Exclusive: The Tubes' Fee Waybill on his baseball history and why he plays polo

Led by singer Fee Waybill since 1972, The Tubes have scored plenty of international hit songs, including "She's A Beauty," "Talk To Ya Later," "White Punks On Dope" and "Don't Wanna Wait Anymore."

Waybill has experienced further success in writing and/or working with the likes of the Foo Fighters, Toto's Steve Lukather, Kenny Loggins, Vixen and Richard Marx, beyond appearing in movies like Xanadu and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

One of the first theatrical rock bands, Waybill and The Tubes have been innovators in every sense possible. In turn, they are among the few bands that played theme parks, had an MTV concert special, opened for Led Zeppelin, appeared on the SCTV television show, and also appeared in Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine. In other words, with The Tubes, it's always been a mix of pop and the avant-garde.

2019 has been yet another fulfilling year for Fee Waybill and The Tubes. Following a run on the Lost 80s Live! tour, The Tubes will be a playing a pair of Halloween-friendly shows at New York City's legendary Iridium -- performing the entire The Completion Backward Principle album from start to finish -- on October 30th and 31st.

While speaking with Waybill about those Iridium shows, his long-time appreciation of polo came up and I asked him to expand further on his history with sports, as embedded and partially-transcribed below.

Waybill also opened up about other famous musicians who have played polo and/or softball.

On whether polo was the first sport he ever took to as an athlete:

Fee Waybill: I was a baseball player. My father started Little League in Scottsdale, Arizona. So I started playing baseball when I was eight years old. I played baseball all the way through high school and then I moved to San Francisco and we got in the band and we started doing music. I continued doing fast-pitch softball for years and years.

Then I moved to L.A. and continued to play fast-pitch softball. It was the spring of 2003 and it was time to start our "park and rec" fast-pitch softball league that I'd been playing in for like 15 years.

The guy who was the director called me up and said, "Well, mostly everybody has gone to slow-pitch and there's only two teams left this spring." I said, "Two? There's only two teams left? So we're going to play each other over and over and over?" He goes, "No, we're cancelling..."

My brother and I grew up with horses. My dad had a horse facility and he was a horse show judge. Me and my brother rode horses from when we were little kids. We were either playing ball or riding horses. He was a ball player, too. So I moved to California and got in the band, my brother stayed in Arizona, got a ranch north of Scottsdale and he's had horses his whole life.

I'm living in San Francisco in this 250-square-foot apartment, he'd go, "Why don't you get a horse?" "A horse? In San Francisco? I've got a 250-square-foot apartment, what am I going to do with a horse?" Which is kind of a running joke with us.

Then I moved to L.A. My brother's done everything, he's done horse shows and reining and cutting and roping, anything you can imagine on a horse, western-style he's done it. So he calls me up one day and goes, "I was driving by this place in Paradise Valley and I see these guys playing polo."

I went, "Polo? Really?" He goes, "Yeah, I go out there and hit the ball around and it's really fun. It's kind of like playing baseball. It's the same size of ball, just a longer bat. Instead of a 34" it's a 54", and you're riding a horse while you're doing it."