reflects his childhood roots in Oklahoma City, says he knew by age 7 he wanted to be a musician. The family moved to Illinois when he was 12. He went to college there, but left to follow his musical calling. Been headed to California, where the Call came together in Santa Cruz in 1979.

When he was 19, Been married his college sweetheart, Carol. Their only child, Robert, was born a few years later, around the time the band started. Keeping a family and a rock career together “hasn’t been easy, but I’ve managed to do it,” said the rocker, who now lives in Berkeley.

“My wife has her own career going (as a psychotherapist), and that’s the reason it has worked. It’s really rough for a musician to be married if your wife doesn’t have her own vision of her own life. If she lives through her husband and is constantly waiting for him to come home, it doesn’t work. (Music) is a self-absorbing kind of occupation.”

Been is thoughtful about the spiritual element in his music, which for a time even won the Call some attention in Christian-rock circles. Been said a good deal of that following fell away, however, after he took an acting role as one of Jesus’ disciples in “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Director Martin Scorcese’s controversial merger of deep spirituality and imaginative speculation made for an excellent film, but it found no friends in conservative religious quarters where anything but a literal reading of the Bible was shunned as blasphemy.

“I was raised in the South, and (Christianity) permeates your life pretty seriously down there,” Been said. “When I was younger, I rejected it all because of the obvious hypocrisies and obvious pettiness and orthodoxies. As you grow older, some of the things that weren’t so obvious kind of stay with you. It’s a struggle to figure out what was a lie about it, and what was true about it.

“My particular spirituality isn’t too much based on some kind of cosmic relationship. It isn’t all walking on air, up in the clouds and looking for answers or inspiration in some kind of otherworldly thing. The spiritual aspect of life usually comes to me through people. It’s pretty much acted out in relation with other people. I think there’s a point to it all. I can’t really figure out what it is, but as corny as it is, I know it has something to do with love, something to do with (reaching) outside ourselves.”

Been’s songs examine both connections achieved, and potential connections short-circuited by human fallibility. It’s all played out with Been’s characteristic emotional fervor and big-scale intensity of feeling.

“When those feelings are expressed, they seem to be huge, but they’re only huge because of the cultural situation we’re in, which is so blank,” Been said. “Most of us, including me, spend most of our time pretty unfeeling, pretty repressed. You’re really happy, sitting in a nice house, watching television and eating your dinner, and you see this stuff on Rwanda or Bosnia. How could you finish your meal if you were really connected to all your feelings? I think something’s really wrong when I realize I can. There’s got to be some incredible numbness in my life, that I can shut down those feelings and go on. People take as much as they can, and when they find they can’t take any more, they turn off. You shut down vast portions of yourself in order to survive.”

Perhaps the television network’s satellite dish is the new tree of knowledge, claiming the innocence of beholders who are forced into numbness in the face of horror. But Been sees possibility and challenge in our current state.

“That is in some way the greatness of the times we live in. It isn’t possible to be ignorant any more. Now we have to take some kind of responsibility.”

At 38, Been is starting to think about helping along a new generation of musicians. His son, now 15, makes his recording debut playing bass on one track from “Nervous Breakthrough,” and Been says it’s obvious he is going to make his way in music.

“I’ve helped him along, but he’s definitely gifted. I think it’s already in the cards, he’s definitely going to be a musician. His grades went down, all the telltale signs. I’m not concerned with his mathematics grade or how well he’s doing in Spanish--it doesn’t seem to matter. The people I feel the most compassion for are the people who are 19, 20 or older and don’t know what to get into. That’s a terrible place to be, if you don’t have a vision of your life.”

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Been says he doesn’t envision working too closely with his son.

“He’s so good that it would be much better if he was on his own. He doesn’t need me.”

But Been hopes to work as a mentor-producer with other young musicians, “finding guys who are 20 years old, and helping them avoid all the mistakes. I’d like to be able to take some band the shortest distance between two points, rather than these ridiculous detours (in the music business) that can be calamitous.”

Been offers this bit of free mentoring for those who might be able to use it: “Too many bands are too greatly affected by their influences. I think it’s great to have a lot of influences, so you can take from each one but come out with something that’s your own. If you are too much in love with one band, it’s a disaster musically. You lose yourself.”

* Michael Been, Vigilantes of Love and Psychic Rain play tonight at 8 o’clock at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $18.50. (714) 496-8930.