It was in April 1978 that underage future Bangles Vicki and Debbi Peterson ventured from the San Fernando Valley to Redondo Beach’s now-defunct Sweetwater Café to see the Cowsills (the real-life family band that inspired The Partridge Family), because longtime self-described Cowsills fangirl Vicki was “quite crushing on the drummer” and was “determined to go to this show and meet him.”

Vicki and John Cowsill’s interaction that the fateful evening was brief — although it was immortalized by Vicki’s bootleg cassette-tape recording of the gig, which she still has in her possession — and less than a month later, “young groom” John married his first wife. As Vicki’s pioneering all-girl band, formerly known as the Bangs, ascended to superstardom with hits like “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Manic Monday,” and “Eternal Flame,” and John became an in-demand session and touring drummer, the two musicians’ paths often crossed. But it wasn’t until Vicki began performing with the woman who is now her best friend, John’s sister Susan Cowsill, in alt-country supergroup the Continental Drifters that she and John became friends — and eventually a couple.

Considering that the two have now been married for 23 years, which is almost unheard-of in the world of rock, it seems like their “little Hollywood romantic story,” as John calls it, was written in the stars. But it was actually written in more than 300 pages of Vicki’s girlhood diary, years before that fleeting Sweetwater encounter, in an “early fan-fiction” fantasy about 13-year-old Vicki being the Cowsills’ roadie… and John’s girlfriend.

Decades later, when Vicki and John’s romance started to get serious, Vicki was of course skittish about showing her new boyfriend that cringey manuscript — especially because she knew that John usually had a policy about not dating Cowsills fans. At this point, John still knew nothing about her adolescent crush, but Vicki figured she should let him know before her friends or relatives outed her.

“I said, ‘You’re either going to find this adorable, or you’re going to run screaming into the night, and I don’t know how it’s going to go,’” Vicki recalls with a chuckle. “And luckily, he thought it was adorable.”

“She thought I would think it was weird, but I got so teary-eyed. I was already in love with her,” says John, his eyes filling with fresh tears as he recalls the moment when she sat him down and handed him her fan-fiction book from 1971. “It was adorable. I loved it. And she kept threatening, ‘I’m going to burn it!’ She was embarrassed by it. I said, ‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare destroy this thing!’ Oh my God, it’s publishable, even though she says it’s not. I think it’s the most beautiful little story. It blows my mind. I had no idea.”

Interestingly, it took years for Vicki and John to literally start making beautiful music together (they joke that the secret to their blissful, lasting union is the fact that they’ve spent much of the marriage apart, touring and recording with their respective projects), but now they’re finally releasing their first joint LP as “the oldest baby band in the world,” Long After the Fire. The album — available this weekend for Record Store Day on 1,500 copies of limited-edition transparent blue/green vinyl, with a wider release on April 18 — contains a dozen obscure gems written by John’s late brothers and Cowsills bandmates, Barry and Bill Cowsill, so it is a true labor of love in more ways than one.

In the charming video above and Q&A below with Lyndsanity, powerpop’s coolest and cutest couple reminisce about their courtship, the making of what they’ve darkly-humorously nicknamed “The Dead Brothers Project,” and the emotional experience of recording Bill and Barry’s songs. We laughed, we cried…  but mostly, we smiled. Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill are true couple goals.

LYNDSANITY:  So, I am going to just start with the most obvious question. How did you guys get together and fall in love? I know it was through John’s sister, right? But I want to hear the full story.

VICKI PETERSON: Oh, [Susan] doesn’t get to have credit for that! [laughs] No, we met because my sister and my best friend and I, who were in a band in high school, went to a club, where we’d already played, down in Redondo Beach, Calif. The Cowsills were playing, and I was a huge Cowsill fan when I was a kid and was quite crushing on the drummer. I was determined to go to this show and meet them. We were actually underage [Vicki had just turned 20], but I talked the manager into letting us all in because we had just played there. So, he had to let us in.

And this was before the Bangs?

VICKI: Yes, this is pre-Bangs. This is me and [then-bassist] Amanda [Hills Podany], and we were just sort of a pop/rock band; I think we were [called] Those Girls by then. Anyway, so that’s where we met. Susan wanted nothing to do with us, by the way! At that point we were sort of annoying girls who were hanging around trying to flirt with her brothers, as far as she was concerned. So, she wanted nothing to do with us. But then later, actually fast-forward many years later, and Susan and I became fast friends, or not-so-fast friends, but very, very close friends. I’d say best friends for life. … So, John and I met, and it’s coming up our anniversary: April 28, 1978.

Did you actually meet that night, or did you just look at him?

VICKI: Oh no, I was not going to let this night go without speaking to this man! So yes, I did bother him while he was setting up; I think we went to soundcheck and just engaged him in conversation. It was just like, “I am going to do this or I will kill myself. I just have to talk to him!” — that situation where you never really imagined you would ever actually be, and you have to take advantage of the moment. And I was kind of a ballsy chick, so I just went up to him and started chatting.

JOHN COWSILL: I remember the table you were sitting at, right by the stairway. I remember exactly where you were sitting. Man, I remember that. I walked over there and you and Amanda and Debbi were sitting there. And Vicki had a tape recorder on her lap under the table and recorded the show.

Do you still have the tape?

VICKI: I do! So cute, I know.

Did you guys keep in touch after that? I imagine as the Bangles started to be successful, John put two and two together, like, “Oh, that’s that girl from the club…”

JOHN: Oh, I was never putting two and two together! I was always one foot in front of the other, so I’d really hardly paid attention.

VICKI: He wasn’t paying too much attention, although we did cross paths several times, and I did stay in touch with his brother, Bob, who sort of became a mentor in a way for me, especially as the Bangles started to rise. But Debbi and I ran into them when John and Susan were playing with Dwight Twilley. We were at SIR to go to a Circle Jerks listening party, and we ran into him outside and I go, “What are you doing here? We’re going to come in and bother you!” And I ran back to my Hollywood apartment and got the 45 that we had made. It was the Bangs’ first 45 [1981’s “Getting Out of Hand”] that we had made with our own money. And I was so proud that I was going to show him: “Look, we made a record! This is a record! It’s a 45 record! And we made it!”

JOHN: I made her sign it.

VICKI: He did! He made me autograph it, which was super-cute. I was just nervous.

JOHN: But then I lost it along the way. Don’t know where. I mean, I’ve lost drum sets, so you can’t fault me for losing stuff! I mean, it was in my drum trap case for a while. … It’s worth $500 now. The case disappeared. That’s my life —  like, if I couldn’t fit it in a car, I just left it behind.

VICKI: Our paths did continue to cross and cross and cross again. But of course, we met in April [1978], and by early May, he was married to wife number one. He was a young groom.

So, you were on these kind of parallel paths, crossing paths. When did the romance start?

VICKI: About 2000. We kind of reconnected and he was almost like my brother, because at this point I knew all the Cowsills.

JOHN: She was best friends with my sister by this time, so my sister had told her everything about me, right up to threatening, “Don’t you date my brother! He’s not a good guy!” That kind of stuff.

VICKI: Bad boy, bad boy.

JOHN: I was a nice guy, but I did bad things.

VICKI: She said, “If you date my brother, I will kill you.”

Well, I’m glad that she didn’t do that, and that you didn’t listen. Obviously, it all worked out — for 23 years! That’s a long time to be married in general, but in rock ‘n’ roll, you can practically translate that into dog years. It’s rare for a marriage to last that long in entertainment.

Did Susan literally say, “Stay away, he’s bad news?”JOHN: Can I tell you something? So, I was courting her while she was living in New Orleans and I was in California. And when it started getting serious, she says, “OK, you need to sit down and I need to tell you something.” She’s liked me since she was a kid and all that stuff that everybody knows now, but I know nothing about that at this point. So, I sit down and she goes and gets something and says, “I have to tell you this before you hear this from your sister or my family.” And she hands me a manuscript this thick of her life with John Cowsill and his family — early fan-fiction, basically —  about how she was going to be my girl and we were going to be a thing. It’s like 300-and-something pages about how she’s going to be on the road with us. And how old were you?

VICKI: I was 13.

OK, then, that’s adorable. It wasn’t like you wrote it recently, as an adult.

VICKI: It was like early versions of fan-fiction, which didn’t exist then in those olden days. But yeah, it was just this little fantasy story about spending a summer on the road with the Cowsills. And of course they’d take a 13-year-old as their roadie. Why not? [laughs]

JOHN: And needless to say, she’s afraid to show me this because she knows my pattern with fans. I love fans, but I don’t want to date one; that’s the general consensus. And she hands it over and she thought I would think it was weird, but I got so teary-eyed. I was already in love with her, and it was just like… I feel that right now [starts to cry]. It was like the sweetest thing.

VICKI: I said, “You’re either going to find this adorable, or you’re going to run screaming into the night, and I don’t know how it’s going to go.” And luckily, he thought it was adorable.

JOHN: It was adorable. I loved it. And she kept threatening, “I’m going to burn it!” She was embarrassed by it. I said, “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare destroy this thing!” Oh my God, it’s publishable, even though she says it’s not. I think it’s the most beautiful little story. It blows my mind. I had no idea.

I can see how adorable it is, but that reveal could have definitely gone the other way. It took a lot of guts for Vicki to do that.

VICKI: But it was something that had to be. At that point, with this intimacy, we had to actually share this moment. And I have to let you in on something: He said he never knew, but everyone else and rest of his family did. When his sister-in-law told his brother Paul, “John’s got a girlfriend, he’s dating Vicki,” Paul goes, “Yeah, of course! Duh!” And John had no idea.

I mean, maybe this is a “don’t try this at home” kind of thing because it usually would not work out so well, but your story does kind of give hope to all the teenage fangirls out there…

VICKI: Yeah, I told [this story to] Susan’s daughter when she was in love with Nick Jonas, and she’s like, “Maybe there’s a chance for me and Nick!” [laughs]

JOHN: It’s a little Hollywood romantic story, really, if you think about it. It’s just so bizarre to me still. [Vicki] had that all going on, and here we are. I fell in love with her without knowing that.

I do feel like this should be a movie — like a scripted movie. You could start with the 300 pages that Vicki wrote as the treatment.

JOHN: I’ve thought about that many times. There’s so many great things in it, and it was so funny to read it because without knowing us, she nailed a couple of things. But we didn’t drink beer at our age, and she was giving us beer: “Hey, you want another beer, you guys?” And I smoked cigarettes [in Vicki’s fan-fiction], which I would never do.

VICKI: I thought, “Well, they’re musicians, so of course they smoke.” I mean, my boyfriend at the time smoked. Of course I assumed you guys drank beer and smoked at 16!

JOHN: But she got my wiseass-ness down.

VICKI: I did! [laughs]

It was truly meant to be. And that brings us to Long After the Fire. Like I said, you’ve been together for 23 years, but you didn’t start making music together until a few years ago.

JOHN: Tell her the first song we sang together. And then we didn’t do anything after that [for years]!

VICKI: In 2004, we had a benefit for Bill Cowsill who was in ill health up in Canada. The family got together at the El Rey and put on this beautiful show, and John and I, we had just been married a year, so we said, “OK, we should do something.” And we learned the song “A Thousand Times,” which of course is our first single off this new record. We learned it and performed it together as the newlyweds and kind of messed it up a bit, but we had fun, and that was our first time ever singing together in public as just us two. … And then that was it. Fast-forward 15 years before we did it again. We had a really nice domestic life, and we had a great relationship for two people who toured constantly. There’s a lot of potential weirdness there, but really navigated that.

JOHN: We had a studio downstairs — we just didn’t use it together!

VICKI: Yeah, I felt like [making music together] could complicate our relationship in a way. I was not sure I wanted to go there yet. And it has been a learning curve, I think, but ultimately I’m so, so glad that we really dove in and decided to do it. I was definitely the reluctant party, I’ll admit that. But once we decided on really tackling “The Dead Brothers Project,” which was its working title…

Wait, that’s literally what you called it?

VICKI: Yeah, because Bill and Barry would appreciate that! [laughs]

JOHN: That’s what we called it forever! We would’ve even called it that [permanently], but we went online and there’s so many “Dead Brother” projects out there. I thought we were being original.

But more seriously, this album is a tribute to Barry and Bill. It’s all covers of their songs, including the one you just mentioned, “A Thousand Times.” So, I guess another obvious question would be, what gave you the idea to do this “Dead Brothers Project,” so to speak?

JOHN: Probably 10 or 11 years ago, I had this idea to do this. I’m not a big writer. I’m a singer and I play, I’m an interpreter of song, and I always loved the songs Bill wrote. And I watched Barry write them. They’re just songs I’ve always known, and if I was alone, I’d sit and try to figure out the chords and sing the songs to myself. I told Vicki about that a long time ago, and she was always, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. We should do that!” And we talked and talked and talked about it. We’re really good at talking about something and never getting into it.

But I’m going to say a major role in getting this started was Paul Allen, who is our producer and who was a friend of mine. When I was a carpenter in Ojai, his mom called me up to work on their house. He was 11 years old. I met him there. … He was a little musician back then, but I hardly paid attention to it. I helped him figure out where to put the strap on a guitar. I set him up with a church group to go play. He was such an interesting kid and just lovely. I’m giving you a short version of this story. And so, then I hadn’t seen him for about 25 years, and I’m playing the Ryman with the Beach Boys in 2017 or ‘18 or something like that, and I get a note: “Hey, this is Paul Allen. I’m out in the front. Do you remember me? You worked on my house.” And I went, “Wow.”

We have been inseparable since that day, and he has worked with everybody. And I told him about this project, and he really got it started with the first song. The Beach Boys were playing in Memphis, and he called up and said, “Hey, I see you guys are in Memphis. You wanna record at Sun Records?” And I said, “Why?” He said, “So we can say we recorded at Sun Records!” …. Then he says, “You told me about the ‘Dead Brothers’ thing. Let’s do one of those.” The song we picked was “Is Anybody Here,” because it’s such a Roy Orbison tribute that my brother Bill and Jeffrey Hatcher wrote, and it was just such the fitting song. And that’s how the project got started.

I’m curious about how you selected the songs chose to do, and how you made them your own but also honored the legacy of your brothers and the original versions.

VICKI: That was definitely a consideration. Some of the songs, many of Bill’s songs, we wanted to honor the original approach anyway and keep them in the traditional country-feel sound. … There were a couple of songs that [John] and Paul wanted to completely rearrange, and I came in going, “No! That’s not how Barry would like it!” I made them crazy.

JOHN: Oh God, yeah.  I wanted to have horns on “Sound On Sound,” and she just came in and ruined it! [laughs]

VICKI: I was like, “That’s not how Barry wrote it!”

So, some of the songs on the album are sort of lost tracks, either because they never actually ever came out, or came out on records that were impossible to find…

JOHN: Yes, and that’s why I wanted to do them. These are the best songs and we wanted to do our favorite songs of them, and so Vicki and I just cherrypicked what we wanted to sing. We needed to have six of each brother, and we sat at a piano deciding who was going to sing what. And if somebody really wanted to do it, they got to do it.

Was the mission behind this record to evangelize your brothers’ work by choosing songs that were lesser-heard, to put the spotlight on their songwriting abilities?

JOHN: Yes, that is the reason: to put a spotlight on their songs. I’ve always wanted to sing them, so it was just a great first project especially for me, who’s never recorded a project on my own. I just love the songs and the whole concept of it, a tribute album to two of my brothers who passed away. And I would do Bob’s songs if he had passed away — but he’s still alive! [laughs] … I’m an interpreter and if I can find a good song, I’ll sing the crap out of it, if it’s something I really care about. And I mean, this album is emotionally charged. There were times when I would get at the mic and I couldn’t get through them [starts tearing up again].

I can tell that even talking about it makes you emotional. Were there any particular songs or specific lyrics that resonated the most with you?

JOHN: The emotional one for me was “When Hearts Collide.”

VICKI: [Barry] sang that at our wedding. Barry stood up with a guitar in the front of my friend’s garden, and as we made our way across the garden, Barry sang that song. It was something that I asked him to do, because I knew it from an album he had made when we were both in New Orleans. It’s just such a gorgeous sentiment about the everlasting aspects of love.

Vicki, which songs were the most intense for you to sing?

VICKI: “Ol’ Timeless.” That was Barry’s other sort of very emotional song. But ever since he was a teenager, it seemed like this guy was looking and thinking about his own departure from the planet. It seemed to me he was always kind of thinking about what happens when you go. The songs he wrote, even when he was a very young man… like “Don’t Look Back,” which is another song that we cover on this record, he wrote that when he was a teenager and produced it. And it’s about taking leave of your loved ones and how to do it with grace — just don’t look back and just don’t hold onto things, and if you need to go, just go. We lost him in [Hurricane] Katrina, actually under slightly mysterious circumstances, and “Ol’ Timeless” was a song he recorded when he was living in New Orleans. He did it very, very stripped-down… so Paul Allen and I really talked about, “How do we want to shape this song and how do we want to approach it, still honoring the sort of almost spiritual feel to it?” We kept it very open and airy.

JOHN: It’s beautiful.

VICKI: And that is a song where he’s talking about when he goes and leaving things behind for others, and “don’t be afraid” and “I’m not afraid” and “I don’t mind the pain” and “just put me on the path” and “here I go.” And I’m like, “OK, I can get inside this.”

You mentioned “mysterious circumstances.” I’m unaware of what you’re referring to.

VICKI: Barry was in New Orleans when the storm hit, and he made the decision to not evacuate. He was kind of couch-crashing with some friends and we didn’t know where he was exactly. And he made a call after the storm passed. He made a call to Susan’s phone, but of course he called her cell phone, and this is 2005. There was just voicemail on the phone, but of course he’s thinking that he’s talking to a machine, where someone can hear it. And he’s saying, “Pick up, pick up!” How heartbreaking is that? Because obviously we couldn’t pick up. He didn’t leave a number; we didn’t know where he was exactly. And then he chose to not get on one of the buses. He was describing the situation, that it was very tenuous and strange, and he was like, “I can’t do this.” And then we heard nothing for months and months. And we went in. Susan and her husband got on a boat and floated into the flooded city of New Orleans looking for him and never heard or found anything, until December [2005], when his remains were found.

JOHN: Here’s another interesting parallel to the Bill-and-Barry thing. We’re having a memorial for Barry in Newport, Rhode Island [in 2006], and we’re setting up for it. And we get a phone call: “Bill just passed away.” So, we kind of smiled and made the best light of it we could. We said, “Well, I guess we’re having a twofer today!” [laughs]

VICKI: Susan said, “Of course. Bill couldn’t let Barry have his own moment! Of course this is going to happen!” [laughs] Like, oh my God, really? They had kind of a beautiful… not a competition, but those two were of a type.

JOHN: Growing up together, they were inseparable, and then later on they tortured each other, because both of them had much substance abuse in their life.

I do appreciate that you do have this dark humor, that you can talk about such sad topics yet still laugh about it.

JOHN: There’s nothing else to get you through the life, babe! … We are not pity-party people. I mean, I’m an emotional person, so I flip-flop right between ‘em, but I’m a quick laugh. I realize with [my brothers’]  personalities that they would be so OK with all of this.

I really appreciate you sharing the funny stuff as well as the sad stuff. Obviously you two get along really famously and it was all kind of meant to be, but you didn’t really do music together until recently, and you mentioned a “learning curve” when you became bandmates. I assume it’s all working out now?

JOHN: I’m the hothead in the family. She’s the calm one.

VICKI: We also acknowledge that we have many relationships. We have familial, because I was his “sister” before I was ever his lover/wife/girlfriend. And now we’re musical partners. So, it sort of just added another layer to what was already there.

JOHN: We’re really great friends. Really, that is the foundation of our relationship. And you don’t get away from your friends; you just kind of work through stuff. And it’s not really hard work, it’s just little things and then you say, “OK, we need to talk about this.” And then we do. We’ve been in relationships where people don’t use their words and they just hurl shit at you, so it’s really nice to be with somebody who you can have a conversation with and feel safe having the conversation. And that’s what works for us, because I’ll get impatient when we’re trying to learn something. I want to hurry up, and everybody has to find their way through a song, and I’m like, “Let’s get this done now!” So, I had to cut my butt down. I wrote a sign with really hard pen on the paper when I was mad at myself. It said, “Be calm. Don’t be mean. Don’t act frustrated.”

VICKI: Which I thought was interesting grammar. I made it into a sign.

JOHN: Yes, she made it as a gift to me. I would put the paper on the coffee table before we started rehearsing. It was poor grammar on my part and she copied it word-for-word, so that’s what’s funny. And you’ll see that in “A Thousand “Times” video. It’s on the wall in our studio.

VICKI: So, that’s a little Easter egg for y’all.

This interview had been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch John and Vicki’s full conversation the video at the top of this page.