Tower of Power Just Won’t Go Away : Fad bands come and go like seasons, but this one is going strong after 27 years. It plays at the Ventura Theatre on Friday.

Psychedelic hippies, disco divas, metal meatheads, glittery glamsters, pogo-powered punks, raunchy rappers, groaning garage grunge gripers, techno twerps--rock’s Next Big Thing comes and goes, yet Tower of Power keeps coming on.

Founded in 1968 in Oakland as the Motowns by Emilio Castillo, Stephen (Doc) Kupka Francis (Rocco) Prestia and Greg Adams, Tower of Power has the funk, soul and R&B; market figured out. Powered by its world-famous and very in-demand horn section, the 10-piece band is finishing up its 15th album (due out about August) and will bring its hefty musical resume to the venerable Ventura Theatre for a Friday evening show.

Castillo, tenor sax player, background vocalist, songwriter, producer and the only man whose career was inspired by a stolen T-shirt, spoke during a break at the studio.

It’s hard to find a CD that the horn section hasn’t played on, giving one the impression that the horn section could play 365 days a year. Are you guys that popular?

Not really. People get the impression that we’re always in the studio, but that’s not the case. Sometimes, we do stuff as a group, or other times, we do stuff individually.

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You’ve been everywhere--how do you survive on the road?

Just treat everybody with respect, that way, you’ll be treated the same way. We’ve been doing this so long, we’ve got it down to a science.

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I can tell you’ve done these interviews before.

Yes, a lot of them. I’m sort of the spokesman.

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How did the band get started?

I got caught stealing a T-shirt, and my dad told me that if I didn’t find something better to do, he’d never let me out of my room for a year. That was back when the Beatles were real big, and I decided I wanted to be a musician. So my dad bought me a saxophone and bought a drum set for my brother.

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Cool dad. What was it like playing with all those famous rock stars 20 years ago?

It was a lot of fun, an exciting time. The Bay Area was the musical mecca then. We played a lot of gigs with Boz Scaggs and also the Pointer Sisters, Aretha Franklin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, all those bands. We closed Winterland and the Fillmore West.

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Tell me a Bill Graham story?

He used to always have us play his private Christmas party. It was the early ‘80s, and we were kinda down on our luck. He came up to me and said, “Go to the dressing room; I want to talk to you privately.” I thought he was going to get mad because he caught someone getting high in the bathroom or something. We’re sitting in the dressing room, just he and I, and he says, “I’m going to give you something, I don’t care what you do with it--but I had a pretty good year, and I love you guys. You can keep it all, split it with the band--I don’t care. Just don’t tell anybody.” He hands me an envelope with $10,000 cash in it. I called in the other nine guys in the band and split it up.

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Most bands last about 10 minutes after they paint their name on the drum set. How do you account for the band’s longevity?

We just won’t go away. We’re very fortunate. We have a unique style of music. We’re not the basic five-piece rock band, and we have very loyal fans that give us the incentive to keep on making good music. Also, this is kind of an exciting time in our career. We have a new drummer, Herman Mathews, and a new lead singer, Brent Carter. We spent a lot of time writing new songs for this album. In fact, we have an excess for this album, some real good tunes.

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It seems like you guys go though lead singers like popcorn at the drive-in.

Well, every so often, we make a change. The last guy lasted quite a while, six years, but we’ve had a lot of great singers.

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Who goes to see Tower of Power?

We get all kinds of people. We have our old fans from the ‘70s who have spawned a new generation who grew up listening to their parents’ music. Then lately, we’ve been getting these real young kids, and when we play in Europe, almost all of our fans are under 20 years old. We don’t have any halfway fans--they’re all fanatics.

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Is Tower of Power the only band that could have a fluegelhorn duet?

You might be right.

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Anything you haven’t done yet?

There’s still a few places we haven’t played yet, Tahiti, the Caymans. Also, we’d like to do a movie, work on a movie score. Right now, we’re just gonna go out there and spread some good original music around.

Details

* WHAT: Tower of Power, Mercy & the Merkettes.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday.

* WHERE: Ventura Theatre, 26 Chestnut St., Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: $18.50.

* CALL: 648-1888.