Rock and Roll Part 1 (1964-1969)

ROCK AND ROLL... Part 1: Starts With The Beatles

The Beatles on Ed Sullivan changed everything. No longer vocal groups, Doo Wop, girl singers, or lounge acts, bombarded the airwaves and variety shows, now we teens had something to stick our teeth into. Three weeks, three shows and our world no longer revolved around the sun; a NEW path had been chosen and it was The Fab Four. Soon other "planets" were discovered ; The Rolling Stones on The Hollywood Palace; The Animals, KinKs and  more, oh, so much more. Radio changed immediately as The Beatles beat the charts, taking over the traditional  Top Tens were what was now called THE BRITISH INVASION. Soon albums cuts, those not played as singles on AM  found their way onto the airwaves. As AM progressed into FM, and FM into free form radio so did we as the listeners progress and became more knowledgeable about what we liked. And this is part of my story...

By 1967/68 listening to the radio and watching television rock was not enough. Like every other red blooded Anglophile I picked up the guitar, primarily playing bass in garage bands but was much more in demand as their drummer to which I was more proficient. Needless to say I was drawn to the fire of other like musicians primarily those my own age which help me judge where I stood on the food chain or better yet to judge my proficiency on the bandstand.  Having no true curfew  I started to regularly attend  Hullabaloo, a local teen club in the neighboring town of Lindenhurst. A true  TEEN SCENE club, soda and bags of chips with a $2.00 cover, there they hosted  a few bands each weekend (Friday and Saturday nights), many bands of the garage style  with a few noted National acts tossed in...The Rascals, Vanilla Fudge just to name a two.

During this period I also was entertained by The Critters (Younger Girl; My Dyingly Sad)  at a local roller rink (Copiague Roll N Ice) (1966), Every Mothers Son( Come On Down To My Boat, Baby) at my 10th grade dinner dance,The Good Rats at an art show (1969) ,Scott Muni Sock Hop Show featuring The Left Banke (1967), again at my high school, and of course Long Island's own The Vagrants (Leslie West), The Hassels (Billy Joel), and The Illusion at every other spot but regularly at Hullabloo.

1968
Just finishing out a summer job at a bank on Wall Street, all of 16 years of age but ready for the big stage we ventured out from Suburbia, AKA The Sticks/The Country, on the LIRR and subway to Queens, New York to see what was and probably still are today the Greatest AMERICAN Rock band. They did it all. Wrote, produced, played their own instruments and sang like a church choir...THE RASCALS.

The Rascals, Nazz,The Vagrants, Eire Apparent, Singer Bowl (8/30/68)

It was a beautiful evening, clear skies, the train ride uneventful, and the crowd enthusiastic, me being one of them. Eire Apparent, a band produced by Jimi Hendrix (they said it at least twice during their 25 minutes of fame, were in hindsight about as good as we were at Hullabaloo. NAZZ was next up. The drummer was superb, the singer and bass pretty good. Yet there was something quirky and eye catching about the guitarist. Windmills, neck bending, string slapping, a bit theatrical but too cool to describe: Todd Rundgren caught my musical attention at that moment and would have it for many moons to come. Local favorites (boys from Forest Hills) The Vagrants hit the stage and left doing a Stones tune (Satisfaction) followed by RESPECT. Pretty nicely done on a big stage.. The stars of the show The Rascals were tremendous. The applause deafening at the beginning and at the end. Hit after hit after hit after hit. Solos, musicianship, vocals clear, clean and crisp. It was heavenly.



1969

THE DOORS January 24, 1969, Madison Square Garden, NY: What a way to celebrate my 17th birthday. New brown corduroy slacks, brown boots, and a new overcoat. A few extra bucks in my pocket from my folks as a birthday gift and away I go. A new pack of smokes, train fare, money for the diner after the show, I was psyched. Ooops, forgot, a girlfriend who was more excited about seeing Jim Morrison and chatting with her friends on the train ride than celebrating my birthday. The lights dim, emotionally and physically, as The Staple Singers take the stage set at mid arena. Then, THE DOORS:

1The Soft Parade
2. Tell All The People
3. Love Me Two Times
4. Who Scared You?
5. Spanish Caravan
6. Wild Child
7. Light My Fire
8. Back Door Man /
9. Me & The Devil Blues /
10. Five To One
11. Jim Introduces Band
12. Hitler Poem
13. When the Music's Over

The Doors were musically okay, not great as I had anticipated. Jim Morrison was an idiot, or was it just me, nah, he was an idiot, hindering an otherwise good band with his "poetry" and rants. One rant in particular I remember was about riding the fence. I dug The Staple Singers, now there was a cool group with a smooth sound.


Since September of 68 I was working in an electronics factory making cassette. Their brands included Vangaurd, Elektra, and Capitol records. So my music collection grew substantially each and every afternoon by at least one or two cassettes, blues, folk, rock, jazz. What every could fit in my boot that day I took it all. After working only a few weeks a woman Ruthie who worked in the Mastering lab, an actual air controlled, white glove environment, called me over to hear something she thought was unique but strange to her 50 year old ears. Upon hearing the sounds coming out of her very expensive head phones I was perplexed but knew what it must be. "Number Nine, Number Nine..." over and over with a cacophony of sounds, screams, horns, etc. Smiling I answered with more of a questioning, THE BEATLES?. She then with her white gloves removed the heavy, shiny disc from the apparatus and put on another selection.... HELTER SKELTER....ah< THE BEATLES YES IT'S THE BEATLES. She informed me it was a company hush hush, no one was to know what we were putting together,not even her, no labels, no inserts yet, just a number 4XWL and it was to be  a double cassette set, one million cassettes ( half a million packages to market) to be produced and stored until November 15 shipping. The entire factory, two shifts was working on one project and I guessed who it was. Needless to say Ruthie slipped me a few early cassettes during week one, no labels just The Beatles to share with my friends. who were skeptical at first but after a little while....ah, yea man, The Beatles.