Sue Marie Saad, James Lance and Anthony "Tony" Lloyd Riparetti met in
junior high school while growing up in
Santa Barbara, California. Given their mutual interest in music, they began collaborating and eventually formed
The Calliope. They achieved some success and released several singles. One of these, "We've Made It", dealt with the
generation gap and so angered a local
disc jockey that he destroyed the record while still on air and voiced a tirade against the band. The three formed a new band around 1978, Sue Saad and the Next, whereupon they moved to
San Francisco and then
Los Angeles hoping to find work as sidemen. It was during this time that they began writing songs and recording them on their
Rodney Sound four-track tape recorder. They were later joined by guitarist Billy Anstatt and bass player Bobby Manzer, studio musicians who had played together in the
rock musical Zen Boogie, wanting to perform in a regular band. The band played in clubs and similar venues throughout Los Angeles The band's debut album was co-produced by James Lance and Richard Perry, the first time Perry had ever shared a production credit, with all the songs being written by Lance, Riparetti and Saad. The album, self-titled
Sue Saad and the Next, took less than twenty days to finish at a cost of $50,000. This was well below the industry standard, generally between $125,000–150,000 financing, and at least 3 to 6 months production time. That same year, their music was featured in the 1980 comedy film
Roadie along with
Eddie Rabbitt,
Jerry Lee Lewis,
Roy Orbison and
Emmylou Harris,
The Joe Ely Band,
Teddy Pendergrass,
Jay Ferguson and Pat Benatar. The film's director
Alan Rudolph liked the band so much that one scene was written in specifically for one of their songs, "Double Yellow Line", which took place on a highway. The band continued performing throughout the United States and toured
Europe with
UFO and the
Boomtown Rats. They also appeared in concerts run by Texas promoter Jack Orbin in late 1981. During the next few years, Sue Saad and the Next performed the main themes for the
science fiction films
Looker (1981) and is regarded by many fans of the film as one of its most memorable moments. It was while working on "Radioactive Dreams" that director
Albert Pyun made an offer to James Lance and Tony Riparetti to score
music for film and together composed the music for
Say Yes (1986),
Commando Squad (1987),
Alien from L.A. (1988) and
Brainsmasher... A Love Story (1993). Though Lance eventually left the partnership, Riparetti remained with Pyun and continued to compose scores for his films including
Omega Doom (1997),
Mean Guns (1997),
Postmortem (1998),
Invasion (2005) and
Left for Dead (2007). He also worked with
Beastie Boys for a time. Riparetti's success led to his starting his own company, Sound Logic, which composes film scores and sound editing for
low-budget films from his North Calle César Chávez studio in Santa Barbara. In April 2008, Riparetti and his company were featured in the
Santa Barbara Independent. The band's second album
Long Way Home, recorded in the 1980s under the band's own initiative and funding, was released digitally in January 2016. ==Discography==