Leroy - remember his name

"Leroy," Hollywood Records.

A recent survey conducted by the trade magazine Radio & Records found that 9 percent of Americans have never heard of the name Paul McCartney. NEVER HEARD OF IT.

Many of these Americans are no doubt the young people who swoon along to `N Sync, mosh along to Limp Bizkit or cruise along to Outkast.

While ignorance of pop music`s colorful history may seem distressing, it represents a natural and inevitable progression away from the past. To some of today`s musicians, it even represents a uniquely beneficial opportunity.

"Young kids don`t know what retro is," claims L.A.`s Leroy, "so they look at what I do as totally new. They see my clothes and sunglasses and just freak out. To them it`s a whole new thing. I get kids with Metallica T-shirts coming up to me, telling me, `I love this. Where did you come from?`"

Leroy (who does not use his Germanic surname, Miller), performs a `70s funk/rock/soul amalgam layered over modern hip-hop beats. It`s described by its author in terms as colorful as the notes.

"My music`s got some ass in it," he says, calling from the road in Delaware recently, where he was opening for Aerosmith.

Released earlier this summer, Leroy`s self-titled debut album opens like an old Motown 45, hissing and crackling as it leads into the dense, kitchen-sink funk of "Be My Lover," "Don`t Look Back" and its minor-hit first single, "Good Time."

"Somebody`s got to bring back the funk and I think I got a really good shot, because I know for a fact that my stuff is absolutely original and fresh compared to everything else out there," Leroy says. "I`m seeing it every night when I play. People are freaking out on this."

A native of Spokane, Wash., Leroy has been writing and playing his own songs since exactly one day after his first guitar lesson.

"My teacher taught me a handful of chords, so I memorized them real quick and started making up my own songs with those chords. To me, it was just normal."

Leroy was 9 years old at the time.

"After my next lesson, I said, `Can I play you this?` And I whipped out three of my own songs. And my teacher looked over his glasses and tripped out. I don`t think he`d ever had a student of any age who had ever written a song. He called my dad and said, `Whatever you do, you have to make sure that he continues to do this!`"

Leroy`s father, an amateur musician, was highly receptive.

"In fact, I think my dad kind of vicariously lives through me," Leroy says. "He`s always been very creative and I think he wanted to be in the entertainment business when he was younger. But it was just such an intangible thing for him, so he went another route. He went into the military, was a TV anchorman for years, and moved on to other things."

To pay back his father`s support, Leroy samples some of his 1953 high-school orchestra on a "Leroy" song called "Error of My Ways."

"I was at my mom and dad`s home and I found this old record," Leroy remembers. "My dad goes, `That`s my high school band.` So I listened to it and sampled this string snippet and it worked out really good.

"The good thing about it is, I don`t have to worry about getting sued!"

Leroy migrated to Hollywood in the early `90s, giving himself exactly two years to succeed (and extensions every two years thereafter).

"I pumped gas at a 76 station, installed cable and read gas meters," he says. "It was not fun, but it was good money."

His evenings were spent gigging in dives until Hollywood Records took note, signing him in early 1999.

Leroy (who has no affiliation with a similarly named and gifted artist, the Incredible Moses Leroy) sees himself on a mission to veer rock music away from its current obsession with hate, back to love.

"If there`s one thing I`ve gotten really tired of is mosh pits," he says, "because they take away from listening to the music. All they are is a vehicle for these people to get wound up. It`s so unsatisfying, in my opinion. And I think you`re gonna start to see more artists that have music that nobody`s gonna mosh to. They`re actually gonna enjoy the music, feel safe and have a really good feeling watching it, and it won`t be because they got smashed up in a mosh pit.

"I`ve got nothing against a band like Limp Bizkit," Leroy hedges. "They got dope grooves and they`re heavy. I like them. I`m just saying that eventually things change and kids grow up.

"They can`t mosh their whole lives."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Corey Levitan