EX-STRAY CAT BRIAN SETZER: BEYOND BACKLASH

“It started out as a garage band and ended up with Jim and Britt doing the National Enquirer every other week.”

That’s Brian Setzer’s capsule summary of the Stray Cats’ career, and while Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom’s tabloid-perfect marriage to actress Britt Ekland neatly symbolizes the conflicts that contributed to the band’s demise, Setzer thinks that the problems can be traced to the rockabilly trio’s meteoric rise.

“The band worked really good for five years, and then everyone’s perception just changed,” noted Setzer, 27, who makes his first local post-Stray Cats appearance tonight at the Beverly Theatre.

“First of all, we became popular, so everybody had to hate us,” he continued, speaking by phone from a tour stop in Phoenix. “That was hard for me to deal with because I was still playing the kind of stuff that I loved.

“And then the corporate headquarters made us play these arenas, which really dulled me. I mean, the biggest the Stray Cats should have ever gotten was to play a theater, and we were in these half-filled arenas, and Jim loved it and I hated it. We were just kind of drifting apart in a lot of ways.

“I didn’t like some of the rock star attitudes that some people (in the band) were starting to get--the whole thing, the cover of People magazine. That’s where I thought the band made a bad turn.”

The Stray Cats formed 10 years ago after Long Islander Setzer encountered Gene Vincent’s imposing “Be-Bop-A-Lula” on a jukebox and adopted the early-rock sound and look as vehicle for fun and rebellion.

After a long struggle in the underground--including a key relocation to England--the Stray Cats were suddenly the hottest thing in rock, thanks largely to the high visibility of their videos on the newly influential MTV.

That led to the inevitable backlash. A band that would have been embraced by rock cognoscenti if it had stayed in back-alley clubs was dismissed as a superficial fad. That still makes Setzer sore.

“People came to see us and we knocked ‘em dead,” he said. “We were a great band.”

Great band, maybe, but while Setzer believes that rockabilly “is as firmly planted in American music as the blues,” its limitations eventually caught up with him.

“Musically, I just wasn’t getting turned on by it too much anymore. I think the band ran its course. I didn’t want to make another rockabilly album.”

So he split up the Stray Cats in late 1984. While his former colleagues mutated into Phantom, Rocker & Slick, Setzer didn’t do much--and not because he was caught up in the excesses of the rock-star life style.

“I got caught up in more like the country life style,” said Setzer, who remained in Long Island. “I wasn’t doing anything. I would never go into the city, I’d just kind of sit home and play with my dogs, play softball.”

He credits record producer Jimmy Iovine with giving him “a kick in the butt to write some new songs.” And his solution to his Long Island isolation was to move to Hollywood, where he has more friends and there’s more musical activity to keep him busy.

Setzer says that in his first solo album, “The Knife Feels Like Justice,” he “just wanted to get a little deeper lyrically and have my guitars be heard for once.”

The LP has traces of Tom Petty, the Byrds and John Cougar Mellencamp (the latter’s co-producer Don Gehman was at the board), so it’s no surprise to hear Setzer say, “I feel part of the young American band movement. I feel I’m probably on par with bands that are up and coming these days--Lone Justice, the Del-Lords, young American bands like that.”

What he doesn’t appreciate is the dreaded Boss comparison.

“I remember reading somewhere that I’m trying to save the American worker--it’s the Bruce Springsteen syndrome. (The writer) was talking about ‘Maria’

“ ‘Maria’ is about a Mexican girl I know who ran (across the border) into Texas. It’s just a true story.”

While critical response to “Knife” has been mixed, its sales figures haven’t exactly erased the memory of the Stray Cats. The album is drifting down the charts after failing to crack the Top 40, but Setzer says he isn’t bothered.

“I just wanted to make a record that I could sit back and listen to. It would have been nice if it had been a huge hit, but it did fairly well. I’m not disappointed.

“My main concern is that the band sounds great, the band’s cooking, and that the live shows are going over well. I’ll just go back and make another one.”