Music Before the Money

In 1966 Reg Presley (no relation to Elvis) was a bricklayer when the song With A Girl Like You came into his head. His band, The Troggs, had been signed by CBS with help from Kinks manager, Larry Page. And much like The Kinks they spent a lot of time fighting amongst themselves.

Troggs was short for the word troglodyte, which was caveman in prehistoric times. Since there was the Rolling Stones and such they wanted something to do with “rock.” Cavemen lived in caves which were made of rock.

Reg was still a bricklayer when Wild Thing shot up the British charts from #44 to #8. He immediately told his boss that he was not bricklaying anymore and left the job site.

The Trogg’s biggest hit was Wild Thing, a song written by Chip Taylor and had minor notoriety when a band called the Wild Ones recorded it. Their punky vocals and trashy guitar sound was the inspiration for punk bands like The Ramones and Iggy Pop. It is also widely claimed that some of the band’s antics in movie This Is Spinal Tap was copied from the behavior patterns of both The Troggs and The Kinks. The fact is both hit tunes were recorded in 20 minutes, even with the ocarina solo in Wild Thing.

They had a renaissance when their 1968 song Love Is All Around was recorded by the Scottish group Wet, Wet, Wet in 1995 and was featured in the movie Three Weddings and a Funeral. But Wild Thing will always be their signature tune and it is also a song that has been covered by the likes of Jimmi Hendrix and Aerosmith.

I remember it because we were 3-chord band at the time and, along with Louis Louis and , it was a staple for garage bands.

Neil Aspinall, a road manager and later head of The Beatles’ Apple Corp., died a couple of days ago at 66. he was around when the Pete Best Beatles were taking the bus to gigs and he was the one who bought a van to take them around. A childhood friend of McCartney and Harrison he was still road manger through the Beatlemania years and helped them through the times after Brian Epstein died in 1967. In addition he was instrumental in bringing the old Beatles catalogue to date by digitizing them and thus preserving them. In all, he was a good friend who kept them together and got them to their gigs.

We had a Neil Aspinall. His name was, and is, Arnold Scheffer. His nickname was “Ziff,” named after Arnold Ziffel, the pig on “Green Acres.” He was the driver and van provider during my first days in a band. His dad owned the bakery so we would load our gear in the bakery van and head to places unknown, or barely known. Ziff was in it for the excitement, girls and notoriety. But like Aspinall, in ways, he would make sure that we got to the gigs on time.

There were other things he did:

• Put tin foil in the fuse box so we could play our last set (not recommended)
• Run around buying or borrowing extension cords when there was only two plugs in the hall.
• Chatted up the girls while we were on stage.
• Arranged for parties after the gig.
• Took money at the door for our dances.
• Drove whomever need to go – to the hospital.
• Critiqued our songs

In all Ziff was a good friend who liked u music and the aura around the band. So goodbye to Neil and Ziff, wherever you are, thanks!

I used to hate music competitions. The practicing leading up to the date wasn’t the bad part. I would put the time and effort into the studies and my teacher would be happy with my progress. However, on the day of the big event I would lose my self-confident veneer. This was the fear of failure, the needling in the back of my brain of how bad I would feel if I messed up in front of an auditorium full of people.

It is a well-known fact that people need to be tested. It’s how we get better at what we do. if there were no tests for airline pilots or engineers the world would be in sorry state. But why do we need to test kids for music trophies.

Well, I just observed this first-hand. My two 11 year-olds (twins) were entered into the local Kiwanis Festival in three categories of Grade 4 Conservatory. As we had been away the week before I thought they did not have enough time to prepare and asked them if they wanted out. They said they would like to do it.

Now, I’ve never said I wanted to do a recital let alone a test in front of people so I was astounded. I had given them a back door out of it – much like I wished someone would have done for me so many years ago. The difference was that they weren’t carrying the “fear of failure baggage that I had accumulated and so were all for the festival.

They both played wonderfully, as did almost all the kids there. And I feared for everyone of them praying that they didn’t make a mistake. And what if they had? They are just 11 year-olds playing some piano tunes. And they get to hear how other kids played the same tune. In fact, one of the boys remarked, “You know, I really liked how that #4, the little girl, held the “A” before Bar 122. I think I’ll try that.”

What I Learned? Don’t transfer my fears to someone else.

Out of 3 performances each one of the boys got a 1st and 2nd and the other got a 3rd. They had fun, met other kids, tested themselves and heard other ways to play the same songs.

It always interests me how history is re-interpreted by each new generation. For example, a month ago in Russia Vladimir Putin began rattlings that Joseph Stalin was a great leader and wanted to resurrect his memory. What that means is to reinvent the man and ignore him as Hitlers’ bunkmate for the greatest genocide expert of the 20thCentury. In music it’s even sadder because the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has ignored groundbreaking acts in favor of the latest flavor.

Case in point, The Dave Clark 5 and The Ventures just received their inductions this year, an honor that should have been bestowed on them fifteen years ago – or at least around the same time as The Kinks or The Who. This is especially true for The Ventures who, except for Duane Eddie, defined instrumental guitar music and provided a soundtrack for the early 1960’s.

Every band we knew, including us, played the Ventures. We wore the records out trying to capture the sound and even cranked up our amps in the church hall to get the echo right. Pipeline was a right of passage. It was also a good guitar study because a novice learned repetition on different strings and then you had to go up to the B – which was tough. Walk Don’t Run took a lot of practice but it was so satisfying when you finally got it. And I can never forget the long glissandos – sliding notes – in Apache. In fact a who’s who of guitar players learned to play listing to Ventures LP’s: George Harrison, Joe Walsh, Stephen Stills, Roger Glover, Jeff Baxter.

The best thing about The Ventures is that you didn’t have to sing. That is what made their music sell internationally. In Japan they out-sold The Beatles 2 – 1. Whatever was hot at the time the Ventures recreated it on disk. Space, the “Secret Agent” craze, television themes, etc. But their biggest hit was television’s Hawaii 5-0, arguably one of the most popular TV themes of all time.

For pre-Beatles influences of modern music The Ventures take the top prize.

On December 4, 1956, in Sam Phillip’s Sun Records recording studio, Carl Perkins and his brother, Buck, has just finished recording Your True Love with a cocky young session player named Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano. In the control room Sam Phillips was really happy with a tune and piped through the studio speakers, “That’s a hit!” Whereby Lewis rebutted, “that song ain’t worth a damn.” Perkins was taken aback. Here was the guy who had a major hit called Blue Suede Shoes and this upstart smart-aleck made the rookie mistake of opening his mouth “to his betters.” But Perkins held his mouth and as the session went on he saw and heard Lewis reinvent piano playing as they knew it.

After recording the next tune Perkins had grown used to Lewis’ ego and slipped in a few “neck burnin’ solos” of his own. It was right about then Elvis Presley walked into the studio. Perkins hadn’t seen Elvis in a couple of years and the young man had dyed his hair from dirty-blonde to jet black. He also had a striking young woman on his arm.

Lewis walked right over to him and said, “So you’re Elvis Presley, huh?”

Elvis just smiled and replied, “I ain’t nobody but.”

Whereby Lewis went on, ‘Well, I’m Jerry Lee Lewis. I’m playin’ piano with Carl today. I play on everyone’s records down here at Sun.” Lewis, Perkins recalled, wanted to show Elvis that he was really something. Rather than taking offense Presley went along with like he was witnessing the birth of something new.

Presley heard the takes of the day and was really impressed. As he and Carl began harmonizing Phillip signaled his engineer, Jack Clements, to turn the tape on. He knew history was in the making. Johnny Cash had also turned up and sang with Elvis and Carl on a take of Blueberry Hill.

There was almost 70 minutes of tape recorded that day of the four Phillips dubbed as the Million Dollar Quartet. Just like the Mercury astronauts were the first space heroes a few years in the future Cash, Presley, Lewis and Perkins were the first phase of the “Rock and Roll Generation.” They were relaxed in each others’ company. And Jerry Lee, a newcomer so used to having to prove himself with both his mouth as well as the piano was impressed as ebing treated as an equal. They did everything: rockabilly, blues and gospel. The last song they did was Chuck Berry’s Brown Eyed Handsome Man. As Perkins was describing his recent tour with Berry the tape ran out.

Th last song by the boys was Gene Autry’s You’re the Only Star in My Blue Heaven and it was over. jerry bid his goodbyes. Cash was already gone. As Elvis walked Perkins out to his car he vowed that he was going to a big man in Las Vegas. Fifteen years later he proved to the world he was right.