Pablo Cruise’s Cory Lerios on the band’s enduring legacy ahead of their May 1 Knuckleheads show

Pablo Cruise. // image courtesy the artist

Pablo Cruise plays Knuckleheads on Friday, May 1. Details on that show here.

The long-running San Francisco pop-rock band has been making music for over five decades now.

Emerging from members of psychedelic rockers Stoneground and It’s A Wonderful Day, the band’s music would become part of the ’70s smooth rock explosion alongside fellow Bay Area bands like the Doobie Brothers and Journey. While never quite reaching the heights of their compatriots, songs such as “Whatcha Gonna Do?,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Love Will Find a Way,” and “Don’t Want to Live Without It” are irresistible earworms which still bring audiences to their feet.

We hopped on the phone with keyboardist and vocalist Cory Lerios, one of Pablo Cruise’s founding members, to talk about the band’s genesis, their lengthy career, and his own work in scoring music for film and television.

The Pitch: I’ve always been curious as to how Pablo Cruise came out of Stoneground, because it feels like that is a very distinct shift in sound.

Cory Lerios: God, yes. That was the reason we came outta Stoneground–we weren’t real thrilled. Stoneground was a fun band to be in and everything, but musically, it wasn’t really what we were doing or what we wanted to do. Steve Price, our drummer, and myself made two records with Stoneground on Warner Brothers and we weren’t really happy with them. And then at the end, Dave Jenkins came along and played some bass for us over at Stoneground, and the three of us got together and said, “Let’s talk about putting another band together,” which is what we did.

Stoneground got to do some fun things. You are in a Hammer movie [Dracula A.D. 1972].

Yeah, I know. Yeah, no, Stoneground was fun. It was a kind of a sort of breaking ground for Steve and I, because we were banging around the Bay Area and playing, and we had a band called Together. Steve and I have been playing since we were in high school. To get into Stoneground and then sign with Warner Brothers, just opened the path to start thinking about other things, and so it was a lot of fun, and the people in the band were really nice. It was a huge band. It had 11 people. So it was a lot to deal with.

Yeah, not a lot of San Francisco psych rock bands getting trips to be in movies in London, that’s for sure.

They were actually popular over there before we joined. They had a following over in England and so that’s how we ended up over there. We did two months over there of touring. It was pretty hardcore, but we played all over the place.

You mentioned that you and Steve Price had been friends since high school, so I imagine it had to have been like a real joy when he rejoined the band last year.

It’s been good–really good–to have him back, for sure. He made the records with Dave and I, and the band really, it’s very solid. This is the best band we’ve ever had, ’cause we have two other members that are not original members, but they’ve been with us for quite some time, and they’re phenomenal on all levels.

Robbie Wyckoff has taken over a lot of the lead vocals for us, and he’s just a great singer, great entertainer. Robbie was with Roger Waters for six years doing all the David Gilmour stuff, and Larry Antonino, who’s playing bass, has a similar background playing with a lot of other people, but Larry’s been with us almost 16 years now.

The band split for a decade, from 1986 to 1996, and you didn’t rejoin until 2004, but during your time when you weren’t in Pablo Cruise, you definitely found a way to fill that musical void. You’ve done so much work for film and television and it was interesting. What was it like to return to live performance after all of that solo making music in a studio for TV shows and things like that?

Yeah, it was a good departure. I mean, I had gotten married, and Pablo Cruise was still on the road, and I went out on one tour, and actually, this was the early ’80s after I got married, and I made just a decision as to whether or not I wanna be married or be on the road. Being able to compose and being able to have that in my back pocket was a great way to a great departure, ’cause I never left the studio, I never left being in front of my keyboards.

I was very fortunate, and I landed some great shows and had some great people to work with, and it was a great opportunity to be able to make a living and get out of touring. I was off for over 20 years and the opportunity came up. I just really kinda liked that space. It was really like a day job: you’d go in and,you’d get in the studio and you wouldn’t leave until you completed whatever episode it was I was working on and but the routine was great and I had a great partner working with me on it, but when the time came to resurrect the band, it was a good time.

It was a realization that we’ve written these great songs and they still really have they have stood the test of time. They’re pretty solid material to perform, even today.

Is there a point in a Pablo cruise show where you can just feel the audience totally lock in?

You know what? We have a really good show. Our show is a show. We don’t just get up and play. We start off with an eight-minute video that kind of walks you through the past. It’s pretty funny. It’s very funny, actually. We lean on humor a lot and there’s a lot of humor between Dave Jenkins and myself. We’re entitled to it because we’ve been together for so long, you can definitely poke fun at yourself.

There are a couple of songs where the band clears the stage, and Dave does a song, I do a song–just by ourselves without any accompaniment–and that breaks it up. We have a lot of different things in the show that are a lot of fun, but from the second that video comes on, I can tell off stage if that’s gonna be a great audience, because people are screaming and yelling when the video’s playing, and if they’re quiet, then that’s another thing. We’re gonna have to work a little harder.

But yeah, the audience is there to see it, and you have to finesse it, because some bands, honestly, can get up and play ten Top 10 or Top 5 hits. We don’t have that many hits, but we have a lot of deep album cuts that were hits and people know ’em. It’s crazy, but people know the repertoire is beyond just the hit songs.

What’s your favorite point in the show? Is it when you get to do your solo song or is it the hits or is there a particular deep cut you just really love?

You know what? That’s a good question, but the shows go by really quick, the way we have it structured and everybody’s a virtuoso. David, Robbie, and Larry are such great entertainers, too, and because they’ve been with us so long, they’re able to adapt the glory of the repertoire, and they just love it.

And they really do it justice. To me, I’m more a producer anyway and so, I kinda love being on stage, watching those guys take our songs and bring a lot of new life to it. Dave Jenkins and I wrote all that material, and so that in itself is very gratifying, but like I said –the instrumentals are always great to do and and there’s nothing like playing the hits because the last four or five songs of our show are hit songs that everybody knows.

The whole place is up, and people are singing along and having a ball, and you think about it, and you go, “Oh man, these songs are so old, and I played ’em so many times, how can I possibly be enjoying this?” But it is enjoyable and it’s a blessing. People ask me all the time, “Why don’t you retire?” and I said, “This is my retirement.”

It is not golf, it’s music. It’s very cool. Very few people have that in their lives, where you have this repertoire that you wrote that stands the test of time and that you’re, and you’re doing it with guys you’ve known forever. There’s never really a dull conversation.

It sounds like you’re living the life my dad lives, where he is also in his 70s and still gets to hang out with his buddies from high school.

It’s just a blessing. Not everybody gets to remain friends with people that long or in contact that long. You say 70s, and it’s, holy shit? 70s? But it is true, and there’s something really great about that. When you have that kind of history, it gets scary when you do the math, and we go, “Geez, known these guys for 60 years,” and on the other hand, it’s pretty wonderful.

Pablo Cruise plays Knuckleheads on Friday, May 1. Details on that show here.