EVERYTHING RETURNS AGAIN THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEFT BANKE

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

PRELUDE:

THE ROAD TO GREENWICH VILLAGE

It’s 1964 or maybe 1965. The Beatles have changed the world forever. It’s going to be self-contained bands from here on out. This is a tale of New York City. And in the boroughs of New York City, a number of individuals have been living their unique and separate lives.

    All this is about to change. Because every weekend, the teenagers from the boroughs get on the IRT, the IND and the BMT and ride to Manhattan to carve out a new life on the streets of Greenwich Village. They idle about Washington Square in the day, sharing weed, pills and gossip, and at night they saunter over to the clubs to see and be seen.

    The lure of music and pop culture brings out the girls who want to be noticed and admired, and the guys - who want the girls. And one of the best ways to get the girls, at this particular time, is to let your hair grow down and sing or play in a band.

     Thus we bring the story from the typical Bronx or Brooklyn neighborhood into the Village and finally uptown Manhattan where the members of the Left Banke are initiated into an already metamorphosed music industry. The song “Walk Away Renée” is actually somewhat of a late bloomer, a hold-over from the doo-wop era. Songwriters Sansone and Calilli might be seen as two Brill Building door pounders – Broadway hacks. The old way of life for Broadway “regulars” is suddenly transformed into something unpredictable and new.

      We’ve got Reparata and the Delrons – who had cut some really nice records – just missing the boat on the great girl group scene, and the Left Banke rising up out of the ashes of the Magic Plants and various other temporal affairs. Life is churning away. You see, this is really vibrant history, and it starts in the boroughs, with music lessons, table radios, the Brooklyn Fox rock and roll shows, Sputnik on TV, influx of drugs, alienation of the generations and moves into the ‘sixties – and into the city – with a rush of social adrenalin. Some people will ride this tidal wave of history with daring and skill; some are propelled toward the shore to be crushed together with the swirling sand and bits of shells and seaweed… left like driftwood in the cold morning sun. – Lance Powers

GREENWICH VILLAGE: THE INCUBATOR

In 1965, Greenwich Village had evolved considerably from its sleepy beatnik and bongo phase to become a churning cauldron of new lifestyles and new ideas. It was no longer to be strictly associated with goatees, berets and jazz, or even the sixties’ folk boom it had so warmly embraced, but was now a point of origin for countless new trends and the limitless facets of unbridled individuality.

In Greenwich Village, it was alright with everyone else that you created yourself in your own image and flaunted whatever wild flight of fancy it pleased you to pursue. Teens flooded from the boroughs on weekends, turned on, crashed, found the unpredictable environment preferable to their strict and orderly upbringing and broke away from their former family ties, sometimes completely and forever. Joan Aupperlee (at the time Joan Padney), who now has been working for decades at Korg U.S.A, a major musical instrument manufacturer, recalls her early days commuting to the Village from her home in Massapequa on Long Island.

JOAN AUPPERLEE

“I started going to Greenwich Village in the mid-60s when I was in high school. The attraction started with my love of Bob Dylan. The Freewheeling album with the shot of him and his girlfriend walking down the street in Greenwich Village was so appealing to me – I had to see it for myself. Of course, since I was still in high school, this meant going into the city on a Saturday, and walking around until my girlfriend Luddy and I had to go back home to Massapequa for dinner. The round trip ticket was about $2.50 on a weekend. We would each have about one dollar to spend once we got there….we would buy a fifteen-cent subway token to get to the Village, but we would always panhandle a token for the trip back to the LIRR (Long Island Railroad).  

“When the summer rolled around, there was no restriction on the day of the week we could go into the city. We loved the Village so much! The people were so friendly and it always had a warm welcoming feeling, unlike other parts of the city. We would have tea or hot chocolate in Café Rienzi, sit for hours in the Kettle of Fish, or walk past the Night Owl hoping to see some cool band members practicing or hanging around. Evenings walking past the Café Wha you could hope to see the Fugs or some other cool long haired people. I remember seeing Tommy Feher at the Tin Angel. I also saw Taj Mahal there and that was such a great concert.”  

FRED ADAMS:

“I don’t think that anyone can fully describe Greenwich Village in the ‘sixties. It was a huge delicious Dagwood sandwich stuffed with characters and clubs, boutiques and bistros, bookstores and sickly sweet smelling head shops topped with a special sauce called ‘music.’ There was the Night Owl Café, where the best of the New York based groups played. Some of the groups became recording stars and some became ‘no hit wonders’ but even if they didn’t become famous, their music was another part of the puzzle that would become an unforgettable era.

  “The Night Owl was always packed, so we’d hang out under the big blue awning listening to the muffled sounds coming from the small room where the Magicians or the Lovin’ Spoonful might be playing their hour long sets. On weekend nights the crowds would be so big that it was impossible to stop anywhere unless you ducked in a doorway or held on to a lamp post. You’d get shoved along, pushed and shoved by the parade of walkers and gawkers that would drive in from New Jersey or the suburbs or take the subway from Brooklyn or Queens.”

TOM FEHER:

“When I first arrived in the Village in 1964, it was primarily a folk music environment. There were still many poetry readings in places like Café Rienzi and the Figaro, and plenty of acoustic music everywhere. I saw Pete Seeger and Gerry Mulligan at the Village Gate, Eric Anderson, Danny Kalb and Dave Van Ronk at the Gaslight. Not only that – many of the performers you saw in the cafés would also say hello to you when you passed them on the street.

“I’d met Danny Kalb briefly through Roy Blumenfeld, drummer for the Blues Project who happened to be my downstairs neighbor when I lived over in a rat trap apartment on Second Avenue near Fourth Street. I remember walking in Washington Square Park early one morning carrying two loaves of bread I’d stolen from a bakery. I saw Danny coming toward me with a hungry look on his face and offered him one of the loaves which he thankfully accepted. That’s the way it often went down in my early days in the Village.

“Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, and Peter, Paul and Mary were the heroes of the hour. You had the old men playing checkers in Washington Square and Izzy Young holding court at the Folklore Center. There was a small town, really real flavor to the Village that was going to rapidly change after Dylan went electric.”

Feher had been a whiz in English grammar and literature since Macomb’s Junior High School in the Bronx. It was no big challenge for him to begin writing poetry and subsequently song lyrics. Words flowed as naturally and swiftly from Feher’s pen as water from an open faucet. And as an aspiring poet himself, he found the work of Dylan both fascinating and inspiring. It was probably Dylan’s influence that caused him to pick up the guitar.

FEHER:

“Actually, I’d say it was my school chum Warren Wilson that really got me not only listening to a really wide variety of music, but playing guitar. It was Warren who turned me onto Dylan. He had a classic Martin model – I think it was a double-oh seventeen, and we would spend nights sitting up in his mother’s Bronx basement apartment learning tunes and fingering out of a Joan Baez songbook while his mother was waitressing.

“The first song I ever learned to play was ‘Lily of the West’ from the Joan Baez book and after that, ‘Cocaine,’ from one of the blues records, or maybe Dave Van Ronk, and then Jesse ‘Lone Cat’ Fuller’s ‘San Francisco Bay Blues.’ We listened not only to Dylan and Baez, but to the Holy Modal Rounders, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and even at that early date (for our generation), Ravi Shankar. 

“And we dug on classical recordings of Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi too, and Erik Satie. I mean, we really had a lot of bases covered. That was actually my first concentrated exposure to classical music, and I’m sure it influenced my appreciation for the baroque when the Left Banke was forming.”

Warren Wilson and Tom Feher were schoolmates in the Bronx’s DeWitt Clinton High School along with Bob Armel, who would play a key part not only in Tom Feher’s life, but in the history of the Left Banke. It was through Warren that Tom met Bob Armel. Bob lived in midtown Manhattan, but for some reason he was attending school in the Bronx. His mother was divorced or widowed and had some money and as Feher tells it, “she sure had some class.” He describes a “real fine lady,” and good looking too, even in middle age; most of Bob’s friends agreed that they would love to ‘make it’ with her.

FEHER:

“Armel was an avid guitar player and he had a friend named Steve Katz, who showed us all a few tricks of finger picking. He had this one riff that we all learned to play, which later became a song and turned up on the Blues Project album as ‘Steve’s Song.’ Steve was a member of the Blues Project along with Al Kooper, Roy Blumenfeld and Danny Kalb, and later became one of the founders of Blood, Sweat and Tears. At some point, Bob Armel moved out of his mom’s apartment and got himself a railroad flat in Hell’s Kitchen. I can’t be sure, but I think that was on the basis of him selling dope of various kinds. He was always dealing in one drug or another, right to the end of his life.

“Warren and Bob were also responsible for introducing me to Greenwich Village. One of the first places I remember being introduced to was the Earle Hotel, which would figure twice again in my life, but at the time was the residence of one of Armel’s beat friends, a bearded guy named Peter who looked something like a satyr to my drug-glazed eyes. Peter professed to be a bi-sexual – something new and weird to my way of thinking, just like the crew of drag queens that paraded the Village streets. Some of the first people I met in Greenwich Village were gay, or in nineteen-sixties Bronx street talk, ‘fags,’ ‘queers,’ ‘fruits,’ ‘homos,’ ‘dykes’ and ‘lezzies.’

“The Village, with its emphasis on cultural and philosophical diversity, was a safe haven for the gays, and one was sure to meet them because they were out on the street looking for new faces to recruit to their way of life. I kid you not – I was invited to the ‘recruitment office’ and slept on the floor several times when I had no place else to stay.

“What I call the recruitment office was the apartment of a guy named Seymour, sandy haired with slack jowls, about forty at the time and the leader of the gay platoon. Seymour’s apartment was on the second floor of a building across from the Café Figaro on Bleeker Street. This was where they’d usually go to have parties: get high, listen to Barbra Streisand records, and swap all the latest Village and Hollywood gossip. Up there I met Fat Tony, Gernot Goerke, Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling and Josie, who fancied himself ‘the Queen of the Village.’ Holly and Candy later appeared in Andy Warhol films and achieved a measure of celebrity in those quarters. 

“Most of them were gay, but a few of us like me and Little Tom, (or ‘Little A’ as he became known), hung out for the drugs and the place to crash… there was a fragile truce. Little Tom would soon get involved with me on a hitchhiking trip to Chicago in the middle of winter; Gernot, who classified himself as an ‘asexual,’ would rescue me from Chicago and later get arrested with me on a drug bust frame-up.”

“One of my favorite scenes with these characters took place in the hallway of the Albert Hotel, where one of them had brought a white cat dyed pink on a leash and was trying to use the cat as a mule for pulling him/her along on roller skates. Try to picture that if you can.”

JOAN (PADNEY) AUPPERLEE:

“I remember seeing ‘gay’ people in the Village for the first time.  Josie was a sweet yet sadly gay man.  He seemed older to me, but I was only about fifteen or sixteen. I also met a boy from Chicago named Limey. He had dark hair and wore John Lennon glasses. I had a big crush on him (it was probably the glasses). I never kissed him or held his hand, but I was infatuated. As summer drew to an end, he was planning on going home to Chicago. I told him I wanted to stay in touch. He pulled me aside and told me he had a secret to tell me. I thought he was going to tell me that he liked me too. Nope… he told me he was gay… I never got over that one!!”

Alan Merrill was another Bronx lad who was fascinated by the allure of Greenwich Village. He’d read a 1964 article in Esquire magazine warning of the perils of Greenwich Village for teenagers.

ALAN MERRILL:

“Rather than putting fear in me, it interested me in a phenomenal way. I read and re-read the article, becoming familiar with the neighborhoods and clubs mentioned in the piece, determined to go explore this mysterious and magical counter culture place. I had a band that played in Westchester, the Alabasters, and we did an open mike afternoon at the ‘Cafe Wha?’ in 1964 in the Village. We did okay, but moreover I fell in love with the area and just started hanging out downtown on my own, making friends.”

Merrill had a date with destiny that would include the Left Banke and musical success in both Japan and Great Britain. But for now, he was digesting the Village scene along with a multitude of other wide-eyed youths, such as “Bella,” who shared experiences with the Left Banke in the early 1970s, moved to Greenwich Village early on and still resides there.

BELLA:

“I was born and raised in an Italian neighborhood in Trenton, NJ.  I started going to concerts and clubs in New York in my teens and eventually moved here in my late teens. Something comes to mind that Mike Brown once said to me. He said we all left our families and found each other for a reason. We belong together and must be a family to each other now. I know that sounds very hokey, but he actually did say that to me.   

“I was never quite sure if he was talking about just the Left Banke band members or if I was included in the ersatz family he was talking about, but I like to think I was. In retrospect, I can see that he was probably right because I was drawn to the Village area and still live in the West Village. 

“I always felt at home here – like I should have been born here. You might say the music brought me here, like Tom Feher’s song (‘Goodbye Holly’ from Left Banke Too), ‘on the wings of a lavender eagle.’ I always loved that song.”

FALL 1965

1965 was the year of great changes in everyone’s lives. The Beatles and British rock ‘n’ roll were no longer a novelty – they had become an institution. One might also say it was the year that the Rolling Stones broke through the acceptance barrier. There was a lot of resistance early on to the Stones crude and defiant image. But as early as 1962, American teens were responding to messages like “He’s A Rebel,” a #1 hit for the Crystals, produced by Phil Spector. 

The girls were sending out the message that they were going to take up with rough-tough street boys no matter what their parents would say or do. This meant that by 1965, guys like Finn and Feher were on the chicks’ A-list, especially in the newly evolving Greenwich Village. Tom Finn had been working at the 1964-65 World’s Fair, which ran through October 17th, 1965.

TOM FINN:

“After the World’s Fair closed in 1965, I didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn, so I asked a girlfriend what I should do. She took me to Greenwich Village, where I felt like I fit in. I spent my time going back and forth from Brooklyn to the Village. 

“By this time I had let my hair grow long and sought out other likewise teens, that could sing and play guitars. One day I heard that the Rolling Stones were coming to town to do a TV show that was being filmed in Brooklyn. So I got a few people together and went to that studio. I told them we should go early and try to sneak in. We got there at seven am, and there was no one there, the show didn’t start until six pm.  “I told my friends (two girls and one boy) to follow me and we snuck in the back door, which was a long way around the corner of the large studio block. The two girls followed me, but the boy was afraid and left for home. I timed it right and crawled right under the security booth and disappeared into the rear of the studio. We were way too early, so I took the girls up a flight of stairs and into a dressing room. The room was dusty and dark and not in use, so I figured we’d stay there until the Rolling Stones arrived, which we did. 

“We had a window which I opened, and saw them pulling up in their limo. We could hear the girls screaming down on the streets, so I figured it’s our time to make a move. I left the two girls in the upstairs dressing room and crept down a flight to see if I could find the Stones. I saw them hanging out in a few dressing rooms, so I went back upstairs and got the girls and brought them down to where I saw the Stones. I did it… we were in! I was lucky that the girls were really good looking, and dressed very hip and sexy. When the Stones saw us they thought we were part of the show or somebody that belonged there, so we spent the whole afternoon hanging out with them.  “After spending the afternoon hanging out with the Stones, the girls Cleo and Cookie and I felt great. We talked to them we laughed and had a great time. Except for Brian Jones who seemed pissed off at us, everything and everybody else too. 

About an hour before The Stones had shot their segment, a big Irish guard saw Tom Finn and the girls sitting in the studio area near the Stones. He recognized them from early in the morning and figured they’d snuck in. He grabbed Finn by the back of his jacket, pulled him out into the aisle and announced, ‘All right you kids come with me.’ 

TOM FINN:

“He was going to throw us out in the street, where all the other hundreds of kids were waiting to get in to see the show. I said to him in a loud voice ‘We’re with the Rolling Stones.’ He said, ‘Oh Yeah, we’ll just see about that.’ Then he pulls me over to Bill Wyman, who was reading a newspaper and says, ‘Are these kids with you?’ No response. “The guard grabs me by the back of my neck (on the jacket) and says ‘All right let’s go;’ then Bill Wyman stands up and says, ‘Hey! Leave them alone, they’re friends of mine!’ The guard’s face turned red with anger, as he walks away cursing under his breath. Hooray for Rock and Roll!” 

*        *        *        *

EVERYTHING RETURNS AGAIN

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEFT BANKE

FIRST MOVEMENT:

FORMATION

Music producer, arranger, songwriter, and recording engineer Ralph Affoumado met the members of the Left Banke in the late 1960s. As this book was being written, he held the position of Choirmaster at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and is expected to so continue.

RALPH AFFOUMADO:

“I was born in Brooklyn New York in 1938. We moved to the Bronx when I was two years old. This is probably at least ten years before any of the Left Banke group was born. In general, there was no TV, no computers, no fast foods, and fewer of the amenities we have today. Life was much slower, and in a way more considerate. People talked more with each other and read newspapers. Arrangers of music wrote everything out by hand. They used copyists for recording sessions. I actually did that until about ten years ago when I began to seriously use the computer for music. Recording studios were a great luxury as was hiring musicians and instruments. 

“By the time the ‘Sixties came along, things were very different. The Beatles and all the changes that came with them, the death of President John Kennedy, and the heavy use of drugs changed our simpler society into a great turbulence and turmoil. Rock music really took off very differently than in the ‘50s. 

“The Left Banke appeared on the scene in the middle of the drug infested mid-sixties. Marihuana smoke was everywhere. The music business was popping. Publishers and record companies were still king and deals were made all over the place. Large companies, managers, producers, lawyers and all the big guys were screwing the musicians and bands right and left with promises of fame and fortune on one hand, and lies and deception with the other hand. This was the milieu of that time.”

Today, anyone who works in the music industry or is interested in the field of popular music is likely to be familiar with the iconic magazine Billboard and its Hot 100. Founded in 1894 in Cincinnati, Billboard is one of the oldest trade mags in the world. Today it enjoys a virtual monopoly on the publication of popular music charts. But in 1966, there were three competing trade magazines in the music industry: Billboard shared the turf with Cashbox and Record World. And much of the product analyzed and promoted by these magazines originated from a stretch of Broadway between Forty-Eighth and Fifty-Third Streets in New York City.

    From the legendary Brill Building to 1650 Broadway on Fifty-First Street and 1697 further up Broadway, music publishers plied their trade, and careers were born. The careers of songwriting teams such as Bacharach & David, Goffin & King, Barry & Greenwich, Mann & Weil and Sedaka & Greenfield are now etched in gold on music business history, along with some of the great publishing companies of the era: Mills Music, Southern Music, Famous Music and Aldon Music.

From this classic locale emerged also such commanding performers as Connie Francis, Paul Simon, Laura Nyro, Neil Diamond, Bobby Darin and Tony Orlando. But these inspiring artists have had their many years and decades in the public eye. For now, we are going to turn the spotlight elsewhere, and discover a musical magic and history that may have eluded even some of the industry’s most devoted fans. For this, we will walk just slightly less than one block south of the Brill Building, to 1595 Broadway, the birthplace of the Left Banke and its classic recording of “Walk Away Renee.”

BIRTH OF THE BANKE

Late in December 1965, three long-haired boys made their way eastward on the icy streets of midtown Manhattan, hands in the pockets of their pea coats, their toes numbing inside Beatle boots never designed to withstand winter weather. The trio: Tom Finn of Brooklyn, Tom Feher of the Bronx, and Warren David of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. They were coming from Bob Armel’s “hippie crash pad” – a railroad flat in Hell’s Kitchen – and were headed for World United Studio, to a meeting that would forever change their lives, and ultimately the lives of several million fans of popular music.

Several city blocks away, in a recording studio tucked away in a rear annex of 1595 Broadway, George Cameron and Steve Martin entered and were greeted by Michael Lookofsky, whom George had only recently met through Tom Finn. Michael was the son of Harry Lookofsky, owner of the recording studio, and so had a set of keys and access to the facilities – all part of his job as general office boy and ‘gofer’ for his father’s music production business.

In contrast to the others that would meet there that evening, Lookofsky wore short hair, a blue preppie shirt with button-down collar, drab olive slacks and penny loafers.

On that first day, he was only too eager to please, as he wanted badly to escape his middle class world and “walk on the wild side” with the others, who exemplified the growing trend of rebellion and flamboyancy in the world of popular music.

The British Invasion was in full swing; the Beatles, the Stones, the Dave Clark Five and the Kinks had been riding high on the charts and the Hollies were about to enter the sweepstakes. In Greenwich Village, where these long-haired boys spent many an evening hitting on chicks, swapping joints, and parading up and down MacDougal Street just to “be cool,” Bob Dylan – already a legend and music business icon at twenty-four – had given them carte blanche to exploit their literacy and artistry while being as irreverent as suited their fancy. They were riding the crest of a tidal wave of cultural and social change.

World United Studio, as noted above, was located at 1595 Broadway, approximately one block south of what was to become the legendary Brill Building (legendary, though not as influential as 1650 Broadway). The entrance of 1595 had a long narrow hall with tin walls on both sides, marble floors and one glass door. A few steps into the narrow lobby there was a small Otis elevator (there were no businesses on the ground level); up one flight and you came out onto a busy floor with a beauty school, a music copyist, a few music publishers and a travel agency. All the way down the hallway to the left were the offices of World United / World Artists Productions Inc. and Twin-Tone Music publishing owned by Harry Lookofsky, who shared the space with freelance producers Steve and Bill Jerome.

  Out the back emergency exit and up a half flight of stairs was a quieter part of the building, and there one found World United Recording Studio: a rectangular room about 20 feet by 30 feet, with a high ceiling and a small control room with a bare bones console, two monitor speakers and several Ampex two-track recording machines. The studio also contained a set of Rogers drums, a Steinway grand piano, an upright piano and several guitar and bass guitar amplifiers. There was also a vocal isolation booth. 

When Finn, Feher and Warren David arrived at the World United Studio, they found the others partly started on what would become a standard operating procedure for writing, arranging and rehearsing songs: George Cameron, with his foot up on a chair, strumming the guitar and Steve Martin standing by the old upright piano singing while Michael Lookofsky pounded the keys in an attempt to “rock” through the stiff formality of his classical music training. Somehow this would all come together to create history. 

George and Steve had two songs they’d been working on, “I Haven’t Got the Nerve” and “I’ve Got Something on My Mind.” With Steve and George singing and Lookofsky supplying a somewhat baroque rhythm on the piano, Warren tapped his ever-present drumsticks on a chair and Tom Finn moved in to arrange the vocal harmonies. Finn was elated. He’d wanted a group like this for quite some time, and had been instrumental in bringing every one of the participants together at one time or another.

Feher, for his part, remained in the background watching and listening. He was known in Greenwich Village and among his close friends as a poet, a fellow who had “a way with words,” and he would eventually become the group’s first exclusive lyricist. From the beginning, there was a natural sense of family in the vocal trio of Martin, Finn and Cameron that did not quite extend to any other musician with whom they would work – even the soon-to-be celebrated Michael Lookofsky.

Lookofsky wanted desperately to be part of the scene, but had one overriding handicap working against him: he was an utter wallflower, someone who did not feel comfortable on stage or in a crowd of people. During his entire career, he would remain pretty much isolated in the surroundings in which others first met him: at the piano, in the studio, surrounded by four soundproofed walls and his musical imagination.

MEMBERS AND OTHERS

MIKE BROWN  

Michael Lookofsky, from what we know was raised in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that also produced the likes of George and Ira Gershwin, Barbra Streisand, Carole King, Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow. Piano lessons were a standard part of family life in Jewish neighborhoods in New York City, and Michael received them as a matter of course. He speaks in one interview of being schooled in Mozart and Chopin, and going to his grandmother’s house to play piano, where apparently (as stated in at least one interview) she encouraged him to learn the classics and may also have instructed him in music.

His father, Harry Lookofsky – born in Paducah, Kentucky in 1913 – started to play the violin at the age of eight years and received his training in St. Louis, Missouri. In his early teens he played the vaudeville circuit in the South with a small jazz orchestra. Having performed in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the mid-30s and later in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, Harry also became an accomplished jazz violinist, releasing a much-acclaimed album, Stringsville, on Atlantic records in 1958. According to writer Jon Rose: “Harry Lookofsky was the first (and perhaps only) violinist to sit down and spend a lot of time figuring out how to play bebop on the violin, an instrument which is a nightmare of technical demands. But he cracked it.”

  One could say that Harry Lookofsky certainly knew music and one assumes he had a presence in the industry. Michael recalls at eight years of age going with his father to recording sessions and absorbing the studio atmosphere and the music. These were the influences that would emerge and take shape in early 1966 when the various elements came together to form the Left Banke. But Mike’s entry into the record business was anything but glamorous. 

By the 1960s, Harry Lookofsky had become partners in a recording and publishing company with the brothers Steve and Bill Jerome. They named their publishing company Twin-Tone Music and the production company World United Productions, and set up shop on the second floor at 1595 Broadway, just north of Forty-Eighth Street in Manhattan.

Until the formation of the Left Banke, the most successful venture of World United Productions had come about with the signing of Reparata and the Delrons, a recording act patterned after successful ‘60s girl groups such as the Crystals and the Chiffons.  

Initially known simply as the Delrons, they were recorded in 1964 first for  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Records" \o "Laurie Records" Laurie Records, then with the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Maresca" \o "Ernie Maresca" Ernie Maresca song “Whenever a Teenager Cries” on the World Artists label. Ernie Maresca had scored before, as songwriter of Dion’s 1961 blockbuster #1 hit, “Runaround Sue.”

“Whenever a Teenager Cries” became a regional hit and reached #60 on the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Hot_100" \o "Billboard Hot 100" Billboard Hot 100; its follow-up, “Tommy,” reached #92 on the charts, with the group now called Reparata and the Delrons. All this might have meant little in terms of the Left Banke evolution, except for the fact that the first album by Reparata and the Delrons contained a song, “Do You Remember When,” by an aspiring songwriter, Michael Lookofsky.

According to Michael, he was working in the company as an all-around helper for thirty-five dollars a week – as an engineer’s assistant or “button pusher,” or more often “emptying ashtrays,” as he describes his janitorial duties. Although we have no way of determining this at the time of writing, one can imagine that Lookofsky was absorbing the studio life at a rapid pace, and may have participated in a number of recording sessions prior to the first Left Banke recordings.

At any rate, there he was when the British Invasion exploded across the world of American popular music and everyone’s parameters changed. All New York City was on the lookout for long-haired, self-contained bands that wrote their own material. Michael Lookofsky, probably following his father’s example, took on a professional moniker. Harry, to many of his industry friends was known as “Hash Brown;” Michael soon became Michael / Mike Brown, the name under which he is known to the millions of Left Banke fans.

In many articles over the years, Michael Brown has been portrayed as the towering genius without whom there would be no group and no sound. But such is the short-sighted view. The group that came to be the Left Banke was based on team effort. Mike was very proficient on the piano, but not at rock. The boys urged him in a rock direction and he began writing songs based on the vocal input they were giving him. They sang their hearts out, and he would get ideas on how to put their harmonies and melodic ideas to use. 

TOM FINN:

“We gave him the ideas, we sang the notes, not him, and that’s why Steve had major fights with him. There were several times that Steve refused to talk to Mike. George and especially I wanted peace in the valley because we knew we were doing something very special, but Steve actually hated him. Because he (Brown) treated people like shit.”   

TOM FEHER:

“If genius comes from neurosis or psychosis then I would say that Mike Brown was a genius. But I don’t happen to believe that. As far as I’m concerned, a true genius also has to have warmth, and compassion for other people. Mike, bless his black little heart, had none of that. Remember, we’re talking 1965-66. He had piano playing and compositional ability, and that’s about all he had.

“Mikey was a troubled boy, younger than the rest of us by two years. He also knew he had a power over the rest of us because he had the keys to the studio when we were freezing out on the street with nowhere to go. Sometimes he played the part of the generous good guy and let us in; other times he would refuse and tease us with it.

“I remember one time I was trying to quit smoking. For a while I had smoked a new brand out called Lark cigarettes. Brown smoked ‘em too. So I stopped smoking for a few days, and Brown would walk up to me, pull out a cigarette and place it under my nose so I could smell the tobacco. Then he’d say something like ‘smell the aroma, don’t you want to light up?’ – like some sort of weird television ad. Sometimes he’d tease me with money too, showing it to me in my penniless hunger and then putting it back in his pocket. That was evil, just plain evil.

“I was a folk guitar player, just getting into the rock thing myself. I would watch his hands on the piano and mimic the motions when the piano wasn’t in use, trying to find my way into being a keyboardist. Mike Brown approached me and said ‘Don’t waste your time; you’ll never learn how to play piano.’ Imagine someone saying something like that to a young Picasso or a young Chopin, trying to stunt their creativity – what a fiendish thing to do! But he didn’t realize that he was talking to the Bronx Bomber. I hung in there, built up my chops over the years, and probably passed him by years ago.

“You can take this any way you like, but as far as I’m concerned, the real genius of the Left Banke lay in the harmonic blend, because Tommy, Steve and George were great friends in the true sense of the word, and that came out in the vocals. I think you could have given them any number of well-written songs by various competent writers, and they would have taken those songs to the top of the charts. But there’s no mistaking the unique sense of creativity that Brown had at the piano; I’m not going to challenge that.”

GEORGE CAMERON

Tom Feher has referred to George Cameron as kind of secretive, basically non-committal back in the day, but easy to get along with. Coming from a Latino background – his mom was born in Spain and his dad in Puerto Rico – George might have been a typical Spanish-American but for a strong Scottish strain inherited from his maternal grandfather. He’d been born in Hells’ Kitchen, Manhattan as Justo George Fabian Cameron Jr., and grew up in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood, in which he reports he went to Catholic School and “stayed out of trouble.”

GEORGE CAMERON:

“I felt a very strong urge to play and sing music, so I started or was in, at least four acapella singing groups.”

When George was about fourteen he met Brian and Lurch, through an artistic friend. They were into sculpture and painting. George had a strong affinity for these qualities and started going to the Fort Hamilton area of Brooklyn to see them on a regular basis. Eventually Brian, Lurch and George began singing together.

CAMERON:

“After seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, we decided to start a group. We called it ‘The Insects’ after the Beatles (as in ‘bugs.’) We did it for three reasons: Girls, love of music and the style of the British groups…and girls.”

TOM FINN

Tom Finn was born in Brooklyn at Beth Israel Hospital on November 21st 1948. His father, Daniel – a police officer – was of English-Irish descent; his mother Anne’s family emigrated from Italy. Finn’s earliest memories are of entertaining his family and their friends by singing “A Bushel and a Peck,” and “Hernando’s Hideaway,” popular hits of the day. Tom Finn’s youthful happiness came to an abrupt end in 1951 when his mother died; he and his older sister Barbara were shuffled around from relative to relative. From there he went to foster homes where more often than not he was abused.

TOM FINN:

“When I was ten years old I ran away from a tough, Irish immigrant family, the Mulligans. I had gotten into trouble in school and I knew they would beat me senseless, so I went around the neighborhood (the Flatlands area of Brooklyn) and collected soda bottles. I took them into a big market and cashed them in for the deposit. When I had fifteen cents I got on a westbound bus and headed to where my father lived; I found his apartment building and went in. He was lying in the bed snoring really loud, and there were beer bottles scattered all over the place. “I got closer, and saw money sticking out of his trousers; I peeled off a five dollar bill, and went back out to the street. I bought something to eat and drink at a drug store fountain and for some reason I bought a really nice pen. I then went back to his building and slept in the hallway up on the roof landing. The next day I snuck down to see what he was doing and he caught me. I begged him not to send me back. “He lived with his girlfriend, Margie who had a young daughter Ann. Margie felt sorry for me; she asked my father to keep me. He said okay. It wasn’t easy to do, but a good social worker said she would approve it. She did this in jeopardy of losing her job. 

I was sooo happy. But now began life with Dan Finn, retired police officer and blackout alcoholic. We all went on living together until his drinking got so bad our lives were in danger. Margie moved out after about two years. That left me alone with my father. I managed to go to school for a little while but, it was impossible so I’d play hooky.”  A devoted student of American popular music history will no doubt be familiar with the success story of Louis Armstrong, headed for a life of certain delinquency and crime on the streets of New Orleans until his interest in music was satisfied by his acquisition of a cornet at the Home for Colored Waifs. Apparently the influence of music performed the same function in Tom Finn’s life, for surely he had little else in the way of constructive guidance to lend him moral support.

FINN:

   “I started to play the bugle in the local church’s marching band. I really loved playing it. One night at a church dance, I went to the boys’ bathroom and a bunch of guys were hitting harmony there. I jumped in on the high note (first tenor). The sound of tight harmony always thrilled me. So these guys asked me to join them in a group. I said yes; I beat out about two or three other kids that wanted to be a member. 

“That was the beginning of ‘The Castels.’ The Castels were what is known today as a doo wop group, but back then we were simply called a singing group.”

At sixteen, Tom Finn left Brooklyn and spent the next year working at The New York World's Fair 1964 - 1965. The Castels, in addition to performing at the World’s Fair had been singing at street fairs all over Brooklyn, and were doing shows at churches and teen dances throughout the New York City area. 

Finn saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and felt curious about their obvious appeal. He went to see them play at Shea Stadium in 1965 and by this time felt a strong pull toward their music, their image and their lifestyle. By the time the Left Banke was ready to hatch, Tom Finn had developed a combination of flair, sensitivity, braggadocio and tact, all finely balanced.

TOM FEHER

“I wouldn’t exactly call him boastful, but he was proud of his Brooklyn street roots, and he paid attention to things that were going on and thus became increasingly knowledgeable about people, about music, about business. He was also very photogenic and knew how to act and pose in front of a camera.”

As Feher has often indicated, Tom Finn was the mediator in spats, “the glue that held the Left Banke together.” In fact, it was Tom Finn who first brought the various members in contact with one another.

TOM FINN: 

“I met George Cameron for the first time in early 1965 at an entertainment hall called Palm Gardens, which had a big stage and audience seating for about a thousand people. In later years this venue became S.I.R. (The Studio Instrument Rentals Building) located at West Fifty-Fourth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The show for that evening featured winners of a local talent search that was sponsored by the Royal Academy of Performing Arts and its president, Vince Spar. On the bill that evening was George’s singing group ‘The Insects’ and my singing group ‘The Castels’ along with several other acts. 

“The whole contest thing was just a smoke screen for this organization to go to neighborhoods and say to local groups, ‘Hey your group has been selected to appear in a big talent show and be discovered by all the record business execs that will be judges at the show.’ Meanwhile what they really wanted was to charge nice high rates for singing coaches and stage choreographers, etcetera. Anyway we took the coaching, and come show time I learned a very important lesson. 

“My group – The Castels – were much better singers and dancers than George’s group; but his group won best of show that night. Why? Because they all had shoulder length long hair. We were dressed in red suits with greased back hair. All the girls in the audience were screaming so loud you couldn’t even hear The Insects. 

“Their song was called ‘Gooey Louie’ and that was the only lyric they sang: Gooey Louie, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Gooey Louie, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, on and on, over and over. My group sang a doo wop ballad with soaring harmonies with a great lead singer, but it didn’t matter. Gooey Louie was what they wanted. So that’s how I met George.” 

GEORGE CAMERON:

“We hit it off very well, we liked his group and he was impressed by our long hair and the audience reaction we received. We stayed in touch. He also brought Steve Martin down to the Village and took him to a hangout for cool kids called Downstairs at Figaro’s. That’s when I first met Steve.”

WARREN DAVID

Tom Finn was indeed so much impressed by The Insects and the impression they’d made on the audience, he resolved to have his own group molded in the new image of long-hair and artsy rock – one that could not only sing, but play instruments as a self-contained band. By summer 1965 Finn had let his hair grow long and had begun spending much of his time in Greenwich Village. It was there that he met Warren David Schierhorst, another young musician with similar ideas. Schierhorst later dropped the last name and became Warren David for professional purposes.

TOM FINN:

“Warren had shoulder length blond hair (Brian Jones style) and was dead serious about this band we were starting. I met him on MacDougal Street. I had decided to put a group together, and Warren was the first link. All I knew about him was he was a good talker and he looked perfect for the group image that I had in mind. He also had a beautiful set of Slingerland drums. When I heard him play I said: ‘Man this guy is great.’ 

“Now we needed a guitarist that could sing. I search around the Village and one evening I saw a guy playing guitar sitting on a stoop on MacDougal Street. I thought this guy is really good, and he was, so I asked him if he wanted to put a group together with Warren and me. He told me that he had a record deal with World Artists records. His name was Mick Wexler. He was in New York City because his production company was run by Harry Lookofsky.

“I think Harry’s label had a distribution deal with MGM records or another major label. Warren and I thought we should make it a trio and shook hands with Mick. So now I was one step closer to getting a rock group together. I even took Mick to Brooklyn to meet my father. My father said ‘Now that guy’s a good guitar player, you can’t play for beans anyway.’”

Michael “Mick” Wexler, a Philadelphia native, had been performing as a folk artist in “the Village” when he was approached by Peter Schekeryk, who introduced himself as a talent agent. Schekeryk, who passed away in 2010, would later become the producer and husband of Melanie Safka (“Candles in the Rain,” “Brand New Key”). He took Mick uptown to World United and made the introductions. 

MICK WEXLER:

“I performed a few songs for Harry and Bill Jerome, and they wanted to record ‘I’m A Nothing.’ I brought Tommy and Warren in to make us a band. I also composed the ‘B side’ and Harry informed me it was ‘customary’ for the writer to share credit with the management team on the B side so all could share in the royalties. I was sixteen – I bought it. When the record was released a lawyer told me I was jerk to have fallen for that line.”

THE MAGIC PLANTS

Wexler’s recording of “I’m A Nothing” backed with “I Know She’s Waiting There” – credited to an imaginary group, The Magic Plants – was released in early 1965 on Verve, and distributed by MGM. A strange association, since Verve was traditionally a jazz label, and the recording has since been best described as “garage rock.” It boasts a punk vocal and fuzz-tone guitar riff. The label credits the release as a World United Production arranged by John Abbott. Abbott was later to play a key role in the Left Banke’s initial recordings.

TOM FINN:

“When Warren and I joined The Magic Plants, Mick Wexler already had a record out, ‘I’m A Nothing’ produced by Harry Lookofsky. Mick wanted us to do some shows in support of the record, which was a novelty song about a guy with really low self esteem. Warren and I weren’t crazy about doing that song, but Mick did have a recording contract and he was a good guitarist. 

“So off we went to Philadelphia, to lip-sync a few shows that Mick set up. We were all pretty good posers and it worked out well. When we got back Warren and I moved into his grandmother’s house in Sea Cliff Long Island. We stayed there for a few months, then came back to New York City and stayed at Warren’s mother’s apartment on Bank Street in the Village. It was at this time that I met Tom Feher.”  

Scott Muni began as a Top 40 DJ in New York City at WMCA in the 1950s and move to rival station WABC in 1960 where he participated in the radio rivalry to schmooze the Beatles the moment they landed in New York. In 1965, Muni  HYPERLINK "http://books.google.ca/books?id=migEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=scott+muni+wabc+dropped+him&source=bl&ots=9hFZE4QpRn&sig=JxSPP0WnU_ERPcCSTFPXTd22KEQ&hl=en&ei=xPj_S_f4DcGqlAfUuOG5CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAw" \l "v=onepage&q=scott%20muni%20wabc%20dropped%20him&f=false" left “WA-Beatle-C,” and while doing occasional fill-in work for WMCA ran the Rolling Stone night club located at 304 East Forty-Eighth Street, near Second Avenue. That autumn, Tom Finn accompanied Wexler, who he further describes as a “Mick Jagger imposter,” to the Rolling Stone club.

FINN:

  “Back in late ‘65 a lot of people didn’t know what Jagger looked like. So we went to The Rolling Stone. Mick (Wexler) was wearing a big pair of sunglasses at night in an already darkened nightclub, and he sported a heavy Cockney accent. Everybody knew he wasn’t Jagger, but he insisted anyway.

“I saw The Vagrants perform, and WOW! What a production! I had never heard a group play with so much volume and production. I was impressed – I didn’t think they were a recording type of group, but live… they were amazing. When we were leaving Mick tripped over a little rise on the floor, and fell on his face. I remember people saying ‘What’s the matter Mickey Boy?’ They ridiculed him. But he deserved it.”

Modesty was not one of Michael Wexler’s primary characteristics. He assumes major credit for the formation of the Left Banke.

MICK WEXLER:

“The Magic Plants were the precursor to the Left Banke.  While the record ‘I’m a Nothing’ was not a commercial success, it laid the personnel foundation for the Left Banke. I introduced Tommy and Warren to Mike Lookofsky. Mike and I spent some good moments at the piano and guitar working on random melodies and dreaming of bigger things.” 

Thus it was that when the members of the group soon to be named The Left Banke first got together, Tom Finn and Warren David were not newcomers to World United productions. The stage was set for the improbable to happen, and so it would.

STEVE MARTIN-CARO

In mid-1965 word got around that The Rolling Stones were in town, and they were staying at the City Squire hotel on Seventh Avenue and West Fifty-Second Street. Hordes of teenyboppers headed uptown to the hotel. Tom Finn was in the area, having just come from a meeting at World United Studios where he had first met Michael Lookofsky.

Finn wanted to go by the Stones’ hotel and look at the swarm of girls. When he got there a group of about fifty girls saw him, thought he was one of The Stones and chased after him. Finn ran as fast as he could, turned the corner and ducked into a doorway in the first available building.

TOM FINN:

“Standing in the doorway was a young man with short hair. When the girls had run by, I came out and said to the young man, ‘Nice way to make a living huh?’  He said ‘Yeah, it sure is. Who are you?’ I said ‘My name is Tom Finn and I’m in a band. Who are you?’ He said ‘Steve Caro, I live down the street with my family.’ I could see that this guy was lonely and he didn’t have any friends; so I said, ‘Let’s check out the chicks.’ He said ‘That’s what I’ve been doing.’ So we went over to where the girls were and hung out with the throngs of teens, outside the hotel.”

The next day Finn went back, and there was Steve Caro again. They hung out together for a long time that night, and Tom Finn taught Steve how to sing “Play With Fire” by the Stones and “If I Fell” by the Beatles. 

FINN:   

“I thought this kid has a nice voice. So I came back a third night in a row, and there he was again. We sang again and hung out. But when it was time to go, I told him come with me. I took him to Greenwich Village and we went to downstairs Figaro’s, where all the hip kids hung out, and I said to Steve, ‘You can hang out here, it’s a good place.’ Then I gave him my Mother Hive’s PIF Club pin and said, ‘Good luck man, maybe I’ll see you again.’ I saw him talking to George who was a friend of mine from the show we did together, year and a half before.”      

Mother Hive (birth name: James Tyson) was one of the myriad characters that inhabited the streets, cafes and clubs of Greenwich Village in the mid-60’s. He sold small pamphlets of his philosophy and poetry, and buttons that all said the same thing: “Mother Hive’s PIF Club PIF / IMRU” which meant: Pot is fun, I am – are you?

While Mother Hive was soliciting customers at the tables of the Le Figaro Café upstairs, an entirely different scene had developed in the small basement hangout below the restaurant. Ushered in by the doormen Count and Hud, teens would surge into the crowded room called “Downstairs” for non-alcoholic drinks and recorded music in a dim light. It was a place to meet and mingle and revel in the currently popular music.

FINN:

“One day I went downtown to the village and stopped into downstairs Figaro’s, and there was George, wearing black gloves, with about five rings over the fingers. He had a pair of drumsticks and was keeping time to the record that was playing. They actually had a Disc-air, which was a term meaning DJ, back then. Steve Caro was there also, wearing a checkered pea coat; he now had long hair half way over his ears. He had his ears up to the speakers and was singing along with the same record that George was drumming to. 

“I said to the two of them ‘Hey guys what’s happening?’  They said they were writing songs together, and were looking for a deal. I said ‘Come with me, I’ll take you up to see Harry Lookofsky, and he has a son that plays piano.’ They said ‘okay;’ so I told them the address and said ‘I’ll meet you up there tomorrow.’” 

TOM FEHER:

“I particularly recall Steve Caro – “Steve Martin” by that time, with his ears right up to one of the big sound system speakers, singing along to songs from the Beatles Help! soundtrack and the newly released Rubber Soul. His naturally unique and soulful voice, as a result of this influence, began to take on a character somewhat half way between Lennon and McCartney; he incorporated elements of both their styles. When the Left Banke became a group, Finn, Cameron and Martin often used ‘You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’ as a tool for practicing their harmonies. Close by and listening in, I got to know that song as well as I knew the National Anthem.”

GEORGE CAMERON (from a 2003 interview):

“Our favorite song to sing back in the day was the Beatles’ ‘You’re Gonna Lose That Girl.’ We sang that song all the time, and everywhere. After that, anytime we got together to sing we would just come up with some amazing harmonies. It really can’t be explained. We just loved to sing and we sounded great together, and we did it best when we weren’t given parts to sing. Just let us go and stand back.” 

TOM FINN:

“George and I both had several years singing harmony in our respective groups in Brooklyn. By the time the Left Banke came to be, we both were very good harmony singers. Of the three of us, I was the unofficial ringleader because I also could read music (from years of playing trumpet in grade school and Junior High school bands); therefore I could understand what we were doing musically.

“But we always had a natural way of blending with Steve, who didn’t know what he was doing, in the harmonic sense. So our style developed by singing around Steve’s lead voice, thereby completing a three part harmony, which turned out to be much different than the typical ooh’s and aah’s prominent in most lead singer and back-up group style. That was fine because the Beatles did the same thing. 

“One night Renée (Fladen) and I plus a group of friends went to a place on the East Side called The Clique. It was a super hip hangout where all sorts of musicians and actors went. I was sitting next to a guy that was very interested in my group of friends. We were talking about singing, and I told him that I was a master at harmonizing, especially at three-part harmony. 

“The guy, who introduced himself as Peter, really got interested in talking about harmony, so I went on and told him that I read music but didn’t use solfeggio (a sight singing method) and that I was just an expert at harmony singing by ear. After all that boasting, I found I was talking to Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary! I felt really stupid bragging like that.” 

George Cameron, having evolved from an Insect to a Mortician, has his own take on the very first meeting of the future Left Banke members. Mike Brown is portrayed in a similar light to the Stones’ Ian Stewart, who played on their early recordings and had a role in the formation of the band, but simply didn’t fit into the flamboyant rock image that was a sign of the times.

GEORGE CAMERON:

“My group with Brian and Lurch was called the Morticians now; but we were heading in different directions by this time, and weren’t playing anywhere. One day Tommy told me and Steve to come uptown to World United Studios – that there was a place to jam there and they were interested in finding new talent. 

“So we all went up there and Tommy introduced us to Mike Brown who was very impressed with us all. He wanted to be like us. You know, with long hair and having girls around etc. We also met a guy who was Tommy’s drummer in the group he was in at that time, ‘The Magic Plants.’ 

“I think that was the first time we were in the same room together, and I think we all felt really good about each other, except Mike Brown. We liked him but I don’t think any of us wanted him in the new group we envisioned, cause he was like really nerdy, and wasn’t a rock and roll type at all, but we tolerated him mostly because he had the keys to the studio and he played a good piano. He slowly worked his way into being a member of the group instead of a back up piano player, and since he played piano we’d gather round and sing into his ears, he loved it. So that’s how we started – and we all loved it back then.”

TOM FINN:

“Mike Brown was never even considered to be a member of the band. He wasn’t like the rest of us. We all were singers that wanted to be in a band, except for Warren, who just played drums. So we all plugged in to the World United Studios guitar amps; nobody had a bass guitar, and Warren played the drum set they had up there. Mike played the piano but nobody could hear him because of the volume. 

“We were just play-acting at being a band; none of us could play. George had an electric guitar and we decided that he was the guitar player. Steve played guitar also: after all, his mother was a professional flamenco guitarist. I was elected the bass player; I’d fooled around with a bass when I worked at the World’s Fair, but not very much. 

“When it came to singing we were really great, man. When I joined my voice with Steve’s and George’s we sounded better than anyone. Steve had the best voice, but none of us ever looked at it that way. We were all lead singers, and Steve definitely didn’t want to be the lead singer. When we sang around the piano with Mike playing is when the sound of the group came out. None of us wanted Mike to be a part of our band. We felt he wasn’t cool enough; he didn’t know how to rock out. But nonetheless it happened.”

While George was reveling in the camaraderie of the newly formed group, Steve Martin remained somewhat distant, beset by personal tragedy. Steve, born Carmelo Esteban Martin Caro in Los Angeles, had lived with his family in Spain as a teenager. The family had recently come to New York City, where Steve’s father, who’d been an agent for bullfighters in Spain, dropped dead on the corner of West Fifty-Second Street and Eighth Avenue. George tells us this occurred right in front of Steve’s eyes.

Steve had been very close to his father and took it very hard. His mother, Sarita Heredia was an accomplished flamenco guitarist, singer and dancer, a fact which had her traveling all over the globe, celebrated in the 1950s and ‘60s as “the only female flamenco guitarist in the world.”

FINN:

“I think they came to New York City because of some connections she had in the Spanish restaurants in the city. I know for a fact that she had a regular gig at a restaurant called Les Pyrenees, on west Forty-Sixth or Forty-Seventh near Eighth Avenue. She was very good at what she did; I think she supported the family.”

After her husband’s death, Sarita moved to Puerto Rico with Steve’s two younger brothers, Juan and Luis. Steve – at that point eighteen and deemed by society to be legally responsible for himself – elected to stay in Manhattan, most likely in the development of his new friendships and the pursuit of his emerging life in music.

Steve was a lonely youth, somewhat bitter. One can imagine the effect his father’s death must have had on him. When he was with the rest of the group his humor came out, but in a somewhat cynical style. Martin-Caro invented nicknames for the others, some of which were quite derogatory. They responded by calling him “Carmelo.” It was probably Steve who gave Cameron the lifelong nickname of “The Hoost,” derived from the Spanish pronunciation of his birth name Justo. He also gave Left Banke long-time friend Fred Adams the nickname “Shark Delrio,” an appellation that would last a lifetime.

FRED ADAMS:

“I guess Steve had me pegged. The name has lived on. I remember that he called my apartment on Forty-Seventh Street the Delrio Arms. The ‘Shark’ came from the fact that I had some money or loaned money or that he’s a psychic and saw my future...”

(Adams is referring to the fact that later in life he moved to Florida and became a pawnbroker, or some might say, a ‘loan shark.’)

TOM FEHER:

“Steve was very much the proud Spaniard, and though in a bad way financially, did his best to present a sharp appearance in public. I remember visiting him one time at the Landseer Hotel on Fifty-Second Street, and he was standing behind an ironing board in his under shorts, pressing his shirts. He was a very careful dresser.”

The lonely sadness and personal pride that marked Steve’s character must have found its way into his vocal delivery, for it was his haunting, world weary voice that was among the elements that set “Walk Away Renée” apart from all other recorded product of its time.

TOM FEHER

The final member of the party at World United Studio that winter of ‘65-‘66 was Tom Feher, born in New Jersey in 1947 and raised in the Bronx from the age of five. His street life and career is probably more colorful and eventful than all the others combined, but in this meeting, he refers to himself as “the invisible man.”

Feher had left home slightly more than a year prior by mutual consent with his immigrant aunt and uncle who had come to blows with him over pot smoking and foul language. Having been evicted from his East Village apartment for failure to pay rent, he’d slept on floors and couches until finally in December of 1965 he decided to make the great American journey and hitchhike to California.

As Michael Brown later would be inspired by the Mamas’ and Papas’ musical bridge to “California Dreamin’,” Feher was inspired by the message in the lyrics and yearned to leave the grey winter of New York City for the California sunshine. But ‘65 was not to be his year. Having written his very first song in a jail cell in Chicago, he was compelled to return to Greenwich Village when another aunt’s refusal to board him for a night deflated his hopes for ever crossing the continent.

TOM FEHER:

“I returned to New York City on or about Christmas Eve 1965, and was staying at the Earle Hotel in Greenwich Village in the room of a gay rich kid who had paid my plane fare home and was trying to get into my pants. There was no way I was going for that – as I wrote in a song a few years later: ‘I got no nasty things to say about him, (as) long as he keeps his fingers to himself.’ I slept on the floor with a pillow and a blanket, as far away from the bed as I could get.

“Well, this guy doesn’t need the money, but to keep himself busy he had a job as a delivery boy for a midtown florist. He would ride up to Murray Hill or somewhere and deliver flowers on a bicycle; so I would be stuck in the hotel room all day – it was getting really cold outside – just dreading the fact that he would come home coochie-cooing by nightfall. After a couple of days of this, I started snooping around the room to see what he had there. To my surprise, I found a shoebox full of pot behind a few things in the closet. 

“This was more than I could hope for! I immediately got the idea how I could turn this situation to my advantage. I pulled off a pillow case, and began filling it with a number of small appliances: a portable radio, a tape recorder, and I think there was an expensive camera. I put that box of marijuana in there with it, pocketed whatever money I could find in the room and headed downstairs, walking through the lobby trying to look like I wasn’t in a hurry, but I was scared shit that Bob, the gay guy, would come back early or something.”

Feher then tells us he got on the subway and took it up to midtown Manhattan, where he headed for the “crash pad” of a friend from high school, Bob Armel. He’d known Bob Armel since DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where Armel had passed on a few guitar licks he’d learned from Steve Katz (later to form the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat and Tears). At the time, it probably hadn’t occurred to Feher that his association with Armel would become a key link in the chain that led to the Left Banke’s formation; being involved with a pop group was the furthest thing from his mind.  

FEHER:

“Armel had been renting an apartment on the third floor of a four flight walkup in Hell’s Kitchen, on Tenth Avenue off the corner of Forty-Eighth Street. I’d been there before at a number of pot parties, and was half in and half out of a circle of people that included Bob, our friend Warren Wilson, who’d introduced us, Peter Adelaar, son of a wealthy soap merchant, a girl named Gina I didn’t know too well, and a pretty girl named Linda Hartig, a fine artist from Brooklyn.

“I trudged up to Armel’s apartment in the blistering cold. I knocked on his door, over and over, waited for his footsteps and for him to complete the door opening ritual. Being in the business of dealing drugs, Armel was extremely paranoid. He’d peer and peer through the little peephole until he was sure it was someone he knew. ‘Open up, dammit! It’s Feher. I’m freezing my ass off out here.’  

“Then he’d have to slide the bar lock, which was a torture all in itself because it was an old model and didn’t slide too well. Well finally he lets me in, and I tell him I need a place to crash. He was reluctant until I showed him the pot and the other stuff. He took the entire haul in exchange for one month ‘rent.’”

Earlier that winter, Feher had met Tom Finn on the streets of Greenwich Village. Feher’s recollection of that event stems more from a discussion they had in the doorway of a café called The Cock and Bull, as to whether “It’s All Over Now,” a Bobby Womack tune that had been recorded by the Rolling Stones, should be played rock style or folk style. Finn tells us of his first glimpse of Feher in front of the now legendary Night Owl.

TOM FINN:

“I was standing in front of the Night Owl in Greenwich Village, and he was introduced to me as ‘The Big A;’ so for about a month or two I called him Big A. I liked Tom Feher from the moment I met him. He was brimming with enthusiasm and good vibes. 

GEORGE CAMERON (interviewed in 2011 by Daniel Coston):

“He was there with us twenty-four/seven. He would make us crack up, goof on us when we did something stupid. He shared everything, lyrics, music. Feher kept everybody in a good mood. He deserves the credit.”

FINN:

“I don’t remember how it happened, but I think Tom Feher invited Warren and me uptown to Bob Armel’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, an area just west of Times Square. Bob Armel had a large apartment and a lot of people hung out there. We’d listen to Rubber Soul and Tim Hardin’s album and play guitars, smoke marijuana and make love; this is where I met Renée Fladen.”

FRED ADAMS:

“Bob Armel had a walk up apartment on Tenth Avenue between Forty-Seventh and Forty-Eighth streets. It was like the old well worn, patched up tenement apartments that I had lived in all my life except for the fact that it was a twenty four hour madhouse! The first time I visited, I was introduced to Armel (nobody ever used his first name) who actually rented the flat, and the Master of Ceremonies, Tom Feher, who also lived there. 

    “There were at least a dozen people in the apartment at any given time. Two might leave only to be replaced by two or three different people. Some were playing instruments or singing, some were smoking, talking about music, politics, drugs or current events. It was a chaotic place, a constant kaleidoscope of incoherent events and changing faces. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember anyone ever having the time to sleep! If they did, it was for a few minutes until a new ‘shift’ entered the room. 

“Warren (David) Schierhorst lived downtown in Greenwich Village, Tommy Finn and George Cameron in Brooklyn and Steve Martin in midtown Manhattan; Armel’s became an unofficial meeting place for the yet to be named band. 

    “Of course my memory isn’t as accurate as I’d like it to be, mainly because of the craziness that transpired at Armel’s. But I remember the first time I saw Renée walk into the front room. I think that every guy there remembers the first time that they saw Renée. The photos of her that survived really didn’t do her justice. It’s as if she was destined to be the subject of hit songs.”

 

TOM FEHER:

“From the moment I first entered Armel’s world the most amazing events were revealed to me. I mean, this guy was at the hub of an entire sub-culture. People were coming and going all the time, scoring dope, just hanging out; and there were parties that started at three in the afternoon and lasted until dawn.”

Tom Feher found himself in the middle of a scene more ludicrous, dangerous and more unreal than anything he’d read about in fiction. Among Bob Armel’s friends were fine artist Linda Hartig and Karen and Peter Adelaar, a brother and sister whose father had made a fortune in imported soap. When Feher was still living in the Bronx with his aunt and uncle, he would go down on the IRT or the IND to the Village and to Bob Armel’s and Peter Adelaar’s to listen to music and ‘get high.’ 

Adelaar was the first one in their crowd to have new records by the Kinks, the Stones, the Who and the Hollies because he would buy them when he was over in England and bring them back home. Their “in crowd” would also go around town to certain places to eat or have coffee and gab. One of those places was the Mayflower coffee shop – Feher places it up on Seventh Avenue around Fifty-Seventh Street. 

FEHER:

I‘ll never forget the Mayflower coffee shops because they had a poem etched into the glass on the wall behind the counter:

‘As you go through life, brother, no matter what your goal,

Keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the hole.’

“So we’re sitting at the counter talking,  – me, Armel, Peter Adelaar, Linda Hartig, and maybe Karen Adelaar was there too. It’s freezing cold; it might’ve been January or February 1965. And when we’re all done discussing British record imports, Picasso, Rimbaud, Sartre and whatever, I bid goodbye and head toward the underground subway station at Central Park to go back up to the Bronx.

“As I get in the vicinity of the Central Park Zoo, I see these businessmen coming up out of the subway carrying attaché cases and wearing the usual fine woolen overcoats and mufflers that they’d wear on a freezing day in New York. The only thing is, up above their collars these ‘men’ had the heads of elephants, giraffes and zebras. It was freaking me out; I didn’t know what to make of it. My mind was playing tricks on me, mixing pictures of past visits to the zoo with my present environment. 

“But at the time, I didn’t know that. The creatures I saw walking past me were really real. It caused an extreme paranoia in me, one of the few times in my life that I really ‘lost it.’ Somehow I got home to sleep it off. I found out later that Armel had slipped a cube with LSD into my tea. That was my first time on acid. I should have realized right then not to trust him as far as I could throw him; but I had a thick head in those days.”

 

A year later, the scene at Armel’s Hell’s Kitchen hangout hadn’t evolved into anything much more civilized. Conspiring there was a group of local small time hoods planning to rob a neighborhood liquor store, and one time someone got the bright idea to find out if their rifle was working and shot a hole in the big fluorescent Hess gas station sign across Tenth Avenue. Feher was also involved in a spooky incident in which Armel and several chanting, moaning females attempted to sacrifice him in a pagan ritual while brandishing screwdrivers, the blades heated to glowing red on the kitchen stove.

TOM FEHER:

“Let’s just skip that one. I’m still alive, and I can stand to forget the gory details. You want to hear about Renée; we’re getting to that. One night there was a party there to end all parties. It was probably before I’d actually moved in, but it was that same winter. The room facing Tenth Avenue was the last one you’d come to from the front door. Peter Adelaar’s sister Karen had woven a multi-colored spider web out of yarn and stretched it across the corner of the room. There were murals of plants and pixies and stuff like that from floor to ceiling, painted by Linda and who knows who else; I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Renée had a part in it.

“There was an old Kent guitar leaning up against the wall, and a bunch of people were sitting in a circle around a water pipe with a pile of pot a foot high on this canvas sheet – they were proceeding to initiate a smoke-out, which basically means that they would keep putting pot in the pipe and keep smoking until one by one people would drop out from exhaustion. Shades of Shel Silverstein! [editor’s note: Feher is referring to “The Great Smoke Off,” from Silverstein’s album Songs and Stories.]

“Anyway, they’re all going at it like crazy, and this quiet guy with dark hair and a kind of pale complexion goes over and picks up that cheap piece of shit Kent guitar, with strings an inch off the fretboard, and starts playing the blues. I’ll never forget that because you just don’t make music that good on a guitar in such pitiful condition. The rest of us were at the time just dabbling in music, but that guy was a pro. I don’t think anyone in the room but me was paying attention.”

As Feher discovered, “that guy” was John Hammond Jr., Vanguard recording artist and son of John Hammond Sr., the legendary record executive who brought Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Bob Dylan, and later Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughn to Columbia records. In the early ‘70s, Tom Feher would have his own chance at an audition with Hammond Sr., but was told to work on his material and “come back in six months.”

FEHER:

“That smoke-out ended at five or six in the morning with two guys still at it, and I think I just went to sleep around that time and never found out who won the final round.

But something else happened at that party that I’ll never forget, something that changed my life. Linda Hartig introduced me to a friend of hers from Brooklyn, another fine artist named Renée Fladen. Renée and Linda were attending the High School of Music and Art at the time.

“As Fred has pointed out recently, there was no way a guy could not notice Renée Fladen when she walked into a room. She moved gracefully, with long white-blond hair falling straight down; I wouldn’t say she dressed provocatively, but there was something about her that said ‘hold me, I need to be held.’

“I remember the first time I held her in my arms, she trembled. She was very shy, and very private – but she knew what she wanted. She wanted action. And I think that because at that time I was more aroused by drugs than sex, I couldn’t supply what she wanted and she quickly moved on. My relationship with Renée was short and not too eventful, but it made a deep impression on me. The second song I ever wrote was called “Renée,” sometime before the events at World United Studio. But I can’t remember more than a dozen words of that song.”

To Feher’s recollection he did not bring Tom Finn up to Armel’s, but did bring Warren David. And so it can be deduced that Warren David brought Finn to Armel’s, Finn met Renée Fladen and all the major connections had been made for the story that has been fascinating Left Banke fans for decades. For Feher, his welcome at Armel’s soon wore thin as he had exhausted his contraband rent deposit. But he was fortunate to find himself a berth directly downstairs in the apartment of John and Ivy Nicholson Palmer where another small thread of the Left Banke story was to be spun.

FEHER:

“They were with the Warhol crowd. John was a cinematographer whose claim to fame at the time – according to him – rested on his coming up with the idea for Warhol’s 1964 film Empire. Empire consists of six hours and thirty-six minutes of black-and-white footage of the Empire State building beginning at sunset and continuing until three in the morning. It was projected at a slower speed, extending it to eight hours and five minutes in length. 

“From what I understood, the big moments in the film were the lights of the building going on at dusk, and a bird and/or a plane passing by. I’ve never seen the film and I don’t think I ever want to. If I wanted to look at the Empire State building for eight hours, I’d climb up on a roof and do it in real time. Then at least I’d get to feel the touch of the breeze, and smell the roof tar and maybe some bread from an all-night bakery down below.”

John Palmer may not have received credit from Warhol for the Empire concept, but in 1972 he surfaced with Ciao! Manhattan, starring Edie Sedgwick, a film which he wrote, produced and directed along with David Weisman. Palmer’s wife, Ivy Nicholson, had been a European fashion model, and from what Feher knows, participated in one or more Warhol film projects as an actress. 

FEHER: 

“Ivy was tall, thin and bony, with a model’s sunken cheeks and high cheekbones; John had a look something like a hawk, with a beak of a nose and longish dirty blond hair combed straight back. With a pin-striped suit he could look like something out of the ‘thirties or ‘forties. They rented the apartment directly below Armel. The apartment was dark and dingy. They were poor as dirt and snobby beyond belief: like most of the Warhol clan, they thought they were really hot shit, ‘superstars.’ But they saved my skinny butt for some part of that icy winter. 

John and Ivy let me sleep in a loft bed up over their kitchen in exchange for watching their two little one-year old twins so they could go out and live the New York night life in places like Ondine and Max’s Kansas City. When they were home, they fought like banshees, yelling and screaming at each other. In one argument, Ivy flung a heavy pot at John, which missed him and hit one of the kids. That sobered them up, but only briefly. It was insane.

“It was one night when the battling Palmers were out clubbing that Renée came over. We waited until the babies were sleeping and then got into John and Ivy’s bed together; but I disappointed her, probably due to all the amphetamine and other crap in my system. Renée moved on to love and inspire others. Such is life.

“But there was more going on. I soon had to deal with the advances of Ivy Palmer, who came on to me behind her husband’s back, or who knows, maybe with his permission; they were a strange couple. I was a young guy who wanted very much to get laid, but I had been brought up in a certain way, and there were things on which I would draw the line. Those things included: no sex with a friend’s wife.

“I tried to explain that to Ivy. She didn’t quite get it, and things were getting very uncomfortable there. That became a reason to move into the publishing company office, where I slept on the couch. It was also the inspiration for the song ‘Ivy, Ivy’ eventually recorded by the infamous ‘other’ Left Banke.”

In the meantime, the newly formed group had acquired a name.

TOM FINN:

“The name Left Banke came from songwriter Scott English. One day I was sleeping in the couch at the office when Steve and Mike came in. They had just had lunch with Scott, whom they said suggested the name. I think they’d lunched at McGuiness’ right across the street (from World United) on the corner of Forty-Eighth and Broadway.   “Mike and Steve liked the name, so it came to be. I’ll never forget it because I was half asleep, and when they told me, I had this vision of a group of gentleman rockers on a stage, well dressed with long styled haircuts, like Jordan Christopher’s ‘Wild Ones’ or if you prefer, early Kinks.” 

Scott English was a Brooklyn-born songwriter who later co-wrote “Bend Me, Shape Me” (#5 / 1967) for the American Breed and “Mandy” (#1 / 1974) for Barry Manilow. Jordan Christopher’s band The Wild Ones, made the original recording of Chip Taylor’s “Wild Thing,” in November 1965.

FRED ADAMS

At this point, we must make room for one more character in the Left Banke’s story, for he too became a steadfast friend of the others and accompanied them through many life changes and events. As a matter of fact, if one looks carefully, he may be found on the cover of the group’s second album, Left Banke Too.

TOM FINN:

“Coming back to the West Side from the Clique one night, Renée and I walked arm in arm to Armel’s house. When we got there Fred Adams was there. Fred was a guy who became a very close friend of ours. He wasn’t a musician but he was a very funny and clever kid. He was a resident of Hell’s Kitchen, where he lived with his mother and stepfather. Fred let me sleep on his floor on sofa cushions; I stayed there quite often too. I really owe my life to Fred: I don’t know where I would have gone, although I was no stranger to homelessness.”

And so… enter Fred Adams, who became a loyal companion of the band and shared many of their trials, tribulations and relationships. As a matter of fact, Fred had been a high school friend of the Left Banke’s first drummer, Warren David Schierhorst.

FRED ADAMS:

“I was born on the island of Manhattan, New York at the Polyclinic Hospital during a record setting snow storm on October 17th of 1948. The neighborhood surrounding the hospital was called ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’ I guess when you grow up not having anything to compare your life to hell ain’t a bad place to be. You learn to make the best of it. A stick becomes a toy sword, a gun, a bat and sometimes a real weapon. Tar covered rooftops and concrete sidewalks are your playground and with a piece of chalk, your canvas. 

“But I did have a great time at Charles Evans Hughes High School. It was there that I met Warren David Schierhorst. Warren was a tall, lanky lad with a Dutch Boy type haircut. As his Germanic name implies, he had blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. He was so soft spoken that at times I had to ask him to repeat himself. We both shared the same non-interest in school at the time and would leave during the boring classes and roam the streets of lower Manhattan. 

“One of our favorite haunts was a deli that would serve beer to underage youths. Beers were fifty cents and hot dogs were the same price so… with two bucks we would have a delicious dog feast and get buzzed too! Eventually Warren became a drummer. I don’t know if he hid the fact or if he developed the talent during our friendship. I guess he got serious about playing when he started carrying drumsticks everywhere he went. 

“Warren told me that he had met some guys that played in a group or were starting a group and asked him to join. In those days you really didn’t have to play an instrument well or even play one at all, but if you said that you played an instrument and had ‘the look,’ you could be in a group or band. You could probably go on for months hiding the fact that you couldn’t play because there weren’t very many venues or bars for new bands to play at. Eventually I got to meet some of the other future Left Banke band members. I think I met Tommy Finn first. I can’t really remember where or exactly when but it may have been in the Village or at Bob Armel’s or maybe Broadway.”

Very likely, it was Warren bringing Fred to Bob Armel’s that soldered the connection. Whatever the case, the entire group – along with Feher and Adams – in its early days before the success of “Walk Away Renée” would congregate late nights to play an electronic bingo game next to 1595 Broadway. 

TOM FINN:

“Right downstairs from World United Studio was an arcade place on Broadway called Fascination. We learned to play it like the hustlers did. It was an illegal gambling place. When you won they gave you tokens, but you could take them around the corner to the candy store, where they’d pay you cash. 

“We used to beat the tourists, using a light touch and a heavy almost frozen ball. In the winter we would take one of the rubber balls and bury it in a snow bank outside. That made it bounce a little less. It would go in a hole quicker. Many times that paid for dinner. The Fascination place was open as late as there were customers... usually four in the morning. There was a ‘regular’ named Eddie ‘Skins.’ He got that name by scraping his knuckles on the sandpaper underneath the glass on the table top.”

Also at Fascination, they made the acquaintance of two aspiring songwriters, Paul Thornton and Jimmy Prestovino. Prestovino had written “I’ll Never Tell,” one of the early recordings by doo-wop legends the Harptones. He later opened a used record shop near Sheridan Square in the west Village.

Thornton was a singer-songwriter born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen similarly to Fred Adams; he would later be involved with Left Banke members on a project or two, and at the close of 1966 co-founded a psychedelic rock band the Godz, releasing several albums on the ESP-Disk label. Next to the candy store, around the corner on Forty-Ninth Street was a luncheonette named Jerry’s. Jerry was a friendly guy, and the luncheonette became another regular place for the boys in the Banke to hang.

TOM FEHER:

“There developed a ritual that included hours of working on song material up in the studio, followed by a trip to the drug store where some of us would get a hold of Rinalgin, which was a brand of nasal spray. We’d pour the Rinalgin into a cup of cherry soda to disguise the taste, and that stuff would keep you up all night. It was a cheap high. So now it was off to Fascination, hopefully to win some money so you could buy the breakfast special at Jerry’s in the morning.

“There was a period between the time when Fascination closed and Jerry’s opened, that we’d just wander around the deserted streets, or go up to the World United office and pass out on the couch for an hour or two. Sometimes there was pot, or pills that someone had scored in the Village or at Armel’s. I was the daredevil. One night we were up on the roof of 1595 where there was a tall Dewar’s billboard high up over Broadway. Someone – it might have been Mike or Steve – challenged me to climb to the top of the billboard, so of course I took up the challenge.”

Up until that time Feher had been known as “Earl Grey,” a moniker he’d collected because of his love for Earl Grey tea. As a result of his billboard climbing and other escapades, Mike Brown nicknamed Feher ‘Youngblood Hawke,’ after a novel by Herman Wouk. 

FEHER:

“There was one time we were all in Central Park at night, after the zoo had closed. I took a dare to climb over a fence and jump on the llama’s back, which I did briefly – you don’t want to take a very long ride on an unsuspecting llama. We then made our way to a fairly large but shallow lake, filled with lily pads. I think it was Steve Martin who issued the dare: ‘bet you won’t go skinny dipping in the lake!’

“So of course I stripped down and dove into the lake. The only thing is, when I got out, my clothes had all been tossed up in a tree. I think my shoes were hidden behind some bushes. What a pain in the ass! I don’t remember exactly how I got the clothes down, but obviously I made it back down to Broadway without being arrested for indecent exposure.”

It wasn’t the last time Feher would have trouble keeping his clothes in sight. But as he would say, that’s a story for another day.

FEHER:

“This was also the time of Mike Brown’s transformation. He was letting his hair grow out; he was experimenting with the drugs that were old news to the rest of us by now. But he really couldn’t handle it.”

Feher, adrift for the better part of the previous year, also found himself sleeping on Harry Lookofsky’s office couch.

FEHER:

“I have to say that despite his upper middle class reality, Hash Brown (Harry Lookofsky) was very supportive of me. He took me under his wing and made sure I had enough to eat and even sent me to his own dentist in Great Neck and paid the bill.

“Maybe he thought of me as the son he never had. (laughs) No, I’m being facetious; he actually had another son – Mike’s brother Joe, who seemed to be everything that Michael was not. He was stable, sensible, an attorney if memory serves correctly, with good manners and a well-groomed appearance.”

Whatever the case, Feher certainly must have endeared himself to the Lookofskys. Michael selected him as lyricist for three songs on the first Left Banke album, and Harry signed him up to a publishing contract with a weekly advance of $50.00. When the Left Banke split occurred approximately a year later, Feher stayed on with Brown and obtained his first single release as a songwriter. Having been Michael Brown’s most consistent co-writer, he was also most familiar with the plus and minus of working with the teenage prodigy.

FEHER (From a 2003 interview by Daniel Coston):

“I think the other guys would agree: writing songs with Mike Brown was torturous. He’d get a title or a basic idea of what he wanted to say, a first line or something, and then he’d come up with the melody and overall musical arrangement.  “If you were his collaborator, you were expected to somehow discover exactly which words he wanted to say, so basically he was picking your brains, but if you wanted to add your own twist to it, you were in for it. I came to think he just wanted company at the piano, someone to harass and batter into submission, and could have just as likely written all the lyrics himself.”

Thus it was in early 1966 that the stage was set for the making of a hit record – one that has gone into the musical history books and voted by a select panel as #222 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 GREATEST SONGS OF ALL TIME.

The cast was assembled; the stage was set; it only waited for the song to be written.

EVERYTHING RETURNS AGAIN

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEFT BANKE

SECOND MOVEMENT

CRESCENDO AND DECRESCENDO:

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE LEFT BANKE

WALK AWAY RENÉE

It was early 1966, amid the pot parties, Fascination, Rinalgin, uptown and downtown clubs and cafes that “Walk Away Renée” came to be written, partly at the old upright piano in the rear of 1595 Broadway, high above the frozen sidewalks of that New York City winter while Paul Simon described the “Sounds of Silence,” Paul McCartney insisted that “We Can Work it Out,” and Mick Jagger informed a horde of teenage listeners “I’m free to do what I want, any old time.” The invasion was a factual reality:  NYC had been re-absorbed into the British Empire.

MIKE BROWN 

(from a 2005 interview by Even Johan Ottersland ):

“We were influenced very much by the Beatles and other British groups. When ‘California Dreamin’ came out by the Mamas and the Papas, I was very interested in how they used the flute in the middle of the song; as far at least as the Left Banke was concerned, at that point in time ‘Walk Away Renée’ was already written, so I just put a flute part in the middle of it.

“I was inspired by the Mamas and the Papas; and before that when I studied piano I was studying Chopin and Mozart and various things… my grandmother was very influential in me practicing every day and I would go to her house. She was like a real piano teacher to me, so I was exposed to a lot of classical music.”

To date, no one has come up with a minute-by-minute description of the “Walk Away Renée” songwriting process and how it was initiated; but it can be extracted from interviews that Michael Lookofsky, soon to become Mike Brown, had been working at the piano on a composition for which he had no lyric. Tony Sansone, the chief lyricist, who was about twenty-five at the time, had been plugging away at songwriting since the age of eighteen, and was not a stranger to the World United studio.

Among Left Banke fans – or perhaps one should say fans of the recording “Walk Away Renée” – there arose over the years a romantic story of unrequited love set to music, initiated and embroidered no doubt by the creative mind of pop journalists in the wake of the song’s success.

Surprisingly, it seems there is little truth to that fable. Yes, there was a Renée; and yes, Mike Brown fell for her in typical teenage fashion. But Mike Brown was not the lyricist, and we find that his infatuation was not as deeply involved in the writing of those words as we have been led to believe.

TOM FEHER:

“The dark side of Mike Brown can be found in an interview he did for Dawn Eden in 1986, in which he puts forth the outright lie that the ‘empty sidewalks on my block’ line was inspired by the corner of Falmouth Street and Hampton Avenue in his old Brooklyn neighborhood. In one swipe, he attempts to eradicate Tony Sansone’s role as lyricist while blowing some more hot air into the balloon of his own legend. This aspect of his character unfortunately offsets the beauty of his musical creativity.”

The facts are given to us by the lyricist himself, Tony Sansone:

TONY SANSONE:

“I met Mike and the others because of the arranger Ben Bennett who had his office in the same building. I always went to see Ben and talk music with him. He was connected with The Ames Brothers. They had a lot of hits. Aspiring song writers were hanging around in the music business area everyday looking to meet up with an opportunity. You could knock on a door and play your song for whoever would listen. Mike would play us some of his ideas when we would go to the studio. 

“I asked Mike what he was thinking of when he came up with the musical idea. He said that he liked this girl named Renée. Bob Calilli, I and Mike agreed to use the name. I used the name ‘Renée’ because ‘Michelle’ (by the Beatles) was getting played and I thought ‘If the Beatles can write about Michelle – a French girl’s name – I can write about a girl named Renée. This is as close as I can get to what I was thinking as I sat on a Danish style couch that was on the floor because the legs had broken off.  Mike was at the piano and Bob Calilli was to his right.”

Tony felt that there was a definite advantage to the name “Renée” because it could be sung by both male and female vocalists. We wonder: where did this collaboration take place?

TOM FINN

 “(Mike) Brown told me the story; I’ll tell you what he told me. Brown said Tony stopped by the studio and Brown asked him to help him write the lyrics. Tony said ‘I’d like to help you but I’ve got to go to the Bronx to bring some food to an old lady that’s in need.’ Tony went on to say, ‘why don’t you come with me and after I give her the food we can go write the lyrics.’ Mike said ‘okay.’ They went to the lady’s apartment, gave her the food, and afterwards went to Tony’s father’s house where there was a piano.

“They wrote it there. Tony drove Mike back to Manhattan. I asked Mike why Tony was feeding the lady. Mike said ‘Because that’s the type of guy Tony was.’ 

Presumably, the “type of guy Tony was” would not give false information on how the song was written. Sansone is very specific about how all the lyrics were chosen.

TONY SANSONE:

“The next thought was: I need a beginning of the story, a middle and an end. My block (the street I lived on) was Hull Ave. and when we moved in it was a two-way street, then one day a one way sign was posted and everything changed. I was a kid in the seventh grade and was amazed that a little black and white sign could change things. 

“So:

And when I see the sign that points on way

“Next to my house there was an empty lot. 

The lot we used to pass by every day.

 “Now when I was in the eight grade I was too shy to tell a girl I

liked her. So: 

Just walk away Renee;

You won’t see me follow you back home. The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same; 

“Mike added:

You're not to blame.

“The middle of the song was to express the nostalgia of looking back and realizing that first loves are special. So:

From deep inside the tears I'm forced to cry; From deep inside the pain I chose to hide.

“I was twenty-six when this was written and I was reminiscing about when I was twelve or thirteen.

Just walk away Renée;

You won’t see me follow you back home 

 “Here comes my poetic moment I thought:

Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes,

“(not ‘falls’ down, because I was trying to express the loss I was feeling.) 

For me it cries

“The final verse was an attempt to bring the story into the present. Right next to my home there was a school yard with a handball wall where we would sometimes mark up not with giant graffiti, but with small hearts, and for fifteen years the heart I put up was there for me to see anytime I passed it. So:

Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall still finds a way to haunt me though they're so small.



Another myth dispelled by Sansone is that Bob Calilli, who received a 25% share of the songwriting credits and thus the royalties, had nothing to do with writing the song.

“Regarding the musical setting, Mike worked with Bob Calilli on the bridge melody. Mike and I discussed often our love of Chopin’s music. (I would drive him home to Queens sometimes). We talked about using some of Chopin’s style integrated with our ideas (the opening chords are a chromatic descending scale.)” Thus, we find that the song was more of a hybrid between Michael Brown’s infatuation and Tony Sansone’s neighborhood memories and his desire to write a commercial lyric. Brown had the girl’s name drawn from him by Sansone’s curiosity; the name “Renée” and the melody Michael Brown had been working on might otherwise never have merged. 

One might consider it bubble bursting to debunk the fantasy that so endeared itself to the hearts of fans for half a century; but it also properly credits those who did the work of creating this beautiful element of popular culture. In retrospect, taking all facts into account, the true story of the Left Banke in all its details provides a tapestry richer in flavor and variety than any romantic white lie.

SANSONE:

“When the song was finished I was going to sing and produce it with Bob, but I got a call from Mike telling me about him putting together three singers which his father was willing to produce and using his dad to do a string section. This seemed good to me since the world was buying groups and not single artists; so Bob and I agreed to let them produce the song.

    “Bob had the copyright form and we signed the publishing over to his dad’s company. Mike got half of the royalties and Bob and I shared the other half. We only finished ‘Renée.’ Back then I was expecting to write more with him but he never asked Bob and me to work with him again.”

One would think that when “Walk Away Renee” became such a big hit, Brown would be eager to repeat the winning formula. But, like a termite eating its way through a furniture store, Mike Brown would charge through professional relationships just long enough to feed on the creative energy of his collaborators and then move on to the next woodpile.

For now, the song had been written. The machinery was all in place for a full production. The group had an available recording facility in the form of World United Studio, a producer in the form of Hash Brown, and the boys had done some initial recording with “I Haven’t Got the Nerve” and “Something on My Mind.”

According to Tom Finn, a demo of “Walk Away Renée” was cut with Warren David on drums as before, Jerry Ciccone on bass and electric guitar, George Hirsh on acoustic twelve string, and Mike Brown on piano. Jerry Ciccone was guitarist for the Shangri-las (“Leader of the Pack”); George Hirsh was a slight acquaintance of Feher’s from the Greenwich Village crowd whom Finn had found walking the beat on Broadway and brought up to the studio to be auditioned; he later went on to join the cast of Hair.

TOM FINN:

“They thought he was pretty good and asked him to play on the ‘Renée’ demo for free. He did it and they liked him. He understood finger picking and knew a lot of songs. Because he did the demo they called him for the ‘Walk Away Renée’ track session.

Finn tells us that vocals on the demo were very sparse and completely different from the master version that was eventually released. And:

FINN: 

“The melody on the chorus was completely different. The chords on the ‘hook’ (chorus) were a pedal ‘A’ chord straight through; no F-sharp minor chord, just the ‘A’ chord with modal rises. It was very different from final product. John Abbott (the musical arranger) changed the chords at the master session (from the modal ‘A’ chord) to: 

(A- F#m -D -A- E <> A- F#m -D- C#m -D - A)

“Abbott changed the chords to what we know today. On the demo Brown was doing his typical modal ‘A’ chord base with different inversions of an ‘A’ chord rising up. But always keeping the ‘A’ bass note.”

The master was recorded within one week to ten days after the demo, with a slightly different line-up of personnel. Warren was replaced on drums by musicians’ union Local 802 session man, Al Rogers. However, according to Finn, Rogers played the part just as Warren had performed it on the demo.

FINN:

“The reason the group didn’t play on all the songs: we were recording three-track back then, with very little or no overdubbing, so if you have a room filled with string players and oboe and flute or whatever, you couldn’t afford to have novice musicians like us play along with them. One mistake and you had to re-do the entire track. It took a lot of experience to do it, and experience is the one thing we didn’t have, except for vocals of course. But we learned quickly. 

“I was an accomplished trumpet player; I knew what was up. But as a bass player, I was only doing it for maybe six months before the big dates. George too. Warren was a little better off: he played well enough to be on our first two recordings. For ‘Renée’ we used Al Rogers on drums, but Rogers played Warren’s parts exactly, beat for beat.”

John Abbott, the arranger, came in on bass. Michael Brown played harpsichord and George Hirsh reprised his twelve-string guitar part, although one can scarcely hear it; it was buried far into the mix to keep it from canceling out the harpsichord. We don’t know who contributed the haunting flute solo, but the lush string arrangement scored by Abbott was performed by co-producer Harry Lookofsky and a number of his associates.

The trio of Steve Martin, Tom Finn and George Cameron produced the vocal sound that rode up the charts later that year, with Martin on lead, and Finn and Cameron supplying the harmonies. Harry’s partners Steve and Bill Jerome are also credited as co-producers, although it is uncertain what Bill’s role in the production consisted of. Steve Jerome was the studio’s chief engineer, and on “Walk Away Renée,” he did a masterful job, as Finn explains:

FINN:

“Steve Jerome had to do some track bouncing; we only had three tracks to use. I know the string parts were doubled and so were the vocals. That means he had to record the strings and vocals to an empty track on another machine, then mix them together unto the one track he had left on the three track machine.

“Steve did a great job on ‘Renée.’ Do you realize that he had to mix all the instruments live onto one track? That means he had to think about all the microphones (the drums, snare mic, cymbals mic, bass drum mic, tom tom's mic and the bass guitar mic, the harpsichord mic, the guitar mic, and the strings’ two mics) and balance them all perfectly into one track. Then, use the open two tracks for lead vocal, strings doubling, vocals doubling by bouncing tracks back and forth. All this had to be done perfectly or everyone would have to play the whole thing again. Amazing!”

Paul Thornton has been a friend to members of the Left Banke since the penniless “nights on Broadway.” He is a lifelong resident of “Hell’s Kitchen,” but met the group through George Cameron, whom he’d known since Cameron’s days in the Village with the Undertakers. After “Walk Away Renée” had been mixed, the boys invited Paul into the control room to have a listen.

FINN:

“I’ll never forget what Paul said when we invited him into the control room and played the finished version of ‘Renée’ for him. He said ‘That’s better than anything the Beatles ever did.’ Those were his exact words.”

Giving credit where credit is due, one can’t forget the contributions of John Abbott. Abbott was known to World United, and had probably been involved with the production of Reparata and the Delrons; he was good friends with Gene Schwartz and had worked often on Laurie Records projects.

FINN:

“John Abbott was perhaps the most important musical element involved in our early recordings. John was like a George Martin figure with us. He wrote arrangements for strings and horns etc. But for the rhythm tracks, piano, guitar, bass and drums, he only wrote or played what we as a group wanted to hear. He listened to all our ideas, took out a pencil and notated what we were laying down.”

Johnny Abbott, as the boys got to know him, went on to arrange many additional hit records including “Me & You & a Dog Named Boo” by Lobo – a #5 hit in 1971; “Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)” by Melanie – a #6 hit in 1970; and the instrumental “Popcorn” by Hot Butter US # 9 in 1972 – an international hit and one of the biggest hits of all time in Europe (and produced by none other than Steve and Bill Jerome).

The date of the sessions for “Walk Away Renée” is estimated to be sometime in March 1966, and documented as being completed on March 23rd. The instruments were recorded first. It appears that Michael Brown did his part on the harpsichord and immediately bolted and left town, because at the time of the vocal sessions, he was nowhere to be found.

FINN:

“By the time we recorded (overdubbed) the vocals to ‘Renée’ (our third recording), the group was over. It was Harry who asked us to put the vocals on, Mike had already caught a jet to California, with Warren, who was very gullible. 

GEORGE CAMERON:

“Just one of Brown’s crazy moments. We were not involved in that; we just kept working on songs.”

 

To date, no one has come forth with the exact reason for Mike Brown’s flight to Los Angeles, least of all Brown himself. One can speculate, and seesaw between an attempt to flee from what some saw as a tyrannical father, and the magnetic appeal of the Mamas and Papas’ blockbuster hit “California Dreamin’,” which had peaked at #4 on the Billboard charts just the previous month.

Possibly he was emboldened by Feher’s two previous failed attempts to cross the continent. Perhaps he fancied himself on a religious quest to kneel at the feet of his guru, Brian Wilson. Whatever the case, it came to light that Michael had pawned, or sold a family coin collection and bought plane tickets to LA for himself and drummer Warren David. Warren, friends with Fred Adams since high school, must have let it slip to Fred. 

TOM FINN:

“I think Fred Adams told us three singers and we told Harry. At that time we had the track and were waiting to either put the vocals on or just forget the group. I’m sure that Steve and Mike were having a bitter feud, because I clearly remember that Steve wouldn’t come to the studio and put his vocal on. 

“The three of us got together and went to, or called the office to tell Harry that everything was over, and that Mike and Warren had split to California. Harry asked us to come over to the studio that night. By that time Harry had called the airline and tracked them down; then I believe he called the LA police and told them to put Michael and Warren on the next plane back, and that Mike was a minor and stole some of his property (the coins).

“That’s the way I heard it. So, Harry thought that he should get us to record the vocals. Which we did, but Steve was still furious with Mike and didn’t want to sing it. Steve’s attitude was really bad at the studio, he sang out the side of his mouth, and mumbled the words on purpose. That’s why the lyrics are so hard to understand. Harry and Steve Jerome kept asking him to pronounce the words more clearly. Steve wouldn’t do it. He was as stubborn as those Spanish bulls that his family was involved with.”  

Thus, it came about as Tom Finn has noted that the group was finished before it had begun. Although they would survive a major split and continue to record and perform for approximately two years, the close friendship that George Cameron had so valued in their first days together had been violated by internal feuding and certain incompatible personalities. As the old nursery rhyme goes, “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men…”

THE FIRST GIG

With storm clouds already on the horizon, the newly formed group was presented with an excellent opportunity, through the generosity of Tony Sansone. Tony arranged a gig for them in his native Bronx.

TOM FINN:

“The thing I remember about the first gig was we got paid about one hundred dollars for it, that was 1965 or 1966, and we did the gig at a church; there were about a thousand people there, at Our Lady of Solace, in the Bronx. When we arrived in the Bronx with the original members and Renée stepping out of that limo, the girls were screaming so loud, the cops had to come to stand in front of the stage. 

“Man, we were starving, but we spent the money on the limo. As of that night, the mod sixties arrived in The Bronx. I’ll never forget that gig. It was like we were the Beatles. So right from the beginning we really had a sense of flair. We didn’t even have a hit record yet, but we had the limo and the blonde. We took about fifty or sixty dollars of that money and rented a limousine, and went and played that show.”

Meanwhile, the business sense of Harry Lookofsky prevailed. He had invested his time, money and facilities in the group, and he wasn’t about to let that go to waste. “Hash Brown,” as he was known to many industry friends, began shopping the master. It should be pointed out once again that Harry was no newcomer to the music industry. He was a respected musician and a competent negotiator. When he sent a production out, it was bound to be listened to and considered. 

However, from what we know, every record label to which the song was submitted turned down “Walk Away Renee.” Every label that is, but one. According to Mike Brown (in a 1985 interview), rights to the master were purchased by Mercury for one thousand dollars. “Walk Away Renée” was to be released on Smash.

The Smash Records label was founded in 1961 as a subsidiary of  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Records" \o "Mercury Records" Mercury Records by Mercury executive  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Singleton" \o "Shelby Singleton" Shelby Singleton and run by Singleton with Charlie Fach. Fach took over after Singleton left Mercury in 1966 (it would seem that “Walk Away Renee” was one of his first acquisitions upon rising to the leadership of the label). Other Smash recording artists had included  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown" \o "James Brown" James Brown,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Channel" \o "Bruce Channel" Bruce Channel (“Hey! Baby / #1 for 3 weeks in 1962),  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Miller" \o "Roger Miller" Roger Miller (“King of the Road,” a #4 million-seller in 1965), The Angels (“My Boyfriend’s Back” / #1 for 3 weeks in 1963),  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Justis" \o "Bill Justis" Bill Justis (“Raunchy,” a #2 million-selling instrumental in 1957) and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lee_Lewis" \o "Jerry Lee Lewis" Jerry Lee Lewis.

The Left Banke were to be in good company. Fach took a liking to the record, the group was signed in May 1966 and by July they had their first record release. The single entered Billboard in the “Bubbling Under the Hot 100” section at #122 for the week ending August 27th, 1966.

GEORGE CAMERON:

“Harry made a cheap deal with Mercury and they just put it out there without much promo. It began to make noise in the South and Midwest.”

TOM FINN:

“I was standing on the boulders in Central Park directly across from the Essex House hotel on Central Park South looking at Brian Jones, who was looking out the window of his third floor room down at all the hundreds of screaming girls below. All of a sudden somebody in the music biz came by and said to me ‘Hey man, congratulations – your record is number fifteen bubbling under the Billboard Hot 100 charts this week.’ I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time I ever heard about any success of the record ‘Walk Away Renée.’”

CLOTHES MAKE THE BANKE

It’s hard to believe, looking back after all these years, but it appears that Harry Lookofsky, without a huge organization behind him, was intent on tailoring his son’s success – and that is meant quite literally. Sometime in June, after the deal had been made with Mercury, but even before “Walk Away Renée” had been released, Harry took the boys down to Paul Sargent’s in the West Village to shop for what were then known as “mod” clothes or “Carnaby Street fashions.”

Carnaby Street, located in the Soho district of London was home to numerous clothing retailers including a large number of independent fashion boutiques. The street was part of the “Swingin’ Sixties” scene in London, with the legendary Marquee Club just around the corner attracting bands such as the Beatles, the Stones, the Who and the Small Faces.

Ironically, it was just about the time that the Left Banke arrived at Paul Sargent’s import shop that the Kinks “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” all about the fashion trends, reached its highest chart position in the U.S. The boys went into Paul Sargent’s with rumpled jeans and scuffed shoes and emerged with ruffled shirts, silk ties and pin-striped suits.

FINN:

“The clothes were bought for taking pictures. Harry took the pictures himself. First he took us up the West Side Highway and snapped some shots near the Hudson River. I don’t think they came out so well, because the next day, we went to Central Park. There’s one shot of us in front of a lake standing on rocks. That was at Belvedere Castle in the park.”

George Cameron, when forming the Insects, (sometimes known as the In-Sect), had adopted a British accent and circulated the rumor that he’d been born in London. The accent clicked very well with the Left Banke’s new mod look. It also came in very handy with journalists who wanted to refer to them as “the American Hollies” or some such thing. However, George confesses that he’d dug himself into a hole with the London business and only kept the impersonation going for fear of alienating the fans. Whatever the case, they did look splendid in their new outfits, as the promotional photos from that time period will verify. At this point, Cameron had replaced Warren David behind the drums. 

GEORGE CAMERON (from a 2011 interview by Daniel Coston):

“…Warren David was a great drummer, an innovative drummer. What happens was… he was a transsexual. He wanted to be a woman, and he didn’t want to play drums anymore. And they said, ‘George, do you want to play drums?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And I got on the drums, and I fell in love. I said, ‘Oh, this is where I can throw all my anger and everything at.’ I finally found an instrument that worked for me, and I got into it.’”

ENTER JEFF WINFIELD

It was about this time that Jeff Winfield, playing in a band known as “Peter and the Wolves,” came up to World United studios to audition. Winfield’s  band evidently did not come into the World United fold; but with the recently released Smash single out and getting airplay, Lookofsky and company were on the lookout for a guitarist to round out the Left Banke’s sound.

Jeff Winfield’s tenure with the group was brief, but his gentle nature and dedication to his instrument endeared him to Left Banke fans throughout the years. Unfortunately, Jeff passed away in 2009 before work on this document was begun; but thanks to the participation of his ex-wife Barbara Linn, we have an insight into his life and character.

Barbara Linn, an exceedingly bright academic student as well as a ballet dancer, choreographer and national science award winner, was born Brooklyn in 1950. Her father – head electrician at Radio City Music Hall and projectionist at the deluxe DeMille Theater, in those on Broadway and Forty-Seventh Street – wanted to get rid of his car but have easy access to work and so moved the family to Manhattan in 1964.

BARBARA LINN:

“When I moved to Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1964 the first friend I made at Seward Park High School was Annabel Borowitz. I was fourteen, she was sixteen. She was hanging out in the West Village and took me with her. Her boyfriend was Jeff Winfield, but she was always sneaking off to see other boys and would ask me to stay with Jeff while she was gone – in essence babysit Jeff so she could cheat. After hanging together a few times, we decided to hell with Annabel, and Jeff and I became a couple. Although quiet, he was intelligent and thoughtful; he cherished his friends and loved me and his guitar.  

“The Village of the mid-60s was a hippie’s daydream. Due to the many small music cellars and small clubs it was common to see Frank Zappa, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other musicians of the era walking the streets, either coming or going from playing gigs. The smell of pot was always in the air and getting high was a given. Jeff was outgoing and loving, and had a select group of close friends, but his guitar was his best friend. 

“Jeff had dropped out of high school, and although I was an honor student in my senior year I would frequently skip school and go to Jeff’s house in Queens while his parents worked. His friends – Steve Ananda, also a musician, Greg Potemkin and others long forgotten – would come over to jam. Jeff would play about five hours a day.”

TOM FINN:

“We all realized we needed a guitarist because we wanted to play rock and roll. We tried out various people that were filtering through the studio. I even asked Jimi Hendrix if he wanted to audition; he said yes. But when I told Mike and the other guys they just pooh-poohed me. They weren't interested in a black guy in the group. Jeff was auditioning for Harry up at the studio one evening in June of 1966. The group he was playing lead guitar for was called Peter and The Wolves. The bass player was a guy named Steve Ananda who played a double cutaway Hofner bass. I got a little worried because he played pretty well too. I think Michael sat in with them during their audition and we all seemed to like Jeff, not so much for his playing, but for his gentle nature. 

BARBARA LINN:

“When Jeff joined the Left Banke as lead guitarist I went to the studio with him many times. ‘Walk Away Renée’ had already been taped and ‘in the can’ before Jeff joined the band, so I never got to meet Renée. Being a dancer and performer myself, I was the least ‘groupie’ type person in the world.  When I went to the studio with Jeff, I found it exciting and fun, but not anything special. 

“I was mostly happy that Jeff was able to connect with a group and have an outlet for his music. In fact, I would sometimes leave to play games on Broadway and Forty-sixth Street at ‘Fascination’ and wait for Jeff to finish or go to ballet school to take class. 

When I did go to the studio, it was with the early group members, Tom Finn, George Cameron, Steve Martin and Mike Brown and Jeff.  I just remember all the band members being so young but focused and professional.” 

 

TOM FINN:

“We were starting to get gigs because ‘Renée’ had just been released. Steve Jerome had set up a promo appearance at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey with host, WABC radio DJ Bruce Morrow; so we went out there with Jeff standing in on guitar. 

We had done a few rehearsals for the event, but we soon found out that it was a lip sync gig, so we didn’t bring drums or guitar amps etc. We figured we’d just do it and fake playing.”

Also on the bill were The Youngbloods, folk-rock band formed by Jesse Colin Young with Jerry Corbitt, Lowell “Banana” Levinger and Joe Bauer. They had been playing around Greenwich Village for some time, starting at Gerde’s Folk City and eventually becoming the house band at the Café Au Go Go. In 1967 their recording of “Get Together” would take them no higher than #62 on the Billboard chart; but it found new exposure and popularity in 1969 as the theme for the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and went all the way up to #5, a bona fide million seller.

FINN:

“When we got there we saw that The Youngbloods would be on the show also. But they were playing live, so we asked them if we could borrow their drums and amps and they said no. So we did the lip sync. We got a better reaction anyway because we brought our fan club. The girls in the fan club came prepared; they had brought all their friends and they made placards and giant helium balloons with our individual names on them, like ‘I Love Tommy’ and ‘We adore Steve.’ So when we went on, they were all screaming like at a Beatles concert.” 

A LEGEND IN THE MAKING

Jack Dabney was working as a disc jockey weekends and vacation relief at WINX in suburban Washington D. C. in the Spring-Summer of 1966. He eventually became one of the group’s biggest supporters. 

JACK DABNEY:

“One day, I got to the station about an hour early. I went into the production studio and found five-six records that a distributor had left and started playing them. The last was ‘Walk Away Renée.’ Played it once. Twice. Five times and I was a Left Banke fan! 

“Like most Top 40 stations, WINX had a very tight play list. Varying from it was a cause for dismissal. However, when I went in for my shift, I took ‘Renée,’ put it into one of our station’s green sleeves and put it into our Top 40 stack of records, throwing something I didn’t particularly like into the trash. When I came back a few days later, it was still there and there it stayed. It entered our charts at #28 on July 13, 1966 and quickly got into our Top Ten. Other radio stations in our area didn’t get on the track until a month or two later.”

Guitarist / bassist / songwriter Charly Cazalet was born in France, and moved with his family to New York City when he was four years old. By the time he was sixteen the British invasion was in full swing and he had formed a long haired band, calling themselves The Outsiders (not the “Time Won't Let Me” Outsiders) that stayed together for over a year. Walking on Broadway and 53rd Street they were noticed by a pair of entrepreneurs looking for a long haired band to produce, recorded two songs, and signed a record deal with Audio Fidelity. As Charly puts it, “the record went nowhere fast.” But they were the first long haired band to play at Steve Paul’s The Scene in the fall of 1964 and became the house band for a few months. They were also the first electric band to play at the Bitter End. The Outsiders disbanded in the fall of 1965.

CHARLY CAZALET:

“In late spring of 1966 a friend, Nona Eagan, told me of a band looking for a guitar player and took me to meet them. As it turned out it was The Left Banke and they had just recorded ‘Walk Away Renée.’ I turned down the offer but became good friends with Steve, George and Tom and spent many days and nights jamming in that recording studio where they recorded their early songs, and partying in the clubs of Manhattan; it was a never ending happening. Then ‘Walk Away Renée’ hit big, the way no one expected. And even today I hear people say ‘that was the song we fell in love to.’” 

Joan Aupperlee (at the time Joan Padney) is Tom Feher’s lifelong friend. They met in New York’s Greenwich Village about the same time he had met songwriter Bert Sommer. The three of them are pictured in a classic photo from the 1969 Woodstock festival along with Peter Sabatino, vocalist for the Atco recording group The Vagrants.

    Feher wrote the song “My Love,” recorded by The Montage and produced by Michael Brown for Laurie Records, in tribute to Joan.

JOAN AUPPERLEE:

“I remember hearing the Left Banke for the first time. ‘Walk Away Renée’ was so different.  The music was ethereal and like nothing that had come before. You couldn’t get enough of the song. I remember going to my local record store and purchasing a copy: I couldn’t quite make out all the words, but they were mysterious and alluring to me.” 

Mary Weiss, lead vocalist for the Shangri-Las, had already scored five Top 40 hits, including the #1 “Leader of the Pack” by the time “Walk Away Renée” was recorded and released. Mary met the group through their association with Jerry Ciccone, who in addition to performing on the “Walk Away Renée” demo, served as guitarist for the Shangri-Las.

MARY WEISS:

     “I have always liked their overall sound. The songs were great. I guess if I had to choose, my favorite would be ‘Walk Away Renée’.” 

A LITTLE SIDE TRIP

About the time that “Walk Away Renée” was released, Tom Finn, Tom Feher, and Mike Brown made a trip out to New Jersey, on the invitation of Jerry Ciccone, having known him since his work on the “Renée” demo recording. And when we say “trip,” we mean T-R-I-P, as in L-S-D. Although this has little to do with music, their experience quite defines the first era of widespread LSD consumption, and what an ‘acid trip’ was all about.

TOM FEHER:

“I don’t recall exactly when and where we dropped the acid. It might have been at Jerry’s house, or it might have been earlier, with him suggesting that we go there as a safe haven to ‘freak out.’ I think he lived in Irvington, New Jersey. But there we were in his basement, with Brown sitting on the floor, smoothing and smoothing his now long hair down over his ears and cheeks, and saying something wild like ‘we’re all going to die,’ over and over and over. 

“He was driving us all crazy; we had enough to deal with in our own minds without this maniac giving doomsday sermons. Now that I think of it, he said the walls were melting, or made out of rubber. It might have been his first acid trip, and boy, could he not handle it! I’m sitting there looking down at my forearms, and I can see through the skin – the veins, the arteries, I’m seeing the blood cells and everything – and Brown is carrying on with this ‘we’re all gonna die.’

“Then I think Jerry’s mother looked in and asked what was going on, and Jerry suggested we all go take a walk around town to cool off; it was a hot summer night, after midnight. Jerry then leads us down the deserted Main Street in the town.”

TOM FINN:

“Jerry said ‘Do you want to meet God? He's right over here;’ then he takes me over to a large window, right in the middle of Main Street. He knocks on the window and I see a ghostly image sort of shimmering up to the glass, dressed in white.  “Right there, I nearly dropped dead. Then Jerry laughs and says ‘That's old Jim, he’s been the night watchman here since I was a kid.’ Well, let me tell you, I thought it was God. It was three in the morning. Nobody was around, nobody but the four of us.”

FEHER:

“It got weirder than that for me. It was an automobile showroom. After we’d peered into the window and seen the night watchman – he was probably holding a flashlight, but to me it seemed liked he was dangling a kerosene lantern – we walked down a block or two and crossed the street. And as we made our way back in the direction from which we’d come, I looked across the street and saw the four of us looking into the window! I mean, it was like a time warp or something. We were standing on one side of the street and I saw us on the other side as we’d been ten minutes earlier. Eerie.

“Then, Jerry takes us down the street and we lie down in front of a movie marquee, gazing up at the stars. It was a beautiful sight.”

FINN:

“We were laying down in the middle of Main Street, flat on our backs, just for the sensation of doing it, because there wasn’t any traffic anywhere. Then a police car comes out of nowhere, with two cops, they stop the car and just stare at us, meanwhile we got up and were walking around in circles, saying ‘Oh shit! What are we gonna do now?’ 

The cops still just stared, then one of them says ‘Look we don't bother your kind, don’t bother us, I don’t know where you’re from but, you’d better go back there right now, and don’t come back here anymore.’”

As one would expect with acid, Feher remembers it just a bit differently.

FEHER:

“As I recall, one of the cops was a friend of Jerry’s who’d apparently known him since grade school. He looks at Jerry with a look that says, “Please, Jerry, not another one of your capers,” and asks him ‘Can you take your friends back to your mother’s house?’

“That’s all I remember about that trip, but it wasn’t the first or last time something like that happened.”

Feher and Brown apparently went back to Manhattan in the morning to crash at the World United studio. Finn however went to Brooklyn with Ciccone, to the house of a Pete Ericson, where a real horror story ensued.

FINN:

“Pete gets high on some pot. Then he gets paranoid and starts a serious fight with Jerry. We were in the basement rec room. Pete’s mother hears the fighting downstairs and calls to Pete; he goes up and throws her halfway down the stairs. Then he comes back, and has a big knife, and starts screaming at Jerry, saying crazy shit like ‘You were always the one who got the girls. You always made me out to be stupid; I’m going to fuckin’ kill you.’ 

“Then turns to me and says ‘What the fuck are you looking at –you think I’m crazy or something?’ Meanwhile I’m on acid, and nearly, shitting in my pants. Then Jerry jumps up and grabs him; the two of them are on the floor. Jerry takes the knife and slaps him across the face really hard. Pete runs upstairs and is crying and screaming at his mother, so we got out of there quick. What a night and what a morning, I’ll never forget it.”

Anyone who’s been on acid should recognize the situation very well; and anyone who hasn’t should by now have a fairly good idea of what it was all about. Meanwhile:

“RENÉE” HITS THE CHARTS

“Walk Away Renée” entered the Cashbox Top 100 Singles charts at #97 on September 10th 1966. The following week it went to #72 with a bullet, then #57, #34, #22, #11, #7 and #3 – all with a bullet – and peaked in Cashbox at #2 on November 5th, denied the #1 spot only by the Monkees’ well-financed debut “Last Train to Clarksville.”

The boys were on a sudden rocket-ride to stardom.

GEORGE CAMERON (from a magazine interview):

“Truly I don’t think it really sunk in till a little later, when one day we heard ‘Walk Away Renée’ on the car radio. Then I believe we got it, though we didn’t really take it all that seriously. What I mean by that is we gave no thought to the business end, and how we were going to present a show. Keep in mind that Steve and I were ardent hard rock types. We liked the Who and the Stones. Our Left Banke stuff was so mellow; and when no outlet for our rock side emerged, shows tended to reflect our frustration. One day we were bad, and the next we were really good.” 

TOM FINN:

“‘Renée’ broke first in Erie, Pennsylvania, and then broke in Columbus Ohio. We went there and played two shows; the first was Dayton Ohio, the second was Columbus. Then one more in Cleveland at a place called Coney Island, where Eric Carmen and John Cougar were in the audience. (As they both indicated years later in interviews). 

“That was the first time we got into a car and drove anywhere; we drove from NYC to Ohio, Steve Jerome at the wheel. When we pulled in to Dayton ten hours later we heard ‘Walk Away Renée’ on the car radio for the first time. We were screaming. 

“The announcer went into a commercial about our live show the next night; and he said ‘Walk Away Renée – the # 1 song on the station.’ We were broke and hungry the day before and ten hours later we were stars. I remember signing autographs at the hotel. The young girls knew we were coming so they were all over us. And we were like clowns, not knowing what to say or do. One girl said ‘can I have your cigarette ashes?’”

With ‘Renée’ climbing the charts, the demand for Left Banke appearances rose. The original combination of Finn, Cameron, Martin, Winfield and Brown toured and taped television shows through summer and fall of 1966. In New York City, the Left Banke taped the Clay Cole television show, including the Rolling Stones, and played an outdoor show for legendary WABC DJ Bruce Morrow at Palisades Park, New Jersey. 

  They did the Zacherle UHF show Zacherle’s Disco-Teen, Shindig, Upbeat in Cleveland, and American Bandstand. They gigged in Florida in August, through Ohio in September, and played Cobo Hall in Detroit on a bill with the Supremes and the Temptations in October. Also in October, they flew out to California for Dick Clark’s Where The Action Is.

FINN:

“In our first airplane flight together the plane lost cabin pressure at thirty-five thousand feet, and had to make an emergency descent down to four or five thousand feet. We definitely thought we were crashing. No pilot’s explanation; the stewardess was freaking out, saying ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ I looked at Brown; he turned white as a sheet. They finally get us back to La Guardia, and put us on another plane flight about two hours later, and just when we were about to lift off, one of the parts fell off the wing and created a lot of sparks, so the pilot jammed on the brakes, pulled off the runway, and we had to slide down a chute to get off; they were afraid of a fire. After that they sent a bus out to pick us up from the grassy field. The whole airport was shut down now. About four hours later, they sent us over to Idlewild airport (now Kennedy) and we got on a third plane: the plane took off at two am and we finally got to where we were going.”

It’s notable that during this period, only three groups of this classic era in rock history had originated with high visibility from New York City: The Rascals, The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Left Banke. When one asks what common trait brought success to these three where others lagged behind, the answer comes up: a unique sound – they were all “one of a kind.” Danny Fields, rock journalist writing for Hullabaloo magazine, was apparently the first on the New York rock scene to pick up on the group’s potential.

FINN:

“I answered the phone at the office one day in mid-1966, and on the other end was a teen magazine reporter named Danny Fields. He said ‘I just want to let you guys know that your record ‘Renée’ is the best record I've heard this year, it’s the best thing since The Byrds. I want to set up a meeting and interview the band.’ This was only a few weeks after Mercury had signed us. At this point, nobody had anything to say about the record. So I took a few of the guys over to his apartment in the Village and early in 1967 he took all of us to Central Park and had us photographed at the zoo. His article is available today, with pictures. The important thing is Danny Fields had really good perception of what good music was…nobody else did. And the reviews we got by all the so-called experts like Christgau of the Voice were really bad. Danny was the only one.” 

“Walk Away Renee” peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 at #5 the week of October 24th, 1966. It had enjoyed the #1 position on radio stations in Boston, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Hartford Connecticut and Wilmington, North Carolina amongst others, and topped the chart at #1 in November on Toronto’s CHUM – the top station in all of Canada, as well as peaking at #3 on the RPM 100 – Canada’s version of the Billboard Hot 100 – on November 21st. It was a solid chart hit and would go on to legendary status as one of the most beloved records in twentieth century popular music history.

FINN:

“When ‘Walk Away Renée’ became a hit we went to Manny’s, the legendary music store on Forty-Eighth Street. The old man was still there, and he asked us for a signed photograph to hang on the wall. I remember looking at all the pictures of musicians and groups from the ‘40s and ‘50s. I said to myself, I wonder if in the ‘70s and ‘80s young kids will look at our photo? I went to Manny’s years later and by then there were several thousand photos all over the expanded store. Once I searched for ours, but couldn’t find it until I was leaving, and there it was, right next to the elevator.”

PRETTY BALLERINA / LAZY DAY

Before “Renée” had reached the top of the charts, the wheels were set in motion for a “follow-up” record. The two songs chosen for the second single were “Pretty Ballerina” and “Lazy Day,” recorded on November 17th. The recordings were as wildly different as any two tracks can get. “Pretty Ballerina,” which has enjoyed its own devoted following over the years, features a smooth, rolling piano by Brown and steady, functional drums and bass from New York’s finest session players. 

The oboe was played by the late George Marge; the cello by Seymour Barab, composer, songwriter, and cellist who’d performed in symphony orchestras throughout the USA. Barab would play a part in future Mike Brown productions. Riding atop this compelling tapestry, the unique, personal and poignant voice of Steve Martin-Caro, driving the simplistic lyrics deep into the hearts of the Left Banke’s following of romantically inclined females and anyone else affected by love poetry and a sense of the baroque. 

The “B” side of the record was the very antithesis of “Ballerina” – a highly charged rocker entitled “Lazy Day,” one of the few tracks from their first album on which all the group members performed. Included were George Cameron on drums, Tom Finn on bass, Mike Brown on piano and Jeff Winfield on guitar, using the fuzz tone made popular by the Rolling Stones the previous summer on their giant hit “Satisfaction.”

Steve Martin, for his part, was allowed to cut loose with an impassioned angry vocal just short of primal therapy; and somehow, with this riot of sound thundering along, the vocal harmonies arranged by Finn have the same smooth precision quality that graced the grooves on “Walk Away Renée.” 

“Lazy Day” stands out as one of the most arresting tracks the group has ever recorded. Not too long after the song was recorded, following a tour of New England with the original lineup, Mike Brown pushed for the removal of Jeff Winfield from the group, and auditions were held with Rick Brand joining the group as the new Left Banke guitarist.

BARBARA LINN:

“Even in the early days I heard grumblings about Mike, but nothing had come to a head at that time. When Jeff went on the road with the group he fell prone to all the girls throwing themselves at the group and he broke up with me in a very cruel way, hurting me deeply. Although separated from Jeff, I was proud to bursting point that he was part of a successful group. When ‘Walk Away Renée’ would come on the radio I had to call everyone near me to come listen. When the balloon burst, Jeff’s life fell apart.  I was devastated for him. He tried to form another group, Birth of Spring, but it was short lived.”

The Birth of Spring included in addition to Jeff, songwriter Alan Wauters, Fritz Nile and vocalist/guitarist Alan Sachs, who would later play a more distinctive role in both the Left Banke saga and the music industry worldwide. The Birth of Spring released two stillborn singles on Mercury Records and disbanded shortly thereafter.

TOM FINN:

“What a shame, poor Jeff – it practically killed him. But please don’t forget that Brown and Steve held auditions for guitarist, drummer and bassist. George and I were also told we were out. Rachel Elkind was hired by Harry to serve papers to my father and George’s parents, some sort of legal notice that we were fired, and since we were minors they had to notify our folks.

“Mike had convinced Steve that the two if them should get rid of all three of us – Jeff, George and me. They kicked all three of us out. Rachel went to our parents with the paperwork, in essence terminating our contract with Harry. They got Rick to replace Jeff, but halfway through Steve realized he really needed George and I because we really had a great blend and our critique was very similar when dealing with Brown: we didn’t accept his songs or his parts unless we liked them. 

“So they took us back, but Jeff wasn’t on the same footing and he got canned. Mike wanted a group that he felt played really well on stage, but not to include them in the royalty picture. The only reason they let George and I back in was, I think they realized that George and I were integral to the sound of the group. Also don’t forget the camaraderie. I don’t think Steve would have felt very comfortable without George and me.”

The “Pretty Ballerina / Lazy Day” single was released in December of 1966 and entered the Billboard Hot 100 on December 31st; it would peak in Billboard at #15 on February 4, 1967 (In Canada, the RPM 100 chart had it peaking at #4). Also in December of ’66, after a trip to Los Angeles, several members of the band met up with an old friend and Michael Brown met his new muse. After a trip to California, to do ‘American Bandstand’ Mike Brown, Rick Brand and Tom Finn decided to fly to Miami for a short vacation. Brand had a driver’s license, so they drove in a convertible from the airport, to their hotel, a resort called The Castaways in Miami Beach. 

At The Castaways, who should they find but Jerry Ciccone – the guitarist who’d played on the “Walk Away Renée” demo.  Jerry for some time been guitarist for the Shangri-Las, who by that time had had their run on the charts but were still well known for their hits “Remember (Walking In The Sand)” and the #1 “Leader of the Pack.” 

The Shangri-Las had just finished up a tour, and were in Miami taking a little time off to relax. The girls and Jerry invited the boys to their room where they were introduced to legendary producer Shadow Morton.

TOM FINN:

   “Mike was flirting with Mary but Rick and I didn’t care for other two chicks. I think Mike and Mary got together. As I was saying, Rick and I didn’t like the looks of the other chicks. So that left Mary and Mike. I liked Mary myself but that’s when she fell for the Leader of the Banke; they were all very drunk, Shadow, Mary and Mike.” 

MARY WEISS:

“I was finishing up a tour, and went to Florida to rest. I spent much of the night on the beach talking with Michael Brown, sharing war stories etc.” 

It appears that Mike Brown was fairly well smitten with the Shangri-Las attractive lead vocalist, and like Renée Fladen before her, Mary would later become the subject of a Mike Brown composition.

RENÉE WALKS AWAY (REALLY!)

While the story of Renée Fladen walking away from Mike Brown has gotten more than its share of coverage through the years, the “pretty ballerina” had more than one admirer in the Left Banke circle of associates.

TOM FEHER:

“Although Renée played a very small role in my life, I still had enough of the poet’s romantic urge to stay in touch and ‘bask in her brilliance.’ (Feher laughs).  There was still a little pit-pat in my heart when she came into view. In February ‘67, around the time that ‘Pretty Ballerina’ was riding high on the charts, I found that she’d moved from the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn into her own apartment near the Chelsea Hotel, in Manhattan, and went to visit her there.

“It was a beautiful apartment with high, high ceilings, ornate plaster moldings – the kind of place that was built like fifty years earlier with love and care. I remember sitting on her studio bed, and not much else. Possibly she made me a cup of Earl Grey tea. It was very formal and awkward; we were drifting apart into two different worlds. One thing I remember though and I’ll never forget, because it has historical significance in the realm of popular music. Just before I left, Renée put a single on her turntable, to play for me her current favorite song by a newly discovered artist. I could see the red and black Atlantic label spinning around and around and around on the turntable. The voice that came out of the speakers was the voice of Aretha Franklin singing ‘I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).’ A powerful voice – like nothing I’d heard before.”

“I Never Loved A Man” was Aretha’s breakthrough hit – a million-seller that held the #1 position for seven weeks on Billboard’s R&B charts and peaked at #9 on the pop charts. While she may have been “newly discovered” by Feher’s and Fladen’s generation, Aretha had been signed to Columbia Records since 1961 with little success. The move to Atlantic was an event that changed the world of rock and soul music forever.

FEHER:

“I saw Renée exactly two more times in my life after that meeting, both unexpectedly – an almost mystical happening in a city of more than ten million. The first was on Broadway near Times Square – I think we were both crossing the street in different directions and suddenly came face to face on one of those ‘island’ type traffic dividers.

“We had an exchange of maybe four or five sentences in which she informed me that she was marrying Woody Kamm and moving to Boston. I think I’d known from the conversation in her Chelsea apartment that she was having a relationship with Woody, but hearing this told me that it really was totally over – whatever ‘it’ was. 

“Looking back now, it may be that she was trying even that early on to get away from the unwanted celebrity that had been thrust on her when ‘Walk Away Renée’ became a hit and the legend began. I’m sure she wanted to get away from that entire circle that included Armel and those of us involved with the Left Banke. If you’d have spent any amount of time with our crowd in those days, you would know what I’m talking about.

“I said something like ‘good luck,’ and immediately felt a lump in my throat and the weight of loss. At that time I was still trying to be the tough street Feher, but I guess I had deep feelings for her that I didn’t want to admit. And I watched her walk away into a sea of several million people.”

For Finn too, it was not a romantic departure. He was at this point a celebrity, and had developed a hard shell attitude that would hammer the final nail into his relationship with Fladen.

TOM FINN:

“I remember the last time I saw Renée: she came to see me at World United; it was in the daytime. I think she came to feel me out, to know if I wanted to be her man forever… sort of like a last chance to be with her. I handled the situation really badly. I was still upset that I’d found her in bed with Warren. Anyway, she was going to be leaving because she didn’t feel New York held anything for her. 

“I wanted her to stay so I uttered the stupidest words I have ever said to anyone. I said ‘You could be the president of our fan club,’ and I was dead serious. Then she said ‘Yeah right! So I can tell all the teenyboppers what it’s like making love to Tom Finn.’ I’d never felt so small in my life; I blew it, big time. To this day I cringe when I think that I actually was so stupid as to say something like that to her. She excused herself and walked away. The next thing I heard she was married to a guy named Woody from a group called the Strangers, I think.”

TOM FEHER:

“The Strangers, led by Peter Gallway, were one of the scores of local bands that had played The Night Owl in Greenwich Village. To most of the people I knew at the time, the Strangers were kind of a joke – a band you looked down your nose at; it was just one of those spiteful things young people sometimes do. Woody was the harp player for the band. He had craggy features, kind of like Abraham Lincoln without the beard, but with granny glasses.

“I remember a rumor going around that the line it’s like tryin’ to tell a stranger ‘bout rock and roll in ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ was a reference to the fact that the Strangers couldn’t cut it musically. I heard them play through the window of the Night Owl one night, and they were actually pretty good for what they did; but I would never have admitted it at the time. So Renée went off to Boston with Woody, and they both became strangers to us. I saw her one last time about a year later, and again it was totally by accident. 

Feher was walking along the street near Sheridan Square in the West Village, and there he saw Renée, looking much the same as he remembered her. The only difference: she was wheeling a stroller.

FEHER:

“Ah, yes – time marches on. Turns out she was in town briefly, visiting her mother I think. And she says ‘This is my son…” and whatever his name was, but the name didn’t really register with me. All I could think was what an ugly little kid. By that time I was well into my sex life and I think I was living with my first steady girlfriend, Lucy. So the old longing and heartache for Renée was gone. 

“I said my goodbyes to her, and later on when uptown, I ran into a few guys from the Left Banke, or maybe it was just Mike Brown and I said, ‘I just saw Renée down in the West Village. She’s got this ugly little baby – looks just like Woody!’ I guess that was my parting shot, my revenge for her having walked away. And that might be the end of the story, except for one little detail that I’ll have to tell you about at another time.” 

WRITING WITH MIKE BROWN

MIKE BROWN:

(from a 2005 interview by Even Johan Ottersland ):

“I’m fascinated with making mistakes. I like making a mistake when I go from one chord to another because that usually leads me into writing something; and in ‘Pretty Ballerina’ the melody that goes rather strangely… it was called a Mixolydian mode I think… I was captivated by the way it sounded ‘off.’ That’s my signature: it’s basically trying to get odd things to fit evenly. I wrote that in about twenty minutes by the way; it was a very easy song to write.”

With “Walk Away Renée a solid hit, and “Pretty Ballerina” climbing the charts, the demand for an album’s worth of material came from Mercury. Brown got busy producing melodies, but was tongue-tied when it came to lyrics. Three songs, “Lazy Day” “She May Call You Up Tonight” and “Shadows Breaking Over My Head” were written in collaboration with Steve Martin.

TOM FINN:

“Brown learned very early in his career to always have a cassette recorder rolling whenever he rehearsed with us. We’d gather around the piano and sing right into his ears and right into the cassette recorder. The next time we got together, all of a sudden the melody and the lyrics were there. What he was doing was recording all our ideas – and believe me, we let them fly, especially Steve. 

“Brown never rehearsed with us with a completed song. He would record us and then write the melody and lyrics after he drained our brains. So in essence he was stealing our ideas and presenting them as his own. The only time he gave songwriting credit to anyone, it was because he couldn’t steal the ideas, or he was separated from rehearsing with us for some reason. 

“The only reason he gave Steve writing credit on ‘She May Call You up Tonight’ was he was trying to reward Steve for singing, because many times Steve wasn’t even talking to him. So Brown had to throw the dog a bone. There’s no way that Brown came up with the lyric ‘Shadows Breaking Over My Head’... that was a Steve Martin line, also things like ‘Now through trees, I can see’ all Steve Martin ideas. Brown never rewarded George or me because he had us under his thumb.”

“Pretty Ballerina” is the only Left Banke recording on which Brown claimed sole authorship, and even that required a bit of assistance.

FINN:

“(On ‘Pretty Ballerina’) he had a lot of help from John Abbott. I clearly remember Johnny taping the piano keys down so he could hear what Brown was playing, and thereby isolating certain notes, so that he could write counter point lines for the arrangement.” 

TONY SANSONE:

“One day, I think we were at Richmond Music offices way uptown on Fifty-Ninth Street when he played for me the ‘Pretty Ballerina’ idea. He wasn’t sure where to take the melody after the first idea; so after listening for a while I suggested a melody for ‘Was I surprised? Yeah! Was I surprised? No, not at all.’ He liked it and it became part of the song.”

FINN (from a 2011 interview with Daniel Coston):

“In hindsight, I really wholeheartedly believe that ‘She May Call You Up Tonight’ should have been the follow up to ‘Walk Away Renee.’ ‘Ballerina’ was great, but ‘She May Call’ had more of an up-tempo group sound to it. ‘Ballerina’ should have followed [‘She May Call’]. But after the hit, Mike and Steve were fighting, and Mike wanted to show the world that he was the only writer. He had co-written ‘She May Call’ with Steve.”

Mike Brown now turned to Tom Feher – the poet who had “a way with words” – as lyricist for three more tunes.

TOM FEHER:

“I’ve already said in interviews that writing with Mike Brown was a painful experience. Imagine you’re a servant or a butler, and your master says ‘I think I’ll go out for a walk – fetch me my walking shoes.’ So you get him the shoes and are lacing them up when he says, ‘No, I’ve changed my mind. Pull off the shoes and fetch my slippers – I want to sit by the fire.’ So you get his slippers. Now he wants coffee, but no – as you’re bringing the coffee in on a tray, he says ‘change that to cocoa.’

“That’s the way it was with Mike Brown. He’d get a musical motif going, and usually a title. He might even have the first line of the chorus formulated, but it was usually a string of words that made no sense, like ‘I swear her green haberdashers’ or something – any words that would align with the rhythmic structure of the melody.

“From that you’d have to piece together a lyric that made some sort of grammatical and logical sense. And no matter what you wrote, he’d have a go at twisting it to agree with his distorted view of reality. I mean really, what does ‘somewhere a mountain is moving’ have to do with a pretty ballerina?”

Mike Brown invented a title called “Barterers and Their Wives” to a melodic figure that later worked its way miraculously onto Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas;” Feher had to enter the maze of Brown’s mind to determine: exactly what was a “Barterer?”

FEHER:

“He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. It’s a largely unused noun form of the verb “barter,” and I’d never heard of it at the time. But, using logic I decided it must be a merchant hawking his wares in an ancient marketplace, and took it from there. The thing was, to Mike Brown, words were just an unavoidable requirement, a burden that came along – whether he liked it or not – with getting his melodies and piano stylings out to the public. He was practically incapable of thinking in a straight line, word-wise.

“At one point, he came up with a really cool syncopated piano figure – something that sounded like a cross between a rock blues and an old time music hall rag. He played the thing for me, mumbling along to the melody: ‘yakka-dakka, rakka-wakka mumbledy peg’ or whatever – totally unintelligible syllables in his ‘dying cow’ voice, and then finished up the musical phrase by singing ‘her evening gown.’

“So I had to build up a story around that title. I think his original first line was something like ‘a bubba bo-bah, bah blah-blah, which later became ‘the butler opened the parlor door’ in the wake of my reconstructive lyrical surgery.”

The third song co-written by Feher for the first Left Banke album was “What Do You Know,” featuring Mike Brown’s only released vocal and a twangy country guitar lick.

FEHER:

“On ‘What Do You Know,” Mike gave me fairly free reign to do whatever I wanted with the lyric, which isn’t much of anything, really. It was loosely patterned after the Beatles’ ‘What Goes On,’ and was designed to set Mike Brown up as a vocalist similar to Ringo Starr – not to be taken too seriously, but to provide ‘comic relief’ from the serious sadness of so many of the Left Banke’s recordings.

“In retrospect, Ringo outclassed Brown vocally by about ten thousand light years, and the reason is simple. I’ll say it again: the personality shines through on the vocals. Ringo is a guy who genuinely loves people. Mike Brown…well...”

The Brown-Feher compositions as well as two of the Brown-Martin tunes, “She May Call You Up Tonight” and “Shadows Breaking Over My Head,” were recorded at Mercury’s own studios. Harry Lookofsky contracted a number of professional session players from musicians’ local 802 to supply the basic tracks. Other than Mike Brown himself, none of the group performed on instruments. However, on “She May Call You Up Tonight,” Tom Finn played the Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me” for session bassist Joe Mack, to give an idea of what the groove should be.

TOM FINN:

“When I was working out the bass guitar part for our song ‘She May Call You Up Tonight’ I was having trouble thinking of a line. So I took a break and turned on the radio and they were playing a song by The Beatles called ‘You Won’t See Me’ and lo and behold – there it was: a perfect bass progression; so I used it. It’s not note for note, but close.”

TOM FEHER:

“Although it was really a shame that the group didn’t get to play on most of the album, it was a great learning experience for all of us to see the pros in action. There was the legendary bassist Joseph ‘Joe Mack’ Macho Jr., who’d played on hundreds of sessions including Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny’ and Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone;’ drummer Bobby Gregg, whose opening snare crack on the same Dylan single became the cue note for an entire generation; and guitarists Ralph Casale, Vinnie Bell, Al Gorgoni, and the new kid in town, Hugh McCracken. I met them all at one time or another while our songs were being recorded. They were very friendly, would answer your questions, and you had a feeling of confidence when they sat down to play, that they truly knew what they were doing.”

When the sessions were done, it was decided that ten songs were not enough for an album, and the group went back to World United studio in February of 1967 to work on one more track – a Cameron-Martin composition, “Let Go of You Girl.” Brown added a bridge section, also using his brand new Hohner clavinet for the first time on tape. It was somewhat of a rush job, since Mercury was panting to release an album, but once again, the group got to play their instruments. The line-up was Mike Brown on clavinet; George Cameron on drums; Tom Finn on bass; and the newly acquired Richard “Rick” Brand on guitar.

AN UNEXPECTED ELEMENT

“Let Go of You Girl” was recorded under rigorous circumstances. In addition to the group members struggling with their shaky chops, the World United studio itself had undergone a considerable transformation. For some unknown reason, Harry Lookofsky had decided to have some reconstruction done on the electronic components of the studio. Rick Brand, the new Left Banke guitarist, had introduced Harry to Kenny Schaffer, an acquaintance from his school years at Bronx High School of Science. Schaffer, in his turn, brought in Richard “Rick” Factor and Steve Katz (not the “Blood, Sweat & Tears” Katz), both of whom he’d met not too much earlier through their common interest in shortwave radio, and the three of them went to work on the studio wiring.

TOM FINN:

“I remember Ken and his cohorts ripping up the control room and turning it into a pile of spaghetti. I think his rotten ass was behind the board on ‘Let Go Of You Girl;’ that’s why it sounds so sonically inferior to the fine level of audio quality exhibited by Steve Jerome.” 

As far as anyone knows, these three characters had absolutely no previous experience or training in recording technology or the wiring of a recording facility. Supposedly they stayed up several nights studying recording manuals before they began tearing the studio apart and placed Schaffer in the engineer’s seat.

TOM FEHER:

“I’ve read in an internet article where Schaffer confesses to the fact that he inadvertently erased the front half of the song and ducked out of the studio hiding his scrawny butt for a week. That was so like him – an incompetent bumbler. He then brags that he turned this to his advantage by becoming the Left Banke’s publicist instead. With the group’s management shifting from Harry to Bill Ottinger, he was able to pull off his first media capers and come up smelling like a rose. He also claims to be the first rock publicist. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Ken Schaffer is simply the most shameless liar and bullshit artist I ever met in my life and the Bronx would do well to disown him. I had to deal with him again years later when I formed my own band.” 

The Left Banke album, simply titled Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina, was released in the final week of February 1967. It was favorably reviewed in Billboard, which called it “a sure bet for top sales.” Meanwhile, dissention had been tearing the group apart. As Tom Finn has indicated, the group was practically finished even before their first hit was recorded, much less released. But when “Walk Away Renée” began its surprising and dramatic climb up the charts, the potential for recouping everyone’s exhausted time, energy and cash seemed to hold everyone together, at least for a while.

They met the touring obligations under strenuous circumstances, but “the show must go on,” and it did. Mike Brown however seemed to have an aversion to personal appearances from the very start. He was seen to hunch over his piano, holding onto it for security; he was tremendously uncomfortable with thousands of eyes focusing in his direction. Add to that, the standard of quality set by his father, as measured against the rush to back up the record and get a performing band on the road. Brown and Finn both have been very vocal in their regrets over the quality of the Left Banke’s live shows during late 1966 when they were at the peak of their popularity.

The group was sent out with their equipment in a U-Haul trailer, first towed by a station wagon and then by a used 1963 Cadillac limousine with co-producer Steve Jerome at the wheel. Although Steve had been elected “road manager,” there were no roadies and Steve Jerome, being exceedingly fat, couldn’t bend over and didn’t participate in the set-ups and breakdowns.

TOM FINN:

“Steve Jerome made us set up our own equipment. I remember one gig we were late and the audience was in their seats at a college auditorium. We had to go on stage in our old clothes, and we had to set up the entire stage with drums, amps, electric piano and PA system plus all the wiring. Then, plug in and start the show all while they sat there quietly watching us. This was a fucking joke. No wonder we didn’t last.” 

“Don’t forget that Brown played the first Hohner Clavinet. On stage it kept going out of tune, and it was the only keyboard we brought on one short tour to New England. I think that after that, Brown totally lost it, he freaked out. He couldn’t take it anymore. His keyboard playing was the glue that held the whole thing together; so when the Clavinet went out of tune, man did we sound like shit. It’s a wonder that they paid us, it was horrible.”

MIKE BROWN:

(from a 2005 interview by Even Johan Ottersland ):

“I was mortified going onstage. Basically we were booked around in very bad places where we didn’t have adequate equipment and the local bands had these big towering speakers and monitors, and more often than not they wouldn’t let us use their equipment. It was very distressing to be the ‘big name’ band with an audience and consistently having the local group being better than we were… it was really the result of poor planning and poor decision making. We were pioneers in those days and a lot of the monitoring systems weren’t working the way they are today.

“I remember we did a show in Detroit with which we had ample power: it was a twenty-thousand person auditorium and we were playing with some Motown bands. We got out on stage and it was just about the most comfortable time going on stage that I’ve ever had. I think if we’d have had that kind of backup I don’t think I would have stopped touring. …it was just a matter of survival emotionally; I just couldn’t do it anymore so I guess I just pulled a Brian Wilson and just wanted to stay (in the studio) and write and produce.”

Brown, having just come out of a fairly orderly music industry environment, and a conservative family life, claimed in an interview that he was straight on the road while the others were getting stoned and partying with the inevitable groupies. No one in the group has denied it.

GEORGE CAMERON:

“Once Steve and Tommy took LSD before going on stage and didn’t tell us. That was really a weird show. In the limo we used to travel for hundreds of miles at a time, and we’d sometimes smoke pot, so we had this alert or warning called ‘Air Emergency’ which meant everybody sitting near a window would roll it down really fast if a cop car was coming near us. We didn’t want them to smell the pot. “One time in Detroit a motorcycle gang followed us out of a coffee shop we were eating in. When we were out in the parking lot they were teasing us, calling us fags. Steve said ‘fuck your mother’ to them. They were going to kill us, but Tommy said to them, ‘You guys think you’re so tough Huh? Wait here and we’ll go across the street to our hotel and get the rest of our guys then we'll see who’s tough.’ Tommy saved us because they went for it. They let us go and waited outside the hotel for us. Of course we never came out. Whew! We almost got killed, Steve was a jerk to say what he did, but he had a bad temper.”

TOM FINN:

“I used every ounce of my South Brooklyn gang war skills to get us out of that jam, because these guys were ready to kill us after Steve said ‘Fuck your mother.’ I tasted the blood in my mouth and I knew I had to think quick, as they were coming toward us with bats and chains. I knew I couldn’t beg for my life. So I did the opposite: I agreed with Steve. And I said ‘Oh yeah! Big shot Detroit bad guys huh? Well you ain’t shit, what are you gonna do beat up a couple of unarmed guys. Just let us go over to our hotel and I’ll get the rest of our guys, then we’ll see who’s a bad ass.’ The leader said ‘What! You scumbag, go ahead – get your boys.’ So we slowly walked to the back entrance of our hotel, and we never came out. I guess I saved everyone’s ass that night.” 

It was these sorts of incidents, but probably more the poor quality of their sound system and their playing that eventually led to Mike Brown quitting the road and opting for the studio life once again. On one gig, Brown flew in on a small plane to meet the group somewhere in the Midwest. He got sick and went back to New York City to rest but they needed him on piano, so he flew back. After that he threw in the towel, he couldn’t take it. As Finn tells it, “He only really did about ten gigs with us, and he fell apart. According to Brown’s version, given in an interview with Dawn Eden, it was not he but the group who fell apart. He claims they’d had one decent gig (at Our Lady of Solace in the Bronx) before the record was released, and that by the time he quit touring the group had destroyed itself. By the end of 1966 it was just short of all-out warfare. With Brand replacing Winfield on guitar and Finn and Cameron just barely escaping the same fate, it was first a case of Brown and Martin versus the others. In the midst of this, Harry Lookofsky split with his long-time production partner, Steve Jerome.

FINN:

“In front of 1595 Broadway – World United – I witnessed Harry in a big fight with Steve Jerome. We had just gotten back from tour; I think it was of New England. Steve Jerome was also our road manager at this time. I didn’t get close enough to hear what they were yelling about, but Steve burned rubber and screeched away from where Harry was standing. I guess Steve wanted money for driving us all over the place and performing road manager duties. But I have a feeling that now that ‘Renée’ was a big hit, Harry wanted to get rid of his (ahem) partner, because shortly thereafter Harry hired Bill Ottinger.”

  Bill Ottinger was a former supermarket manager from Valley Stream Long Island. It wasn’t long after his recruitment that Ottinger too found himself in conflict with Lookofsky.

TOM FEHER:

“I think, personally, that the real reason Steve and Harry were in conflict was over the sex and drugs on the road. These things have a way of getting around. I’m sure Harry was aware of what was going on, and being a traditional-type family man he was infuriated to think that his protégés – his own son now included – were up to their necks and eyebrows in the drug culture. He had probably been relying on Steve Jerome to crack the whip and discipline the boys. So he hired straight-as-a-board Billy Ottinger to rectify the problem. What he didn’t realize was that Ottinger also would eventually get caught up in the weed and speed – and even the greed.”

TOURING (ROAD STORIES)

February tenth through February nineteenth 1967 found the Left Banke on a tour of southern states, including Georgia and Florida, with the Beach Boys, who were coming off a huge #1 hit, “Good Vibrations.” On the bill, along with “Special Guest Stars” the Left Banke, were Question Mark and the Mysterians, Seattle’s Electric Prunes, and one-name vocalist Keith, whose single “98.6” had entered the Billboard Top Ten that January. One can imagine the excitement of those tour dates. 

The Left Banke line-up for this tour included Tom Finn, Steve Martin, George Cameron, Rick Brand and Emmett Lake, who’d been recently recruited to replace Brown on piano. The tour started in Miami and ended in Nashville. Tall, bearded Emmett Lake – visually the polar opposite of the Left Banke image, but a competent pianist – had been recruited through a newspaper ad.  

TOM FINN:

“This was One of Emmett’s first gigs. On this first gig we somehow had bought a starter pistol not in Florida, but in Mississippi. We all thought it would be funny if, during the ritard in ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ Emmett – with his Grizzly Adams looks, – pulled out the gun and shot Steve. So we did it. In the short break, he pulls the gun, aims at Steve and fires. This gun looked and sounded real. So the break comes, he shoots, and Steve falls down, clutching his stomach. Then instead of continuing the song we stayed stopped, and all ran over to Steve ‘to see if he was alive.’ Well it seems like we fooled a lot of people, including The Beach Boys. Just when guards started running up, Steve gets up and we all start laughing our asses off. The Beach Boys didn’t think it was funny and told us to never do that again.”

The tour went on, and as Finn describes it, “it was great.” All the groups had private limos, they didn’t travel more than four hours a day, and The Beach Boys had a great sound system and monitors. For once, Finn, Cameron and Martin could hear their vocals which meant they sounded a lot better; and since there were several opening acts, somewhat like a variety show, the Left Banke only had to be on stage for three or four songs and could do all originals. 

FINN:

“But even with all that, George was out for as much pussy as he could get. At every gig he had ‘em lined up outside his hotel room door, and I’m not kidding, he’d finish with one, throw her out, and bring in the next one. As this went on George got into more and more trouble. I remember one girl – he screwed her and asked her for her car keys. He took her parents’ car into a field behind the motel we were staying at, and gunned the motor. 

“He floored that accelerator to burn that rubber. All you could see was a big cloud of dust as he kept going faster and faster; he finally started to go around in smaller and smaller circles until he went over a large rock. The car stopped because he had rammed the car up on top of the large rock and the wheels had no traction because they were all off the ground and the under frame of the car was sitting on top of the rock. George was drunk off his ass. The Beach Boys all came out on the balcony to watch this. They were pissed off too. They were saying ‘Go out there and stop him!’ The girl was crying, ‘that’s my father’s car, oh no, he’s going to ruin the car.’ And he pretty much did; we had to call a tow truck to get the car off that boulder. The car was all dented and I think he burnt out the transmission.”

One can imagine the horror experienced by Mike Brown had he been on this tour. The boys in the Left Banke were running amok, sowing their wild oats and splurging on the benefits of their newfound celebrity. (Not that our boys were the exception to the rule). One night on that tour, they invited three girls to one of their rooms but before they came in, Steve, George and Tom took their clothes off. When the girls knocked, they yelled, “Come in the door is open!”

FINN:

“We were hiding in the rear bathroom and as soon as they were in the room we all ran out, with each one of us holding a facecloth or small towel over our penises, with one hand, and we all held our other hand high in the air as we all tip toed into the room like ballet dancers. Then we each jumped totally naked right on a girl and pushed them onto the double beds. We all smoked pot and got drunk and we fucked all three of ‘em. 

“When we were finished they asked if we could call a car and give them cab fare. It was really late, and it was dark outside and they said they were afraid to go out. George thought about it and went into his suitcase and got a small pocket knife and showed them the door and said ‘if you’re afraid, here take my knife.’ He handed one of them the knife and pushed them out the door. What a guy, huh?”

We hear more road stories about George than anyone else in the band, possibly because he had a tendency to get caught in his antics. Here’s a beauty. At one point, one of the girls he’d bedded had turned the tables on him and landed him as a marriage partner. It’s surprising that the marriage lasted three years with goings on such as these:

FINN:

“We’re all having an orgy in one of our hotel rooms. Each one of us has a young groupie, and we’re all banging them, when a knock comes on the door, saying ‘George, George, Open up this fucking door!’ It was his wife Linda, and she knew he was in there so she kept screaming at the top if her lungs ‘George GEORGE! Open the door!’ We all scrambled to get dressed; I was petrified. I couldn’t get my pants on. I put them on backwards and fell down when I tried to walk.  “We went into a huddle and we said ‘George, hide in the bathtub behind the shower curtains, and we’ll tell her you’re not here.’ So me and Steve went to the door and said ‘Linda he’s not in here’ through the locked door. She says ‘Tommy, I know he’s in there, open the door.’ Steve and I looked at each other and said ‘we’d better get out of here,’ not to mention the three girls, all half dressed and freaking out. So on the count of three we whipped open the door and we all ran out onto this long balcony – Steve, me and the girls. “Linda goes in and within fifteen seconds finds a half naked George in the bathtub cowering behind the shower curtains. All of our clothes were mixed up and I think George had one of the girls’ shirts on. Well let me tell you, Linda grabbed him by the hair and dragged him out on the balcony half dressed and begging, ‘Linda stop – I wasn’t involved, I was just watching.’ Linda proceeded to kick and punch him all the way back to his room. She beat the shit out of him. Linda was strong and tough.”

By early 1967, this had become more or less standard and expected behavior for rock bands on the road. The Who’s Keith Moon, for one, would have laughed down his nose at these antics, as mild and unworthy of headlines. But at one point, guitarist Rick Brand pulled a caper that just might have cost the Left Banke another Top Five hit.

FINN:

“What happened was Rick Brand wrote a sexually suggestive letter to a radio DJ’s daughter. She came to the station to meet the stars; you know – daddy sets it up so his daughter gets bragging rights and autographs. I saw Rick teasing her and he figured he’d turn her on and she’d never tell daddy, but she did, and gave him The Letter. 

“It just so happened that in addition to being a DJ on a 50,000 watt station (WLS, one of the most powerful and influential stations in the nation), I think he was also the station’s program director. He threw us out the door, yelling ‘you’ll never be heard in this state again!’ I even remember the letter, because he gave it to our road manager. It read something like, ‘warm secretions of liquid life, slithering and sinking into dark cracks and passages…’ Those were almost the exact words of the beginning anyway. You know, he was being poetic.” 

THE OTHER BANKE

Feher isn’t quite certain on exactly how or when, but he has distinct memories of the “other” Left Banke assembled by Mike Brown in early ’67 to record a Left Banke single release in the wake of “Pretty Ballerina.” This very short-lived group consisted of Brown on keyboard, Warren David on drums, Bert Sommer on vocals and bass and Michael McKean on guitar.

Sommer, who was already known to the Left Banke by virtue of his friendships with Feher and Warren David, would later go on to a leading role in the Broadway version of Hair, release several albums on Capitol Records, and perform at the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969. Warren David it seems was having his last go at being a Left Banke member. And from what is known, it was David who brought McKean into the picture. Michael McKean, the other member of the other Banke, was a Shakespearean actor and folksinger. Who would’ve dreamed that he would go on to co-star on the ‘70s hit TV series Laverne & Shirley (as Lenny) and then co-create the cult classic This Is Spinal Tap?

MICHAEL McKEAN (from a New Times interview 4/24/09):

“…I was 18 years old, and a friend of mine named Warren David was briefly a drummer for a band called the Left Banke. Mike Brown, who was the writer of ‘Walk Away Renée,’ and his father, a guy named Harry Lookofsky, who was a New York session man and arranger, they wanted to put together a new version of the band because they wanted to put out some new records. I was recruited -- this was in New York -- through my friend. 

“They bought us new clothes and new guitars, and we rehearsed for three months, and then we broke up again. I never played a single gig with the Left Banke. I was with the band when they recorded what was kind of their comeback single with their new vocalist, a guy named Bert Sommer. So when that song was gonna tear up the charts we were gonna go out and support that, but the band fell apart again. It was really a matter of rehearsing with the guys, and taking off out of the back door with my guitar and my new clothes. So in a sense, I did play in the Left Banke.”

TOM FEHER:

“I remember Mike McKean as a soft-spoken, very well mannered guy, a Shakespearean actor at the time that this new ‘Left Banke’ group was brought together.

As it turned out, this quartet had a longevity of about three days; I don’t think they played on the ‘Ivy, Ivy’ session, and I know they never played a single gig.

“I recall very vividly the last time I spoke to Michael McKean, some time after the Left Banke furor had subsided. We ran into each other on a rainy evening outside a candy store or luncheonette on Saint Mark’s Place. He told me he was leaving town that very weekend, to go to LA. No music for him, he was digging into his acting career. Well, we don’t have to imagine what he accomplished with that move.”

THE BATTLE OF THE BANKES

Just about the time that the group’s first album began its unremarkable rise on the charts – it peaked at #67 in Billboard and #59 in Cashbox – the disputes and unrest between group members and group and management had hit fever pitch. The three singers didn’t particularly like ‘Renée’ very much; they felt they had better songs in the works. However, after ‘Walk Away Renée’ became such a big hit, Mike wanted to be the sole writer and creative head and, as Finn tells it, “put the whole process in a headlock.” He took over completely, with his father’s blessings.

TOM FINN:

“We went out on the road to milk the hit, with ninety percent of all the money disappearing into Harry’s pocket. Mike couldn’t take the pressure on the road, and quit the touring and wanted to stay home and write and produce. The reason for the split was that Harry and Mike tried to woo Steve away from the rest of us. Steve initially agreed; but where Harry and Mike made their mistake was by letting Steve continue to do these grueling tours with eight to sometimes twelve hour drives between shows while Brown stayed in New York. 

“Steve hated Mike for playing the big shot leader sitting in New York while we were out slaving on the road. The most money I ever got was maybe one hundred and fifty dollars; and that’s after being out of New York City for two or three weeks. So one day Steve beat him up in the hallway between the World United studio and the office. Brown cried to Harry and said ‘I don’t want to play with these guys anymore.’ Harry backed Mike’s decision to fire all of us and get together with Tom Feher and Bert Sommer to be the new creative circle. We had two big hit records and we were broke.”

TOM FEHER:

“I wasn’t in on all the arguments and legal hassles. When Mike came off the road and decided to limit his activities to the studio, there was more work for me in the lyric writing department. But as I’ve mentioned, I had my own issues with Mister Brown.

“When Bert Sommer stepped into the picture, a new era began. I’m not sure if Brown met Bert through Warren David or through me. The connection was made; but first – a little about Bert. I’d known Bert for over a year, and I have to tell you that Bert Sommer was one of the most unique people that ever walked the earth; there was and never will be anyone quite like him. Because Bert Sommer was extremely tall, with a baby face that wouldn’t quit, Steve Martin called him ‘Baby Huey’ after a comic book character of that name; but he was much more than that. I would have called him, on first appearance to be a cross between Michael J. Pollard on the outside and ‘George Jefferson’ on the inside. Bert was a Soul Brother trapped in an ofay body.

“I’ll never forget the first time I met Bert. It was in Washington Square Park, back in the Spring or Summer of ’65. This tall, gangly kid – he didn’t have the trademark afro then, his hair was ironed down – comes walking up the Row. We street people had names for the different paths in the park; the only one I remember was Junkie Row. 

“Anyway, here comes this tall skinny guy in bellbottoms and t-shirt with a big smile on his face, walks up like he owns the park, and whoever was with me introduces us. Bert grabs my crotch, and shakes my balls as if he was shaking my hand. ‘Nice ta meetcha,’ he says. And that sums up Bert in one short paragraph. He was in your face; he was always challenging your ability to handle outrageous behavior, always putting people on the spot, to make them snap out of their daydream state. He did a great job of it too; and it was all in fun. Bert was also an immensely skillful and prolific songwriter.”

Joan Aupperlee met Feher and Sommer at approximately the same time, also in Greenwich Village.

JOAN (PADNEY) AUPPERLEE:

“Bert had a sweetness to him, but also a very sarcastic wit. An extremely talented guy, but he had hidden torments that most people would never see. When he would play his guitar either on the street or in the park, people would just stop what they were doing. When Tommy and Bert would sing together, it was magical.”  

FEHER:

“Joanie’s either daydreaming or exaggerating. Bert had a voice for sure, but me? In 1966 there were frogs that could sing better than me.”

Sommer had been good friends with Long Island rock and soul band The Vagrants, and would enjoy a single release that same year as co-writer with producer Felix Pappalardi on the group’s first effort for Atco Records, “A Sunny Summer Rain.”

FEHER:

“If Mike met Bert through me, he soon took over the connection and began a songwriting partnership that was almost as fruitful – to his way of thinking at least – as the one he had with me. With a bucketful of wordless tunes rolling off his piano, Brown was like a junkie thirsting for his next fix of lyrics.

“I’ve probably said how I was really getting sick of working in the chaotic zone of his twisted mind. There were some songs I simply refused to write lyrics for. Like his concept ‘men are building sand.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean? As a writer, excepting some very rare instances, I shun symbolism – I go for direct communication. I wasn’t going to get involved with that nonsense. Building sand, indeed!

“So Bert came along, and not being fed up to the eyebrows with Brown, was game to give it a try. I think that ‘Sand’ was the first song they wrote together, and it was originally Mike’s idea to have it done by the legitimate Left Banke, the one we all know and love.”

Michael Brown, with the help of Bert Sommer, finished off a song titled “And Suddenly,” and along with Feher’s “Ivy Ivy,” proceeded to ready a Left Banke single for release at the record company’s urging.

FEHER:

“To this very day, I’m not quite sure why ‘Ivy, Ivy’ was chosen for recording, much less as the ‘A’ side of a single, but there it was. Sessions were booked and the tracks were performed by the union regulars. Al Gorgoni, who’d played guitar on ‘Barterers and Their Wives,’ and possibly some other album cuts, played my original guitar part practically note for note – which is remarkable because I had composed the song in an open tuning, and he played it in standard tuning as far as I know. I got the thrill of my life up to that point because I got to meet Bobby Scott, another one of Hash Brown’s buddies, who’d been recruited as the arranger on the date. Bobby had some personal problems, but as a musician and songwriter, he was top-class.”

Bobby Scott had toured with Louis Prima, beginning at age fifteen, on piano and vibes, and later with Gene Krupa. He had his own #13 gold record, “Chain Gang” in 1956 – not to be confused with Sam Cooke’s song of the same title. At the time when he wrote the arrangement for “Ivy, Ivy,” he had achieved success as the co-writer of “A Taste of Honey,” originally an instrumental theme for the 1960 Broadway version of a 1958 British play. “A Taste of Honey” had won two Grammy awards, the most recent for the Herb Alpert #7 Billboard hit. The Beatles had further popularized the song in their vocal version of 1963. But Bobby Scott still had major chart appearances to make, when again as a co-writer he scored a #7 hit with the Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” which also went Top Twenty for Neil Diamond, both in 1970.

FEHER:

“Working with guys like Bobby and Al Gorgoni was a terrific experience for a young guy like me, off the street. I know it’s been quite a factor in my own development as a musician that I had pros like them to interact with in my early years in the studio. Bert sang the vocals on both sides of the single. ‘And Suddenly,’ thanks mainly to Bert’s already honed lyrical skills, had pop potential that ‘Ivy, Ivy’ did not. The Cherry People made it to #44 in 1968 with their version. I would call ‘Ivy, Ivy’ an art song; I can’t conceive of it making an appearance on the commercial charts.”

Feher also says of this time period – although it’s an analysis of the situation many years after the fact – that quite a few people made some really poor decisions at that time.

FEHER:

“For one thing, I think the guys weren’t very smart to split with Harry Lookofsky. Harry was still playing in the major league. He had a reputation in the industry, he had enough of a business sense to get record deals and get product out, and I believe he sincerely liked the boys in the Banke.

“Without Harry Lookofsky, there might never have been a Left Banke. He gave them their shoe horn into the industry. They were complaining that Harry pocketed most of the money. That’s easy to say when you know nothing about business – I had the same point of view back then; but once you’ve gone into business for yourself, like I did later in life, you recognize just what the responsibilities are and where the money actually goes.

“Unfortunately, Harry had a very unstable son to whom he was quite devoted, and when the shit hit the fan, he and Mike went one way and the three vocalists went in the opposite direction. I think Harry also made some critical errors, like splitting with Steve Jerome, hiring Kenny Schaffer, and most of all releasing ‘Ivy, Ivy.’ 

“You may think that odd, coming from me who had everything to gain by getting my name on a record release. But since I was there on the spot, I have to say that ‘Ivy, Ivy’ had less to do with good business than it had to do with indulging the pouting son – and I was just there along for the ride. 

“Harry also took a liking to me, and maybe that solves the mystery of why he chose my song for a single release. Or maybe he did it to keep me from defecting to the other camp, thus keeping for Mike his main co-writer. One thing to realize though is that a condition of the record release was for me to grant fifty percent of the songwriting credit and royalties to Mike Brown, which I did. That was my stupid mistake: Mike never composed a single note or wrote a single word to that song.”

Feher has one additional ax to grind, and he leaves no room for doubt as to his opinion.

FEHER:

“I also think, after all these years, that it is a continuing error to refer to those recordings as a product of ‘The Left Banke.’ The voice is Bert Sommer; none of the members of the Left Banke other than Mike Brown were involved. Bert was a competent vocalist and performer, but let’s face it: his voice is not the voice of the Left Banke; the LB vocals are most commonly configured as Steve up front with Tommy and George supplying the harmony.

“Bert was quite a competent artist and performer in his own right. I think it would be much more sensible and dignified for everyone involved to credit those sides to Bert Sommer as a solo artist and install them in his catalog of releases. But I doubt that ever will happen. Someone would have to be paying attention and put on their producer’s ears. Someone would have to be concerned with the truth… and the record industry has not been traditionally known to embrace the truth with open arms.”

The tunes were recorded on March 27th, 1967 and a single was released in the third week of April. By May 6th it was “bubbling under” Billboard’s Hot 100, but it was not to reach the chart.

MORE CONFLICT

TOM FINN:

“No book on The Left Banke can be written without the story of the split and how Steve, George and I hired the law firm of Paul Marshall and Johanon Vigoda. They also represented Jimi Hendrix. I used to get all the stories about Jimi when I was up at their offices on West 57th Street. The three of us met a guy named Bobby Michaels who’d heard about Mike and Harry releasing ‘Ivy, Ivy.’”

Aspiring songwriter Ron Singer and Charly Cazalet (musician and friend of the band), had joined Tom Finn in renting an apartment on Eighth Avenue not far from the studio, where Feher had been temporarily boarding when Finn was out of town, as an alternative to sleeping on the office couch.

FINN:

“We met Bobby in the apartment above Smiler’s on Eighth Avenue and he convinced us to set up an appointment with Marshall and Vigoda the following day (like, right away). So we went up there and Paul Marshall did all the talking, while Johanon Vigoda just quietly stared at us and made notes on his pad. We agreed to have them represent us in a lawsuit against Harry. We went back up there a few days later and heard Johanon Vigoda yelling into the telephone. He was on the phone with a person named Green I think; anyway he was talking to the president of Mercury Records in Chicago.”

Irving Green was not only President, but one of the founders of Mercury Records.

FINN:

“Vigoda was cursing at him; I couldn’t believe him, he was being brutal. He said something like ‘Irving you can’t do this, we have a contract, are you fucking crazy?We’ll sue you for millions, don’t get me started, what the fuck kind of fucking sham is this you’re pulling. Irving, Irving, IRVING!! You've got to stop this right now.’ And then he hung up on him. The next thing I know, Mercury pulled the record. Then they tell us we’re not going to court. 

“Now the whole thing has been turned over to the Musicians Union Local 802. The decision of who owns the name The Left Banke comes down to Union arbitration. Well, Vigoda did his homework because he brought forth documentation declaring Harry Lookofsky as a union scab. Anyway a few more things were brought into evidence, like Harry doing the Left Banke recordings off the union books. “So they found Harry guilty of this illegal behavior, and found in the favor of Steve, George and I as the lawful and rightful owners of the name. We were elated! Marshall and Vigoda asked for no money or fees, but what they wanted was to administrate our newly formed (at their request) publishing company named Purple Flower Music BMI. So we agreed and that left us free to begin Left Banke Too.”

TOM FEHER

“I don’t know if I’m the one to comment on this, because I was as wild as the Wicked West Wind in 1967. Following the trend of striking out against Harry and Mike, I even climbed through a transom in the publishing office one night, pulled my songwriter contract out of the file and tore it up. But I have had the experience of watching the music industry go downhill decade after decade while lawyers climbed to the top and began dictating much more than memos to their secretaries. 

“We got to the point where it was rumored that the only way to even be considered for a recording contract was to go through a lawyer – not for his legal advice, but for his clout and connections. And thus you witnessed a mass exodus of really great artists who decided to skip the whole industry thing and sell their own product. It’s been a critical catastrophe for everyone involved, and if you ask me, it all started with guys like Johanon Vigoda. But you didn’t ask my opinion, did you?”

The apartment on Eighth Avenue, owned by a Mrs. Smiler of the Smiler’s stores, where Bobby Michaels had told the boys about Marshall and Vigoda, was the scene of Sixties excess to rival any other of the day. It was the epitome of drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. Mrs. Smiler, in addition to owning a chain of grocery-type stores that stayed open all night, was a landlady – she owned the building in which the apartment was located. And when she didn’t get her rent, she was a battle ax! The boys would cringe when they heard her big shoes clomping on up the stairs.

FEHER:

“During that time, I was basically homeless and chronically ill with one thing or another because I’d been living on drugs and daily breakfast specials since about summer 1965. I don’t recall if I’d worn out my welcome in the company office or what, but at one point I got to sleep on the living room couch of Ronnie and Charly’s apartment over Mrs. Smiler’s store on Eighth Avenue. I think it began because Finn, who was one of the co-renters, was so often out of town, suggested it as spot for me to crash.

“A number of wild things happened up in that place. There was sex on the kitchen table. You have to remember that Charly had been in a band that was one of the first to play Steve Paul’s scene, which was just a hop and a skip from the apartment. So it came about that we hung at The Scene quite a lot, and often musicians would come up in the wee, wee hours, to score dope, or do their dope in private. One time, Jimmy Page came up to the apartment and loosened up his fingers on one of our guitars.

In mid-1967, the Left Banke continued to perform in and out of town. The group was booked by Ron Sunshine of Premier Talent, founded by Frank Barsalona in 1964 – the first booking agency to specialize in rock acts. Premier Talent had organized the first American concerts for the Beatles, the Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones. The Left Banke was in good company. Among their local bookings was a gig on June 28th 1967 at the Village Theater, which later became the Fillmore East. The show – called The Bread for Heads Festival – featured Frank Zappa with the Mothers of Invention, The Fugs, and Allen Ginsberg. An odd booking for the group, to say the least.

TOM FINN:

  “That night, during ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ Steve yelled up to Joshua, (who had a famous psychedelic light show) ‘Hey man, stop playing! Hey you lighting man, turn off those fuckin’ lights, we’re not a psychedelic band!’ and a lot of people clapped. 

“That show was a fundraiser for the legal defense of people that got busted for pot smoking. The Mothers were nice enough to let us use their equipment and drums, amps… everything. Later on when the roadies went to our own equipment van, all the equipment had been stolen – drums, amps, sound, and everything except our guitars that we’d been playing. We did the gig for free, but we lost all our stuff, which we couldn’t afford at that time.” 

BERNSTEIN ON THE BANKE

In April of 1967, a CBS News special, titled Inside Pop – The Rock Revolution, brought a sampling of the new music of a new generation to the attention of the adult world. Hosted by the legendary and highly respected composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, it was considered an early example of the analysis of pop music as a serious art form. With the Byrds’ recording of Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!” playing in the background, Bernstein introduced the program in this fashion:

LEONARD BERNSTEIN:

“I came to these songs naturally through my children but I have a sneaky feeling I would have heard and responded to them anyway. After all, they are part of music, which is my world, and a part that is so pervasive as to be almost inescapable. Many parents do try to escape this music, and even forbid it on the grounds that it is noisy, unintelligible or morally corruptive. I have neither escaped nor forbidden it, neither as a musician nor as a father. I think this music has something terribly important to tell us adults and we would be wise not to behave like ostriches about it. Besides, as I said, I like it.”

Bernstein then went on to give examples of musical relevance of the Beatles by analyzing “Good Day Sunshine” and “She Said, She Said,” following which, he made these statements:

BERNSTEIN:

“Now the point I want to make is that such oddities as this are not just tricks or show-off devices; in terms of pop music’s basic ‘English,’ so to speak, they are real inventions… and it’s not only the Beatles who make these inventions. For instance, there’s a group known as the Left Banke that has a tune called ‘Pretty Ballerina.’ Now this tune is built – not in the usual major or minor scale – but in a combination of the Lydian and Mixolydian modes. Imagine that!” 

(He plays the combination on the piano and sings the first two lines of the song.). 

“It comes out with a sort of Turkish or Greek sound. ‘I had a date with a pretty ballerina, her hair so brilliant that it hurt my eyes…’ rather unusual, wouldn’t you say?”

The program thus praised the Left Banke, or more precisely, Mike Brown’s compositional ability, in relation to the Beatles and other featured artists such as Frank Zappa, Graham Nash, and Brown’s hero Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.

TOM FEHER:

“I would say, at the time, this citation by Bernstein rather went to Brown’s head. But really… classical musicians and music teachers of the day were very fond of impressing people with big words the public would struggle to understand.

“When I decided to establish my own music teaching program in Los Angeles in the early ‘nineties, I studied three music dictionaries and hundreds of music texts in order to develop my own unique program; and I can tell you that a lot of the big words are easily understood if you take the time to investigate.

“The modes – which are older church forms of what we know today as ‘scales’ – can be found on the white keys of the piano. The Lydian mode can be heard by playing the white keys from F to the next higher F; the Mixolydian mode can be heard by doing the same from G to G.

“In my teaching program, I stress that performance of music came first, and documentation came later in the history of music. So all the big words have been invented to describe something which is done simply by selecting something one can play and saying ‘I like that sound.’ Call it what you like.”

TOM FINN: 

“Leonard Bernstein was the conductor of The New York Philharmonic and a brilliant composer, who wrote things like West Side Story amongst other classics. I was introduced to him as a member of The Left Banke, and when he shook my hand he wouldn’t let go. He held my hand for about five minutes; it seemed like five hours.

“As he held my hand he was talking about how ‘Pretty Ballerina’ employed a chord known as the Devil’s Chord. He further explained that he also used the chord in his song ‘Maria’ from West Side Story. This devil’s chord happens on the words ‘pretty ballerina,’ and on the word ‘Maria.’ It’s a half-step up or down from the closest note.” 

TOM FEHER:

“The ‘Devil’s Chord’ got its name from being banned by the Church in the middle ages, and is more accurately called ‘the Devil’s interval.’ It’s a musical interval also known as a tritone, which is formed by playing tones that are three whole steps apart, such as the C tone and the F-sharp tone. I’ve used it myself in a number of piano compositions. Big deal!

“But I suppose it was considered unusual to include a sound like that in pop music at that time; and it sure was a feather in the group’s cap to have the conductor of the New York Philharmonic orchestra mention them in the same breath as the Beatles.”

ENTER RACHEL ELKIND

In late 1966, when Hash Brown decided to back a move by his son to retain Steve Martin and can the rest of the group, he’d hired Rachel Elkind to oversee some of his business affairs and in fact assigned her take care of serving papers on Cameron’s and Finn’s parents to terminate the boys’ contracts because they were still minors.

Once again, we see the extent of Harry’s connections in the industry, for Rachel came with impressive credentials: she’d been secretary to Goddard Lieberson, President of Columbia Records since 1956 (prior to which he had been responsible for Columbia’s introduction of the long-playing record). Elkind would make her own mark in 1968 when she turned the classical music world topsy-turvy with her production of Switched-on Bach, and paved the way for the synthesizer’s introduction into commercial music. But in 1966, she became Tom Feher’s Guardian Angel. 

TOM FEHER:

“Like most of us, I was seriously experimenting with all kinds of drugs during those years, and as a result my body defenses were a mess. At one point while living up over Smiler’s I caught a flu that kicked in very hard and it immobilized me to the point where I was sure I was going to die. 

“I think Charly was out on the road, because I was in the tiny room that was his bedroom; lying on my back and looking at the ceiling. People talk about out-of-body experiences; but you never quite understand it until it happens to you. My body was so ravaged and ill I began formulating myself as a bird and rose to the ceiling where I could look down and saw my body below me. I can tell you, I’d temporarily ‘given up the ghost,’ as the old saying goes. Or the ghost had given up the shell. 

“One thing I’ve realized since then is that a key issue to the unhappiness in our lives at that time is that almost everyone was strictly out for themselves. This was especially true in heavy drug-dominated areas like that apartment; There were people all around me, but no one really cared whether I lived or died – they were into their own survival issues.

“Well someone did care. I think it was Finn who got the word back to Harry, and he sent Rachel over with antibiotics that got me well. It wasn’t just the antibiotics either; Rachel had taken a genuine liking to me, and I got the Mother Teresa treatment from her in abundant quantities. 

“Somewhere along the line there, Rachel invited me to take a room in her brownstone in the West eighties. That was the beginning of a new life for me in many ways. The most of what I’d gotten out of that apartment over Smiler’s was a song about my out-of-body experience, called ‘High Flying Bird.’ I can assure you, I was very close to flying like that bird and leaving the body behind for good.”

While Tom Finn and the rest of the group and management(s) proceeded to battle it out, Rachel Elkind became a guiding figure in Feher’s life. The room in her brownstone didn’t come entirely rent free – there was handyman work to do, and Rachel’s elderly mother needed a companion; Feher fit the bill in both cases. 

Elkind also became Feher’s musical mentor. She took him to see the American Symphony Orchestra in a performance of one of his favorite classical pieces, Ravel’s Bolero, and introduced him to Leopold Stokowski. 

At one point, Rachel decided to groom Tom as an artist. She brought him together with a composer with whom she’d recently become acquainted, Rhode Island native Walter Carlos. Carlos had been working as a sound technician at Manhattan’s Gotham Sound, and having earned a master’s degree in composition at Columbia University was engaged in dialogue with Robert Moog concerning the development of Moog’s synthesizer.

Under Rachel’s guidance, Carlos arranged two music tracks, one for Bert Sommer’s opus “Brink of Death,” and the other for a Feher composition “Nightingale,” with Tom as vocalist. The Sommer song was an ironic choice, as Feher had only so recently actually been on the brink of death. The production, engineered by R. Dennis (Bob) Schwarz, took place at Gotham and Rachel lost no time in gaining the interest of Mercury Records in signing Tom Feher to an artist contract and releasing a single. It was a noteworthy production. But Feher refused to sign.

FEHER:

“You might think I was crazy – but I’d heard that Mercury was controlled by organized crime, and I didn’t want to get involved with that. Looking back at my own early history, I should’ve been pleased to belong to a crime family. But maybe I was beginning to question the wisdom of those anti-social ways. It was Rachel herself who got me to see that there could be kindness and consideration in this world, something I’d lost along the way from the Bronx through Greenwich Village and Hell’s Kitchen.”

Elkind, a competent businesswoman, kept the “Brink of Death” track on hand, and later replaced Feher’s vocal with that of a group named “Childe Harold;” it was released on the Limelight label in 1968.

DESIRÉE

It seems likely that Mercury Records – in the business of selling recorded product – was anxious to recover from the “Ivy, Ivy” fiasco and keep their proven money maker on the charts. The album cut “She May Call You Up Tonight,” released as a single on May 25th, also tanked; radio programmers and dj’s were becoming confused as to which Banke was left. All involved, however – the label, the Lookofsky faction, Rubott Management and the boys themselves – were well aware that the winning combination included both Brown and vocalists. It made sense to repeat the successful hit-formula. 

TOM FINN:

The story actually starts after we leave Marshall and Vigoda’s office and have just been awarded the name The Left Banke and rights to record under this identity. Marshall and Vigoda say ‘We’ll administer your publishing company, Purple Flower Music.’ We agree; now we need to do a single and a new album. This was in the summer of 1967. 

“Marshall and Vigoda had successfully stopped ‘Ivy Ivy’ and now we had to start thinking as a trio instead of the Mike Brown Band. Charlie Fach gave us Mercury studios to experiment with our new direction. We went up there and cut a few demos of songs. One was called ‘The Ballad of Kate McLain’ which I wrote. The other was a Steve Martin song called ‘Fly, Fly Away.’ 

“Charlie Fach came in to the studio to hear what we were up to. As I recall he wasn’t too happy with our attempts at a new sound. ‘Kate McLain’ was a low tempo shuffle with a feeling and sound not unlike, The Beatles’ ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ with a story line about a horrible woman that turned her back on her man just when he needed her most. 

“Steve’s song ‘Fly Fly Away’ was a one chord open tuning raga style mantra, which was an existential story about a bird that symbolized freedom. In any case the look on Fach’s face wasn’t a happy one. So Charlie Fach figured he’d talk to Brown and try to make a truce, this truce was ‘Desirée.’” 

TOM FEHER:

“Possibly this is what the trip to Chicago was all about. Some time in 1967 Mike Brown took me along on a plane to Chicago to meet Mercury executives. I’ve got to say that by that time, my mind was so fried that I hadn’t a clue to why we were out there. It might have been to promote the ‘other Left Banke,’ or possibly to discuss the reunion for ‘Desirée.’ What I remember most is that one of the execs at this meeting said to us, ‘You know, you guys have got it made. I’d love to grow my hair long, drop acid, take off my clothes and run through the woods; but I’ve got a wife and kids to take care of.’ And I tossed back at him: ‘The hell with the wife and kids. Let’s go run through the woods!’ They all laughed, thinking it was a joke, but I was dead serious. What did I know about family responsibilities in 1967?”

Indeed; Feher was later to become a father of five, and a responsible one at that. It was significant that Brown took Feher along to the Mercury offices, because it indicated that this was an official creative partnership. “Ivy, Ivy” was a mythical collaboration; but with “Desirée,” the partnership began in earnest. Brown jumped in with both feet, pounding the studio piano and producing his most ambitious melody to date. His contribution to the lyric was the title, “Desirée.” He envisioned a full orchestral accompaniment, but left the lyrics entirely up to Tom Feher, who even contributed a line to the melody.

FEHER:

“I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere in interviews of articles on the group, but ‘Desirée’ was another lyric about Renée Fladen. No question about it. I authored the lyric, so I should know! I don’t recall that Mike and I ever discussed it, but I’m pretty sure we started working on the song shortly after I’d seen Renée on Broadway and she hit me with the bomb about moving to Boston with Woody. “Possibly he too meant it to be about Renée, but for me it was deep, really deep. It’s right there in the lyric: ‘She is living somewhere far way; still I ask her in my lonely way to stay…’ I had my feelings for this girl too. I was the first one of our crowd to meet her, and the last one to speak to her. 

“I put my deepest feelings into the lyric of that song. And for the first time in working with Mike Brown, I added a melody, to my words ‘how could you leave me?’ I think, under the tough shell of my street punk image, I was finally admitting that yes, my heart could be broken too.”

The Brown-Feher collaboration would produce one more song for the Left Banke, a number titled “In The Morning Light,” musically and lyrically patterned after the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine.” It was a rather unusual theme for the moody Steve Martin; but it was a completed track and would find its way onto the group’s second album. Meanwhile, in September of 1967 recording for “Desirée” was set up to take place in Capitol Records studios. Located in the upper forties between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, Capitol had a large room that boasted a ceiling that could be lowered or raised to change the size of the interior and thus the acoustics of the recording environment.

Feher recalls the engineer pointing out to the center of the room and telling him that “Frankie” (Sinatra) would stand out there behind a microphone and record live vocals with a band; but by the time the Left Banke had arrived, it was the era of vocal overdubs.

FEHER:

“When you think it over, you realize that in the earlier days of recording, musicians and vocalists went into the studio far better prepared – as the years progressed, technical advances made allowances for and corrected all sorts of errors. Less was demanded of the performing artists. If you think that more recent recorded product sounds stiff, robotic, unnatural and contrived, this could be part of the reason why. 

“The musicians of the fifties and early sixties would have laughed at you if you told them you had to keep time to a click track; keeping time was the drummer’s job! And singing the correct notes on pitch was the job of the vocalist, which means the true quality of record releases was much higher than that which must be ‘fixed’ by electronic devices.”

The tracks for “Desirée” included a rhythm section powered by drummer Bobby Gregg and the usual reliable session musicians, enhanced by the addition of strings and horns, all totaling up to a seventeen piece orchestra. It was an adventurous outing, and at a cost of five thousand dollars, an expensive single for its time. “Desirée” was released in October of 1967, and although a pick hit in the group’s home town of New York City, it barely broke into the Billboard Hot 100, making it to #98 nationally. 

GEORGE CAMERON (from a 2011 interview by Daniel Coston):

“I didn’t play drums on that. That was all studio cats. I thought it was over-produced. I like the song, but I didn’t like the horns; it just sounded like there was too much going on. It was a great song, but Mike wanted more, and more.”

TOM FINN (same interview):

“‘Desiree’ bombed because it was too blaring as a production, and because radio DJ’s were confused about who was, and who was not The Left Banke.”

Regardless of chart performance, “Desirée” is cited by many Left Banke historians to be their finest recorded work. Over forty years later, die-hard fans old and new are still extolling the record as an under-appreciated masterpiece. One would think that with a classic track such as “Desirée” in the can, the group – hit or no hit – would be able to set aside their differences and march forward to even greater accomplishments; but that was not to happen. For one thing, there was the problem with Rick Brand, who not having been there at the outset with the others was not truly considered a member of the group but more of a hired hand. 

One might even surmise that the vocalists – who had been against the ouster of original guitarist Jeff Winfield – resented Brand’s presence altogether. When Brand locked horns with Mike Brown over “Desirée,” it was inevitable that he would leave the group. In a 2003 interview by Daniel Coston for The Big Takeover magazine, Brand is quoted as saying that he disagreed with Brown on the arrangement of “Desirée” and consequently stormed out of the recording session.

He also tells of a falling out with George Cameron in which George would not speak directly to him when Brand was in the room, but made his statements to Brand through comments to the others. Brand was also miffed by the fact that he wouldn’t be allowed in on the songwriting for the second album, and so he too “walked away.” He didn’t see the Banke follow him back home. It seemed at this point that conflict was determined to hound the Left Banke until its dying day. There was an additional point of controversy over the “Desirée” master tape, as Tom Finn recalls:

TOM FINN:

“Why was the record never issued in stereo? Why was the record issued saying electronically enhanced to simulate stereo on the record labels? I spent a good portion of my life working in one of the top studios in New York City, and I’ll tell you this: the only time we engineers ever ‘enhanced’ a recording was when no stereo version was available.  

“I ask once again, why did this record which was announced by Charlie Fach as ‘the most expensive recording in the company’s history’ end up being presented in such a sonically inferior way? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know the answer. The answer is: because the master eight track recording was lost, damaged beyond repair, or stolen. 

“I clearly remember hearing that the multi-track tape of ‘Desirée’ was stolen. I was just thinking how did the vocals get on ‘Desirée’ if there was no multi-track tape? That means there is only one way, and it’s ugly. What had to happen is this: somehow Brown or the engineer fucked the tape up. The only way they could do that is to erase the tape. It happens. I don’t buy the stolen tape theory. What might have happened is Brown, being paranoid, took the multi-track home with him and somehow lost it – left it in a cab or whatever. So back to how did the vocals get on a tape that wasn’t there. 

“This is the only way: the engineer made a rough mix of the track for Brown to take home and listen to. Engineers always made reference tapes in mono because at the end of a big session all they want to do is basically throw up the faders and do a quick mono mix. They don’t want to set the console up for a stereo mix; it requires too much work assigning instruments, drums, horns, guitars etc. to a stereo spectrum. It’s much easier to mix by ear and just do it mono. 

“So Brown somehow is left with only the 7 1/2 speed mono reference mix. Faced with utter shame and failure, he asks the engineer what can be done and the engineer tells him that the only thing they can do without the master multi-track tape is to take the 7 1/2 mono ref mix and record it onto one track of a new tape and do the vocals on another track and then bounce them together to a third track. 

“Which would be what we have on the album and also what was issued on the single. I think it was Brown’s fault otherwise that recording studio would have been blamed big time. I’m not making up conspiracies; this is the truth – there was no multi-track.”

By 2012 it certainly seemed unlikely that readers would hear Brown’s side of this story; he had been totally unresponsive to requests for him to be interviewed for this book. In any event, “Desiree” was Mike Brown’s swan song as far as the original Left Banke was concerned. He’d already embarked on a new project to provide an outlet for the songs he’d been writing with Feher and Sommer since the onset of the “other Left Banke” incident.

TOM FEHER:

“By the time ‘Desirée’ was being recorded, Brown had finally moved on from Renée and had found another muse: Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las. You may recall they’d met in Miami in a lull between tours; so of course, Mike had to write a song about her; I think it was one of the last songs we collaborated on at World United Studio, because after that he’d moved out to New Jersey and did his writing and playing at home..

“Well, I was kinda sweet on Mary too: how could you not be? I admired the way she could down Heinekens faster than a lot of the guys I knew, so I jumped into that one with full enthusiasm; as a matter of fact, I wrote part of the melody, to the lyric ‘how you waver in the light.’

“When I first heard the tune, all Brown had developed on it was the main melody and one word – ‘Mary.’ Later he threw in that little phrase ‘got away today.’ So it was a full collaboration and was bringing me to the time where I would be writing both words and music to songs using melodic and harmonic elements and even piano technique I’d learned from working with Mike Brown. 

“We wrote two more songs together around that time, ‘Tinsel and Ivy’ and ‘An Audience with Miss Priscilla Gray,’ which was a lark. Along with Brown’s revenge – ‘Jake Martin,’ a spoof on vocalist Steve Martin-Caro that was never recorded as a master or released – those were the last songs I wrote with Mister Brown.”

ENGLEWOOD / MONTAGE

Around late 1967 or early ’68, Brown had moved in with a woman named Joyce Norden, whom he would eventually marry. Norden had come to Brown by way of Tom Feher, with whom she’d had a brief affair when he was resident in Rachel Elkind’s Manhattan brownstone. In fact, it was Elkind who’d introduced Feher to Joyce Norden.

Norden, ex-racecar driver and mother of three, had acquired a huge three story house in Englewood, New Jersey in a divorce settlement. As her ex-husband Bob was a trumpet player, it appears she had quite an ability for bagging musicians.

The house boasted three baby grand pianos, and numerous bedrooms on all levels. It became a temporary place of boarding for Feher, Sommer and Shelly Leder (later Shel Stewart), a songwriter-musician and friend from the Greenwich Village days of ’65 when he’d played as a featured act at The Night Owl café with his band The Jagged Edge.

TOM FEHER:

“The Englewood house was a trip – in more ways than one. The amount of drugs we were taking in those days was staggering, and it included all types, from pills and pot, to hash and LSD. When I had first met Joyce, she took me upstate to Millbrook, New York where Timothy Leary was visiting some kind of a commune. They were building up to the ‘Summer of Love’ no doubt. Up there I saw people living in tepees and others sleeping on mats in rooms where they’d painted murals and doodles all over the walls. There were little kids with droopy diapers and dirty faces wandering around, probably wondering ‘Where is mama?’ ‘Who is mama?’

“I remember seeing Leary enter the main room from a big central staircase, nodding his head like some sort of an emperor to the applause and awe of his subjects. I decided in typical Bronx fashion that he was an ignorant arrogant asshole and told Joyce ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here as soon as possible.’ 

“In Englewood, Mike and Joyce favored pills – I think both of them had prescriptions from their respective psychiatrists. They would lock themselves up in the master bedroom for days and leave it to our imagination as to what was going on up there. It was like sacrilege to even knock on their bedroom door when they were holed up in there, and we musicians were depending on them for free room and board so we weren’t about to rock the boat. 

“I can just imagine what it was like for Joyce’s kids, growing up in an environment like that. Their mom had screwed just about every adult male living in the house. Their stepdad, Mike Brown, was a raving paranoid pill-head. Bert (Sommer) would amuse them by lighting his farts and blowing flames out of his ass. They were also subject to all the pressures of the big Englewood drug bust.

“It seems the local police had been watching the place and observing all the long haired musicians coming and going. I think Joyce already had some sort of bad reputation in town as a divorcée in a time and place when such things weren’t so widely accepted. Whatever the case, they were intent on busting all of us; but it turned out they picked the night of a teenage party when one of Joyce’s children was celebrating a birthday. 

“It was about the farthest thing from a pot party you could find. But that didn’t stop the mighty cops. They charged in and frightened the hell out of everyone there including a bunch of neighborhood kids. They searched every room and found very little on which to base a case, but apparently that didn’t faze them either: they had brought along a large plastic bag full of pot, planted it in the house, and then one of them came triumphantly into the living room holding it high for all to see. Next, they carted a whole bunch of us off to jail, including myself, Shelly, my girlfriend Lucy, and John Abbott – one of the straightest people on earth who just happened to be there as a friend of the family to help celebrate the birthday. It was a sick joke.”

In Englewood, when not holed up in his bedroom, Brown as a producer began scouting out local bands. One of them was the Counts, in which Tim Weisse was vocalist and rhythm guitarist. 

TIM WEISSE:

I met Mike Brown at a battle of the bands at the Tenafly Rifle Club, I think it was 1968. My band, The Counts, won that night and Mike wanted to produce us. We were local, from Dumont. Mike came to several of our rehearsals, once giving us copies of ‘Desirée’ which I think had just been released. We were at the house in Englewood several times. I thought that house was cool... it reminded me of the Addams Family, except there were no gold records in the Addams’ family hallway. 

“I was sixteen years old at the time, the rest of the guys in the band were seventeen (one of parents always brought us to the house and picked us up when we were done). We talked of going on the road, being tutored, making money, etc. Anyway, one day my Dad calls and tells me to look at the newspaper and the story of the drug bust was big news. Once our parents saw that… our dreams of being rock and rollers went out the window. The Counts band is still together... the same five guys that went to the Englewood house. We only play a couple of gigs a year because I’m in Phoenix and the others are in NJ, OK, FL and CA.” 

Another band that Brown approached was The Whirlpool, a group that had been playing for several years, covering tunes by the Beatles, Beach Boys, Zombies, Mitch Ryder and the like. From the start, Mike Brown was not much interested in the band’s repertoire or their ability as instrumentalists. He was already drawing up plans for a group to replace the Left Banke in his professional life, and what he listened for was vocals, the one thing he was sorely lacking in order to manifest his musical inspirations.

In the Whirlpool, he heard competent harmonizing, but was most taken up by the strong, clear vocals of the group’s drummer, Vance Chapman; in Chapman he no doubt heard a successor to the Left Banke’s Steve Martin. Brown moved in as producer with Joyce Norden becoming the group’s manager; from what Vance remembers, it was Norden who suggested the name change to “Montage,” the name under which they recorded their one album.

After several months of work on vocal arrangements and rigorous vocal rehearsals, Brown began the recording process at Allegro Sound in the basement of 1650 Broadway, where coincidently the new Left Banke managers, Bill Ottinger and Roger Rubenstein had not much earlier rented and opened an upstairs office as Rubott Management.

The music industry in New York City even in the late ‘60s was a small community in which just about everyone rubbed elbows at one time or another (as can be seen by the numerous connections made evident in the Left Banke history). For the Montage sessions, Mike Brown called in arrangers John Abbott and Seymour Barab, both of whom had worked on Left Banke recordings – Barab as a cellist. It appears that due to Chapman’s cheerful, co-operative character, the conflicts that had plagued Brown’s Left Banke associations melted away.

VANCE CHAPMAN:

“Mike was easy to work with, both in rehearsal and in the studio. I remember late nights at the piano after the others had gone home, when the two of us would go over leads, harmonies and how the songs would be presented on recordings and in live performances. I learned a lot about writing songs then. During the days, Bert Sommer would be there to make subtle lyric changes, tell jokes and make fun of us. Tom Feher (now Tom Fair) was also around to do the same. It was a light-hearted atmosphere but a good working one. “Mike’s role was all encompassing. He sat at the piano in his huge Englewood home and played the songs – emphasizing the melodies that he wanted us to do. At one point he said he had a challenge for me. He played a melody (‘She’s Alone’) that went all over the place and gave me the words of the first line, ‘She picks the mirror off the floor and then she sees – her husband who’s been dead now for seventeen years...’ 

“Then he said, ‘Can you sing that?’  I mentioned that the lyrics were pretty weird. ‘But can you sing it?’ I did and he was very impressed, saying that he didn’t think he would find anyone who could hit all of the notes on key every time. So I started singing it over and over and over until he went into his Jack Benny routine and said, ‘Now, CUT THAT OUT!’”

The newly christened “Montage” was comprised of the following personnel: Chapman on lead vocals and drums; Bob Steurer on vocals; Mike Smyth on guitar and vocals; and Lance Cornelius on bass and vocals. One can imagine the possibility of Michael Brown sitting in on keyboards and recreating the Left Banke’s sonic environment; but by this time Brown was firmly committed to studio life and it was unlikely that he would ever take the stage again.

The completed Montage album featured five Brown-Sommer tunes: “She’s Alone;” “Men Are Building Sand;” “Grand Pianist;” “The Song Is Love;” and “Wake Up Jimmy.” Also included were four Brown-Feher numbers, “I Shall Call Her Mary,” “Tinsel and Ivy,” “An Audience with Miss Priscilla Gray,” and a re-make of “Desirée.”

And for the first time, Feher had one of his own “solo” compositions – “My Love” – recorded and released (unless one wants to count “Ivy, Ivy”).  

CHAPMAN:

“Tom wrote ‘My Love’ and the first time I heard it, I wanted to do it on the album. For some reason Mike didn’t want it on there, and he and I went back and forth about it for a while until I said (jokingly), ‘Well, if I can’t sing that song on the album, I don’t want to sing any songs on the album.’ 

“He said he’d think about it. Obviously it was included, and I remember going into another room to tell Tom that we were going to do it. Tom was glad to hear that, and the harpsichord parts which Mike put on those tracks made the song much better than even I had expected.”

TOM FEHER:

“Looking back, I think with ‘My Love,’ it was the typical Mike Brown story of him having to have full credit and full control. The idea of an album that included a song without his name on it as songwriter must have rankled him no end. He’d managed to get away with convincing me to put his name on ‘Ivy, Ivy,’ but at this point I’d learned a bit about the rights of creators, and I wasn’t about to share credits on ‘My Love.’

“I think it ended on the album for two reasons: first was Vance’s determination to sing the song; and second was there just wasn’t enough other valid material to draw from at the time. It had come to the point where I was going to ‘step out’ as a songwriter on my own merits. Which is exactly what I did.”

With songs written in the fall of 1967, recording of the Montage album took place between February and August 1968. One imagines that Mike Brown used his previous association with John Abbott and Reparata & the Delrons to obtain a deal with Laurie Records, for Laurie released the album in January of 1969. It had been an eighteen month process. Unfortunately for everyone involved, neither the album nor the singles – “I Shall Call Her Mary” and “Tinsel and Ivy” – went anywhere at all.

FEHER:

“You can go back and forth on why the Montage never hit… I don’t think it matters at this point. There’s some incredibly great music that never sees the light of day due to lack of promotion and industry connections, while a great mountain of total crap is shoved into public ears week after week in our glutted society. The bottom line for the artists is: can you look over your work a year, five years, ten years or more after its creation and be proud of it? Personally, I think the Montage album is something like one of those big ‘black and white’ cookies we enjoyed back in the early sixties: half and half.

“Some of the tracks are really fine and some are simply uninspiring. ‘She’s Alone,’ if you listen carefully, is a blatantly obvious attempt to emulate the Beatles’ ‘She’s Leaving Home.’ Brown did that a lot with Beatle songs; he was an unashamed devotee of George Martin. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. On my tune ‘My Love,’ you hear echoes of the piccolo trumpet of ‘Penny Lane’ which had come out early in 1967 and was still fresh in everyone’s memory.  

“‘Desirée’ sounds watered down to my way of thinking. But for the most part, Mike’s melodies are as good as any on the first Left Banke album, some slightly better. I’ve seen that review in which some writer who thinks he knows music states that there is a ‘wrong’ note sung by Bob Steurer on ‘Men Are Building Sand.’ What idiocy! That’s an intended note and one of the coolest musical creations ever to come from Mike Brown. It’s unique, all his own. The place where that song breaks down is in the lyrics.

“Bert – as much as I love him, and he was an awesome songwriter in his own right – I don’t think Bert as a lyricist was the proper match for Brown’s melodies if one wanted to keep that ‘baroque rock’ thing happening. Then of course, Bert was thrown the leftovers that either I refused to write or that Brown decided I couldn’t write proper lyrics for. I have to give him credit for trying to make some sense out of Mike Brown’s twisted vision of lyrics.

“In the final analysis I’d have to say that Brown’s melodies – when he did that semi-classical thing – required a lyricist steeped in the romantic poetry that emulated the same period from which the music was inspired. On the Montage album, I would say the gem that’s been overlooked is ‘Tinsel and Ivy.’ That song, played over opening credits, would set the mood for any romantic film now and forever. So music supervisors, take note.”

While fully admiring of Vance Chapman’s vocal capabilities, Mike Brown apparently didn’t think much of the group as a group, and has indicated that after the recording was completed he had no further contact with any of them. One interviewer deduced that he (Brown) was not satisfied with the result because of the failure of the album to chart, and added, “he’s been reluctant to talk about the group ever since.”

 

RUBOTT MANAGEMENT

TOM FINN:

“Rubott opened while Brown was doing the other Left Banke.  Bill Ottinger came along shortly after the Jeromes quit. He started as our road manager, with Rick Brand’s older brother, Bob Brand. Roger Rubenstein was brought in by Ottinger, as a partner when he opened Rubott.” 

Beginning in late 1967 and into 1968, while Mike Brown was concentrating on building an album about lonely girls and men building sand, Bill Ottinger was busy building a management agency. He had come into the Left Banke family as road manager to replace Steve Jerome. As he stepped into the full managerial position with the group, he brought in a friend from his area of Long Island, Roger Rubenstein. 

Ottinger was short and slim, with close-cut black hair, beady eyes, a beak-like nose and a face covered with acne scars. In contrast, Rubenstein was somewhat of a Dick Clark look-alike with gleaming white teeth, Elvis sideburns and a perpetual tan over his smooth complexion. They merged their surnames to create Rubott Management and in short order moved in to an office in 1650 Broadway, one of the Manhattan’s major music industry buildings in the 1960s. Along with Ottinger and Rubenstein came self-proclaimed “first rock publicist” Ken Schaffer and the Left Banke Fan Club, headed up by Cookie Wrublewski (now Dakes) and Carrie Reda (now Cavalluzi).

 HYPERLINK "http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1356067760" COOKIE WRUBLEWSKI DAKES: 

“Carrie and I took over the Left Banke Fan Club when Tambi left. It was just when Rubott moved to 1650 Broadway. It all started when Carrie received a phone call from the Clay Cole Show for us to come down to interview the Left Banke on September Twenty-Fifth 1967. When we entered the studio at four thirty that afternoon, we were greeted by Tom Finn. We told him that we were supposed to interview them for Flip Magazine. He told us to follow him into the dressing room. When Carrie and I followed him we met the rest of the Left Banke, whose names were Rick, Steve and George, and also their manager Bill Ottinger. They were just beginning to have something to eat.”

The interview was typical of interviews of the day, with the girls asking questions about their music, ambitions and favorites. The boys for their part clowned and responded with absurd answers, having apparently watched all the original Beatle interviews.

DAKES:

“When the interview was complete, I was surprised that Carrie and I could still think straight. The reason for this is because during the interview, while we were asking Tom questions, Rick started to interview us. Then they started to interview each other, which brought their manager into it. In a few minutes, our interview papers had their interview, plus ours, and their manager’s on it. It really was a lot of fun, and completely different from other interviews we had done in the past.

“About a month after the Clay Cole Show Carrie and I went to see the group’s publicist, Kenny Schaffer at 1595 Broadway (the old place) so he could okay the article that we’d written for Flip Magazine. Rick was there and that was when Rick asked us if we wanted to take over the fan club. Of course we said ‘yes!’

“Kenny gave us the new address and said to come in two weeks. When we got to Rubott there were still boxes on the floor from the move. Kenny had told us to come to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tom Feher was there more than the Banke. We would always see him when we got there.” 

TOM FEHER:

“What the girls in the fan club probably didn’t know is that when Rubott first opened, I had no place to live and was sleeping on the office couch. That’s why they saw me there so often.”

 HYPERLINK "http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1356067760" COOKIE WRUBLEWSKI DAKES: 

“We ran the fan club until they closed the office. Even though we were only part of Rubott for a short time we enjoyed every minute of it. I remember sitting in the office with Steve Tallarico (Steven Tyler now): he was nervous about signing his first contract.....look at him now.”

Steve Tallarico, who millions of fans today know as Steven Tyler, lead vocalist of Aerosmith and judge of televised talent, was a member of one of the several groups that Ottinger and Rubenstein proceeded to sign on to their “stable.” While they may have had hopes for a Left Banke sales resurgence, they were without a doubt “spreading their bets,” in the eventuality of a full-blown Left Banke failure. 

Meanwhile, they milked the cash cow to the best of their ability, booking the Banke and re-investing in the other artists. The Left Banke’s industry paid the office rent and their managers’ salaries. One can picture Roger and Bill using the Left Banke name to open doors that would otherwise be closed to a pair of complete novices in the music management game.

Among the Rubott talent acquisitions were The Chain Reaction, (the Yonkers-based band that featured Tallarico and keyboardist / songwriter Don Solomon as focal members), The Fun Band, and Mr. Flood’s Party, a six-piece progressive rock band whose members had roots in Queens and Brooklyn. Rubott also negotiated a number of songwriter contracts, thus adding to their roster Feher, Ron Singer and Marvin Potacki.

TOM FEHER:

“I can’t say they didn’t try to make a go of it. They promoted the hell out of the Chain Reaction and the Fun Band, and they got an album deal for Mr. Flood’s Party on Cotillion, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records – although I think that Mike Corbett and Jay Hirsch were already friends with Ahmet Ertegun. 

“Corbett even got me a live audition at Atlantic with Nesui Ertegun, Ahmet’s brother. I sang a song for him called ‘The Cow,’ about a family that sold their favorite cow for ‘sirloin steaks and leather,’ and Nesui went ‘ho-hum.’ For us songwriters, Rubott hooked up a co-publishing deal between the writers, themselves, and Unart Music, which was also publishing Jackie DeShannon’s material at the time. If you ever want to see a great musical biography and a cool catalog, check out Jackie DeShannon’s.

“In the Unart publishing deal, I suppose I was the chief inducement since I’d already had a few songs released on the Left Banke’s first album. I remember being a bit sore that they threw Ron Singer and Marvin into the mix and advanced them the same weekly amount as they gave me. If memory serves, we each received fifty dollars per week. You laugh! I couldn’t see how Ron Singer – who was basically a club-hopping groupie of sorts, casually fooling around with music – would be on a par with me, who’d already written dozens of songs. 

“But in retrospect, it makes sense when you realize that Billy and Roger were probably skimming up to fifty percent of the Unart money off the top before handing us our advances. They were in business to make money, whether the artists made any or not. I mean: fifty dollars a week! Made you wanna go back to washing dishes.”

When the group wasn’t flat out on the road, they were living in various hotels – something that brought down everyone’s morale. Ottinger and Rubenstein, in their somewhat bumbling manner, attempted to solve the problem. But as Finn describes it, life off the road was becoming a grotesque nightmare.

TOM FINN:

“When we would get back from a long road trip, we would be checked into one of those Broadway hotels, The Bryant, The President, The Belvedere, The Woodward, The Taft or The Forest. For a while Steve lived in a furnished room with Sharon Sterne on West Seventy-Second Street and Riverside Drive. He used to beat her up regularly. I was pushed into sharing an apartment with Howie Tarter, Frank Bonlaren and a guy named Neil Silver. Rubott told me to room with these guys because I needed a place to live. George was living with Linda on West 72nd Street next to the Dakota. 

“Steve now had his own pad on Sutton Place. Once Steve and I picked up two chicks and brought them back to his place. Steve took the girl into his bedroom and when she refused to fuck him, he kicked her in the naked ass out his apartment door and threw her clothes out in the hall behind her. He was a mean guy; even crazy.  

“Now as for this thing with Frank and Howie, they told me it was a great big apartment and I’d have it mostly to myself, because the other guys were only there on weekdays. So I said ‘yeah.’ I didn’t mind staying there; I took a lot of acid up there and screwed a lot of chicks. But I didn’t like Howie or Frank; they were both supposedly tough guys. Frank was hired to be our road manager/bodyguard. There were all these stories about how Frank beat the living crap out of people. Frank was a fucking pig, who had a short ugly Jewish girlfriend he called ‘the mouse.’ 

“Once when I was coming down from LSD, I shared a bedroom with Frank and he says to me ‘Hey T, why don’t you come over here.’ I said ‘Come over where?’ He said ‘Over here in my bed.’ I said ‘Frank, are you saying you want me to fuck you?’ he said ‘Yeah T… whatever.’ I said ‘You're fuckin’ insane.’ So I took my blanket and pillow and slept on the couch in the living room. As I walked out, he was jerking off. I said to myself, Frank is a fucking degenerate; he’d have sex with anybody or anything, probably even a chicken. 

“You know that incident with the motorcycle gang in East Lansing Michigan? Frank was with us. Frank Bonlaren, our bodyguard/killer tough guy told us to leave the restaurant and go across the parking lot to our rooms, while he stayed in the restaurant and never came out. He was a chicken and he wanted to separate himself from us so he didn’t get beaten up. We thought he was going to come outside to the parking lot, to save us. But, he never came out; he didn’t do anything but hide. I remember Bill Ottinger telling us that Frank was a killer with his two hands, and that he could beat the shit out of many guys. They told us stories that Frank did this and Frank did that. We thought Frank was our attack dog. Be he was just a sick degenerate coward. 

“A guy named Carl Hauser lived in this apartment building. Carl was the lead guitarist for the house band at Ondine, the Druids. One night he introduced me to this girl, Jill Williams. I proceeded to start fucking her and she moved in with me, so Frank had to move out. The apartment was falling apart. Frank and Howie moved out. I had a tour to go on, so I left Jill there and I told her, that at the end of the month, she should move to the Bryant Hotel and that I’d meet her there when I got back from tour. 

“Well, I spoke to her on the phone from wherever I was and she told me that the guys that were taking over the lease in the apartment were very, very nice and they would let her stay there until I got back. When I got back, I had my keys and walked in and couldn’t believe my eyes. There was Jill in a fucking loft bed, naked with two naked guys – two fuckin’ huge football players. One of the guys said ‘Hey – Jill is really a nice chick,’ and then he said to me ‘Here take this block of hash.’ 

“They were paying me for fucking my fiancé. Yeah! I had told her we’d get married. I moved in with George and Linda; Jill came there and knocked on the door, so I took off my ring and flushed it down the toilet. She freaked out and ran over to Rachel’s house and proceeded to start fucking Russian George, who I think was living there at the time.”

As the months passed, the boys in the Banke began to take a very bitter view of the management practices at Rubott. George Cameron cites early interest in the Left Banke by the manager of the Beach Boys, and insists that Ottinger and Rubenstein jumped in to prevent that – in order to acquire the management position, and thus handling of the finances, for themselves. But he admits that the group didn’t see the big scam coming because they were involved in their own internal hassles, their clashes of personality.

GEORGE CAMERON:

“We let them convince us to stop touring because, as they said, we had no hit record and that our life style would have to change. “We let them book us in these clubs (we are not a club band) and the locals kids killed us on stage because they had mom and dad and nothing else to do so they always sounded great. Our best shows were with the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas. We were great on big stages, depressed on small venues.” 

TOM FINN:

“We were working pretty hard on the road in the latter part of 1967. Rubott was going out of their way to cater too a very moody Steve Martin. They had to get him a classy apartment on Sutton Place on the East Side of Manhattan, with wall to wall red carpeting and a big color television, just to keep him happy enough to sing and go out on the road. 

“I was living at The Bryant Hotel at that time. George had a slick pad on West 72nd Street and Central Park West right next door to the Dakota. They tried to make money by stepping up the gigs but we didn’t have a lot if time to work on new material. 

“Rick Brand wasn’t making any of us happy with his sarcastic personality either. Also, George now had Linda Hills to keep him busy and preoccupied. Marshall and Vigoda had won us the union arbitration case against Harry Lookofsky. Now Mike wanted another shot at the group so we did Desirée, but after that record wasn’t picked up by DJ’s across America we all knew we had to come up with new material for a single and an album.” 

Marshall and Vigoda, in lieu of their attorneys’ fees, requested administration of a new Left Banke publishing company named Purple Flower Music. The group agreed and began looking for new material for a second album. 

FINN:

Rubott showed us a bunch of tunes that writers had sent to them, but, we didn’t like any of them too much. One of the songs was ‘Sunday Will Never Be The Same’ written by Terry Cashman (and Gene Pistilli). I don’t really remember it too well but any song with a lyric that says ‘I remember children feeding flocks of pigeons’ was enough to make me puke. So I guess we passed on it.”

“Sunday Will Never Be The Same” was picked up by Chicago folk-pop group Spanky and Our Gang and released on Mercury Records. It peaked at #9 on the Billboard chart in June of 1967.

LEFT BANKE TOO

TOM FINN:

“Around that time Rick Brand was busted also. Things were becoming scattered around the Rubott office because they were signing bands like The Chain Reaction, The Fun Band and Mr. Flood’s Party. We were watching Billy and Roger trying to be big time managers. But I knew I had work to do, so I decided to get the second album together.” 

TOM FEHER:

“It was Finn’s initiative more than anything else that made it possible to have a complete second album. Without Tom Finn’s drive and creative inspiration there would have been no Left Banke Too. And I owe a lot to him because up to that time no one else in the group took me seriously as a musician; to the rest of them I was just a zany lyricist who would climb billboards and walk barefoot down Broadway. There was no respect coming my way.”

TOM FINN:

“I liked Tom Feher’s new songs – ‘Bryant Hotel,’ ‘Goodbye Holly’ and ‘Sing Little Bird Sing’ so I told Rubott that I wanted the group to record those songs. Marvin Potacki from the Fun Band wrote ‘Give the Man a Hand’ and we liked it. Also at this time I realized we had to put our noses to the grindstone and produce some material that Fach and Mercury would like. 

“I wrote ‘Dark Is the Bark’ about a woman that wasn’t happy about her life and my title was ‘Darkness’ until Steve Martin got involved and started writing some lyrics. I really didn’t want to call it ‘Dark Is the Bark of a Tree’ – but that’s Steve Martin for ya!

My other good song was ‘My Friend Today’ which I wrote as a story about all the betrayals and backstabbing that went on in my young life at that time. I asked ‘who is my friend today?’ and I really meant what I was saying there. 

“We started to rehearse the album songs at this cool old horse stable building in Greenwich Village. There were some noise complaints from the neighbors in the Village; I guess we were among the first musicians to rehearse there, so their sound proofing wasn’t up to par quite yet. I don’t remember too much about the rehearsals but obviously we went over all the songs we had, including the Tom Feher songs and the Marvin Potacki song. We didn’t rehearse the songs from the Artie Schroeck dates because we didn’t play on them.” 

Feher remembers a fairly cramped space and insists that the rehearsal place was called “Cherry Lane Studios.” It was in the West Village, he says, not far from Sheridan Square and not too far from Paul Sargent’s where the group had obtained their first outfits for stage and photos. The first new Left Banke song copyrights were registered on February 28th 1968 under the newly created Purple Flower Music and recording for the new album was begun in early March at Olmstead Studios on Fortieth Street across from the main branch of the New York Public Library.

The producer on these first dates was Artie Schroeck, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist who’d been playing drums and piano since the age of three. Schroeck already had a long history of accomplishments including gigging with Gene Krupa, Louis Prima and Lionel Hampton and had worked with contemporary acts such as Neil Diamond, the Lovin’ Spoonful and Frankie Valli. On the Left Banke dates for “Dark Is The Bark” and “My Friend Today,” Artie not only did the arranging and conducting but also played drums and vibes on the tracks.

FINN:

“When I first heard and saw Artie Schroeck sitting at the drums leading the big jazz-soul studio band playing ‘Darkness’ and ‘My Friend Today’ I knew we were in big trouble. This was not at all the Left Banke. I was sick. Steve Tallarico, who was at the track session with Don Solomon from the Chain Reaction, whispered in my ear ‘You're a genius.’ I said to myself, this guy is on LSD – which he was – and yeah, the tracks were great… but NOT the Left Banke. I did my best to smile and carry on, but I wasn’t happy with the two tracks. We did vocals a few days later. If I remember correctly, George wasn’t there or left after Steve (Martin Caro) put his lead vocal on both tracks. I asked Tallarico to jump in there, which he gladly did. I had been hanging out with him and we were singing together just for fun.” 

Steve Tallarico was not to remain with Rubott Management; one assumes that when the Chain Reaction failed to place a record on the charts under Rubott’s guidance, his desire for success prompted him to move on to new horizons. In 1969, he met up with Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton in Sunapee, New Hampshire and shortly thereafter Aerosmith was born. “Dark Is The Bark” backed with “My Friend Today” was released by Mercury (on Smash) and reviewed in Billboard on June 1, 1968, the same week that Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” topped the charts. It was a mellow time for music and the Left Banke had a sound to match; but the record failed to attract attention.

Mercury then switched horses, bringing in producer Paul Leka who’d just recently come off a #1 record with the Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine.” The Leka dates, also done at Olmstead, comprise half the album: “Nice To See You;” “There’s Gonna Be A Storm;” “Goodbye Holly,” “Bryant Hotel;” “Sing, Little Bird Sing;” and “Give The Man A Hand.” These recordings were unique in that 1) There was no input from Michael Brown whatsoever; and 2) All group members, with the addition of songwriters Feher and Potacki, performed on the recording sessions.

TOM FEHER:

“I was absolutely thrilled that Tom Finn included me on these dates. You have no idea what it’s like to be treated more or less like the group mascot for two years and suddenly been given a position of respect with the group. It was my coming of age as a musician. All the while, Mike Brown had been sneering at my attempts to absorb and emulate his piano style; now I had an opportunity to demonstrate my painfully acquired ability. 

Tom Feher’s piano work (on “Nice To See You” and “Storm”) was somewhat buried in Paul Leka’s schmaltzy arrangements, but it was actually pretty good, and from there on out, it only got better. Left Banke Too contains three of Feher’s early solo songwriting efforts, which have been well-received by fans of the group in the decades since the album’s release.

FEHER:

“‘Sing Little Bird Sing’ was written about my first steady girlfriend, Lucy Martens. Lucy had some sort of secretarial job in a music business office. We’d met when she was living with two roommates in an apartment on Fifty-Seventh Street, and later went to live at 888 Eighth Avenue where we were neighbors with Tommy James and The Cowsills; Bill Cowsill came to visit us a few times at our apartment. 

“Rubott, at the time had bought me my very first guitar – until then I’d always played on borrowed instruments. Roger took me to Manny’s and bought me a classical guitar on sale for fifty bucks. Well, I got right down to using that guitar, and was experimenting with writing tunes using an open B string – various chords build around a B string that just droned through the progression. 

“I wrote an instrumental thing called ‘Palomino,’ that I still play from time to time, and a pretty little tune called ‘Love Is What You Are.’ The third tune I wrote was ‘Sing, Little Bird Sing,’ and I was very excited about it. I wrote it exclusively for Steve’s voice. The melody was in a range I could barely reach, but Steve had that penetrating tenor that would suit the tune perfectly, and I had enough minor chords in there to give it the full Left Banke impression: moody, haunting and romantic.

“Steve, of course resisted singing it. He was in the Brown camp as far as Tom Feher was concerned, and didn’t really consider me as part of the group. Nevertheless, he did a fine job of singing the melody which was composed with his voice in mind.”

Another of Feher’s songs, “Bryant Hotel,” was descriptive of an actual hotel on Broadway at the corner of Fifty-Fourth Street, at the time adjacent to the Ed Sullivan Theatre. At one time or another all three of the Left Banke vocalists had lived there between road gigs. The most accurate description of the hotel can be found in Feher’s lyrics:

BRYANT HOTEL

Words & music by Tom Feher / Tom Fair © 1967 / 2013

Bryant Hotel, cardboard ceilings and mayhem; nobody cares.

Hours for sale; Broadway harlequin harem, foot of the stairs.

It’s a sunny day, but through your window all the world looks grey;

The cleaning lady didn’t show today, or so they say,

But then you never can tell…

Bryant Hotel, fossils lie in the lobby, biding their time.

Midsummer hell: sink-down sofa, seat shabby, fifty-cent wine.

It’s a sunny day, but through your window all the world looks grey;

A month of dear belated bills to pay, but that’s okay –

They never had it so well at the Bryant Hotel…

Bryant Hotel, elevator vacation: hourly ride.

Telephone call: Find another location… credit denied!

But through your window all the world looks grey;

The cleaning lady didn’t show today, or so they say,

But then you never can tell… at the Bryant Hotel…

At the Bryant Hotel… at the Bryant Hotel…

GEORGE CAMERON (from a 2011 interview by Daniel Coston):

“‘Bryant Hotel’ was a Feher song... He got me to do that one, and I said ‘Yeah,’ because the Bryant Hotel was a special memory for all of us. We all lived there, partied there. It was like the Chelsea Hotel, but only on 53rd Street. All the uptown musicians would hang out there. The key was weird for me, and I tried to get them to change it, but they couldn’t do that without ruining something else. It’s a fun song to sing. When you read the lyrics to that song, it’s hilarious. Tom Feher is a good songwriter. There’s a really good story there.”

TOM FEHER:

“I was pleased with ‘Bryant Hotel.’ As a song, it came out telling the true story of life in that seedy hotel in the most picturesque and poetic manner I could assemble. It was written on the guitar, and patterned musically somewhat after the Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon.’ The Kinks were a group we all admired. The ‘Broadway Harlequin Harem’ at the ‘foot of the stairs’ refers to the hookers that hung around the hotel.

“The dingy rooms with their filthy windows gave rise to ‘all the world looks grey’ and ‘you never can tell’ if the cleaning lady showed or didn’t show, because the room would look the same no matter what. ‘Fossils lie in the lobby’ was one of my favorite lines; it refers to the eighty and ninety year old men sitting on dumpy couches in the lobby, waiting to die. And then there was the ‘elevator vacation.’ You never knew if it was going to work or be out of order.

“I was fairly thrilled with the basic track and the vocals – it was the first time Steve had an opportunity to really cut loose his r&b chops since ‘Lazy Day.’ You can hear him on the fade calling out the actual numbers of the rooms they’d stayed in, 409 and 302.

“My only gripe was with Paul Leka’s addition of banjo (played by Rick Brand) and that tacky tack piano glissando. Personally, I couldn’t reconcile myself to Mercury’s selection of Leka as a producer; after all his big hit up to that time was on Buddah, which had a reputation as the flagship of the bubble-gum world. I just couldn’t digest the match-up of Paul Leka and the Left Banke. But don’t get me wrong, Paul was a gentleman, well-organized, one of the easiest people to work with; and why should I gripe when my own songs were finally getting respectful treatment?”

The final Feher solo composition on Left Banke Too was an energetic pop ballad entitled “Goodbye Holly.” The group’s versatility was well demonstrated here for it featured Finn on both electric guitar and bass, Cameron on lead vocals and Steve Martin on drums. Feher himself performed on piano and acoustic guitar, and his voice can be heard in a “telephone call” to “Holly” played by Cameron’s wife, Linda Hills.

CAMERON (from aforementioned Coston interview): 

“We were in the studio, and they were fixing something on another track, so Steve and I went out and had a couple of beers. We came back, and Tom Feher asked me to sing ‘Holly,’ and I said, ‘What?’ (laughs) So I said, ‘Okay,’ and Steve jumped on the drums. That’s Steve on drums, and when you hear the reissue, you’ll really hear what the drums sounded like. There’s a lot of drums on there. It’s like Keith Moon on ‘Goodbye Holly.’ Steve got into it, and then I got into it. I changed a little bit of the melody. We had fun. That was a fun, fun, fun session, because Steve was back there pounding away. He could play a little bit of everything.”

FEHER:

“I think what happened was that Steve either refused to sing it, or, not wanting to sing another Feher song, did such a spiritless vocal that it couldn’t be used. So we turned to George; I don’t think he’d had a lead on anything since ‘I Haven’t Got The Nerve.’ George did a fine job of it. ‘Goodbye Holly’ I consider to have been representative of the peak of my songwriting ability up to that time. The lyric is strong and emotional – a work of pop poetry based on an actual girl named Holly who died in a fire in New Jersey. She was a girl I’d met maybe once or twice through friends. It was during the time I was living in Joyce Norden’s house in Englewood and was written on one of the Norden pianos.

“The melody is memorable and is woven through a number of sophisticated chord changes. I originally imagined it would be produced somewhat like ‘Daydream Believer,’ a song written by Neil Diamond and recorded by The Monkees. That might sound kind of corny, but hey, man – The Monkees held the #1 spot for four weeks the previous year with ‘Daydream Believer.’ Why couldn’t ‘Holly’ do the same?”

“Goodbye Holly,” backed with “Sing Little Bird Sing,” was released as a single around the same time the album itself was released: November 1968. Both failed to find their way into the record charts. Tom Finn, in addition to rallying the group for recording, contributed two additional solo compositions, “Nice to See You” and “There’s Gonna Be a Storm.” As with the Feher tracks, the band members played on both songs: Cameron on drums, Finn on bass and guitar, and Feher on piano.

The vocals featured lush harmonies reminiscent of the Beatles, who were an immense influence on the Left Banke’s sound and direction. On “Nice to See You,” Tallarico / Tyler was once again called in to round out the sound. Both songs were topped off by the orchestral and electronics effects of producer Paul Leka.

NICE TO SEE YOU

Words & music © 1967, 2013 by Tom Finn

Try to tell who’s singing the song so well.Leave your shell. It’s really not hard to tell.Now is the time (now is the time)To let the world know you’re alive.Pull up a chair. (Pull up a chair)And let me know when you arrive.Nice to see you, nice to know that you’re there. 

Nice to see you.Try to tell who’s singing the song so wellTry to tell who’s playing it natural.Up in the air. (Up in the air)And yet with both feet on the ground.Fly if you dare. (Fly if you dare)You just might see the world around.Nice to see you, nice to know that you’re there. 

Nice to see you.

TOM FINN:

“‘There’s Gonna Be A Storm’ was about a tidal wave of love that was gonna rise up and sweep over the world, which was just a then common-type sentiment that was going around. After all this was the Summer of Love, right? And ‘Nice To See You’ was a message to the masses to leave their sorry little nowhere lives and join the great me and my wizard ways to become enlightened and full of shit, just like me – or at least me and every other preacher of the karma and ‘the way.’” 

THERE’S GONNA BE A STORM

Words & music © 1967, 2013 by Tom Finn

Here you are, taking your life for granted whiledreaming of your enchanted isle.Sit back and dream awhile...awhile.Hey, hey, hey: there’s gonna be a storm.And if the time will come, I will follow you.I'll speak the same words then as you liked me to.I'm telling you a storm is due! 

Here you are. Ask me why I can only lie.Here I am, and there’s one thing I can’t deny.Just look up in the sky...Hey, hey, hey: there’s gonna be a storm.And when the waves of love rise up all around.Don't look for shelter because it just won't be found.It's all around oh hear the sound…

TOM FEHER:

“Once again I have to wonder at the choice of Leka to work on Left Banke Too. When we were going over the songs in rehearsal, you could really hear the core band – the bass lines, the drums and my chunky piano. After Paul got a hold of those tracks, the songs got swallowed up in a sea of effects. He started off ‘Nice To See You’ with some backwards tape noise – I don’t know what that has to do with the rest of the song – and then covers everything up with glissando on the harp… he sure did love that stuff. 

“The strings were pretty good; I would’ve mixed ‘em back a bit though, and pulled some of that reverb off the vocals. And the ‘There’s Gonna Be A Storm’… well, I guess you could say that song was going to get hit by effects just because of it’s nature; just listen to those sweeping strings. I wonder if anyone noticed that at the close of the ‘Storm’ track, the strings are playing the melody to ‘Holly says to say goodbye to you?’ Personally, I think Paul Leka was in his own way doing what everyone else including the Left Banke was trying to do at the time: emulate the creative depth and scope of Sergeant Pepper. Most people fell short of the mark” 

Despite Finn’s self-criticism, one could also read into his lyric a prediction of the Woodstock phenomenon and the Stones’ fiasco at Altamont that was to come a year later: “…and when the waves of love rise up all around, don’t look for shelter ‘cause it just won’t be found.” The sessions were rounded out with a song from Marvin Potacki, a new addition to the Rubott roster. Potacki, an excellent guitarist plays both acoustic and electric on his “Give the Man a Hand;” Steve Tallarico once again joined in on harmonies, making the Olmstead sessions an all-around Rubott team effort. With the addition of the Mike Brown-produced tracks “Desirée” and “In the Morning Light,” from the same “reunion” period, Left Banke Too was a complete set.

FEHER:

“‘In the Morning Light’ was another ‘Brown channels the Beatles’ track, inspired by ‘Good Day Sunshine’ and ‘Got to Get You into My Life.’ One of the reasons Mike went after the Paul McCartney English soul-shouting sound was that Steve Martin could emulate it so well. That’s probably one reason why several reviewers have panned Left Banke Too, saying the group suffered from the departure of Brown. Frankly, I think those reviewers are way off the mark. 

“Left Banke Too is a great piece of work and it demonstrates that the group members were evolving and could easily create a lasting piece of work with or without the boy genius. Today, even through all the syrup that Paul Leka poured over it, fans still love those tracks. The songwriting was exceptional, even if I’m blowing my own horn here. But I mean everybody’s songwriting. Just think that Tom Finn could write two numbers that stood up to the broad ability of a guy like Artie Schroeck – I mean Artie had worked with big bands and arranged for Frankie Valli; he was major league. 

“Another thing that may have been overlooked is that Left Banke Too marked Tom Finn’s debut as a lead singer with the group. And a great job he did of it too. If you listen to ‘Nice To See You,’ and ‘There’s Gonna Be A Storm,’ you’ll find that they are Finn vocals; but his tone quality is so similar to Steve’s that it’s hard to tell the difference. I’m sure his intention was to maintain the recognized Left Banke vocal sound.

“And Paul Leka… I wasn’t thrilled with some of his choices, but I don’t mean to sound like I detested his production work. All around, he did a pretty good job because you can listen to the tracks decades later and they have musical continuity.

“And how about ‘Give The Man A Hand?’ You realize that the LB was getting into making a social statement there about personal responsibility for one’s fellow man, and it’s so cleverly done you don’t even know you’re listening to a sermon. I think that in the final analysis Left Banke Too is a treasure - a great album, a classic piece of ‘60s pop and rock and can stand alongside any other work of the era.”

Tom Finn has more of a bittersweet assessment of the Paul Leka productions as they relate to the Left Banke’s trademark sound.

TOM FINN:

“When Fach brought in Paul Leka, this was the kiss of death. The best thing was that we all played all the instruments ourselves, so the group sounded like a group; that was great. But Leka was an over-the-top commercial producer. To him everything was a gimmick. The gimmicky string parts, just like the ones he used in his hit ‘Green Tambourine’ were deadly. 

“He also overdubbed a psychedelic sound track connecting the songs on the album, complete with long fade outs with backwards tape loops and sound effects galore. I was even sicker. At least Schroeck played and arranged what he felt in his heart. And there were the vocals which were always good. So the album didn’t outright suck. 

“I have mixed feelings about Left Banke Too. I can remember getting a case of LP’s from Smash Records, and that’s exactly what I did, I smashed the whole case. I used them for frisbees in Central Park and I hated the album and the outcome. I felt like Smash fucked us up by pairing us with producers that weren’t on the same page as us. There were three production entities: Leka, Schroeck and Brown. The producers were also the arrangers, so they all had their own ideas of what we should sound like. Now as I look back I can’t blame them for anything, they all did a good job. 

“It’s just that the group wasn’t dedicated enough. I can remember getting little or no support from Steve and especially George. I mean they didn’t roll up their sleeves and work hard to develop a strong follow up to the first LP, which, by the way didn’t do very well at all. Nowadays people are calling the first album a great debut album. Well, those people are hard core Left Banke fans. I clearly remember getting a lot of poor reviews on Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina. 

“The second album has grown on me. I actually like it. It was fun recording the Tom Feher songs. Feher was there and gave his support and lent his more than ample playing skills on piano and guitar. The Feher tunes came out very well. 

“The other songs like the Schroeck dates also were very well done, but I feel the direction was way too jazzy to be the Left Banke. I give hats off to Artie Schroeck as a monster at his craft. Leka also did a good job but he wasn’t the right person for the job, he just gimmicked it up, using sound effects and psychedelic effects etc. But again, the blame is not with him. 

“The Left Banke should have tried harder to obtain or write good material. I felt we were really waiting for some sort of magic to occur. I really felt the loss of our early family of writing and producing, not necessarily just Mike Brown, but all the earlier contributors like John Abbott and The Jeromes. We were in an unfamiliar situation. We had to be everything right there and then, but we weren’t ready.” 

If his disappointments with the productions weren’t enough, Finn had another revelation concerning Rubott Management when he attempted to collect his pay for the work on the Left Banke Too sessions.

FINN:

“When we split up with Harry, Smash Records was well aware that Johanan Vigoda had exposed Harry as a union scab and that he held non-union sessions. So Smash made sure that they paid union scale to the musicians on Left Banke Too. 

“I remember filling out some forms at some of the dates and was expecting to get a check for my playing. Well, time went by and my belly was empty; so one day for the hell of it I went over to Local 802 at the Roseland Ballroom on Fifty-Second Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue and I asked about my checks. 

“The union man had me sit down and shortly came back with my cancelled checks. They were signed and cashed by Rubott! Those fucking worms used their power of attorney to sign and cash my musician checks. The union man gave me a Xerox copy of the checks and sent me on my way.  I never forgave Rubott for that. I was living on thirty-nine cent Blimpies back then. That occurred in December ‘68.”

Mercury pulled two more singles out of the album: “Bryant Hotel” backed with “Give the Man a Hand” was released in February of 1969, and “Nice to See You” backed with “There’s Gonna Be a Storm” was released in May of ’69 – both to no result. One could say at this point that the Left Banke was finished as a commercial enterprise. Bookings were few and far between. When an artist or group fails to have a current recording on the charts, interest drops very rapidly. Finn attributes this partly to the lethargic attitude of the group members themselves.

FINN:

“We’d just completed an album and didn’t make any attempt to perform it on stage. ‘Desirée was the only song from Left Banke Too that was ever included in our live repertoire. We were grossly disconnected from being professional entertainers with a mission to promote our new material. Isn’t that what bands do, go on the road to push their album sales? I don’t think we rehearsed more than a few times. We sometimes just jammed on stage, with the Royal Hoost (George Cameron) taking five minute drum solos. Steve Martin once went on stage with a five day beard, a long overcoat and a pint of hard liquor in his pocket. He yelled at the audience: ‘we don’t give a shit, and if you don’t like it well Fuck You.’ Out of the few hundred people that hadn’t already left, the audience just slowly walked out.”

The ‘60s were coming to a miserable close; but before the decade was out, there would be one more session and one more release for the Left Banke. And for Mike Brown, one more Top Twenty hit.

MOTOWN GIVES THE MAN A HAND

Although Mike Brown had grounded out with “Desirée,” and would go down swinging with The Montage, he was about to log another stat in the form of a pinch hit by one of Motown Records’ premier vocal groups, The Four Tops.

TONY SANSONE:

“The Four Tops producers recorded ‘Walk Away Renée’ for an album. Radio station WWRL, the black music station in New York City, began playing ‘Renée’ and Motown decided to release it as a single. BUT they demanded that they pay a lower royalty. Mike asked if we were willing to agree. WOW – to have the FOUR TOPS sing a song I wrote: of course we said YES!!!!!”

In 1967, just before splitting with Motown, the Tops’ producers, the legendary team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, completed one final album for the group: Four Tops Reach Out. In August of 1967, the album, containing three Top Ten singles (including #1 “Reach Out I’ll Be There”) peaked at #11 on the Billboard album charts. Also on the album: “Last Train To Clarksville,” “I’m A Believer,” “If I Were A Carpenter,” and “Walk Away Renée.”

TOM FEHER:

“Berry Gordy, founder of Motown was one of the cleverest cats in the business. I’ve seen a lot written about disgruntled artists, but some people never stop to think: where would those artists be if it wasn’t for Berry Gordy Jr.? Maybe I feel for him because like Berry I started as a songwriter and branched out to other things. He started with Jackie Wilson, one of my favorite performers, and wrote some of my favorite songs for Jackie – tunes like ‘Reet Petite’ and ‘To Be Loved.’ 

“Then he looked at his royalty checks and decided he wanted a bigger piece of the pie. He was a man with vision. Like the Little Red Hen, he planted the seeds, watered the ground, harvested the grain, ground the flour, kneaded the dough and baked it. And man, he spread that pie around. Just consider the roster of Motown artists that went on to recognition and wealth because of what he started. But no matter how many people prospered, there was always someone to complain.”

As legend has it, Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown in 1960 with $700 borrowed from a family member. Building off his first #1 hit, “Shop Around” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, he turned Motown into a multi-million enterprise. Much of Motown’s success was created by marketing black music to white America. In 1967 it appears that he did a turn-around and began marketing white music to black America.

FEHER:

“If you take a good look at the Four Tops Reach Out album, you find some very clever planning. The single “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” was a huge hit for the Tops, peaking in Billboard at #1 on October 17th 1966. The album choices were no coincidence. They included a certain number of hit songs by white performers who were dominating the air waves at the same time ‘Reach Out’ was Number One.

“There’s ‘Last Train To Clarksville’ and ‘I’m A Believer’ by the Monkees, the Association’s #1 hit ‘Cherish,’ Tim Hardin’s ‘If I Were A Carpenter’ which went to #8 for Bobby Darin and the Left Banke’s ‘Walk Away Renée.’ To me this says that Motown was ‘reaching out’ even further to connect white America with black America. Berry Gordy was no fool; he wanted the lion’s share of 1967’s teenage pocket money. But in his own way he was also a master at racial and cultural integration.”

In August of 1967, the Four Tops Reach Out album landed at #11 on the Billboard album charts. About the same time, Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown over contractual / financial disputes with Gordy. One suspects that singles were now pulled off the album to fill a gap as there was no new original music coming from the erstwhile company producers. “Walk Away Renée” was released as a single and peaked at #14 on February 17, 1968, another Top 20 hit for the Four Tops – and a boost to the flagging reputation of Mike Brown.

A final note on the Four Tops rendition of “Walk Away Renée”: On March 19, 2011, music journalist Daniel Coston went to see the Four Tops in concert. The fifth song in the Tops’ set was none other than “Walk Away Renée.” In introducing the song, Duke Fakir, now the band’s sole surviving original member told the crowd the story of how the Four Tops came to cover the song. 

As Coston relays the tale: one night, while the Tops were recording at Motown’s fabled recording studio, label boss Berry Gordy was upstairs, listening to the radio and placing bets. “Walk Away Renée” came on the radio, and someone raised the question, could the Tops take the song, which was in the Top Ten that week, and do a version that would eventually put the song back in the charts? Words were exchanged, and a bet was made.  

Berry Gordy eventually came down to the studio, and told the band of the bet. “We asked him, ‘How much did you bet?’” Fakir told the audience. “Berry told us, and we told him, ‘Place that bet.’ And we did win the bet.” One of Fakir’s bandmates then asked him how much money had been bet. “I’m not going to tell you how much it was” Fakir answered, “but I can tell you that with the money from my part of the bet, I bought a car for my girlfriend. That girl is now my wife.”

DANIEL COSTON:

“In listening to both versions of ‘Renée,’ the differences are slight, but effective. The Tops’ version has slowed down the tempo ever so slightly, and the drummer has added a skip-beat in the verses. This gives the song a slightly more ‘Motown’ feel to the arrangement, but also gives more weight to the arrival of the choruses, which Stubbs royally announces with emotion in his voice, particularly when he sings the word “Away” with a touch of refined anguish. “But what else did the Four Tops’ version have that pushed ‘Renée’ back up the charts? Simply put, the singing of Levi Stubbs and his enunciation of the lyrics. The Left Banke’s original version of the song features Steve Martin Caro’s lead vocal as another instrument, with the mix almost being equal to the instrumental backup. Caro also under-sings the song, a factor which was largely due to Caro’s mood on the day of recording. 

“‘When Steve sang ‘Walk Away Renée’ he wouldn’t even pronounce the words,’ Tom Finn told me recently. “Harry [Lookofsky] would say, ‘C’mon Steve, get the marbles out of your mouth!’ And Steve would say, ‘Just roll the tape.’” Whether or not Caro was aware of it at the time, his delivery came across with a resigned wistfulness that was perfect for the emotional tug of the song. 

“However, when Levi Stubbs was behind the microphone, the delivery was quite different. Levi’s vocal is way out in front, and he enunciates every word as clear as a bell. When you listen to the Tops’ version of ‘Renée,’ you are reminded of how evocative the lyrics are, with just a minimum of words. For many reasons, I believe, the Tops’ version brought those lyrics a little more to the foreground, which helped to make the song new again.” 

THE EXTENDED FAMILY

BERT SOMMER

While the Left Banke’s sun was setting, Bert Sommer’s star was rising. Even during the short time he’d participated in the “other” Left Banke, he’d been forging a career as a songwriter, composing material for his friends in the Long Island club band The Vagrants, consisting of brothers Larry (bass) and Leslie West (guitar), Peter Sabatino (vocals), Jerry Storch (organ) and Roger Mansour (drums).

For a producer, the Vagrants had the phenomenal Felix Pappalardi, who made his great success with three albums by England’s Cream: Disraeli Gears, Wheels of Fire, and Goodbye. Pappalardi was also a songwriter and with Sommer he’d co-written both sides of the Vagrants’ 1967 Atco single release “A Sunny Summer Rain” and “Beside the Sea.”

Later that year, Bert’s solo writing effort for the group, “And When It’s Over” was also released on Atco. But Sommer’s career was just getting started. Under the guidance of manager Dominic Sicilia, he obtained a contract with Capitol Records in November of 1967. Produced by Artie Kornfeld, a Vice-President of the label, Bert’s debut album The Road To Travel was released in 1968 as the Left Banke was releasing Left Banke Too and wrapping up its final days on the road.

But that wasn’t all: manager Sicilia, the same week he’d brought in the album deal with Capitol had wangled an audition for Bert Sommer in the hot new musical Hair, which moved to Broadway in April of 1968. Bert eventually landed a replacement role as one of the show’s leading characters, “Woof;” but before that came to be, Sommer and Feher, along with a long-time friend, Alan “Pinky” Greengold, became roommates sharing a studio apartment on Seventieth Street off West End Avenue in Manhattan.

TOM FEHER:

“It wasn’t a very long-lived co-habitation, but it was very revealing as to our individual characters. Bert was the one who’d rented the apartment, and if memory serves, he invited us in at very low rent shares because we were both piss poor. Alan Greengold was quite a character. There wasn’t a person who met him that didn’t immediately notice his resemblance to John Lennon and comment on it – and despite the fact that he didn’t have a musical bone in his body, he played the part to the hilt: he was as vain as the day was long, but lovable, like a chubby teddy bear.

“What I most remember about Alan was his love of ice-cream – he’d lay down sideways on a couch with a spoon and work his way through a quart at a time. And in between scoops he’d lick the spoon dramatically, as if a movie camera was rolling. But Alan had a roly-poly belly that Lennon would have cringed to look at – and at that time, having no groupies to tend to him, he was looking through the personal ads for a woman to have sex with. He’s the only person I ever knew that pursued sex through a newspaper.

JOAN (PADNEY) AUPPERLEE:

“I had met Alan Greengold, Tom Feher and Bert Sommer all at the same time in 1965. Alan had an uncanny resemblance to John Lennon. I just couldn’t stop staring at him. I didn’t want him to know I realized the resemblance, so I played dumb. We were walking past a dress shop on MacDougal and the window display was mini dresses and Beatle albums. He asked me if I noticed anything, as he stood right next to the window and put his head near the album.  I said ‘not really’ – and then I decided to agree that there was a ‘slight’ resemblance.’” 

TOM FEHER:

“Bert – now Bert was another story altogether. He was fussy about the way we used the refrigerator… after all it was his refrigerator. But we thought he’d gone a little too far when he put up cardboard dividers inside the fridge with arrows pointing to “Bert’s Side – Stay Away,” and “Your Side – OK.” One day, to get even because we thought he was so self-centered, we took an oil portrait of Bert that he had put up over the mantel and turned it around to face the wall. It took him a while to notice it, but when he did, he was fuming!”

Feher contends that the most remarkable fact of this time period was his introduction to Sommer’s songwriting discipline.

FEHER:

“I don’t think many people were privileged to see Bert at work – maybe Leslie and Larry West and later, Bert’s wife Karen could have verified this – but Bert was an amazingly methodical songwriter. He had a work ethic and an enthusiasm for his craft that rubbed off on me and remained with me for the rest of my life.

“For one thing, he had two binders that contained at least two hundred handwritten song lyrics. Up until that time, having worked with Brown and the guys in the Left Banke, I was accustomed to people who wrote a maximum of two dozen songs per year; this high production rate was something of a revelation to me.

“But Bert could also write a song at the drop of a hat. I’ll never forget watching him flip open the TV guide and run his fingers down the titles of the old movies that were playing that week. One time, as I watched, he said, ‘here’s a good one – The Mummy.’ That was the original film with Boris Karloff. With no hesitation he starts strumming a D minor chord, singing:

‘I was a member of the archeological

Expedition that thought it logical

To dig up the desert and try to find the mummy.

One of the guides at the excavation

Said he thought he’d give his estimation

That the mummy wouldn’t think the diggin’ was too funny.’

“All this right off the top of his head! To this day I can still remember those words and the tune that goes with them. He wrote the damn thing right there in front of me in the space of about ten minutes. Bert’s songs were always easy to sing and easy to remember – he kept them simple and full of feeling, kind of like Neil Diamond who was an inspiration to him. He could write those upbeat fun tunes, but man, could he lay down a romantic ballad. When he sang one of those dreamy love songs he would close his eyes and drift away, and if you were there to listen, you’d drift away with him.”

It also happened in 1968 that Sommer, along with Mike Brown, placed another song on the charts – a minor hit, but one that would go into both of their expanding résumés. 

This was an event that was surprisingly and unwittingly assisted by Jack Dabney who as a DJ on WINX had been the first to spin “Walk Away Renée” in the Washington DC area in 1966.

JACK DABNEY:

“I was attracted to the Cherry People (then known as the English Setters) by their fantastic harmonic abilities. The group had been playing DJ ‘sock hops’ around Washington for a couple of years. After a couple of personnel changes, I took them to New York to showcase at the Café Wha? The group was a big hit in the Village (in spite of the Wha?s Tex complaining about their lack of original music). Lots of folks were lining up for management opportunities.

“I received a call from Jerry Ross at the Hotel Albert where we were staying. He said he wanted to buy the group from me. He seemed surprised when I explained to him that I didn’t have a contract with the group and that I simply wanted them to take the best opportunity. The group liked what Ross had to offer. After handing them off to Jerry Ross, I stayed around the Village working relief shifts running lights and sound at the Wha?  I made five dollars a day, which somehow paid my rent at the Hotel Albert and bought a daily sausage and peppers sandwich.” 

The band signed a deal with Ross’ Heritage Records, newly distributed by MGM; The Cherry People’s album became the first to be released under the new distribution deal. The group was introduced nationally by Jerry Ross with Dick Clark on American Bandstand where they debuted their new single “And Suddenly.” A Bandstand appearance was practically a twenty-four carat guarantee of boosted record sales.

Jerry Ross was no newcomer to the business: he’d worked in Philadelphia not only as an announcer for Dick Clark, but with Kenny Gamble and Thom Bell, and had hits as a writer or producer with numerous artists including Bobby Hebb (“Sunny”), Keith (“98.6”), and Jay and the Techniques (“Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”).

Possibly it was his association with so many Mercury recording acts that brought the Brown/Sommer composition to the attention of Jerry Ross. In any event, “And Suddenly” was recorded by The Cherry People and released in early July 1968, entering the Billboard pop chart the week of July 20th. It peaked at #44 – a respectable showing and another feather in the Mike Brown cap, adding to his professional stature. But The Cherry People would not climb the charts again. 

RACHEL ELKIND

Another of the Left Banke’s extended musical family to find success in 1968 was Rachel Elkind. Undaunted by Feher’s refusal to sign with Mercury, she continued to befriend him while nurturing the career of Walter Carlos, who’d done the arranging on Feher’s first recordings as a performer.

It was thus that Feher was on the spot when history was being made – for Carlos through 1967 and 1968 was developing an ability with the Moog Synthesizer that would lead to album chart success and pave the way for the synthesizer to enter the mainstream of commercial music – and rock music (among other things) would never be the same.

TOM FEHER:

“Walter Carlos was what we’d call ‘an eccentric genius.’ I’ve never met anyone quite as devoted to classical music and simultaneously to the new world of synthesized sound. I can’t imagine Carlos doing anything during the day but wake up, work at the synthesizer until midnight, go to sleep and repeat the same process ad infinitum. This was a person living in a world detached from everyday realities that you find on the streets of Manhattan – as far removed from the depraved world of Bob Armel as Madagascar is from Alaska.”

Rachel Elkind was the perfect person to nurture the Carlos career. Not having any children of her own, her mothering instincts were fulfilled by her devotion to musical artists. She protected; she reassured. If Feher was the ‘black sheep’ of her musical family then Walter Carlos was her first born favorite son. Without Elkind on hand to inspire, to organize, to be the buffer between Walter Carlos and the brutal world outside that cozy Manhattan brownstone, Switched On Bach would very likely have been a stillborn project. Rachel knew the business end of music too, very well.

Rachel Elkind urged Carlos along and with the assistance of Benjamin Folkman and a considerable input from Robert Moog she managed to secure a 1968 release for Switched on Bach on Columbia Records. The album became one of the best-selling classical albums of all time, initially selling over half a million units and eventually passing the million mark. Carlos garnered three Grammy awards as a result of this work.

FEHER:

“Because of Rachel’s commitment to mentoring this wayward youth (me), I was fortunate to be on the spot and observe the production process on the album. There was plenty of dialogue with Bob Moog, for one thing. The synthesizer that was used to create Switched On Bach was, as I recall, the first Moog synthesizer ever purchased, and Moog would add refinements as Carlos required them. So they were in rather constant communication. It was a long, drawn out, painstaking process in which the pieces were built up one note at a time. Visually, what I remember most vividly was the extensive patch bay with connecting wires crossing here there and everywhere, and the artist (W. Carlos) frantically adding and removing connections to get the proper combination of effects for each segment of the track.” 

Historically, rock musicians including the Doors, the Rolling Stones, the Monkees, the Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel, had been experimenting with Moog’s synthesizer before the release of Switched on Bach. But it is widely agreed that “SOB” opened the floodgates of public acceptance and interest that created an electronic revolution in commercial popular music.

Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes, Sun Ra, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Stevie Wonder… all these artists gained inspiration and owe at least part of their success to the ground breaking work released by Walter Carlos in 1968. Even the Beatles jumped on the Moog bandwagon during the production of Abbey Road. 

ALAN (SACHS) MERRILL

Alan Sachs, like many other participants in the Left Banke saga, was born and raised in the New York borough of the Bronx – 170th Street and College Avenue, not far from Yankee Stadium. The neighborhood was also home to Alan’s childhood friend, songwriter Laura Nyro (“Eli’s Coming,” “Stoney End,” “Wedding Bell Blues”). Alan tells us it was a very close knit neighborhood, an “extended family” (that phrase again!)

ALAN MERRILL:

“I remember old people sitting on stoops and milk crates, watching out for the kids, keeping us from playing stickball in traffic. One Summer Night’ (The Danleers / #7 in 1958) was one of my favorite songs when I was a kid. That’s rock ‘n’ roll to me! My first awakening to a palpable sexuality in rock music.

“My grandmother Rose (Raisa) owned a building on Mapes Avenue, further uptown Bronx. A very young Dion and the Belmonts would rehearse on her stoop in the mid ‘50s, and she would chase them away with a broom at ten pm. I loved their singing, listening with my head out the window and was not a happy boy when she told them to ‘Get back to Belmont Avenue and make that noise where you live!’

“Laura Nyro introduced me to the Verve Folkways people in 1964, and Artie Mogul asked me if I’d be willing to quit school and play bass with a new band called the Lovin’ Spoonful. I had long hair and wore Beatles style clothes. I had a look. They needed a bass player. I had been playing guitar for about a year, a quick learner, and could handle bass parts. Laura urged me to do it, but the stipulation was that I’d have to quit school. I didn’t go for the Lovin’ Spoonful gig for that reason. When ‘Do You Believe In Magic’ came out, Laura brought me the single and played it for me over and over. It was a great record. ‘See what you missed’ she said with a wicked smile. I knew it was going to be a Number One and I had missed the boat. Laura didn’t lead me wrong, that’s for sure.”

In 1965, Alan Sachs began a three year stint fronting a band in Greenwich Village’s Café Wha? where he rubbed elbows with, among others, Jimmy James (later Jimi Hendrix), the Raves and Richie Havens. Sachs, who later changed his surname to his mother’s stage name “Merrill” for professional purposes, first came across the Left Banke as “Walk Away Renée” was climbing the charts.

MERRILL:

“My first ‘meeting’ was at World United Studio where I was rehearsing a band for a party, in 1966. The lineup was guitarist Shelly Leder, keyboard (Farfisa organ) and blues harp man Mark (later ‘Moogy’) Klingman, drummer Carl Peachman (ex-the Strangers) Fred Ebner on bass. I played guitar and sang lead. We were rehearsing to play at a party for Tim Leary at Peggy Hitchcock’s mansion on Fifth Avenue. Peggy was best friends with my mom, that’s how we got the gig. When the Left Banke walked in we had to pack up fast and get out of the studio. They looked like rock stars: long hair and great clothes. It was their studio and Harry Lookofsky had kindly let us rehearse there, but once the Left Banke arrived to get to work we had to move fast and get out. 

“I hung around for a while and talked to Tom Feher, who wanted to write a song with me. I felt uncomfortable with the Left Banke having arrived, so I declined, which I regret now of course! I was amazed that guys our age could actually write songs that would be recorded and released. It was an epiphany for me. Tom and I didn’t write a song, but that moment gave me the courage to start writing.”

In 1968, with Rick Brand gone and a number of gigs booked, the group held auditions for a replacement. Guitarist/vocalist Alan Sachs saw the Left Banke audition advertised in The Village Voice “Musicians Wanted” section in early 1968 and answered the ad. He auditioned in a midtown rehearsal hall and was selected over some fifty other applicants. 

MERRILL:

“My audition would have been at the same time that the first promo copies of ‘Dark Is the Bark’ came out. Those were the first two songs Tom Finn gave me to learn at the Bryant Hotel, ‘Dark Is the Bark’ and ‘My Friend Today.’ I still have the 45 rpm record he gave me to study! It was around my birthday, January or February. I played ‘Renée’ with Tom in G, and was surprised that the he played it so easily since the record was in the key of A. George came into Tom’s room and we did the three parts on ‘Renée,’ with me on the one note part. It sounded brilliant.

“Steve Martin (Caro) was aloof and not terribly interested in having me in the band. He was extremely good looking in a Paul McCartney pretty boy sort of way, but very macho at the same time. A phenomenal singer… I admit I styled myself after his persona in years to come. He was the ultimate pop star. He had all the confidence and cockiness that goes with the mix of extreme good looks and young celebrity.”

Prior to Merrill’s Left Banke audition, he’d briefly been in a group The Birth of Spring, organized by Alan Wauters, who Feher describes as “a Left Banke wannabe.” Wauters had walked the same Village streets and hung in the same Village cafés and clubs as Feher, Finn, Cameron, Winfield and Martin-Caro; Merrill too had known him since 1965. 

MERRILL:

“When my Cafe Wha? band broke up in winter of ‘67 Alan Wauters asked me to join forces with him, a drummer from Texas named Danny Casey, Fritz Nile on bass and Jeff Winfield on guitar in his band The Birth Of Spring. They were a bit older than me and I was used to being the leader of my bands, and couldn’t handle Alan Wauters’ control freak factor. It was a short lived situation, a few months, where we rehearsed in the Albert Hotel basement. 

    “In fact Left Banke singer Steve Martin came around to listen to us at the Albert Hotel with his managers Billy Ottinger and Roger Rubenstein. I was totally intimidated by Martin’s presence; he was dressed like a Beatle in pro rock star finery, and so I clammed up when I sang my composition for them, titled ‘Dream.’ 

    “Steve got right up in my face and said with a sneer ‘if you’re gonna sing, sing it from the balls! You sound weak.’ I nearly cried. He was one of my idols. It was a life changing moment for me. I started to sing a bit harder from that day on every day, getting my voice stronger. I now sing it ‘from the balls’ and I never ever clam up!”

As fate would have it, and as Rubott informed him, the Left Banke decided to go on as a trio and his services would not be required. Sachs/Merrill was broken hearted at not landing the gig; but professionally speaking, it may well have been the best thing that ever happened to him. In an effort to get as far away from Manhattan as possible, he left for Japan, where his mother, jazz vocalist Helen Merrill, maintained a residence.

In Japan, he officially became Alan Merrill and began a new career as a model, songwriter and musician that would take him to far broader popularity and success than the Left Banke could have offered him in the twilight of their career. Nevertheless, his love for the Left Banke’s music remained with him throughout his life. In the early days of his new career, Alan performed Feher’s “Sing Little Bird Sing” on Japanese television prior to its U.S. release on Left Banke Too.

MERRILL:

“I got the ‘Sing, Little Bird Sing’ backing track on an acetate from Richard Kaye, a music publisher and friend of mine in 1968 or ‘69. He mailed it to me in Japan. He thought I should have a go at the song when he heard I had a deal with Atlantic. I added several instruments to the track myself, guitars and fretless bass, and sang over it. My Japanese label (Atlantic) didn’t want to release a song in English so it was shelved and I did an entire album in Japanese instead. 

“I performed the song solo acoustic on Japanese TV anyway, on the show Young 720 in 1969-70. I had my own weekly spot on the show and could play whatever I wanted to. The song sounded great with just guitar and voice. I also did the Tom Feher composition ‘I Have Been Searching’ on Japanese TV, solo acoustic. It was very well received.”

“I Have Been Searching,” a 1969 Feher solo composition, was written as part of a score for the film The Telephone Book, and marked the first of two Finn-Feher collaborations in the wake of the Left Banke’s demise.

TOM FEHER:

“In 1969 I met a guy named Nelson Lyon, possibly through John Palmer, I’m not sure. But Nelson was a screenwriter/director and he had this thing he’d written called ‘The Telephone Book,’ which was a story about a guy who picks out names at random from the telephone book and makes obscene calls. And this girl falls in love with the obscene caller. A really weird story. Well anyway, Nelson’s got a money man – producer Merv Bloch – and he’s got South African actress Genevieve Waite lined up for the part of the girl, ‘Alice.’ Genevieve had recently starred in the film Joanna, and was, I think, considered a hot property at the time; at least Nelson thought so.

“So he brings me up to see the producer and play some songs; a deal is made to front me some money and to pay for recording. I brought in Tom Finn, feeling that he knew more about the recording process than I; and we’d worked well together on the Left Banke Olmstead sessions. His rep as a member of the Left Banke didn’t hurt either.”

Finn and Feher recorded three of Feher’s songs, the aforementioned “I Have Been Searching;” “Love Is What You Are;” and a new version of “Sing Little Bird Sing.” For the basic tracks they recruited three members of the McCoys, Rick Zehringer (guitar), Randy Zehringer (drums) and Randy Hobbs (bass). Although their #1 hit “Hang On Sloopy” on Jeff Barry’s Bang label topped the Billboard charts in September ‘65, by 1968 The McCoys had moved to Mercury and were more or less label-mates of the Left Banke, so it was a very natural partnership. 

The basic tracks were recorded at the original Hit Factory near Times Square, owned by writer, producer and arranger Jerry Ragovoy. Pop music scholars with a serious interest in the soul /gospel music and r&b up to that time would know of Jerry Ragovoy: among the songs he’d written or co-written were ‘Time Is On My Side,’ ‘Cry Baby,’ ‘Piece Of My Heart’ ‘Get It While You Can,’ and ‘Stay With Me’ – songs recorded by Theola Kilgore, Garnett Mimms, the Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin.

FEHER:

“I got to meet him very briefly during those sessions and I was thrilled. The legendary Eddie Youngblood engineered the sessions. Rick Zehringer had just obtained his very first pedal steel guitar and decided to try it out on ‘I Have Been Searching.’ He did a masterful job which is evident even on the scratchy old acetate that’s been circulating as a Left Banke rarity.”

An acetate, for readers that might not be familiar with the history of the recording process, is a single-sided aluminum disc ten or twelve inches in diameter coated with a film of nitro-cellulose lacquer. Acetates contain grooves just like vinyl records, but are short-lived by their very nature. They can be played on a commercial turntable but wear out very quickly. They can also be referred to as “test pressings or “reference discs.”

Before the 1960s, recordings were made directly to disc without the initial stage of tape recording (which hadn’t been developed at that time). In the years that the Left Banke was recording, acetates were used to check the quality of tape-to-disc transfer before mass production of albums and 45rpm singles.

FEHER:

“Finn played electric guitar fills on the Hit Factory sessions and brought Steve Martin in to do the vocals. What struck me most about Steve at the time was that he put absolutely no enthusiasm into the project. Even though his vocals were right on pitch as usual, when I listen to them even now, it sounds as though he’s bored to tears. He had to read the lyrics to ‘Sing Little Bird Sing,’ off a sheet at the microphone even though he’d just recently recorded them for Left Banke Too. His interest level was next to zero.”

Tom Finn wrote string and woodwind arrangements for the songs and the parts were recorded by Harry Lookofsky at World United studio with players he’d contracted for the date. The McCoys moved on and began working with Johnny Winter as “Johnny Winter And,” with Rick now billing himself as Derringer and penning what was to become his signature song “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” (#23 in March ’74).

FEHER:

“I wrote at least another half-dozen songs for the film, but for whatever reason, the project began to fall apart and that was all we ever did. I think some of it had to do with Genevieve Waite pulling out; maybe the funding dried up, who knows. Nelson had introduced me to Genevieve which was a kick for me as she was a good looking girl, let me tell you. I even got to play a bit part in a party scene he shot for the movie up at Bob Armel’s Smile studio. I had a bottle broken over my head and walked out the door while dropping my pants and mooning the camera – big film debut!”

Nelson Lyon eventually got himself another actress, Sarah Kennedy, to play Alice; the film was released and distributed in 1971 by Rosebud productions. Feher’s songs were not used, but the fact that the recording of “I Have Been Searching” includes Finn’s involvement and features a Steve Martin-Caro vocal has brought it to the attention of fans as a Left Banke recorded rarity.

COFFIN NAILS

As 1968 faded out and 1969 rolled in the fragmented Rubott family was crawling on its last legs. The Left Banke’s pair of Top Twenty hits couldn’t be stretched much farther. 

Musicians were becoming harder to find. For a brief period after Brand’s departure, the Banke had the services of a guitarist named “Scrub,” whose fondness for the Jeff Beck Group had vocalist Martin-Caro singing “Let Me Love You Baby.” Finn had found Scrub – real name Tim Hayden – playing acoustic guitar out on MacDougal Street in the Village and brought him up to rehearsal at Smile studio. 

Emmett Lake had come and gone and there was no replacement keyboardist. Bill Ottinger had secured the group a place on a minor tour of the East Coast with the Mamas and the Papas, the Turtles, Question Mark and the Mysterians and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.

TOM FEHER:

“I was hanging around the office one day when I heard Billy Ottinger grousing about needing a keyboard player for two shows on the east coast with the Mamas and Papas. One was to be at the Baltimore Civic Arena and the other at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C. The group members were also in the office and Tom Finn – I’ll never forget this – Tom Finn said something like, ‘Feher knows the songs, why not have him play piano?’

“Now I don’t know if he was just testing to see how desperate Ottinger was, or if he truly believed I could fill the shoes of Mike Brown on piano. I know Finn was getting pretty cynical around that time and he would figure it didn’t matter what the group sounded like on the road, it was washed up anyway.

“But the fact is I did know how to play the key tunes – ‘Renée” and ‘Ballerina,’ although my confidence wasn’t very high. Whatever the case, Billy Ottinger agreed and I got my first taste of playing to a large audience. One of those shows had five thousand seats filled. I particularly remember the powerful bass foot of Mitch Ryder’s drummer, and Mark Volman of the Turtles clowning around for the audience by rolling around on the floor on his roly-poly belly.

Finn has confessed to only vague recollections about the Mamas & Papas shows; but he too was suitably impressed by Mitch Ryder’s drummer. Finn was standing at one of the stage curtains directly behind the drums as the Detroit Wheels launched into one of their minor hits, probably “C. C. Rider.”

TOM FINN:

“I was amazed by the drummer’s bass foot. He was playing that universal Bo Diddley beat very, very up-tempo. I couldn’t believe it. But I peeked through the curtains and he really was smokin’ that beat. I said to myself ‘Oh shit, do we have to follow this band?’ I never heard a band rock like them. Mitch soon after went solo and got himself a ten piece soul band with horns. That was a big mistake, he never had another hit. 

“The other thing I remember is the Mamas and Papas rehearsing their vocals acapella, you know, they were just warming up. We were all standing backstage when they first walked in, I think they must have seen us do our sound check, because when they walked past us Michelle Philips stopped and kissed Steve Martin-Caro on the cheek and handed him a long-stemmed red rose. It was more than obvious that Michelle thought old Stevie boy was pretty hot. I was just wishing it was me that she dug. Nothing ever came of it though, just a kiss and a rose.”

Not too long after, Feher took part in what was to be the final ‘Left Banke’ appearance, a show in New York State on a bill with the MC5.

FEHER:

“By the time that gig happened, you couldn’t really call it the Left Banke any more. Tom Finn was gone, George was gone; the only original group member on stage that night was Steve Martin, and he was in one of his morose moods. Jerry ‘the Hawk’ Hawkins was on bass and David Paul ‘the Whip’ Wesley was on drums. The Hawk and the Whip were both originally from a group called The Best of Friends who had a single out on Laurie Records in 1968. 

“I met them, as I had many other people – through Bob Armel, who’d moved to Eighth Avenue and opened up the Smile rehearsal studios around the corner from Steve Paul’s Scene. (Make no mistake about it though: Armel’s main business was still dealing drugs.) The Hawk claims that he was onstage with us in Baltimore or somewhere. I’ll award you an armored car full of gold bullion if you can decipher his verbal confetti… it’s entertaining, so you will read it in the raw form as it was issued from the oracle. I’ve known him for over forty years and most of the time I still can’t make head or tails about what he’s trying to say, but here – you figure it out for yourself.”

JERRY HAWKINS:

  “…the first time i meet feher he’s up at armels bangin on the piano and he’s rockin out lady madonna ten times better than paul or whoever played on that track with some very berry accoutrements so i say to armel who the fuck is this guy and armel says oh thats tom feher who writes a lotta shit for the banke so im thinkin well i gotta play with this guy one day. 

“Finn was with us in Baltimore playing guitar thats why I was playin bass cause he was playin guit… feher on piano cause mike was too fucked in the head to play… george on drums and steve singin and another time the whip was bangin a tambourine or somethin and we were more like some kind of wacked out cover band than the Banke.  

“Once I’m in rehab someplace and some guy says hey I was in the Left Banke another time I’m in ShopRite and some guy says hey ya know I was in the Left Banke so I’m thinkin HOLY FUCK MAHATMA GHANDI WAS IN THE FUCKIN LEFT BANKE TOO !!!!!!!!!!!”

TOM FEHER:

“As Left Banke members were falling off the game board, the final gigs still had to be honored so there we were. I think the only songs from the Left Banke repertoire we played were ‘Walk Away Renée’ and ‘Pretty Ballerina’ and the rest of it was the kind of stuff we would want to do personally – Rolling Stones’ songs off Beggar’s Banquet and ‘Feelin’ Alright?’ by Traffic’s Dave Mason. Steve liked to sing ‘Workin’ In A Coal Mine’ by Lee Dorsey. We probably threw some Chuck Berry in there too. But Left Banke? The group was unrecognizable. Meanwhile, we show up for the upstate gig and the promoter has sold about two hundred tickets for a place that holds several thousand. 

“Howie – the Rubott Road Manager, nicknamed ‘Black Bill Tarter’ by the Hawk – goes into the office to rough up the promoter and get the cash while we listen to a set by the MC5 – the loudest band I’d heard up until that time. They had something like eighteen speaker cabinets with a huge American Flag draped over the set-up and they were kickin’ out the jams with their amps on eleven. 

“Can you imagine the Motor City Five opening for the Left Banke? Can you hear ‘Kick Out The Jams’ followed by ‘Pretty Ballerina?’ But as I mentioned, we weren’t the Left Banke; that was over. The most I can say about that gig is that it resulted in me, the Hawk and the Whip forming a band which we named ‘No Regard.’ We found a common love of Chuck Berry and the Stones would evolve into some new sounds of our own.”

TOM FINN:

“The Left Banke was going out and doing shows with Big Howie Tarter as Road Manager. I remember him saying ‘I want youse guyz to play ‘Life’ by Sly and the Family Stone.’ I looked at myself in the mirror and I said ‘That’s it, I'm finished, I quit.’ 

I think Feher started to play in the group by this time. It was around June 1969. Rubott tried to sell Mr. Flood’s Party but this was not going to happen. I remember going to see them play at The Scene. There were two guys in Mr. Flood’s Party who played a role later in my life. First was Michael Corbett (flute, percussion and vocals), who introduced me to Victor Benedetto who loved my song ‘Lorraine’ and signed me as a songwriter and helped me reassemble the Left Banke in 1978. And there was Freddie ‘Frogs’ Toscano, with whom I played bass in his group ‘No Frills’ in the ‘80s. That was all Fifties’ Rock and Roll and Rockabilly. I had a ball with ‘No Frills.’”         

CONDUCTIVITY

Composer, conductor, recording engineer and producer – Ralph Affoumado was born in Brooklyn in 1938 and two years later moved with his family to the Bronx… two boroughs that seemed to have a considerable influence on the life and times of the Left Banke. In 1969 Ralph too would play a role in the group’s overall history. Ralph aspired to a musical career early in life. He graduated Music and Art High School, (predecessor to what is now LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts) in New York City in 1956 and entered the Juilliard School of Music as an Orchestral Conductor. 

He graduated Juilliard with a master’s degree in orchestral conducting in 1962, became conductor of the Jamaica Symphony the following year and then of the City Symphony of New York at City Center, holding those positions for many years and giving concerts all over the tri-state area. 

RALPH AFFOUMADO:

“From the very beginning of my musical career I was drawn to pop, Latin, rock, and folk music, and played it all on the piano. So even though I was a classical musician I loved, worked with and composed pop music of all kinds. Juilliard gave me the tools I needed to process musical information professionally, speak the musical language with the best of musicians, orchestrate, conduct and play on sessions, all this while happily communicating with musicians in the popular and rock fields. This made me a kind of go-between or spokesman for rock musicians because I could easily communicate with any classical sideman or background players at recording sessions, and help to make things run smoothly.”

Affoumado wrote for CBS / April-Blackwood publishing and had a chart hit in 1966, “Life is Groovy” on the BT Puppy label sung by the Tokens and Kirby Stone Four. At the same time he was doing arrangements for several pop artists, producing bands, and writing and producing commercials and industrials. While writing, teaching, raising a family and doing all of the above, Ralph had a small production company at Associated Recording Studios. He also had the keys to the studio which meant complete access and could come and go as was necessary. This is where he met some members of the Left Banke.

AFFOUMADO:

“I first heard ‘Walk Away Renée’ when it came out, (around the same time as my hit ‘Life is Groovy’) in 1966. Renee had the classical touch that I knew so well so I immediately reacted strongly to it. It was obvious that some classical musicians were at the helm of the arranging side of this hit. However, I must confess that the first thing that seduced me musically about the group was Steve Martin-Caro’s voice. 

“Steve’s voice had a plaintive, sad, piercing quality with a timbre like I had never heard before in American music and frankly never have heard since. I love ethno folk music from all over the world, Bulgarian, Russian, Spanish, and so many others. 

“Steve’s voice reminded me of that kind of approach to song. He seemed to not open his mouth and sort of forced the music through a small closed space half singing and half mumbling yet, I could understand him and most of the words. Years later I realized Steve Martin-Caro was to voice what James Dean was to acting. There was extreme pathos and pain in the sound and he seemed very vulnerable. 

“I am extremely vibrato sensitive, but his vibrato just felt right and comfortable. On top of that, he sounded un-coached and very real. Later I was to find out that Mike Brown micro-managed Steve’s voice ad-nauseum. The background vocals were, I thought, exactly right and they blended with the tracks and the lead in such a way as to make a nearly perfect package. 

“When ‘Pretty Ballerina’ came out I freaked altogether. After hearing Ballerina, for me, Mike Brown was an amazing pop composer. To use that kind of modality in a pop song at that time, or any time, I thought was really special. More amazing was the fact that the public bought it. The recording was clearer vocally too. Steve was in close to the microphone and clear as a bell. You could even hear his lip smacks.

“Quite a while later I heard ‘Desirée’ on the radio and again I knew classical arrangers were at work. Although the recording was muddy, badly recorded by today’s standards, and over saturated with arrangement, I loved it. As a classical musician I heard and understood every note and phrase and what the composer was doing. 

“Again it was this wonderful combination of vocal timbre, interesting composition, background vocal sound and instruments with a composer who dared to stick alternate 3/4 rhythms in the middle of a straight ahead 4/4 rock piece. I was sure the public would hate it, but it got to me at the core. I so wished I could meet the group, write and arrange for them and just add some of what I knew to help them along, but they disappeared.”

Ralph Affoumado’s desire to meet the Left Banke was to be fulfilled in early 1969 when the trio of Finn, Cameron and Martin-Caro entered Associated Studios to record a demo session and Ralph was assigned to engineer the date. The demo session was booked to record two Finn compositions, “Taking Chances” and “Love, This Is The Day,” on which he’d also acquired the piano-playing assistance of Michael Brown. The Left Banke’s fire may have burned out, but there were still embers glowing beneath the ashes.

Affoumado saw his opportunity to finally work with the group he so admired, and offered them free access to studio time at Associated and the challenge of writing radio jingles for a number of well-known products. Associated Recording Studios was on Seventh Avenue near Forty-Eighth Street; the entrance was right next to the Metropole. The studio had been established in 1946 and would continue as New York City’s major independent recording studio for close to forty years. 

TOM FINN:

“Ralph was a classical conductor who was a major influence on Michael Kamen of the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. He helped me score my string arrangements for remake of ‘Sing Little Bird Sing’ and ‘I Have Been Searching’ for the Telephone Book project. Ralph was working at Associated Recording as an engineer and in-house producer at that time. He was so excited that we were there that he made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. 

“He proposed that each one of the group write his own commercial. We were allowed to choose any product we wanted, because there was no real demand or sanction from any corporate entity. This was all for fun; the commercials were done as a lark. Ralph thought it would be a good way to get us all in the studio, break the ice having fun and being in a work mode. So we proceeded to write: I wrote one for Toni Hair Products, Mike wrote one for Coca Cola and Ralph wrote one for Cadillac automobiles.”

RALPH AFFOUMADO:

“I asked if they could get the entire group together again and they promised to try. They warned me it would not be easy to get together and work with them but snotty Juilliard me didn’t believe what Tom said. Working with the Left Banke was quite another story than what my imagination had perceived. At risk were everyone’s ego and authority and position in the Left Banke hierarchy, Mike Brown being culprit number one. It was obvious that lots of baggage existed between the boys long before this bunch of sessions with me which lasted all told, a few months. Add to this toxic mix some outsiders, girl friends, and some recreational drugs and you can just imagine the tension and futility of it all.

“Mike constantly screamed nervously at everyone especially Steve and threatened to leave. He corrected Steve in a very harsh way. Steve, trying to save face, would pooh-pooh him and then sulk. Mike even tried to bully me by asking for money as an advance, but against what I wasn’t quite sure as we hadn’t done anything yet. Most of the group and especially Steve was no match for Mike Brown’s musicality, logic, and business sense. He used his way with words against anyone who blocked his goal path. 

“For my project idea, this proved to be pure sabotage. Obviously they all needed money but I was in no position to pay them or help them financially. My idea was to give them space and a facility to ‘do it again’ and I would orchestrate and produce this time.

“I did everything possible to get them to chill. I fed them and was a mediator for the arguments. I had them to my house in the Bronx to meet my family several times. Steve needed real direction and he would take it from Mike but not under these conditions. Although Steve’s natural vocal ability was amazing, very frankly his life got in the way. 

“Steve needed great help to navigate through the system. Mike was no help at all. He was wired, and sarcastic, and difficult. There is a point where humanity and civility mark the man no matter how talented. I loved and appreciated Mike’s talent nevertheless; I just didn’t want to work with him any more. 

“Through all this the only one I could really talk to was Tom Finn. We actually became close for a short while. After a session and when everyone left, Tom and I would sit alone in the studio and schmoose and play music and talk a lot. Tom’s voice and ability to write and harmonize was very special and I wanted to work with him as well. Somehow, life’s vicissitudes got in the way. I had stuff to do and he did also and we never got it together.

“Although, we turned out a few really good demos for commercials and even some songs, the project had to stop for reasons mentioned. I was very unhappy with the results and just knew that I could have done more but I was not in a financial position to do so. The result was not good and I never quite got over it. I considered it a terrible failure for me.”

NINETEEN SIXTY-NINE / WOODSTOCK

Most people in looking back on 1969 see the close of the decade as centering on two events: the Woodstock Festival and the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. For the Left Banke it was the end of a roller coaster ride up and down the charts. But there were still members of the group’s extended family seeking and finding their way through a maze of life punctuated by drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll.

Ken Schaffer had used his Left Banke connection as a springboard to greater things. He and fellow writer Alan Rinde had rented a penthouse suite in a building on Fifty-Eighth Street next door to the Plaza Hotel where over the next few years, Schaffer would work for Alan Douglas on the production and promotion of two posthumous Jimi Hendrix albums. And he would later find his way back into Feher’s life, (much to Feher’s chagrin). Elkind and Carlos came back with a new album of Moog-enhanced classics, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer. Tallarico went off to found Aerosmith. Feher recalls one other Rubott connection of note that was to prove a key factor in the development of rock music in the ‘70s.

TOM FEHER:

“I was hanging around the Rubott office as usual one day in 1969 when a friend of Roger Rubenstein’s from his school years on Long Island came in to visit from California. I guess they hadn’t seen each other for a while. The friend, whose name was Shep Gordon, was a guy with sort of granny-type glasses and a frizzy Jewish ‘afro.’ Every other phrase out of his mouth was ‘far out, man – far out!’ He was a New Yorker who’d caught West Coast fever. Jerry Hawkins gave him the nickname ‘Bozo the Clown’ because of the frizz.”

Much like Rubenstein and Ottinger, Shep Gordon had gone into management and had come to town with his big discovery, a West Coast rock band who’d just put out their first album, Pretties For You. The album was issued on Straight Records, a  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label" \o "Record label" record label formed to distribute productions and discoveries of  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa" \o "Frank Zappa" Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Cohen" \o "Herb Cohen" Herb Cohen.

FEHER:

“I looked at the picture on the album cover and saw five guys with hair halfway down their backs, but not the pretty-boy English types, these guys looked like muscular jocks in tights. We checked out the album and listened to some cuts and thought, what’s this shit? No doubt there were listeners somewhere who’d had the same thoughts on first hearing ‘Pretty Ballerina.’

“We laughed until we were blue in the face and figured the group was going nowhere. But I accepted free admission to a concert they were doing at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden. I don’t recall if any of the Left Banke members went down to see the show; but in the dressing room backstage, Shep introduced me to the members of the group, Alice Cooper. (The group itself was named Alice Cooper at the time). Little did we know.”

For Feher, the sixties would end quite dramatically in a number of ways. For the latter half of the year he shared an apartment with loyal Left Banke friend and associate Fred Adams.

FEHER:

“Freddie’s apartment was around the corner from Steve Paul’s The Scene, and was a hanging place for musicians and groupies and who knows what else. I remember an after hours party in there one night with big ol’ Buddy Miles hanging onto two skinny white girls, and another whacked out chick who sat up in the kitchen all night talking to a potted plant. The living room was home to anywhere between one and three motorcycles at any given time, since the apartment was straight off the street. Fred’s landlady was the mother of his good friend Willy the Bike… just about anything was possible there.

“Bert was playing in Hair at the Biltmore theatre just across Eighth Avenue. He’d introduced me to Jimmy Rado and Gerry Ragni, the writers of Hair, and they’d bestowed on me their ultimate seal of approval in the new order of things when Ragni wrote the word ‘FREE’ on my wrist with a ballpoint pen, just down the street from Carnegie Hall.

“Acid was everywhere that year, in great abundance. I was walking through Central Park one day when I came across Randy Zehringer (drummer of the McCoys) practically floating off the ground, grinning from ear to ear. He had cleaned out a Noxzema jar and filled it with acid tabs and was popping them like candy!

“Well, one evening I’m pacing back and forth in the apartment – Fred was out somewhere – and I’m waiting for the acid I dropped to take effect. After a while I’m getting antsy so I knew something was happening. I looked in the bathroom mirror and instead of my usual face, I saw Jesus Christ – or at least what some pictures of him look like. And I felt like I had to make a statement to the world at large.

“I also felt, since it was a rather warm evening, that I didn’t need any clothes to make the statement. So I strip naked and I walk out the front door as calm as you please and make a left, walking down Forty-Seventh Street to Eighth Avenue. The firemen in the firehouse across the street are wolf whistling and making jokes and comments, but that didn’t bother me. I knew now what I had to do. 

“I walked across Eighth Avenue and up to the Biltmore Theatre; I walked into the theatre and down the center aisle, and as luck would have it I walked in on the nude scene. So I just got up on stage and joined in. I don’t really remember much more than that, how I got back to the apartment and so on, but I think Bert was somewhat pissed with me, like I had embarrassed him or something. Like I was being unprofessional! The one thing I remember above everything else is that next day I was mentioned in Earl Wilson’s column in the New York Post. He called me ‘Nature Boy.’

“But these kinds of shenanigans were driving Fred up the wall. I was supposed to be paying my share of the rent and the advance from The Telephone Book would’ve brought me up to date. I got a check for several hundred bucks and cashed it; when walking across Central Park toward home I met a bunch of winos and turned the cash over to them – I mean, I was handing out twenties to park bench derelicts, thinking I was doing some sort of good deed! That’s what acid will do to you. I came back to the apartment with empty pockets, and that was the last straw for Fred.”

In July of 1969, Feher’s California Dreamin’ finally came to fruition. Managers Ottinger and Rubenstein paid for round trip tickets to San Francisco for him and Ron Singer. Rubott was about to fold up. Perhaps they looked at the bank account and decided how to best distribute the remaining bucks while looking like ‘good guys.’ So they sent Feher and Singer off to sunny California.

FEHER:

“It was nothing new for Ronnie; he’d made the trip numerous times and was one of those countless New Yorkers you see hanging around the Whiskey and the clubs on Sunset Boulevard to this very day. But for me, it was like walking into a dream.

“We stayed in Berkeley at the house of Ronnie’s friend Seth Morgan. I thought Ronnie had thought that Seth was the grandson of financier J.P. Morgan; probably another hallucination. But he was actually the son of George Frederick Morgan, heir to the Ivory soap fortune, so that wasn’t too far off base. Seth was going to UC Berkeley at the time, and totally into drugs like the rest of us. One of the first things I saw in his house was a girl washing dishes in the kitchen, with her tits hanging out – no shirt, no nothing. Welcome to California!

“I’d noticed there was a tree house way up in a very tall tree on the property, so next morning right after waking up I climbed up a rope ladder to the platform. I popped my head over the edge and what do I see but two people in the act of making love. Whoops!

But it didn’t seem to bother them at all. In the afternoon, a bunch of us went up Telegraph Avenue and onto the Berkeley campus. There was a sound like rolling thunder in the distance that kept getting louder as we continued walking. 

“When finally we came up to a big open space, a central quad, you know, I gazed on something I’ll never forget: a huge horde of people in all kinds of dress – regular school clothes, fringes, beads, Nehru shirts, sandals, bare feet, bare chests, you name it – and they were all chanting, swaying and dancing to the pounding of about a hundred pieces of percussion. There were tambourines, maracas, bells… and at the center a good number of congas and other large drums laying down the basic groove. I was experiencing my first ever drum circle, and to this day it’s still the most impressive circle I’ve ever seen or heard. According to Seth, they would keep it up for hours. We spent about a half hour there and headed back. 

“On the edge of the crowd I saw Barbara Morillo, who’d been in a female vocal trio, The Cake, back in New York. But now, she told me, her new name was ‘Iliana’ or something like that, and she’d traded in her mod clothes for a sarong and beads. The last I saw of her she was still chanting and swaying.

“Back at Seth’s house, I met a guy whose regular name I can’t remember; but he had changed it to a native American-style name, ‘Laughing Waters.’ I got to be really good friends with him; he had a spiritual side to him that was missing in the rest of the people I’d met. Well, we’re in a van with a bunch of other people, driving through Oakland, and he says to the driver, ‘Let me out here, I’m gonna hike to my parents’ house in Lafayette.’ 

“He asks me if I want to go with him. I had practically no money, didn’t know where I was or where we were going; so of course I agreed to go to Lafayette. We walked across the freeway, over hills and through fields and eventually got to the house, a sprawling ranch house with acres of land attached to it. His parents were both archeologists, on a dig in Mexico. We raided the kitchen, watched television.

“Like most of the other people I’d met so far, nudity was a natural fact of life to him. I didn’t get any gay vibes from Laughing Waters, so I tossed my clothes off too. It was July 20th, a week before my birthday which was July 27th. One of those dates you never forget. We turned on the television and everything was about the lunar landing. I kept thinking, what a co-incidence that as Man was walking on the moon… I too was taking a giant step in my personal life and walking for the first time on the soil of California.

“Next morning Laughing Waters takes me out back of the house and introduces me to a pair of motorcycles. He says, ‘Come on, let’s ride, I’ll show you the property.’ I was hesitant; I’d grown up in a family without a car; I was just short of being terrified of motor vehicles. But I figured what the hell, all I can do is fall off and break my neck – and followed his instructions. We’re riding over a ridge, naked to the world toward the edge of the property, gunning the engines, when suddenly this guy is standing up on a hill pointing a rifle at us.

“‘Fuckin’ hippie bastards!’ he’s yelling, and takes aim. ‘Quick, turn around,’ says Laughing Waters, and we head back toward the house in a cloud of dust with the report of the rifle ringing in our ears. ‘What was that all about?’ I asked. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘that’s just the next-door neighbor. He’s nuts.’ And that was the climax of my stay in the Bay Area. Don’t ask me how, the rest is a blur, but I got back to Seth’s and connected with Ron Singer who convinced me to swing through Los Angeles on the way back to New York. I think air fare from SF to LA was something like twenty-five dollars back then.”

Feher had the number of Bert Sommer, who was living in Los Angeles. Sommer came to pick him up at the airport, in a used car that Feher describes as a ‘canal boat.’

FEHER:

“I’ll never forget the experience of Bert driving me out of the airport. He was yakking away, making his usual joking comments about LA, not paying attention where he was going, swerving and almost crashing into the walls and rails several times on his way down the ramp in the parking structure. Bert was having a ball, enjoying life; but I had to wonder if he’d actually learned how to drive or if he even had a license. Must’ve taken driving lessons from George of the Left Banke. He took me up to Artie Ripp’s house in the Hollywood Hills, where he was living during his stay in LA.”

Artie Ripp – producer of Doris Troy (“Just One Look” / 1963), Jay & the Americans (“Come A Little Bit Closer / 1964) and co-producer with Jeff Barry of the Shangri-las debut “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” – was the co-founder in 1964 of Kama Sutra Productions (which in 1965 became Kama Sutra Records) and of Buddah Records. 

As a principal in these labels, Artie was a considerable force in the record industry of that time, releasing product by The Lovin’ Spoonful, Lou Christie, Melanie, Elephant’s Memory, The Brooklyn Bridge and a wide assortment of “bubblegum” groups by the end of 1969. In the seventies, Kama Sutra and Buddah would play roles in the further careers of both Bert Sommer and The Left Banke.

FEHER:

“Artie lived in the Hollywood Hills in a house of fairly simple design; but it must’ve cost a pretty penny. His boys (sons) had their own bunkhouse, separated from the main house by a long tunnel-like hall. That’s where I stayed for the night. What I remember most is that the walls of the Ripp’s swimming pool had been painted by Simon and Marijke, two members of the design collective ‘The Fool’ that had worked on the Beatles’ Apple Boutique in London. You would dive into the pool, and down below were paintings of a deep sea diver, a mermaid, seaweed, sea horses and a treasure chest with golden coins spilling out onto ‘the ocean floor.’ It was fantastic. Let me tell you, that’s something you don’t ordinarily find on a Bronx street corner.”

WOODSTOCK

Feher returned to New York City just about in time for the Woodstock festival. If it hadn’t been for Bert Sommer, he might have missed it altogether. When Bert’s first album, The Road To Travel was released the previous year on Capitol, he’d begun a personal friendship and professional relationship with producer Artie Kornfeld that led to a major opportunity for him when Kornfeld became one of the promoters for the Woodstock Music and Art Festival of 1969. Bert was included in the line-up, and he in turn included his former roommate and fellow songwriter Tom Feher in his good fortune.

TOM FEHER:

“It was part of my reputation and tradition that I never did what everyone else was doing; I scoffed at trends and fads. But in this case, for some reason I accepted Bert’s invitation to accompany him to Woodstock. And I would say a few magical things happened there to me, personally. First of all, on the way up – like so many others – we found out that the roads were jammed and closed. The night before the official festival opening, we stayed in a motel nearby. In the morning, I found myself at breakfast with Grace Slick, Keith Moon and a number of other rock luminaries.

“We’d gotten the news about the roads, and a helicopter was coming down to fly us in, one small group at a time. While we were waiting out in a field alongside the road, I got to hear the soothing words of Swami Satchidananda, one of the great religious teachers and yoga masters of our time.

“In direct contrast, Tim Hardin was staggering about drunk as a skunk. It was a hot day in August but he was wearing a trench coat in order to be able to carry around bottles of booze in the inside pockets. We waited for quite some time while Tim got ornerier and ornerier. Finally it was our turn to fly. We got into the copter and saw that awesome sight that most people are now familiar with: the packed roads and the festival site from the air.

“We get out of the copter and are ushered into a jeep vehicle that was to take us to the performers’ area behind the stage. On the way, there’s some guy up front ranking out the Grateful Dead. Somehow the subject of their music had come up, and he says ‘They suck. The Dead have always sucked; they’re the worst fuckin’ band in creation. And the worst is Pig Pen… he can’t play for shit.’

“Through the whole ride we couldn’t see the guy’s face; we could only hear his loud insolent voice, and we’re laughing and rolling our eyes at the audacity of this dude. So when we got out of the jeep, I went over to have a look at him. Would you believe? It was Pig Pen himself, taking us for a ride. What a laugh!”

Sommer and Feher spent precious little time together on the first day, as Bert was scheduled to play that evening and stuck close to the fenced-in performers’ area while Feher in wide-eyed amazement set out to wander about in the sea of hundreds of thousands.

FEHER:

“I wanted to see everything. The place reminded me of the farm out in New Jersey where I’d gone to camp for many years in the 1950s; but instead of an occasional cow, the paths of Yasgur’s farm were overflowing with people and noise. I made my way past tents, sleeping bags, pickup trucks and crowds of half-dressed and undressed hippies, girls with babies on their hips, headbands, beads… just like you see in the photos. Looking around for familiar faces the only one I could find was David Peel. He was in Hippie Heaven, this was right up his alley. 

Someone gave me some mescaline and I took it – the last dose of street drugs I ever took in my life. But I must’ve been raving about how I had healing powers because at one point someone ushered me to a facility where they were collecting people who were having bad acid trips. I was asked to talk to a girl who was on the verge of suicide or something. Whatever I did must’ve worked because she calmed down; but I can’t tell you what I said or did – it was the wildest scene ever.

“I think it was on Saturday when I was wandering up on a hill and the rain began to come down. I happened to be near a fairly large tent, so I jumped in for shelter. The tent, it turned out, belonged to David Bromberg who had a collection of guitars with him. For the half-dozen or so of us that jumped into the tent, it was a real treat because Jerry Garcia happened to jump in too, and he and Bromberg proceeded to jam on acoustics for the entire time of the downpour.

“Later that night I was standing in the performers’ area with Joan Padney (now Aupperlee), a great friend of mine and Bert’s since 1965. We look down the hill, and there’s Pete Townshend sitting by himself in a jeep, looking bored or maybe contemplating the Who’s upcoming set, who knows. Joan says to me, ‘Oh my God, Tommy, there’s Pete Townshend, I can’t believe we’re standing this close to him.’ I could see that star struck look in her eyes, so I said ‘Well, go over and talk to him,’ and she says ‘Oh no, I could never do that.’

“So I take her by the hand and lead her down to the jeep and I say something like ‘Hi, Pete,’ – you know, like I’ve known him all my life – ‘this is my friend Joan and she loves your music.’ He says hi – I mean who wouldn’t want to talk to Joanie – and I walk away leaving them there. To this day I have no idea what they talked about, but Joan got to meet one of her idols.

“Still later that same night, there were a bunch of us around a campfire – including Joan Baez and Danny Fields and some others I don’t recall. But we’re talking social situations and politics of some kind, and I was all fired up with responsibility. At this point there at Woodstock I was looking around at this beautiful farm trashed and filled with drugged up people, and I’m thinking we’re always out for freedom, freedom, freedom; but it means nothing if that freedom isn’t balanced by responsibility – like to clean up this mess we’re making here.”

“So I’m voicing my opinions at this little campfire conference, and Danny Fields says to me, “Tom, you should run for president.” We all laughed, but when I got back to the city, I sat down and wrote a song called ‘Make Me Your President.”

The chorus of Feher’s song:

“Make me your president; make me your president;

I’ll set a precedent for everyone here.

Make me your president and I’ll be your heaven sent

Crazy chief executive of the United States of Hair.”

Bert Sommer, meanwhile, was making another kind of history, as described by Victor Kahn. Victor had met Bert in New York City on the Central Park Hill around the Bethesda Fountain on a Sunday afternoon in 1968. Victor was in the graphic arts end of the music business and working at the time for Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, doing their album packaging for Let it Bleed. Victor Kahn and Bert Sommer became lifelong friends.

VICTOR KAHN:

“When we first crossed paths Bert was sitting around on the grass and singing with his guitar to a bunch of New York street hippies. I stopped and listened for a while. I was caught that day by his tremendous power, presence and the sweetness in his voice. We sat and talked for hours and I realized he was quite the star, although not yet what the pop world called ‘famous.’ 

Victor was on hand for Bert’s Woodstock appearance, and went to congratulate him backstage after the set. Victor describes Bert’s performance.

KAHN:

“It was around 8:00 pm and just before sunset on Day One, Friday August 15th, when the chance of a lifetime came for Bert. The rain hadn’t started to mist on the crowd yet. The mood was still mellow and the timing was perfect. Woodstock’s producer Artie Kornfeld couldn’t even watch his young twenty year old star set up, he was so nervous... this was too personal for him. He had signed Bert to Capitol and directed Bert’s musical career almost from the very beginning and finally Bert was getting his first real taste of major concert exposure in front of close to a half a million people! 

 

“Bert’s first album, The Road to Travel had been out a few months and they were in the studio recording his second album Inside Bert Sommer on Artie’s new indie record label Eleuthera Records. The choice of songs to perform at Woodstock was difficult to say the least. Artie wanted some new material that would capture the attention of the Woodstock feeling.

“Bert was thinking of opening with something off the first album called ‘Jennifer’ – a song about love and emotional attachment. This was the ‘fantasy song’ he had written about Jennifer Warnes who was in the LA cast of HAIR with him and who also appeared as a regular on The Smothers Brothers hit TV show.” 

Victor had just completed an album cover for Jennifer Warnes on London Records (Parrot label) and used Bert’s song lyrics about her on the back cover of that new release. 

(Jennifer’s recording career was slow in taking off, but in 1977 she hit the Top Ten with “Right Time of The Night,” and followed in 1982 and 1987 with two monster duets: “Up Where We Belong” with Joe Cocker [#1 for 3 weeks, platinum single] and “The Time Of My Life” with Bill Medley [#1 for 1 week, gold single] ).

KAHN:

“Bert could have done any songs he wanted and for as long as he wanted... he had put together an incredible hour long set with studio musician Ira Stone on electric guitars, Hammond organ and harmonica. Charlie Bilello is on bass in this performance that has been ‘lost’ for over 35 years. Despite many inaccurate printed reports and song set lists that have Bert only performing ‘Jennifer’ and ‘America’ at Woodstock,  the actual ten song set sequence was: Jennifer / The Road To Travel / I Wondered Where You’d Be / She’s Gone / Things Are Going My Way / And When It's Over / Jeanette / America / A Note That Read / and Smile.”

IRA STONE:

“In 1969 I answered an ad in the Village Voice newspaper. They were looking for a guitar player to work with a Capitol Records recording artist. I had seen Bert around because he wrote a few tunes for the Vagrants, Leslie West’s band before ‘Mountain.’ Leslie and I were friends, played guitar together and hung out back then. Bert met with us (my wife Maxine and I) before he had to go play ‘Woof’ in HAIR. We both took our guitars out and started to tune down to open ‘D’ at the exact same time. 

“That was a magic moment because not many guitar players were using an open D tuning at that time. We then played ‘Jennifer’ from his first album. Little did I know that our very first gig would be at the Woodstock Festival and we’d open with that song! We arrived in upstate New York on Thursday and hung out until Friday when we had to get to the festival site. The caravan of cars that we were in got caught in the traffic gridlock so we had to wait in a big field for a helicopter to fly us over the hill to the stage area. 

“None of us realized the scope of this event until the chopper cleared the hillside. Then we were in awe! All we saw were hundreds of thousands of undulating colors. So many people; it was a sight that I will never forget! We went on stage and played a full ten song set. The eighth song into the set, we did that cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’ and got the only standing ovation of the Festival.

“Looking into Bert’s eyes and hearing the roar of that huge audience... WOW!  We finished our set and were totally blown away. All of us were unaware at that time what this concert would later become: the spirit of a generation... the Woodstock Generation!”

More details and photos of Bert Sommer’s Woodstock appearance, as well as his life and career can be found on the tribute website ( HYPERLINK "http://www.bertsommer.com" \t "_blank" www.bertsommer.com) created by Victor Kahn after Sommer’s death in 1990. A 2009 article by Jim Fusilli in The Wall Street Journal, referred to Bert as “Woodstock’s Forgotten Man;” but he is well remembered by everyone whose lives he touched with his music and his unique personality. 

For Tom Feher there remained yet one memorable Woodstock moment that has to be one of the great untold stories in the history of rock music. It happened in the early hours of Monday morning.

TOM FEHER:

“I was wandering around in the area behind the stage for God knows what reason, when Hendrix walked over, on his way to the stage for his legendary performance. Now, I knew Jimi in a very casual way that many musician members of our generation did. You would meet somewhere and say ‘hey, man,’ pass on some street news and then meet again a year later and say ‘what’s happening, man?’ in passing – in recognition, you know what I mean.

“I’d first met him when he was playing as ‘Jimmy James and the Blue Flame’ at the Café Wha? A female admirer had bought him his first left-handed Strat and he’d put it in the coat room when he went out on a break. When he came back for the next set, he found out that the guitar had been stolen from the coat room. I was standing upstairs outside the club when he came running up, told me about the theft and asked if I’d seen anything. I hadn’t. And right there out on the street he broke down and cried over that guitar. What a loss! He was devastated.

“Next time I actually spoke to him was in the men’s room at Steve Paul’s The Scene. He was snorting coke in there, not a very musical experience. But I have to tell you something else. That same night, I saw Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison at the bar down there. Just think about it: three musical legends, all to be gone within three years or so from that night, all together in the same club. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back, it’s kind of spooky. Ha-ha! Probably a hallucination.

“At any rate, here comes Jimi on his way to the Woodstock stage elevator, and I’m all wrapped up in this new concept of responsibility. And I flashed to the picture of him in the men’s room at The Scene. So I went up to him and I said, ‘Hey man – there’s an awful lot of people up there. Say something meaningful to them to help them live better lives; don’t go up like a crazed coke fiend.’ I couldn’t get that picture of him in the men’s room at The Scene out of my mind.

“It happened that Artie Kornfeld was also nearby, maybe to accompany him to the stage. And Jimi, doing his best to ignore me says to Artie: ‘Artie, please do something about this, I’m too high to handle it.’ So Artie takes me by the arm and says something like ‘Tom, come with me into the management trailer for a while,’ and that’s the end of that. But to this day I consider that something very significant happened right there – a parting in my own world of my past life and my future life of growing responsibility, and maybe the same crossroads for an entire generation.”

“About one month later I saw Jimi for the last time. The Hit Factory had moved over to West Fifty-Fourth Street, and I went over – maybe on the invitation of Ragovoy or someone that wanted to show me the set-up. I get there, and Hendrix is in the control room mixing something. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention to the music because what struck me immediately was that he had a drug-dealer type on either side of him talking in his ear with opinions on the mix.

“I look at him and he’s half-alive, drugged-out and I guess this was becoming more evident to me because I was no longer a drug user. But I couldn’t help thinking to myself, man, this guy is on the way out; he hasn’t got long to live. Unfortunately I was right.”

Late in 1969, Feher once again received assistance from friends in the Left Banke circle. Rachel Elkind allowed him use of the TEMPI recording studio established in the wake of the success of Switched-On Bach. He came out with a simple but high-quality recording of seven of his songs. Following the advices and connections of his friend Bert Sommer, he was later able to pitch his songs to several publishers.

DREGS

Near year’s end, The Left Banke took one more stab at logging a hit, when producer Tommy Kaye (Thomas Jefferson Kaye) took an interest and recorded with Brown and Martin at Elephant 5 studio. Kaye had a track record that included production of “Soldier Boy” for the Shirelles, “96 Tears” for Question Mark and the Mysterians (both #1 platinum singles), and the Triumvirate album for John Hammond Jr., Mike Bloomfield and Dr. John.

JERRY HAWKINS:

“Elephant Five used to be Skitch Henderson’s studio and the Best of Friends did some demos there back in the day. The sound was pretty good for a four track and Tommy Kaye was the engineer. The studio was having a gangster transition about that time. Our demos out of there got us a live audition with Laurie and Eliot Greenburg became our producer when we signed with them.”  

Hawkins’ group The Best of Friends had one single released in 1968 on Laurie: “You Aught To See My Love Today” backed with “Feel Pink.” Jerry Hawkins and David Paul “The Whip” Wesley joined forces with Feher in 1969 to form a trio, “No Regard.”

HAWKINS:

“The Whip had nowhere to live when we got back from ‘awesomeland’ (editor’s note: Los Angeles) and wound up stayin’ there while I was slummin’ it at Armel’s, the hospital, Montana, Cali and where ever. Around this time Feher and I were hanging out quite a bit. The Banke was kind of dissolving I guess, and the Whip says, ‘Come on over and back up the Movers.’ I was thinking: the Movers backed up Pickett and now here’s us backing up Pickett’s back-up. Other than that, we recorded nothing up there.  We did have some great rehearsals and we most certainly had NO REGARD!!  Around that time I remember Feher and me dancing in Washington Square Park and some guy takes our picture and it winds up on the cover of the Village Voice.”  

TOM FEHER:

“Elephant 5 was over on the East Side, Fifty-Fifth Street I think. It was in a townhouse owned by a gangster, at least that’s what the Whip told me. He was working for the gangster, a guy named Mickey, as a sort of all-around houseboy/errand boy in exchange for a roof, a bed and all the drugs he could eat. This was when we had the No Regard trio, and we did some background vocals up there for Curtis Pope and the Midnight Movers on their recording of the Paul McCartney tune ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road.’

“Curtis has some reputation – you oughta google him some time. The Midnight Movers were backing Wilson Pickett in concert if memory serves; I remember also laying on the floor of the studio during recording with my head inside the big open bass drum, to get the full effect of the kick pedal. Heavy duty! Tommy Kaye was the main engineer/producer up there, and I think he did the production on the Midnight Movers as well as the Steve Martin sessions. They cut ‘Myrah,’ ‘Pedestal,’ ‘Foggy Waterfall’ and the Stones’ ‘Salt of the Earth’ with Steve.”

TOM FINN:

“This session, which pairs the two so-called big guns of The Left Banke, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I mean, these recordings were approved by Charlie Fach. I don’t know where they found Tommy Kaye and Elephant Five Productions. But these sessions I believe were the very last that were condoned by Smash/Mercury.  Now here’s what’s so revealing: this was what Brown always wanted, right? This was Brown and Martin… at last they were alone to create their masterpieces. Well… what the fuck happened? This was the worst sounding shit ever, this really sucked. Compared to Left Banke Too, this was an abortion. Left Banke Too was a good album, although somewhat misguided by a group of inexperienced recording artists; we did damn good compared to that fucking bullshit. 

“You should hear, ‘Goodbye Holly’ and ‘Bryant Hotel’ today. They sound great! Ah yes, the sweet test of time is revealing just how well we all did, without His Royal Highness Michael Brown.” 

“Myrah” backed with “Pedestal” was released in November 1969, marking the final single released as the Left Banke on the Smash label. The following month, the Stones headlined at Altamont and the ‘sixties had come to a close. As for the Left Banke’s initial rise and fall, Tom Finn sums it up in the following manner.

FINN:

“The Left Banke led by Steve Martin-Caro (as focal point) were a bunch of stuck up assholes. This attitude was based upon a ‘we’re better than you’ stance. We’re so special that all we do is stand there, and you fans should be happy we’re even doing that. There was a time when Steve did his best on stage. But then it suddenly stopped. Why? Who knows, maybe it was after Brown left the performing aspect of his involvement; but whatever caused it, there it was – boring as hell. “We were handed the world on a silver platter, and with no managerial or professional guidance proceeded to self destruct. Brown wasn’t as wrong as he is made out to be, to have jumped ship. But therein lies the problem. The main problem was the inability of Steve or Mike to get along. You can’t blame Steve either. There he was, put out on the road with no rehearsals and a bad, bad, bad situation of five guys jammed into a Caddy Limo, driving sometimes eight to fifteen hours only to get to a gig with a fresh local band armed to the teeth with equipment and a super tight show. After that happens, time after time it would knock the crap out of anyone. “So Steve just withdrew into himself and said ‘fuck this!’ And fuck Harry and fuck Brown and fuck Rubott. Okay – occasionally there were some good shows, but the normal thing was horrible. George doing five minute drum solos, doing seventy-five percent cover songs and getting no money afterwards. And there you have it. The earliest shows were better because we hadn’t had the shit knocked out of us yet. But when Brown left, all bets were off.”

Thus, the short-lived career of the Left Banke came to an end… sort of. Time would bring half-hearted resurgences and the individual cast members would find outlets for creativity in other projects. Meanwhile, “Walk Away Renée” would reach classic status, heard in elevators and broadcast in supermarkets and shopping malls throughout the land. And a legend would arise around the group’s legacy despite the self-destructive bent that put an end to their success even before it had begun.

EVERYTHING RETURNS AGAIN

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEFT BANKE

THIRD MOVEMENT:

AFTERMATH

BEYOND THE BANKE

THE SEVENTIES

TOM FINN, SOUND TECHNICIAN

By 1970 the Left Banke of “Walk Away Renée” fame was history. But nothing is ever really over. Some of the principal players went low profile and weren’t heard again for years, only to pop up unexpectedly “out in left field;” others continued to plug on.

The Left Banke as a recording group, and Michael Brown as a writer-producer, had yet to reach the bottom of their respective creative barrels. The seventies would produce what many fans would consider was their finest combined effort ever; and by decade’s end a third album that demonstrated to diehard fans the potential of the trio as an entity apart from Michael Lookofsky/Brown. 

But these releases, excellent though they might be, were issued far from powerful commercial distribution channels, and amid a churning changing industry that seemed to have forgotten the group’s existence. It was time to seek out new sources of income and stability. Bassist/vocalist Tom Finn had married, and in 1970 began a four-year tenure at Bell Sound, one of the premier recording studios in the music industry of New York City. Domenic Sicilia, well-connected manager of Bert Sommer, had called the studio and made an introduction on Finn’s behalf.

TOM FINN:

“I started as a ‘Button Pusher,’ which means assistant engineer. I worked at this full service studio from January 1970 through July of 1974. I learned about setting up sessions, what microphones were the best for certain instruments, how to align recording consoles and tape machines, how to edit audio tape, how to keep track of takes, how to cut acetates, etc. Since Bell Sound was a full services studio, an employee would be exposed to all aspects of recording and mixing. 

“Some artists and producers and tracks I worked with were: Leiber and Stoller, ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ by Roberta Flack, Superfly LP by Curtis Mayfield, ‘Brother Louie’ by Stories, ‘Dueling Banjos’ by Eric Weissberg, Paul Anka, Sam (The Man) Taylor, Van McCoy, Steve Goodman, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, Kiss, Brooklyn Bridge, Kenny Rogers, Bob Dylan, Ringo Star, all Fania Records Latin recordings, Gladys Knight & The Pips, mostly all Buddah / Casablanca records, and Kool & The Gang.”

Finn has a full bag of great studio stories, some of which he is glad to share.

FINN:

  “I remember when Duke Ellington came in and one of the chief engineers, Harry Yarmark, snapped a picture of him. The flashbulb blinded Duke, so he grabbed the camera and hit Harry over the head with the camera. I used to do pirate recording sessions under the nose of the studio’s nasty General Manager. I would set up these big rolling sound dividers and hide the band I was working with behind them, and turn the lights out. So if the boss came in everyone would run behind the dividers. 

“Everyone that worked at Bell kept their mouths shut and looked the other way. One day Alan Klein from ABKCO came in and dropped off all the Rolling Stones original master multi-track tapes and wanted them all copied for safety reasons. He had bought out Andrew Loog Oldham. The problem with the copying was that a certain assistant made the copies and put the copy in the original box and stole all the original tapes for himself. I couldn’t believe that Alan Klein was so dumb, he never even knew about the switcheroo.”

As Tom Finn’s time at Bell Sound stretched out, he became bolder and bolder with his “off the books” sessions. It was quite a trick, keeping the knowledge of his surreptitious activities from General Manager Dave Tieg. On one occasion Finn had studio B all set up with microphones and musicians. He was doing an unpaid-for sneak session, when suddenly the phone rang; the night time receptionist told him that the General Manager was coming up in the elevator. As Finn tells it, he “freaked out” and told everyone to hide behind the big sound barriers in the back of the recording room. He then turned out the lights and pretended he was working doing maintenance in the control room. 

FINN:

“I'm sitting there in the control room of Studio B. Dave had come up to talk to someone else on the second floor, it was late – about ten pm – so he looked in where I was and said ‘Finn what are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’m not here on overtime; I forgot to check the console before I left about two hours earlier. I was just running a few tests.’ 

“‘Finn,’ he says, ‘have you been smoking in here?’ I said, ‘yeah, I didn’t think anybody would be around so I lit up a cigarette.’ He said, ‘Finn I don’t know about you,’ and left. I waited a while after he’d gone, and continued the recording session. Everybody was nervous as hell; they’d almost got caught. I was so nervous my hands were shaking. Margaret might have been with me on that one.”

Finn would bring his wife Margaret into the control room during sessions despite Tieg’s view that “women don’t belong in recording studios;” (conveniently overlooking such women as Carole King, Aretha Franklin and Carol Kaye, one of the most prolific studio bass players in recording history). In order to avoid the General Manager’s eagle eye, Margaret would hide under the console when he was in the studio. Marg (as she now goes by) got to know engineers Eddie Youngblood and Harry Yarmark who informed her in after-session chats that she had very good ears. The engineers taught Marg about the console, and she became drinking buddies with Youngblood. A few years later, when the Finns separated, Eddie Youngblood secured her a job at Musicor studio as a tape editor.

In landing the job at Bell Sound, Tom Finn had managed to keep his hand in the music business. For Tom Feher, 1970 was the beginning of a very busy decade. With the Left Banke he had more or less been in the wings and not in the spotlight. It was now his turn to take center stage, at least on a local basis. Feher had moved to Weehawken, New Jersey, the town of his birth and entered into his first marriage while writing material for his new band – a very short-term affair, but one that would dovetail into other developments.

ROCK AND ROLL BOOT CAMP

FEHER:

“The group that Jerry (the Hawk) and David (the Whip) and I had formed, ‘No Regard,’ was evolving into something else. We’d made one recording at the recently established Record Plant. Somehow or another a guy named Steve Bass came along with the intention of becoming our manager. Hawkins says it was me who brought Bass into the picture but I’ll be damned if I remember how or why I even met the guy.

“Steve Bass had a face like a rat and a bad case of acne. I think he originally came from Arizona with big plans to take over the music industry in New York City. We had all sorts of names for him: Sam Bass (an actual outlaw of the Old West), Bass Hole, Bass-tard and Bass-ackwards. It was probably Bass who decided we would need a lead guitarist and that’s how we met Jerry Mamberg from Yonkers who later became Jake Falsworth and then Jake Hooker.”

JERRY HAWKINS:

“Around this time Feher showed up with the BASS HOLE. Yes, only he was responsible for that. We auditioned for a lead guitarist up there at Smile studio while Armel and Sharon Sperber and the Whip were locked in Armel’s bedroom shootin’ dope and drinkin’ dog urine. That’s how we wound up with the Jerry the Mamasburg and we said, ‘we can’t have two Jerrys in the group so what you wanna be,’ and he says ‘Jake Hooker and I’ll keep a twenty stashed in my boot at all times so I won’t disappoint you boys.’ We picked him ‘cause he was the only one of about a hundred guys that answered the ad that could play Chuck Berry.”

Steve Bass had big plans for the group which they now re-named “Benn Gunn,” after the old pirate in Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Treasure Island. Bass relocated them, along with Feher’s family and the others’ girlfriends up to an old hotel site in the Catskills, just outside the village of Fleischmanns, New York. The idea was that they should have no distractions (other than the women, one imagines), and get down to heavy duty practice to become a very tight performing unit.

TOM FEHER:

“Bass didn’t reckon with the likes of us. He knew we were wild and unpredictable but he didn’t know the lengths to which we would go to demonstrate our disregard for society and all its regulations. He assigned a guy named Jonathan – can’t recall his last name, a former member of the U.S. Marines – to check up on us once a week and give us practice assignments. Jonathan was also a trained musician, so Bass figured he had all bets covered. But after a few weeks of our antics, Jonathan handed in his resignation. Another musical Marine buddy of his, Jerry Peloquin, took over the unenviable position.

“One of my favorite moments was a Saturday when Bass and Peloquin came up together to check out our set in progress and hopefully hear a passable result. That morning we got together in a huddle and said ‘okay, what can we do to twist their minds into little fuckin’ pretzels?’ 

“So here they come into the big main room fresh off the road, and what do they see?  We’re all set up with our amps and instruments, with lipstick and make-up and our girlfriends’ clothes on, including stuffed brassieres, singing the Supremes’ ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ I can assure you, that made ‘em stop and think.

“Remember, this was before the New York Dolls and only slightly after Alice Cooper had made their debut album. After our performance, the Whip decided ‘why waste all that time putting on and wearing makeup for so little effect,’ and he went out to the main road for a while and took up a hitchhiking position, which presumably sucked the brains out of a few of the passing motorists.” 

The time spent in Fleischmanns – about three or four months during the summer of 1970 – was no doubt driving the city boys crazy, and although they managed to stay out of jail, they also managed to pull off numerous shenanigans during their short stay in the Catskills. Bass had rented for them the property of a defunct hotel comprising several buildings, of which the boys and their entourage were limited to the main house. Or so they were told. It appears that the sleepy little community of Fleischmanns was not ready for the likes of Benn Gunn – nor they for it.

JERRY HAWKINS:

“We’re driving around near Woodstock one fine spring day spewing out a cloud of hydrocarbons and various and sundry vile filth similar to 9/11 and this cop pulls us over and says ‘hey boys you got some nerve – don’t you know this is EARTH DAY? What the fuck… why don’t you all just get out of town and get on back to New York City or where ever the hell you from!’ That seemed to be the general consensus when we showed up in town.”

TOM FEHER:

“Bass was giving us a weekly twenty-five dollars apiece as allowance while we were up in Fleischmanns. What the blazing hell are you gonna do with twenty-five bucks? He’d set us up with accounts in the little local bank and once a week we’d go into town, cash our checks and then go buy a heap of supermarket ale and cheap cigars. Don’t ask me what we did for food; I don’t remember eating.

“When we walked through the town, you could see the blinds on some of the houses move. We knew that the old folks behind those blinds were commenting and cursing us for being there; or maybe they thought we were visitors from another planet. The only really cool thing I remember about the town itself was that Hawk and I were walking down the road one day and we found a little country church and no one around. 

“We tried the door, it was open and we went inside where we found a church organ. Turned that thing on and I played a couple of our rock tunes on that thing while we howled away on the lyrics like two werewolves under the full moon.”

After several months, Sergeant Jerry Peloquin also gave up on group discipline and Steve Bass presumably running out of capital, closed shop on what Feher was to call in a song title ‘Rock and Roll Boot Camp.”

JERRY HAWKINS:

“Bass is driving us down to New York City and we’re calling him ‘bass hole;’ so he pulls the van over and says, ‘You guys gotta stop this shit.’ Feher says, ‘I don’t have to stop any kind of shit.’ So Bass says, ‘Get out.’ Feher says, ‘My pleasure,’ grabs his kid and the wife and bids us adios, right there in the middle of the New York State Thruway.” 

The peak of Steve Bass’ participation in the interests of Benn Gunn came when he booked Chuck Berry in Asbury Park and had Benn Gunn open for Chuck. The gig also included, as most Chuck Berry gigs did, that the local band would back him up when he did his set.

FEHER:

“Now this was in the days well before Bruce Springsteen came to prominence, and maybe he hadn’t even played Asbury Park yet; but I’ve seen a video of an interview with him, and apparently he had much the same experience with Chuck as we did in 1970. The place we were playing in, I forget the name, was a converted airplane hangar – big old space. I don’t recall how many people they got in there, maybe fifteen hundred, maybe less. Anyway we do our set and it’s time for Chuck to play and he’s nowhere to be found. I would’ve thought Bass to be nervous, but maybe he’d dealt with the Chuckster before. It’s like one minute to start time and Chuck shows up with a blonde and a briefcase.

“He gives instructions to fill up the briefcase with the remainder of his fee and comes backstage to tune up. I ask him, ‘what tunes are we gonna play? Can we do a little run-through?’ He says bluntly, ‘I’m Chuck Berry – you know my songs.’ Then he shows me a set list. Songs are in A flat and E flat, keys I almost never got used to on the piano. I said to Chuck. ‘Look, if you want me to just hold the chords down, I can play in these keys; but if you want me to rock – how about doing a few in A or E.’

“Well, he did a slim few in keys like A, and E and I thought I’d won a major contest there. I have to say I was thrilled to be playing behind one of my childhood heroes; but the cat was rather aloof from everything except his own concerns. He comes off a lot better in his autobiography than he did backstage.”

JERRY HAWKINS:

“I remember the Chuck well. I think he got his dope that night from the same guy I did and the Whip was pissed ‘cause he had none – so he went out into the parking lot and started smashing everyone’s headlights with his drum sticks. Chuck also didn’t care for my unconventional bass playing and the fact that I ‘didn’t take direction too well’ as we say in the business, my excuse being that about the only songs I knew how to play were written by either some guy named Feher or by some miscreant named Hawkins…”

Heading into 1971, with Benn Gunn’s short life now at an end, Tom Feher “did the singer-songwriter thing” and played around town in various clubs and locations. Once again, thanks to the assistance of his good friend Bert Sommer, Feher had an opportunity to make some music business connections.

TOM FEHER:

“I swear, sometimes I thought that Bert knew everyone that made anything happen in the New York City record business. After Benn Gunn went down the tubes, he introduced me to Ron Dante, who at the time had a reputation like being the mystery guest on What’s My Line? I mean, he was a real mystery man.”

Today, it’s well-known that Dante was the voice of the Archies (along with Andy Kim and Toni Wine) on “Sugar, Sugar” which was number One for four weeks in ’69 – a platinum single. Ronnie Dante in turn introduced Feher to John Walsh, a record producer who’d scored a Top Ten hit – also in ’69 – with ‘Tracy’ by The Cuff Links, ( a ‘group’ that also just happened to be Ron Dante incognito).

FEHER:

“John was interested in making a record with me and took me up to Scepter Records recording studio where we cut two songs. The first was my auto-biographical account of life in Fleischmann’s, called ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Boot Camp.’ The other – more promising commercially I thought – was called ‘Doo-Doo-Doo,’ an idea I copped off an Otis Redding song called ‘Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa.’ But the Big O’s tune was subtitled ‘Sad Song;’ but mine was in the other direction… really happy.

“For whatever reason, the record was never completed. We did basic tracks that sounded really good and I laid my vocals down, also good… but as I recall, Walsh ran out of dough to complete what we call ‘sweetening:’ adding orchestral instruments to fill out the arrangement.

“I’m sure John wanted to get some horns on ‘Doo-Doo-Doo,’ and who knows what else. I guess he’d spent all his ‘Tracy’ money and had to hock his cuff links (ha-ha) to keep his rent paid. But I can tell you it was a thrill for me to be in Florence Greenberg’s digs. I sure knew of the Scepter/Wand reputation. I’d been a big fan of The Shirelles, Chuck Jackson and the Isley Brothers.”

Scepter, formed by Florence Greenberg in 1959, had also been home to Dionne Warwick and B.J. Thomas; Wand, the Scepter subsidiary established in 1961 held the Number Two position for six weeks in 1963 with The Kingsmen’s now legendary recording of Richard Berry’s “Louie, Louie.”

On Feher’s Scepter session, the lead guitar role was performed by none other than his Left Banke buddy Tom Finn. In the reception room, Finn noticed a lady that looked very much like Dionne Warwick, but without fancy clothes or stage make-up. On taking a closer look, he realized it was… Dionne Warwick.

While these none-too-lucrative business dealings were going on, the Feher family was scrambling about with no real home and Feher’s wife was about to give birth.

TIME PASSAGES… AND ICE CREAM

In 1969 Tom Finn had met Julia Creasy at Vanguard Recording Studios on West 23rd Street near the Chelsea Hotel. Creasy, who was in artist management at the time, gave him a few albums by British singer-songwriter Al Stewart. Finn enjoyed the albums.  

TOM FINN:

“He wrote like a true poet, very British sounding folk music. I liked it but I told Julia, ‘He really needs to learn how to write a hit record.’ Julia said ‘Al is playing at The Bitter End in a few days,’ so I first met up with him and invited him over to our apartment. I tried to tell him that his music was great, but not commercial. He listened, smiled and understood what I was saying, but said that he’d get there someday. I think I pointed out that Donovan was able to crossover and play folk ballads and still rock out. 

“He told me he had a group before he went solo and Jimmy Page was his guitar player. So I shut up and listened: I knew I was outclassed. I went to see him at The Bitter End where he met up with Jerry Weintraub, a big-time manager who was interested in representing him. I now started to realize very quickly that Al was going places. I think, we hung out for a few days and I showed him around town and took him to a few clubs and hangouts. Then he took off back to London.”

A few months later Finn, his wife Margaret, George Cameron and his wife Linda Hills went to England to visit Julia and to take a European vacation for about seven weeks. While they were in London, they stopped by Julia’s office on Goodge Street. 

FINN:

“We walked in and some English guy says, ‘Oh, Americans are you?’ I said, ‘How did you know that?’ and he said, ‘Oh, because you’ve got that stoned look about you...’ I looked in the mirror and saw that I had shoulder length long hair, the Hoost (George Cameron) looked pretty disheveled also – and I got the point: Englishmen at that time had their hair styled and coiffed at a hairdresser’s shop. But we Americans were into that sloppy sort of Neil Young and California grungy look.

“We weren’t at Julia’s office for very long when Al Stewart came bouncing in. He invited me to come to see him perform at a very famous club in London called Cousin’s. I had brought my guitar with me overseas, to try and sell it. 

“When I got to Cousin’s I had my Gibson Hummingbird with me. The club was packed when Al took the stage and said, ‘I’d like to invite my friend from New York City, Tom Finn to join me on stage to sit in on lead guitar. You all know what became of my last guitarist Jimmy Page, right? Please welcome Tom Finn.’

“Needless to say I was paralyzed with fear, but he went into a tune of his called ‘My Enemies Have Sweet Voices, Their Tones Are Soft And Kind; When I Hear My Heart Rejoices, I Do Not Seem To Mind.’ Long title, huh? But I knew the tune pretty well, so I just played some lead riffs and I got down to business. The British audience liked me. The next day I sold my guitar for a very, very nice price and off we went. Next stop was a week in the British countryside at Julia’s friend’s house. Then we were off to Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands. Wow! We really dug that place.” 

As Marg Finn tells it, 1971 was a good year for ice cream. What did the Finns do? In July of 1971 they opened the Big Brother ice cream parlor on Eighty-Sixth Street at Central Park West, on the ground floor of a luxury rental twelve-story building, the Orwell House.

BELLA (Friend of the Finns):

“Big Brother began when Margaret worked as a real estate agent and met a lawyer by the name of Simon Haberman. He owned a lot of buildings in Manhattan, including the building on Central Park West and Eighty-Sixth Street he named the Orwell House. I was going through a transitional period and was staying with the Finns until I could find a job and an apartment. I slept in the living room with George’s drum set.  

“At some point, Bert’s wife Karen left him, and I shared the living room with her and her baby. I went to work in Haberman’s law and building management office and eventually moved into a building he owned on Riverside Drive. Haberman hired Margaret to rent the apartments in the newly renovated Orwell House.”

When Margaret’s job there was completed, and all the apartments were rented, Haberman told her he wanted to open an ice cream parlor in the commercial space. Since the building was named Orwell House, he would call it Big Brother in reference to George Orwell (author of the novel 1984). Margaret told him she wanted to manage the ice cream parlor with Tom, and Haberman agreed to her terms. The ice cream parlor would also include a performance stage for acoustic music.

TOM FINN:

“Although Steve, George and I never performed there as a group, we did paint a nine room apartment in the Orwell House – an offer we couldn’t refuse – thanks to Margaret’s connections. None of us knew the first thing about painting, so we ended up doing ten coats of paint or something equally ridiculous. What we should have done is use a coat or two of primer, because the walls were basically all sheetrock. “I can still see the three of us sprawled out on the rolls of new carpeting, exhausted and unconscious. I recall the landlord paying us a thousand dollars to paint it. But after we finished I think he had to have some Mexicans redo the job.”

BELLA:

“Tom and Margaret told me about the ice cream parlor and wanted me to work with them. I agreed to work with them immediately and was very excited about the project. 

Karen drew a giant mural on the wall that we all helped paint.  Big Brother went over very well with the public. We had a lot of regular daytime and evening customers. 

Sometimes people were a bit confused about what was going on in the back room with the stage because they were expecting to walk into a place where they would just be buying an ice cream cone.”  

TOM FINN:

“We served Abbott’s ice cream, their deluxe brand; we had a flavor called Rum Raisin. At Big Brother there were regular performances by singer songwriters. Scott Fagan and Vicki Sue Robinson played as a duet and very good. Bert played an acoustic solo set. Livingston Taylor played there; I played as a backing acoustic guitarist for some of the acts. We had a play performed there, called The Way.” 

BELLA:

“We once had a fashion show that was covered by Geraldo Rivera on the evening news of a TV station, so Big Brother made the TV news. We had a blast at Big Brother while it lasted. Every night was a party, even after closing time.”

TOM FINN:

“Along with us having the keys to the ice cream parlor, we also had the use of an empty apartment upstairs. I was a faithful husband: if I told you of the hot chicks I could have banged, you’d die. Man I was walking around with an eternal boner! There was this one super hot chick that Margaret hired to open up Big Brother early in the morning. I had to meet her there at say ten o’clock to open the door and help her mop and prepare for a twelve noon opening. 

“This chick had the nicest tits and ass I had ever seen. So, just to thank Margaret for the job, this girl says to me ‘Why don’t you and I go upstairs to the apartment and fuck? I’ll give you a great blow job too.’ Whew! I felt like Jackie Gleason… I said ‘hum-a-hum-a-hum-a-hum – I uh! I uh! uh! uh! I really c-c-c-can’t do it. M-m-m-m-Margaret might show up early. Now, this girl was a fuckin’ newlywed. And there were others too. Margaret always hired chicks that were hot and horny.”

ALAN MERRILL:

 “On vacation in New York from my work in Japan I went to Big Brother with Jake Hooker, specifically to see Tom Feher perform there. I requested ‘I Have Been Searching’ just to hear his composer’s version; Tom complied and did a great rendition. 

“He included ‘oh yeahs’ that Steve (Martin Caro) hadn’t sung on the acetate I had… ‘love me and I’ll make you mine, oh yeah!’ three times repeated at the end; It was great.

After the show we talked and Tom looked at me and said, ‘you’re not Sachs, I know Sachs!’ Guess I had changed a lot in a few years.”

TOM FEHER:

 “What I remember most vividly about performing at Big Brother was an unfortunate incident with Bert. I sang that song I’d written about and for him, about his drug addiction; I looked him straight in the eye while singing these lyrics:

‘Look around – take a look at your son;

Can’t you see what this madness has done?

Think ahead, when he finally knows

Of your life and the road that you chose.

Is this what you want him to learn

When he becomes a man?

If only I could make you understand.’

“Bert was furious with me… took me aside and said something like how could I hang out his dirty laundry in public, embarrass him in front of his friends. But that was my way – I was as up front as he was, about most things. It was around that time our friendship really began to crumble.”

CROSSING THE LINE (OF DECENCY)

In 1971 Tom Feher was busy dirtying his own laundry. The previous year, Sommer had gotten him involved in a softball game in Central Park pitting the cast of Hair against the staff of Screw magazine. As the Hair team outnumbered the mag’s players, Feher was sent over to the Screw team and became friends with one of the writers.

TOM FEHER:

“His name was Dean… I don’t recall his last name. I don’t recall who won the game either, but I know I got one or two key hits against my friends from the cast of Hair. All this high profile sex with The Telephone Book and now Screw magazine had got my songwriter machinery crankin’, you know? By the time I made the demo at TEMPI, I had written an outrageous thing called ‘New York City Suck Ass Blues,’ and later I added in a tune called ‘Obscene Call.’ I was finding the subject of raunch sex a fertile field for my creative impulses.

“Now just let me set the scene for what happened next on this line. After returning from ‘rock ‘n’ roll boot camp,’ and after my first son was born my mother-in-law got our little family situated in an apartment in Union City New Jersey at a rent of – get this – forty dollars a month. It was a railroad flat over a grocery store with no shower – a place that had been formerly rented out by her boyfriend and his bookie buddies just to keep a telephone and some kitchen furniture to run a numbers racket.

“I had been crossing my fingers that I would get a record deal off the Scepter recordings; but it didn’t happen and I was blaming it all on John Walsh. We were piss-poor and finally I took somebody’s advice and went down to apply for welfare. It was the most degrading experience I’ve ever had in my life.”

Fortunately, the welfare office had a branch that sought employment opportunities for those on the welfare rolls, and Feher obtained a job almost immediately, working in Manhattan for a company called PRP – Public Relations Productions. It was a photostat house and print shop in the days before the Kinko’s type of chains came into being. Tom had been hired as a messenger, taking stats and such back and forth between PRP and the art departments of advertising agencies, mostly on the East Side of Upper Manhattan.”

With his long hair halfway down his back dyed black like his hero Conan the Barbarian, Feher would bring his guitar to work and became an instant celebrity as his co-workers joined in to sing his sex-themed rock songs.

FEHER:

“The guys were from the boroughs, you know? Brooklyn, Queens… they’d grown up rough and tough in neighborhoods similar to mine and street talk was a way of life for them. I might not have gone over so well in the main office of PRP; but at the stat house I was King of the Hill. The shop was located one floor above street level right across from Bloomingdale’s. Some of the most sophisticated and gorgeous girls in all of New York got in and out of cabs there and walked into Bloomingdale’s and the nearby shops.

“We had these ceiling-high swivel windows that allowed you to stick your head and body out of the building, and every spare moment, our guys would lean out of the windows and pitch wolf whistles and comments at the ladies. Joe, the shop foreman, was especially fond of redheads, and when one walked by he would yell ‘Hey! Red!’ It wasn’t too long before I was whipping out my guitar and finding a way to put this stuff to music.

“‘Hey! Red!’ was one of the first. The chorus became ‘Hey! Red! Gimme head. My balls are hangin’ like a bucket-a-lead.” I wrote so many of these – ‘New York City Wimmin,’ (“There’s pussy, pussy everywhere, but ya never get a bite to eat”) ‘Flat-Chested Girl,’ ‘Anal Intercourse,’ that before long I had a repertoire referred to as ‘The Dirty Dozen.’ On weekends I’d go out on the street, down in the Village and up in Central Park, and I’d sing my songs to anyone who was stupid enough to listen. One day I was out there offending anyone I could, and this guy Dean, who remembered me from the Hair vs. Screw softball game came by and started shooting pictures.

“Next, he tells me he wants to interview me and do a story for Screw on ‘The Dirty Dozen.’ Well that was just fine with me. You gotta understand, though, that this was all a big laugh as far as I was concerned; I never thought anyone would take it seriously.”

Dean invited Feher up to the offices of Screw magazine where he was introduced to Screw founder Al Goldstein. Feher was not thrilled with the pseudo-celebrity.

FEHER:

“There are no words harsh enough to describe the contempt I felt for this motherfucker. Filthy slimy reeking drooling chauvinist wart inside a pig’s asshole is a compliment as far as Goldstein was concerned. You could sense the moral decay just oozing out of every pore. His office was a squalid sty, and in fact, it was Al Goldstein that inspired me to write my classic poem ‘The Talking Pig’ which I am always delighted to trot out at parties for the entertainment of guests. 

“After the interview with Dean I was only too happy to leave the Screw offices as quickly as possible. On the way out I had my first glimpse of Patti Smith in her torn white t-shirt, and my first whiff of her hairy underarms. What she was doing there, I have no idea, unless she was auditioning for a Screw centerfold.”

It was in fact Tom Feher who was to be awarded “centerfold.” The article, complete with photos of Feher sticking his defiant (but clothed) butt into the camera, covered an entire two-page spread in Screw, and Feher proudly showed off his new “celebrity” to friends and associates. Somehow or another this new ‘career’ and repertoire came to the attention of Wes Farrell. Feher had met Wes once before, through an introduction by either Ron Dante or – who else – Bert Sommer.

Wes Farrell was one of the most successful record business executives ever, in a career that inspired more than three-hundred million in record sales – seventy million with the Partridge Family alone. He was writer or co-writer of “Boys,” recorded by the Shirelles and the Beatles, “Hang on Sloopy” (the McCoys) and “Come A Little Bit Closer” (Jay & the Americans).

To pursue his publishing and production interests, Wes formed the Wes Farrell Organization in 1966 working over the years with artists such as Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, the Rascals, Every Mother’s Son, The Cowsills and The Brooklyn Bridge. 

As a publisher, he was responsible for an incredible string of hits, including  “Candida,” “Knock Three Times” (Tony Orlando and Dawn), “Groovin’,” “How Can I Be Sure,” “People Got To Be Free,” “Lonely Too Long,” and “What A Beautiful Morning” (the Rascals), “Danke Schoen” (Wayne Newton), “Indian Lake” (The Cowsills), “I Like Dreaming” ( Kenny Nolan), and “The Night Chicago Died” (Paper Lace) among others. 

FEHER:

“This is a guy with over a hundred gold records. At the time I met him, he had a mere ten million singles and five million albums sold. True to Feher form, I would come up into his company offices wearing a double holster and brandishing cap pistols which I fired off to the terrified shock of the receptionist and secretaries. This was at a time when the entire New York music business was in a paranoid state because someone – I think it was Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – had climbed on a ledge over at Buddah and threatened to jump off if he didn’t immediately get a cash advance on songwriting royalties.

“It was after that incident that one company put in the bullet-proof glass at reception and to enter the offices you had to have an iron-clad appointment made through an attorney or some other insider. The music biz had once been a relaxed, hand-shake kind of a business. You could walk into a publishing company with a briefcase of your music, sit down at a piano and show your wares. Now, with that paranoia on the rise, the lawyers moved in big time. 

“Meanwhile… Wes Farrell. Nothing came of my office visits particularly, except I was advised to holster the guns. But one night I’m walking with my guitar down on Bleeker Street and this stretch limo pulls up. The door opens and I hear Wes calling, ‘Tom get in for a moment.’

“It turns out that Wes and his business partner Steve Bedell and their wives are going down to the Village Gate to see Elephant’s Memory, a group in which they might already have had stock. The guys had been bragging to their wives about this outrageous songwriter who lets it all hang out… and now here he is walking along the Village street!

“So they sit me down in the limo and have me rattle off one or two tunes. ‘Hey! Red’ was always on the top of any request list. Anyway, the wives are giggling, and these guys are talking, trying to figure out how can they possibly commercialize on this wild shit of mine? I guess they never worked it out. When that was done, we said ‘goodbye’ and I never heard from Wes or Steve again. It took more than ten years for gangsta rap to make graphic sex commercial. I suppose you could say my timing was off… call it premature ejaculation.”

THE BANKE SCORES… ANOTHER GUTTER BALL

Around the time that Feher was letting it all hang out, Finn got together with Steve Martin-Caro to help write a song from a fragmentary idea that the erstwhile Left Banke lead vocalist had a notion to perform. Tom Finn gives us an insight to the songwriting process that evolved between himself and Martin-Caro without the presence of Mike Brown. In a certain sense it harks back to Feher’s description of his own collaborations with the Left Banke keyboardist. 

TOM FINN:

“Let me just say that trying to interpret a Steve Martin-Caro lyric isn’t the easiest thing to do. I sang this song with Steve and George at least a few hundred times. The lyrics that I wrote – mostly after the first verse – had to show some hope. But I think this is a case where the lyrics had to be brought forth like sculpture. I kept chipping away, chipping away until it sounded like it made sense. 

“Like, ‘Now is only the beginning. Try, you could only come up winning girl… to be worthy of living in this world of tears. You’ve tried living with the pain…’

“Steve would come up with an initial lyric and melody, then I would pick it up from there and finish it myself or, as in this case, Steve would occasionally interject a lyric here and there. I would say that Steve and I were fifty-fifty writers on the song. George somehow wormed his way into a one third share of the writing. He actually wrote nothing. George felt that his presence there was enough to grant him an equal share.”

The song when completed was titled ‘You Say’ and was demoed in 1972 with the assistance of Michael Kamen. Kamen, whose personal star had yet to rise, was at that time known primarily as a member of the New York Rock Ensemble, who’d released several albums, on Atlantic and later Columbia to minimal sales.

Proficient on both oboe and keyboards, he later went on to work as an orchestral arranger with Pink Floyd, Queen, Eric Clapton, Roger Daltrey and countless others, as well as launching a highly successful career composing musical scores for films and television. It was characteristic of Tom Finn to seek out and work with the best available musicians, and long before Michael Kamen was a major name to be reckoned with, Finn had secured his talents as pianist for the “You Say” demo recording.

FINN:

“‘You Say’ was written when Michael Brown left the group. We needed a piano player, so I got in touch with Michael Kamen and asked him to be in our group. He took us into The Hit Factory recording studio and we recorded ‘You Say’ as a demo. It came out great. It was recorded using only Steve, George, Michael Kamen and myself. And it’s so much better than the version that got thrown on our Strangers On A Train album (recorded in 1977-78). We didn’t even play on that one, it’s not very good. 

YOU SAY

Words and music by Tom Finn & Steve Martin-Caro

You say you’ve seen all the suffering;

You say you’ve seen all the pain;

You think there’s no one near you can talk to;

You say no one’s cried but you.

But still you look to find that someone who’ll make you feel better,

And you hope to find that someone will make you feel right

But still, reflections of a broken past

Remain to find their way at last.

Let memories fill your nicest dreams,

Forget the world and how it seems.

Still, you remain  so far away.

Now is only the beginning;

Try – you could only come up winning, girl,

To be worthy of living in this world of tears…

You try living with the pain.

FINN:

“I figured I had better get us out of the USA, because Steve and George were getting into trouble with all the parasites and wannabes buying them booze and drugs. I thought if we lived in London we’d be far away from those bad influences. So I sent the demo to the UK and it received immediate favorable attention. The UK people wanted to hook us up with Columbia Records here in the USA to get the ball rolling, so I set up the meeting. We went up there to see the head of A&R; I think the guy’s name was Don Cherry.  “He basically said, ‘We love your sound and we want to help you develop the band.’ At this point, Steve got very rude, and started insulting people and acting like he didn’t want to be there. He was cursing at the secretaries. It was like a nightmare; needless to say, that was the end of that dream. Because of that, we lost our momentum and Michael Kamen too. Kamen went on to become a superstar producer, arranger and writer, collaborating with Pink Floyd on The Wall amongst many other giant successes.” 

BUDDAH YEARS / THE LEFT BANKE’S FINEST COLLABORATION

In the early 1970s, members of the Left Banke circle of friends and associates would find themselves afforded a number of recording opportunities by virtue of their connections to Buddah Records. An unofficial Left Banke “reunion” took place when Martin-Caro, Cameron and Finn joined Mike Brown in the recording of two new Brown compositions, “Two by Two” and “Love Songs in the Night.”

TOM FINN:

“Steve hated singing, ‘Love Songs In The Night.’ The part that really ticked him off was the octave jump on the verses: ‘Right here,’ etc. He thought it was a ridiculous melody and he was really angry about it. 

“He was screaming at Brown saying ‘What do you want to do, make a fool out of me?’ Eventually he sang it; but you see this is exactly the thing that’s at the center of what Left Banke critics fail to understand. And that is: as a group we never kissed Brown’s ass. If we liked, or didn’t like something that Brown presented to us we would tell him about it.”

These recordings were produced at the Eventide Studio, located on West Fifty-Fourth Street, directly across the street from what would become Studio 54. Rick Factor – who one may recall as one of the trio that “remodeled” the World United Studio in the wake of “Walk Away Renee’s” chart success – engineered the date.  

The tracks featured Mike Brown on piano, Tom Finn on acoustic guitar and bass, George Cameron on drums and union man Hugh McCracken on electric lead guitar. Although obviously a complete re-united group effort including the trademark harmonies and the Mike Brown songwriting signature, the songs when released were credited to Steve Martin as a solo artist.

(Note: in years to come, the name Steve Martin would become firmly fixed in the public mind with that of the banjo-playing comedic actor; as a result, Steve’s birth name of “Caro” has been appended to his last name to avoid confusion and make a distinction between the two.)

Not only was it a united effort – “Two by Two” and “Love Songs in the Night” are considered by fans to this day to represent the peak of musical and lyrical creativity by the original combination of Finn, Cameron, Martin and Brown.

FINN:

“Everything on the basic track session went very smoothly: no mistakes and no out of tune harmonies, although I did three voices to George’s one note harmony line. Again, Brown blew it. He had a chance to rekindle our relationship. The group played their instruments; there was a good feeling in the room and we knocked off the two songs in about three hours. But instead, he put Steve Martin’s name on the record because Domenic thought the name Left Banke was over. There was a second session at The Hit Factory. Hugh McCracken did lead electric guitar on both tracks. After Hugh’s part was done, Michael mixed it.”

The Eventide sessions took place in January of 1971, and a single was released in March of that year on the Buddah label. The “Domenic” referred to by Tom Finn was Domenic Sicilia, Bert Sommer’s manager, and at the time of recording also manager of the new Mike Brown outing, a group called “Stories.” Sicilia apparently had close ties to Buddah for it was he who organized the project entitled Ultra Violet’s Hot Parts, an album of love songs to be used as the soundtrack for a film on the history of the porno industry. The two “Steve Martin” tracks were included on the Hot Parts album, as well as four tracks by Bert Sommer (“Jennifer,” “She’s Just A Girl,” “And When It’s Over,” and “Mama If you’re Able”), two tracks from the Montage album (“Tinsel and Ivy” and “My Love”), and two by Hair alumnus Allan Nicholls. Michael Brown, Bert Sommer and Allan Nicholls were at the time all signed to Dominic Sicilia as manager. 

As far as one can tell, the film and the soundtrack album were both utter bombs. It makes one pause and wonder why such an odd combination of elements was released in the first place. The best one can manage in attempting to explain it is that Sicilia had the proverbial foot in the door; and Buddah, riding high on the charts, could afford to throw away dough on whimsical projects such as the Hot Parts album – it was, after all, a showcase for a number of musical acts that were held to be promising “stars” by common agreement.

Under the captainship of Neil Bogart Buddah was a hot label. They’d had their first number one single in 1968 with Paul Leka’s ‘Green Tambourine’ and followed up with an enviable string of hits: “The Worst That Could Happen” (Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge / #3, 1969); “It’s Your Thing” (The Isley Brothers / #2 million seller, 1969); “Oh Happy Day” (Edwin Hawkins Singers / #4 million seller, 1969); “The Rapper” (The Jaggerz / #2 million seller 1970); “Ain’t No Sunshine” (Bill Withers / #3 million seller, 1971); and many more.

In 1971, Melanie (Safka), whose husband Peter Schekeryk had played a role in the formation of the Left Banke, scored a number one million seller with “Brand New Key.”

In 1972, the year of the Hot Parts album release, Buddah was riding high with a number one (for three weeks) million seller in the form of Bill Wither’s now classic ballad of brotherhood, “Lean On Me.” It has been estimated that in Buddah’s peak period of operation (1969-1973) one of every five releases by the label made the record charts, in contrast to one out of every twenty by other labels. 

Several members of the Left Banke circle found their way easily into this spectrum of success, but with little success of their own. In the wake of the Woodstock Festival, Artie Kornfeld launched his new Eleuthera label with the album Inside Bert Sommer. Artie’s new label was distributed by Buddah.

The album, released in 1970, contained a number of excellent Sommer-penned tunes – “Smile,” “Friends,” “Eleuthera” (about the Caribbean island that inspired the naming of the label), and the cover of Paul Simon’s “America” that had been such a big hit with the 1969 festival crowd. Inside Bert Sommer also featured Bert’s version of “Grand Pianist,” his collaboration with Mike Brown that had previously been recorded by the Montage on Laurie. A single from the album, “We’re All Playing In The Same Band,” made Top Fifty and was performed on the Smothers Brothers TV show.

TOM FEHER:

“We’re All Playing In The Same Band” is an anthem for the sixties and beyond. Bert was totally caught up in the feeling of Woodstock and the sense of community and brotherhood that was demonstrated there. The song was the result of that inspiration.

“When I hear it today, I hear a chorus of kids singing along – it’s a universal message and one of the type most needed to be heard over and over until all the people of the planet wake up and realize that they are traveling one common road into the future. Woodstock was essentially a beautiful dream; unfortunately the dream was tainted with an enormous dose of every kind of drug.”

“As for Bert, he was grossly undervalued as an artist. It was said by some that his high-pitched vocals sounded girlish and that was preventing him from being really successful as a performing artist. I don’t buy that. Having an unusual voice didn’t get in Dylan’s way; as a matter of fact, it was a plus. You have to remember though, that public recognition of Dylan was assisted by a large volume of his songs being recorded by other artists – over 75 covers in 1965 from what I recall. He was first brought to broad public attention when Peter Paul and Mary recorded ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ in 1962 and took it to #2 on the pop charts.

“Bert’s songs too would have sounded great riding on the vocal cords of many other artists; but that never happened for him. Too many publishers who once worked hard for a new songwriter, promoting his catalogue, became lazier and lazier as the years progressed. Today, traditional song publishing has gone the way of the horse and buggy – except maybe in Nashville; I don’t know much about Nashville, but I sure hear a lot of songs performed by artists who don’t write all their own music, coming from there.”

 In 1971 Bert recorded a third album entitled simply Bert Sommer and released on the Buddah label. Along with a new collection of original tunes were included cover versions of the Rascals’ “People Got To Be Free,” Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans,” and the Rogers & Hammerstein classic from South Pacific “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” His own original “People Will Come Together,” continues the brotherhood thread begun at Woodstock and is again, an anthem for all the ages. It seems that around this time, Sommer had become disillusioned with his relationship with Artie Kornfeld and was in the market for management. Mike Brown has stated in an interview that he set up a four song demo session at RCA studios which helped Bert land a management contract with Dominic Sicilia, who would also become the manager of Brown’s next group, Stories.

Michael Brown had been signed to Buddah, also in 1971, as a solo artist – it being label president Neil Bogart’s idea that he (Brown) should record an instrumental album of “classical rock” music. Brown recorded several tracks, but “got stuck,” which one can read “balked.” It’s interesting to note that the idea – classical rock instrumentals – was in the air, and a fairly profitable idea at that, judging from the success of Apollo 100’s “Joy” (#6 / January 1972) and later Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” (#1 / July 1976) deftly employing a disco twist.

But Michael Brown has always considered it crucial to have a vocalist to work with and inspire him, and Buddah was pressing him for more tracks which they weren’t about to receive. As Brown revealed in a 2005 interview, “If I’m connected with a good lyricist it makes it a lot better to proceed.”

The problem was resolved when Michael’s father Harry introduced him to bassist/vocalist Ian Lloyd, the son of one of Harry’s musical contemporaries. Brown now had his collaborator, and it became a lot better to proceed. With guitarist Steve Love and drummer Brian Madey, Brown and Lloyd formed the group Stories and cut a self-titled album for the Buddah-associated Kama Sutra label in 1972.

A single from the album, “I’m Coming Home,” barely missed the Top Forty, charting at #42; the album did not fare well. Stories recorded a second album for the label in 1973, with legendary engineer/producer Eddie Kramer at the controls. It was an extraordinary stroke of good fortune for the group: Kramer, who’d started at Pye studios in Britain in ’64 recording such artists as Petula Clark and the Kinks, went on to work with Traffic, the Small Faces, the Beatles, The Stones and Hendrix.

But that wasn’t good enough for Mike Brown, it seems; he left the group shortly after the release of the album, About Us. Apparently Brown did not care much for Kramer’s method. Additionally, Michael was feeling the strain of being in a band and the ever-looming responsibility of touring to promote the albums, something which he dreaded.

He indicated years later in a broadcast interview with Even Johan Ottersland: “It was hard to relax… there were a lot of pressures… I was passively going along with what was happening because I had to… it wasn’t a happy time.” Nevertheless, he had soldiered through a weeklong series of performances to promote Stories’ first album, opening for Bette Midler (who had yet to release her own first album). According to Jude Lyons, who was employed by Buddah at the time, “I never saw Michael Brown play as well as he did during those shows.”

Following Brown’s departure, the group, in the effort to find a hit, waxed a cover of the Hot Chocolate track “Brother Louie,” propelling them to the #1 spot for two weeks in July of that year and earning them a million selling single. They logged several other chart hits (“Mammy Blue” #50, and “If It Feels Good Do It” #88) before they broke up the following year. As luck would have it, Tom Finn was on the spot to witness the development of Brown’s latest brainchild.

TOM FINN:

“I was working at Bell Sound when Mike Brown came in with Stories to do their first album and also was there when they returned from England where they had recorded the basic tracks to their second album. I was an assistant engineer and was very often assigned to working on the sessions for both albums, so I got to see and experience their entire process. I felt horrible in one sense. After all, I was in The Left Banke and was almost a rock star. And now, I’m setting up microphones and keeping track of their takes on the tape box. It was almost more than I could bear… but bear it I did. 

“I liked what they were doing on their first album. Brown still could write nice melodies and the band did play on all the sessions: no studio men, except for strings. I thought they worked well together and actually overcame my feelings of sadness. 

“When they came back from England to finish off the second album it was a completely different story (no pun intended). They had fired their producer engineer Eddie Kramer who had done most of the basic tracks in London. Mike Brown had a big problem with Kramer and Ian Lloyd and quit the band just before they came back from England and booked Bell Sound to do the rest of the album. They brought a British engineer with them, Keith Harwood and he was very good.” 

Keith Harwood later made his reputation at  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Studios" \o "Olympic Studios" Olympic Studios recording musicians such as  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie" \o "David Bowie" David Bowie, the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Things" \o "Pretty Things" Pretty Things and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Wood" \o "Ron Wood" Ron Wood. He also collaborated on engineering the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stones" \o "Rolling Stones" Rolling Stones albums  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Only_Rock_%27n%27_Roll" \o "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (1974) and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Blue" \o "Black and Blue" Black and Blue (1976) and engineered a number of  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin" \o "Led Zeppelin" Led Zeppelin albums, including  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Graffiti" \o "Physical Graffiti" Physical Graffiti and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presence_(album)" \o "Presence (album)" Presence. At the time of the Stories sessions, having completed work on Zeppelin’s  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houses_of_the_Holy" \o "Houses of the Holy" Houses of the Holy, his star was just beginning to rise.

FINN:

“I was trying to find out what happened to Mike Brown but nobody would tell me. Then I started to get mad because I thought Mike was sick and in a hospital somewhere. I was right: M. Brown had had a nervous breakdown and was in a mental institution. I remember hating Ian Lloyd and some of the band also, because there they were doing Mike’s songs and they couldn’t care less about his welfare. Anyway I somehow found out where he was and went to the institution to visit him. It was like he was a little child who didn’t remember anything about Stories or anything about music.”

It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last instance of Michael Brown’s odd behavior. Meanwhile, the show must go on. While Sommer, Brown and others were riding the Buddah bandwagon, Feher was not left out of the mix; he too was afforded a small opportunity as the empire built on bubble gum grew ever larger. Once again, it was through an introduction by his friend Bert Sommer.

TOM FEHER:

“Bert got me an appointment to meet Neil Bogart – one of the most unusual meetings I’ve ever experienced in the music biz, unless you want to count that episode in Wes Farrell’s limo. The receptionist says go on in, and I enter the main hallway where I find Neil strolling up and down the hall flipping a yo-yo – like making it “walk the dog” – and chewing and blowing bubble gum.

“I guess it was part of his promotional image, having made his main reputation on bubblegum music, to carry on like this; first impressions, you know. Well, in order to have a conversation with him, I have to walk along while he continues this routine. At one point he stops and gets serious. ‘Tom,’ he says, ‘you’ve got a lot of potential. The only thing is, to really do you justice, I’d have to launch a major campaign, and we just can’t afford to do that right now.’ Very tactful – how could you grieve when being turned down by such a silken tongue?

“To me, it sounds like a possible runaround, although he was very believable even to me, the number one skeptic of my generation. ‘But,’ he says, ‘go visit Bob Reno in our publishing department; I’m sure he’d like to make a deal on a few of your tunes.’ That sounded better than nothing to me, so I said goodbye to Neil for the first and last time and went to see Bob Reno. Bob picked up publishing rights to two of the songs I had done in the demo at Rachel Elkind’s TEMPI studio. Consolation prize: a few bucks in my pocket; but nothing more ever came of that.”

Sommer made one more connection for Feher that year – with Hal Fein, who was running E.B. Marks music publishing company, one of the oldest music publishing companies in the business since the days of Tin Pan Alley. Hal picked up one of Tom’s tunes – a nice little ballad called ‘I’ll Be Satisfied,’ – and pushed a few more bucks across the desk. 

As it turned out, nothing ever happened with that tune either, but while up at E.B. Marks Feher got to meet some of the most successful songwriters of the sixties: Charlie Singleton, who’d been the lyricist on ‘Spanish Eyes’ and ‘Strangers In The Night;’ Lincoln Chase, the composer of Shirley Ellis’ ‘The Nitty Gritty’ and ‘The Name Game;’ and the legendary Otis Blackwell who helped put Elvis on the map with ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’ ‘All Shook Up,’ and later ‘Return to Sender.’ Blackwell had also written the rock and roll classics ‘Fever,’ ‘Handy Man’ and ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ Left Banke buddy Alan Merrill covered these three and eight other Otis Blackwell tunes on a 2003 album called Double Shot Rocks – a tribute to Otis and another great songwriter, Arthur Alexander.

FEHER:

“They had a nice little thing going there, with sound-proofed compartments featuring spinet pianos that all had a pencil and writing pad up on the book rack – all ready to go. But that sure wasn’t the life for me. I took my single check for one song and got out of there. Something about it reminded me of a Southern plantation around the time before the Civil War.

“I was giving it a go, trying to be the songwriter who makes the rounds; but somehow or another I guess I didn’t fit into the mold… the ‘big break’ wasn’t forthcoming. However, through the E.B. Marks connection I also met a woman who worked at Polygram Music. I think she was keen on me; but mainly, she introduced me to a guy named Jan Warner, also a songwriter, who was looking for a vocalist to sing on a demo of a song he’d written called ‘Drop Of A Hat.’

“The song required a real balladeer like Sinatra or Tony Bennett and I was very surprised that they would pick a snarling street kid from the Bronx to sing the tune. I didn’t think I could do it; but Jan and whatever-her-name-was coaxed me and encouraged me, and I learned it note for note in repetitive drilling with Jan at the piano giving me the melody. We cut the demo at Ears recording studio, and I was amazed: I actually sounded great – better than I had on any of my own tunes! They must’ve heard something in me that I didn’t even hear myself. The song was in a lower vocal range than my usual, so I didn’t have to strain and could be mellow. 

“I think it was this demo recording that convinced me I could actually be a good vocalist and not have to live forever in the shadow of the Left Banke’s Steve Martin. I know he looked down his nose at me when it came to singing; but now I couldn’t care less. I got paid for the demo, never got signed to Polygram, and to this day I don’t have a copy of that recording of ‘Drop Of A Hat.’”

While Tom Feher was eking out less than a living as a songwriter, he was also appearing in folk clubs with the idea of building a career as a stage performer. His major point of reference was always Greenwich Village, where he landed a gig on a bill with comedian Chris Rush, the group NRBQ, and an upcoming songstress with a great set of pipes, fellow Bronxite Melissa Manchester.

FEHER:

“It’s funny how things progress as life goes on. People who meet and share experiences on one occasion later wind up heading down vastly different roads. Melissa, who seemed to like my performance a lot, was in practically the same boat as me at the time… she had very little going for her. A few years later, she had a major hit with ‘Midnight Blue,’ and by 1983 she’d won a Grammy and continued on up from there.

“Chris Rush had a fairly successful career, with several comedy albums released and later a job writing for National Lampoon. As for me, I continued to bounce up and down the streets. If you wanna know, I think I preferred it that way. My first goal as a teenager was to write books, and my life of hard knocks has given me plenty of material to write about the broad spectrum of humanity at its worst and at its best. Fame was never much of a magnet for me.” 

 Whatever the case, Tom Feher was about to embark on one of the most adventurous phases of his rock and roll life. It may have never made the front page of Rolling Stone, but it was definitely one for the rock history books.

FEHER:

“While walking around the Village one night, I happened to bump into an old acquaintance, Vivian from the Earle Hotel escapade, the Rolling Stones groupie. She might not want to be called a groupie, but let’s face it, no mama’s little good girl jumps on the hood of the Rolling Stones’ limousine. At this point though, she tells me she’s married to a guy named Skip and he has a band called ‘Horsefeathers’ – named after a Marx Brothers’ movie – and they could use a vocalist. Skip is the bass player in the band.

“I meet Skip and he takes me over to their practice place where I hear a few tunes which are not quite as commercial as I’d prefer, but the band is really tight. The one song that made a big impression on me was an instrumental called ‘Road Apple,’ It intrigued me because the band played the song in one key – I think it was B-flat major – and the guitarist played his part in another key, the key of E major, if memory serves. It had a fascinating sound.

“I don’t recall what happened to Horsefeathers exactly, but I know they eventually disbanded. And Skip came around to one of my acoustic gigs. Somehow or another we began to talk about forming a band. I invited him out to Weehawken where we began putting some tunes together with drummer Steve Severino, one of the sons of my soon-to-be landlady; we practiced in Steve’s basement. Somehow or another we also brought in a sax player named Ray, who was working in an auto parts place way over on the West Side of Manhattan.

“I remember going to visit Ray at work one time and found out one of the former members of the original Monotones worked there too. The Monotones had a number five hit in 1958 with ‘Book Of Love.’ In case you want to know what ever happens to old doo-woppers, there’s a clue for ya: auto parts.

“At any rate, Skip, Steve, Ray and I were getting a pretty good sound – a little bit of the oldies influence and something that was gonna be called ‘punk rock’ in the years to come. Ray was older than the rest of us, and his hair was already gray. At gigs, sometimes people would come up to us and say ‘you and the drummer and the bass player look a lot a like.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah we’re brothers and the sax player is our father.’ When Ray heard that he would get really steamed… Ray was a soft-spoken guy; but he didn’t like that at all.”

INTERMEZZO: THE OCTET OF TESTICLES

One night, Feher was having a drink at Gerdes’ Folk City in the Village when he came across a musician acquaintance from the Rubott days – Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who’d played briefly with Mister Flood’s Party.

TOM FEHER (from a live 1999 concert recording):

“If you’re in the music industry, you probably know who Jeff is. He started out selling guitars from behind the counter at the Dan Armstrong guitar store in New York; and he’d always be back there practicing and the next thing I knew he was in a band with some friends of mine, called ‘Mr. Flood’s Party’ who put out an album on Atlantic in the late ‘sixties. And suddenly he disappeared but (later) he began appearing in places, like he was playing with the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan and if any of you have seen Blues Brothers 2000 you would have seen him in the Louisiana Gator Boys… he’s got the big mustaches and stuff and wears a beret and plays the blues.

“So Jeff is now a legend, but at that time he was just like a medium-sized legend. And I was at Folk City one night sitting at the table, and this was back in the days when every other word out of my mouth was ‘gimme a Heineken;’ and we were drinking our Heinekens and kinda getting a little wobbly and everything, and he goes ‘what’re ya doin’, Tom?’ and I said ‘I got a new band, y’ know?’

“And he said ‘what’s the name of the band?’ and I said ‘I don’t know, we just play, y’ know, we just play.’ And he goes, ‘well how many in the band, Tom?’ and I said ‘There’s four in the band.’ He said: ‘call it eight BALLS.’ And for two-and-a-half years…”

 

“Skunk” Baxter, having done his share of drinking was no doubt kidding with Feher; but Feher for his part immediately grabbed onto the concept as an excellent way to attract attention for his new group. Tom titled the group Eightballs, to unanimous approval and they eventually adopted the image of the eight ball from pocket billiards as their logo. This gave them a two-pronged attack, because the listener could go with either meaning and be satisfied. It may be that some people never got Baxter’s original intention even though they heard the name Eightballs at scores of concerts. According to Feher, the original lineup did not play many gigs, but he describes one memorable one that took place in a venue called Theatre 8, in the City Center complex of West Fifty-Fifth Street.

TOM FEHER:

“I don’t recall exactly how I knew David Hart – probably through Left Banke buddy Paul Thornton – but he was the manager of City Center and also a video engineer / filmmaker of some sort – I think he did experimental things. He had the use of a room which he called Theatre 8 and he would promote shows there of various sorts. We played there on a bill with a folk trio called “The Braid” – a strange combination because they had acoustic guitars and this beautiful three part harmony, and we were cranking out raw rock ‘n’ roll. 

“As a rock band, we were unique in two ways: first, we had my Dirty Dozen sex songs which were entirely outrageous at the time; and secondly, we included a good number of country tunes and oldies in our repertoire, something that had not been done much previously in a rock band format.

“We were doing Dion’s version of the Drifters’ ‘Ruby Baby,’ Ray Charles’ hit version of Buck Owens’ ‘Cryin’ Time,’ Sam Cooke’s ‘You Send Me,’ and the Drifters’ ‘On Broadway,’ which we’d turned into a musical-theatrical production number. Downtown I’d met a struggling actor named Van Goldy, and we got to talking about joining forces in some way, so we collaborated with this twist to ‘On Broadway.’

“The band would start off by setting up the groove, nice and soft and uncomplicated. Then, with Dave Hart’s help on the subdued lighting, we’d set up a mood with me narrating about being a hick coming to the big city and winding up on Broadway. Meanwhile, Van Goldy was hidden, laying flat on the stage in front of me under a big piece of burlap or some other cloth.

    “We still haven’t actually begun the song, but while I’m narrating, he comes up out of the burlap and begins a pantomime to illustrate my story. He’s walking in place, gawking like a country boy might do at the lights and billboards, and making his eyes pop out at imaginary girls while I keep rattling on. Then finally, the drums kick in, the bright lights go on, and I’m singing the first verse – ‘They say the neon lights are bright, on Broadway.’…it was very effective.”

The original Eightballs line-up had a short life-span. There were disputes among the three younger members – primarily Feher and Skip the bass player versus drummer Steve Severino. Ray, a very mellow older guy, couldn’t stand the friction and bowed out. It wasn’t long before Severino too was “out of the group.”

FEHER:

“Steve came from a family of twelve kids and most of ‘em weren’t very bright. We used to joke around and say that the brains of two or three kids had been distributed to a dozen, so that’s what you got. Steve had a younger brother John who would walk around the streets of Weehawken at all hours of the day and night shaking his head and talking to himself; the locals called him ‘John the Bat.’

“Steve also had a wife, her actual name was Maureen but everyone called her ‘Terry,’ and they lived in the house where we practiced. Terry didn’t like me and Skip, and we didn’t like her. She had a flat ass and was the bitch of all time. We used to nag Steve about being pussy-whipped. And of course, she nagged Steve about being in a band with us living vermin. When she thought the music was too loud or we were too snotty or something she’d start putting poison in Steve’s ear and he’d come to us apologetically and say something like ‘Terry says she can’t sleep when we’re rehearsing. Do you think we could find another place to practice?’ It was pathetic. Soon we were on the lookout for another situation, including a new drummer.”

“Another situation” came about in the form of a recent Feher opponent, Benn Gunn manager Steve Bass. Bass had been promoting concerts in the tri-state area and taken aboard on his ventures a young drummer from Millburn, New Jersey named Damian Karch.

 FEHER:

“Damian was a slick talker for sure; and he was a great drummer but at the time he wasn’t doing much drumming I guess, and that was his true love if you don’t count money as a main squeeze. Anyway, somehow or another I ran into Bass. And Bass wants to book Eightballs. When he found out we were now short two members, he introduced me formally to Damian who had a good friend in Millburn named Lee Farber, a guitarist. With the addition of these two we had the second and final Eightballs line-up – what you would call the ‘classic’ line-up if we’d ever had a well-promoted career.”

Steve Bass had booked a show at the Bricktown Ice Palace near the Jersey shore, and wanted his protégés to open for two well promoted and recorded bands, Sea Train and Mandrill. Feher and Cummings (“Skip Rope” as he now billed himself) made daily trips to Milburn to rehearse in the Karch family garage.

They rehearsed eight hours a day, five days a week. Rock and Roll Boot Camp in Fleischmanns was strained baby food compared to this – it was the real thing, and Feher became the taskmaster. The boys had a genuine intention of becoming a super-tight band, a force to reckon with in the world of rock music; and they got damn close. Meanwhile, the combination of Feher, Rope, Karch and Farber was an odd one, split down the middle by their respective backgrounds.

FEHER:

“There was me and Skip, streetwise and r-rated, in combination with Damian and Lee who’d grown up rather comfortably in a small town in central New Jersey. Damian had an unusual diet: for breakfast, he’d eat Captain Crunch cereal in a bowl of Coca Cola. They had a kind of corny sense of college humor – especially Lee – that was lost on me and Skip. Our idea of ‘funny’ was to stick your ass out of a moving car and moon the other drivers on the State Thruway. Skip had moved to Weehawken, and his new girlfriend, Janet, wasn’t above flapping her boobs out in public either.”

Lee Farber, born into a comfortable middle-class environment in Queens, New York, had grown up in the Millburn/ Short Hills area of New Jersey – one of the top income earning areas in the nation. For the young people of Millburn, rock music was not an urgent way of life, but more of a “cool thing to do” that could be easily financed by mom and dad. Farber took his musical inspiration from the Beatles, Cream, Hendrix and Zappa; he met Karch at school and in Eighth Grade they put together a short-lived pop-rock band called “The Invaders,” playing material like “Time Won’t Let Me” (#5 for The Outsiders in 1966).

LEE FARBER: 

“That band went by the wayside as they do and I didn’t see Damian too much until like senior year when he came roaring back with stories of traveling with rock bands, doing light shows and stuff and getting into promoting like Bill Graham and such.  

“I swear one day at a class meeting 1969-70, ideas for a fund raiser were pitched with typical responses like bake sale, car wash, etc. until it came to Damian who said he could bring Johnny Winter to our high school to do a concert/fund raiser. There was silence, I recall… Damian had become somehow like a Rock n Roll James Bond…High School by day and who knows what by night… he had swagger, confidence and attitude, ego and focus…”

However it may be, it seems that Damian Karch (deceased at this writing and not available for comment) got himself into a partnership with the wheeling-dealing Steve Bass – whom Farber has described as an “aluminum siding salesman” – and through Bass became aware of Tom Feher and Ed Cummings (Skip Rope).

FARBER:

“Bass told Damian – with whom I was about to put together a two-man rock act we would call ‘Tucson,’ –  to try something with two guys he knew late of some other group and if it didn’t work then he could go half-cocked with the other idea. The guys were Tom and Skip. I had already sat in on meetings taken with people Damian found through ads placed in the Wall Street Journal or something…I swear we had people listening to his pitch about this music investment…he was good. 

“So we put that on hold and took a look. I actually can’t remember anything but that Tom and Skip – and Damian too –were in ‘costume’ and I wasn’t. They looked the part (of rockers). I must’ve looked like a joke; but Damian was persuasive and could talk a line about whatever if he had his sights set…”

TOM FEHER:

“Somehow, we merged the elements into a tight unit that survived for two and a half years doing weekly gigs in Jersey bars, high schools, ball fields and frat houses, and in campy places around Manhattan. Our first gig was probably the one at the Ocean Ice Palace in Bricktown near the Jersey shore. It came off pretty well, all things considered. Our ‘fan club’ from Weehawken came down to applaud and heckle and filled up the front of the audience with even more noise than we could muster from our amplifiers.

“So at least we had a cheering section. We did the set that we’d been rehearsing every weekday for two months, and from the old recordings that still exist, I can tell you the instruments were tight but the vocals left something to be desired. I might have been ninety percent on pitch-wise, but that’s ten percent too little when you want to play in the big leagues. Damian sang like a chipmunk and Lee had what we called the ‘dying whale’ sound. We had a ball, though, playing for a real live audience after all that time in the Karch’s one car garage.

“At one point, I heard Lee make an announcement to the audience: ‘psychedelic cookery’ he says. I look over and he’s got a pair of shiny red silk gym shorts on his head – supposed to be a chef’s hat. I guess in his own way he was being just as rebellious as the rest of us, to live up to the Eightballs ‘image.’ He did silly things like that, but you forgave him because he was one of the hottest guitar players around – he could easily go up against Alvin Lee from Ten Years After.”

More than “just a rock band,” Eightballs methodically fashioned their performances into a visual event. Feher in silver boots would kick his leg high in the air, Rockettes’ style during Farber’s guitar solos; Skip wore glitter shirts and platform shoes; while playing his kit, Karch could whistle loud enough to be heard over the entire band.

  Lee Farber had been successful in college wrestling, and Feher had spent eight years training and competing as a gymnast; on certain outdoor gigs, they would do dive rolls over Tom’s electric piano, crossing from opposite sides of the stage while the bass and drums thundered out a rock tattoo. 

The band members in the new incarnation of Eightballs booked themselves, transported and set up their own equipment, promoted themselves and did their own banking and issuing of pay. Because Lee had many friends in various colleges – himself having only recently emerged from the college scene – many of their gigs were played for college fraternities.

FEHER:

I think the first college frat house we played was one down at Stevens Tech in Hoboken near Castle Point, overlooking the Hudson River. I don’t know how we got that one. It had to be a local town contact of mine. The pay was minimal – something like a hundred fifty bucks – and the only things I remember about the gig itself was singing ‘You’re Cheatin’ Heart’ as a request, and a keg of beer rolling from the second floor down a long flight of steps and bouncing on the floor.

“I’ll share just a few highlights from the college gigs; they were outrageous. There was one in Bloomfield University which we did with a band called Cotton Mather – real punks. At the same gig, a couple of violent women showed up and demonstrated their disgust at my song ‘Hey! Red’ by pouring beer on our mixing board and shorting out the sound. Then, at the end of the gig, the little pricks from Cotton Mather tried to steal our Voice of the Theatre type cabinets, custom-made by Lee. Just think how stupid they had to be, to try and rip off something as big as those boxes. 

“We had a roadie at that time, John Crawford, a wild guy with glasses and hair down to his ass, but he was tough: he almost bit someone’s ear off one time in a fight at one of our gigs. Well this time, he spotted the speakers in the back of a pickup that belonged to one of Cotton Mather’s people. 

“He ran around the front of that car before they had a chance to start it up, opened the hood and ripped out as many spark plugs as he could grab. That was the same gig at which some really drunk member of the audience walked in front of a moving vehicle and went flying through the air to land on top of a grassy knoll. That dude was so drunk he didn’t even feel it! Got up, looked around in confused annoyance, and walked away.

“I think my favorite and most memorable college gig was at Princeton U. In the first place, it was Princeton! Here I was, a graduate of University of the Streets, bad-mouth bad boy who’d given the finger to all greater established institutions, and one of the frat boys is pointing to a red brick building and say ‘…and that was Einstein’s dorm…’ … priceless! But that frat party was the bomb. The school had won a football game, and they were set to blow the roof off the ivy covered halls. My first clue was seeing a couple of big beefy football players walking around in dresses and falsies, one with a blue wig and one with a pink wig, with high heels and lipstick. It was a carnival.

“During our set, I was concentrating on my guitar because in our entire repertoire I had one lead part, in ‘Born to Be Wild,’ and I didn’t wanna screw it up; lead guitar was not my strong suit. So I’ve got my head bent down and am looking at my carefully placed fingers, when Skip starts yelling and digging the head of his bass into my shoulder.

“I get the riff done, and I look up, and Skip is pointing with his bass to the other side of the room, which was something like a medium-sized banquet hall. Some wild character had apparently wrapped gauze around his head, squirted on some lighter fluid and lit the damn thing up. He was swinging across the room, hanging onto a chandelier, his head aflame. You have to admit that Alice Cooper and Ozzie Osborne could pick up a trick or two from the boys at Princeton.”

The group was involved in a number of campy outings in the two-and-a-half years of its existence. Among these was a Halloween gig with Elephant’s Memory and John Zacherle in the Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel on West Thirty-Fourth Street. Feher is a bit hazy on the hotel’s name, but he swears to the location, thus it seems probable. Bass had gotten together with a North Jersey fellow, John “Jed” DeFillipis who’d been entertaining thoughts of being a big time rock concert promoter. DeFillipis had been involved in one or two projects with Joe Marra, the owner of the legendary Night Owl; somehow Bass, through the Weehawken connection, gotten a hold of Jed’s ear and persuaded him to join up with him in a venture that would include Damian Karch as a third partner. The trio called themselves “Whipsnade (Bass), Bizonet (Karch) and LeFong (DeFillipis).” The names were no doubt inspired by Groucho Marx characters, as Bass had already promoted concerts under the name “Wolf J. Flywheel,” a Groucho character from the film The Big Store.

FEHER:

“Damian had no problem playing both sides of the fence – taking a cut of the promoter’s share and also playing in the band. His main concern was how much money he could make; he had a flamenco dancer girlfriend, and older woman from Spain that would pinch his testicles if he didn’t bring home the bacon. The rest of us were devoted to the band only and I resented him for that. But the Halloween show with John Zacherle was a cool gig – after all, Zacherle was the Cool Ghoul – and we made a few bucks.

“Zacherle was already known to me. I’d seen him on television in the late ‘50s when he was hosting Shock Theater, running old horror films and talking to his never-seen ‘wife’ who supposedly reclined in a coffin. At the time of our gig, he was a radio DJ on WPLJ. Bass set up a meeting with me and Damian and Zacherle in the commissary at CBS and we went over the plans for his appearance. We would do our regular set, which included some pretty spooky stuff anyway, and then announce Zach as a special guest. Zach would come out and do two songs: his own ‘Dinner with Drac’ and the Halloween mega-hit ‘Monster Mash.’ ‘Dinner with Drac’ is a limerick put to music. Zach had the lyrics on big pieces of oak tag, which he would read and then throw to the ground. I immediately fell in love with it. It wasn’t until years later that I found out he’d taken it to number six on the Billboard charts in 1958. I was hooked from verse one:

A dinner was served for threeAt Dracula’s house by the seaThe hors d’oeuvres were fineBut I choked on my wineWhen I learned that the main course was me!

“Zacherle wasn’t the only ghoul we shared the stage with. At a little college up in Connecticut we did a show in which we doubled as backup band for Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. We met him backstage before the gig, and he went over his set requirements with us. Most of the list was just the usual three-chord, twelve-bar blues stuff in various keys. One number, called ‘Ashes,’ was a C chord to an A minor chord, over and over.”

Jay’s big theatrical opening number of course was his legendary ‘I Put A Spell On You,’ which by this time (early ‘70s) had been covered by Creedence Clearwater and become fairly well known outside the chitlin circuit. 

As the curtains parted, Jay was on a dark stage lying in a coffin, and there were candles lit for an eerie effect; when the music started, he rose up out of the coffin and did his thing. It fell right in line with Eightballs’ outrageous sense of theatre. Also among the Eightballs’ campy gigs was a performance at the Museum of Modern Art. 

FEHER:

“I don’t recall exactly how we got the gig… one connection leads to another, and things come up, y’ know? Anyway, we arrive at the museum and we’re given an empty gallery as a changing room. The curator guy or whatever he was tells us we can change there, but under no circumstances touch the valuable painting behind the drape on one wall. It was supposed to be worth around fifty thousand dollars. 

“He leaves us there and we’re changing, and of course our curiosity gets the better of us. What kind of painting can be worth fifty grand? So we peek behind the curtain and all we see is a blank canvas. I’m going, ‘This guy is pulling our leg. There’s no painting back here – he just wanted to fuck with our minds.’ But Damian – I think it was Damian – keeps looking over the canvas and suddenly he calls out, ‘Hey – look at this!’ 

“So we go and look, and up in the corner of the canvas, which was about six feet high and ten feet wide, this huge canvas – up in the top right-hand corner there are four or five stripes of color between three to six inches long. I’m going, ‘no, this can’t be real,’ and we’re debating on whether anyone would really pay fifty grand for something like that and finally agreed that it was not only possibly but very likely in the kind of company that hung around art museums.

“Meanwhile, the equipment is set up and we go out into the reception room where the snooty rich of New York City are daintily holding their champagne flutes and jingling their jewels and talking through their noses and whatnot. Some genius had worked it out to put us on a bill with Odetta, of all people.”

Odetta, an Alabama native who was referred to by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. as the Queen of American Folk Music, was a vocalist, actress, guitarist and songwriter and was also dubbed “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement” in respect of her work in the cause of human rights. Her repertoire of folk songs, folk blues, jazz and spirituals was far from being compatible with the brash, high volume rock of Eightballs.

FEHER:

“We could appreciate Odetta as an artist, but strategically it was a nutty combination, putting us in front of the same audience as a sensitive folk artist. And the proof was in the pudding, tasting of. The hoity-toity audience stopped their chatter, listened and politely clapped for Odetta, but when we started up, they turned around and began talking to each other. I said ‘Fuck these assholes, if that’s the way they wanna be,’ called a huddle, and we played the rest of the set with our backs to the audience and our faces to the wall.”

Eightballs was also involved in one of the remarkable events in the early 1970s New York City cultural environment: the emergence of the Mercer Arts Center. The Mercer was located in the Broadway Central Hotel, which had opened as the Grand Central Hotel at 673 Broadway near Bond Street in 1870. The Broadway Central had already made its way into musical history when Bill Haley and the Comets rocked the house in the 1950’s. But in the early 1970s the Mercer Arts Center on the Mercer Street side of the huge hotel became a haven for artists of all varieties and even helped lay the foundations for what was to become the punk rock movement.

As Feher tells it, the Mercer wasn’t specifically designed to be a music venue – far from it. Apparently it was mainly intended as a home for off-Broadway theatre… somewhat ironic when one considers it was located in the Broadway Central hotel. A comedy called “El Grande De Coca Cola” played there to capacity crowds, and an adaptation of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” ran for almost a thousand performances before it was cut short by the collapse of the hotel.

Being so suited for theatre, the Mercer Arts Center naturally brought in some of the more avant-garde forms of music that had been surfacing in the wake of the Velvet Underground. Among the locals that played there were the New York Dolls, New York Central, Teenage Lust, and the Magic Tramps featuring Warhol alumni Eric Emerson.

TOM FINN:

“I went with Marc Aaron to see Feher play with his band Eightballs at Mercer Arts. I clearly recall Tom up in stage wowing the crowd. Marc and I were impressed. I’m afraid I don’t remember too much else about the Mercer Arts Center, except seeing Patti Smith playing there. Patti was caterwauling a song called ‘They Never Called Pablo Picasso an Asshole.’ I remember saying to Marc ‘What the fuck is happening? This is not music.’ I couldn’t understand why people would want to hear this type of music.”

TOM FEHER:

“There were other more respectable acts there during the short history of the Mercer. I saw Billy Crystal and Orleans in a cabaret style room there; Tom Petty played there too, and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. But it was the New York Dolls who made their reputation at the Mercer Arts Center.

“Eightballs and the New York Dolls were at odds from the very beginning. The Dolls’ lead singer – if you want to call him a singer – was a Bleeker Street barfly named David Johansson. He was one of those guys whose lips are big enough to make him a ‘Mick Jagger’ look-alike. Other than that, there was no comparison. David couldn’t sing two notes in a row in tune; hell, he couldn’t sing one note in tune. 

“I must admit, he did improve somewhat after the demise of the Dolls; but suddenly, fresh off the street he’s up there on the stage posing and yelling into the microphone and strutting around like a rock star. Really, this is the point where music became a pose rather than a profession. Up until that time it was really expected that a musician actually knew something about music. 

“These guys didn’t give a fuck about the quality of sound – all they wanted was the notoriety and the sex that went along with it. Now I didn’t mind either the sex or the notoriety; but I like to have mine on a foundation of actual musical skill. My background was with the Left Banke, and the Dolls were a joke to me. Although we later played a few club gigs with them, the first time I actually heard them was at the Mercer. 

“Their throne room was a theatre up near the front of the place. It wasn’t a particularly large room, and they were playing at an ear-splitting level that was intolerable for even a hard core rocker like me. I think they were playing Bo Diddley’s ‘Pills.’ I could just hear Bo going ‘Who are these fruity little clowns? What hole did they crawl out of?’ I left after one and a half songs.

“Meanwhile, we got to play way in the back in the Oscar Wilde Room where we shared the bill with Teenage Lust and Patti Smith. Patti opened up the show reading poetry, holding a bird in a cage and occasionally plunking on a toy piano. 

“Teenage Lust acquired some fame when their guitarist/vocalist Billy Joe White – formerly with David Peel and the Lower East Side – reportedly took a shit on stage. Now that’s theater for you! Not to be outdone, Skip’s girlfriend Janet jumped up on stage during an Eightballs number, ‘Obscene Call,’ zipped down Skip’s fly and proceeded to deliver a serving of fellatio while he never missed a beat on his bass. You could say those were the good ol’ days.

“Also playing in the Oscar Wilde Room was my old compadre Jerry Hawkins who had a band with him on guitar and Jerry Nolan on drums – quite a sound for two instruments and one voice (they added more players later). Nolan was a pretty good drummer who got recruited by the Dolls when their original beatmaster, Billy Murcia, went for an extended underwater swim.”

JERRY HAWKINS:

“I remember Mercer Arts Center well… with the like Clockwork Orange décor… when I was playin’ there with KICKS – that fucked up band I had with Jerry Nolan, Billy fuckin homo Squires, drunken Danny Sicardi on bass and Junkie Jer the Hawk on guitar.  “Nolan looks at me one day shortly after his twenty-eighth birthday and says to me ‘Well Jer, I think I got about ten good years left in me. So I’m gonna join the New York Dolls and shoot dope, play and die.’ He actually squeezed an extra two years in, I think, before the virus got him. 

“One night I was playin’ in the Oscar Wilde Room – just me and Nolan – and David Peel shows up with John Lennon who looked like he was trashed on heroin which was probably the only reason he was hangin’ out with David Peel or sittin’ through one of my sets. The limey was there to keep him company. You remember her famous circus act that came to a near final curtain call???”

“The limey” was a British girl named Janice who had been the girlfriend of drummer David Paul “The Whip” Wesley in the Benn Gunn band and had now shifted over to servicing Hawkins. The circus act he refers to was an incident in which she jumped out of a third story window and barely lived to tell the tale.

Feher considers the Mercer Arts Center unique and says “it’s too bad it didn’t survive the big structural catastrophe.” The “structural catastrophe” to which he refers was the collapse of the Broadway Central Hotel on August 3rd, 1973. The collapse of the building and subsequent failure of the city to support renovation effectively put the Mercer Arts Center out of business. Seymour Kaback, the air-conditioning engineer who’d conceived and managed the Mercer, deplored the situation as a lack of city pride in its heritage. According to Kaback, the Broadway Central and its theaters were the victims of sublime indifference to our heritage, neglecting our best architecture as we neglect the theater arts. For Eightballs, the show continued in various bars, clubs and outdoor venues too. They played in sports fields, and in the Central Park and Lincoln Center band shells. Harriette Knight – at the time Harriet Birnholz and still in High School – was the girlfriend of Eightballs guitarist Lee Farber.

HARRIETTE KNIGHT:

“I remember Patti Smith on the bill with Eightballs at the Mercer Arts Center with her toy piano. I always thought she was a drug addict lesbian. Well, after reading her book ‘Just Kids’ (which I loved), I came to find out that she’s a straight shooter all the way: no drugs… and the woman I thought was her lover was actually her sister (and roadie).   Eightballs played at My Father's Place in Roslyn, Long Island with the New York Dolls. Lee fixed Arthur’s bass; the Dolls were shooting up heroin, and Janet led me the other way so I wouldn’t see.”

TOM FEHER:

“I particularly remember the Lincoln Center gig because I was deathly sick that day. I’d never missed a booked gig, but I was in danger of missing that one because I’d been laid up with the flu in our cramped apartment in Weehawken Heights and I didn’t want to go out or even move my little finger; I was miserable and I told the guys by phone to play the gig without me. Well, they weren’t gonna go for that, especially since I was responsible for about ninety-eight percent of the vocals. So I’m lying there wishing to die when the doorbell rings and Damian Karch comes in to drag me off to Damrosch Park in his little puke green Datsun pickup.

“I lay there in the bed of the truck down through the Lincoln Tunnel and up the city streets, wheezing and moaning until we got to the band shell upon which I pulled myself together and did my thing. We’re in the early measures of a really neat and nasty song called ‘That’s The Way I Like Her,’ and some smart asses in the audience start throwing things, mostly rotten food. I got hit by at least one egg in that barrage – the big payoff for climbing out of bed sick as a dog to make, like what? I think it was a freebie.

“At the Central Park band shell, we debuted our new finale number, which was something of a further development of the early Eightballs when Van Goldy came up from under the tarp during ‘On Broadway.’ In this case, we had a large number of inflated Eightballs beach balls which we’d found through a novelty company, and it was the beach balls that we had hidden under the tarp. Our big final number was ‘Music’s Gonna Save the World,’ which had a long repetitive ending something like the Stones’ ‘Tumbling Dice.’

“When we got to that part, I’d invite the audience to clap along, and suddenly the balls would be released from under the tarp and go rolling out into the audience. It was really cool… if only we could have perfected it and made enough money as a band to afford buying more and more beach balls. We also had the great idea of buying boxes of women’s panties in three sizes and having them imprinted with the Eightballs logo; we would set them out on the front of the stage and let the girls in the audience fight over them. It was just wishful thinking, but crafty, ever so crafty!”

Eightballs played a number of places with the Dolls – at My Father’s Place in Roslyn, Long Island, and one in a little dive on Queens Boulevard where Feher received an extended education in the music business from – of all people – Arthur Kane, the Dolls’ bass player.

FEHER:

“The gig had been set up for us by my old enemy Steve ‘Sam’ Bass (Hole), who booked it for two hundred dollars and gave the band fifty percent, or one hundred, which split four ways gave us twenty-five bucks a piece. There was a pitiful band on stage called ‘Rags,’ so Skip and I went out in front of the club to take in a bit of night air, and that’s where we were when Arthur came out and joined us. The Dolls had their album out and were getting lots of publicity; we figured that at this point they had it made.

“So Skip and I are grousing about Bass and going ‘Can you believe it? He takes half the money and all we get is twenty-five bucks a piece!’ Arthur looks at us and reaches into his pocket. He says, “What’re you complaining about? All I got for the gig is this,’ and he pulls a five dollar bill out of his pocket.

“We thought he was bullshitting us. But we got to talking about it, and it seems that after paying the roadies, the manager, the promoter and who knows what else, that’s all they got out of the gig. I’d heard other stories like that, and at this point it was becoming real to me that maybe Eightballs was way ahead of the game by doing our own business. But that wasn’t good enough for us… we had to sign up with a slimy two-faced ‘manager.’”

Eightballs lasted as an entity for approximately two and a half years, from 1972 into 1974. The end came with the re-entry of publicist/entrepreneur Ken Schaffer into Feher’s orbit. The group had been handling their own business affairs for two years and doing a fairly good job of it. But in the music biz, a band is supposed to have an agent and a manager and lawyer and more in order to get a recording contract, a hit record and a national tour. And of course, they wanted all that.

FEHER:

“We had two people – I use the term loosely – pursuing us with the idea of becoming the manager of the Octet of Testicles: Steve Bass and Ken Schaffer. Now if you’ve been following this history, you’ll probably say ‘Get third and fourth options, you blockheads;’ but we were blockheads. And we also had a ghastly policy of doing everything by the vote of the majority. Like some nations you may have heard of.

“Bass was totally out of the picture, from my experience with him as manager of Benn Gunn; everyone agreed on that one, even Damian who I think saw it as some kind of conflict of interest for himself because of his other business dealings with Bass. But the guys were hungry for help, and they knew nothing of Schaffer like I did. I tried to tell them, but they outvoted me three to one and I ended up signing a paper with the rest of them. It was a disaster from the get-go.

“He altered our bad boy image which included a logo of little baby with a dog collar that said ‘SASS!’ and began pasting some sort of Zen philosophy quotes on our promotional materials and writing up lies about us in our bios. Next, he thinks he’s a record producer and wangles us into accepting him behind the mixing board as a way of rewarding him for getting us the studio time. On one song, he mixed my guitar way down and mixed the maracas – which he played – way up high. I think he did it just to spite me.

“This is typical music business bullshit, it’s happened to the best and the worst of us. What really pissed me off is that I saw it coming and didn’t do anything about it before the shit hit the fan. The final outcome of all this was that I quit, which effectively destroyed the band.”

While Feher was hitting his personal stride with Eightballs, Tom Finn was sweating out sessions at Bell Sound, but took time out to take a course in musical arrangement.

TOM FINN:

“I took a course at The Manhattan School of Music. The year was 1973. The course was arranging, and the teacher was John Abbott. One day after class Johnny drove me home to my apartment on Ninety-Second Street. He stopped the car at an empty space on my block. I was confused as to what I was going to do with my life and John said to me, ‘You'll do fine, you’re the one that made the whole thing happen.’ I paused and thought to myself, what does he mean? Why is he saying that? So I said c’mon John don’t pull my leg. And he said ‘I’m serious. You’re the one, not Mike Brown.’ I remember just saying ‘Thanks, John.’ But I never knew why he said that.” 

TOM FEHER:

“Anyone who has followed the story of the Left Banke from the very beginning would understand. There are ‘geniuses,’ and there are practical, down-to-earth people who make things happen. Tom Finn had dreams and he knew how to pull people together and make those dreams happen. I’ve never had much use for ‘geniuses;’ they get in the way of progress and social intercourse. They’re like traffic accidents: everything has got to stop and all heads turn their way when they enter a room. Phooey!

“It was Tom Finn who wanted to form a group, and who really was the driving force behind the Left Banke. It was Finn who was out on the Village streets pulling people together. All Brown ever wanted to do was get his songs recorded and run, which he did quite successfully. When you scroll forward to the Left Banke story in the twenty-first century, you will begin to understand just how vital Finn’s role was in the very existence of the group.”

THIS IS REALLY RICH

Bandleader and jazz drummer Buddy Rich, who passed away in 1987, was billed as “The World’s Greatest Drummer” and widely known as one of the top drummers of all time. In 1973, Tom Finn met Buddy Rich while working on one of Buddy’s albums at Bell Sound. Buddy’s manager Stanley Kay asked Finn to come over to Buddy’s Place, the first of two Buddy Rich clubs, to help them with their sound system. 

Finn went over to look, and ended up working there at night for four nights a week. After improving Buddy’s sound system Finn went on to announcing and mixing sound for Buddy and all the featured acts: Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Mel Torme, Lou Rawls, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and many other big jazz stars. 

TOM FINN:

“It was without a doubt one of the best learning experiences I ever had. Buddy was a very mean and sarcastic person but he was always nice to me. He and I became friends and he always brought me to special events and big shows he did outside the club. He needed a drum roadie, so I brought David Lang to meet him. David got the job and was Buddy’s guy for all things regarding drums. Eventually Buddy opened a new Buddy’s Place and I got involved by designing a sound and lighting system. 

“This was in 1974. I started dressing better and became the MC as well as mixing sound with one hand and doing lights with my other hand. I guess I was the stage manager too. I got to meet Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Steve Allen and Jackie Gleason to name a few. I was really learning.”

 

Finn tells a typical story about Buddy’s explosive temper.

TOM FINN:

“I was entitled to an employee’s meal when I came to work at eight pm, and one day the maître d’ and cook said ‘If you want to eat then you have to be here at seven pm with the rest of the staff.’ So that night I didn’t get my usual hamburger and fries and I was really feeling depressed over it. Buddy came to work at about eight-thirty pm and said ‘Hi Tommy’ I said hello, but I must have looked upset because Buddy said ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I said, ‘They won’t give me my food if I don’t come in an hour earlier to eat with the employees.’

“Well… Buddy flew into a rage, and said ‘Who told you that?’ I said the ‘Maître d’ and the cook.’ I saw Buddy running across the room and he got the maître d’ and the cook and screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘You don't tell Tommy what to do, he’s like a member of the band’ then he screams, ‘Tommy, get over here – from now on you come in whenever you want, and I want you to order steak and champagne and if you don’t you’ll talk to me.’   

“Then he walked over to a set table, turned it over and started breaking glasses and dishes and cursing at the maître d’ and the cook. Everybody was in shock, but none of the audience were there yet – just the staff. My god! Was he furious! I was as quiet as a mouse; I didn’t know what to do, so I ordered a steak. Mmm! that was good.” 

It was at Buddy’s Place that the stage was set for Tom Finn to become a DJ during the rise of disco music, a position that served him increasingly well in the decades to follow. Buddy Rich had a partner named Marty Ross who owned a steak house or two. Marty was the one who’d built Buddy’s Place and ran the club/restaurant; Buddy had put up his name and celebrity. Marty was young and hip and wanted to turn the club into a disco after the stage show was over. He wanted to keep customers in the club and make money at the bar. 

FINN:

“Marty says to me ‘Hey Tommy, I want you to play these records or tapes,’ and since he was the boss, I did. Buddy hated disco music and didn’t want his name associated with it. For the first week or so, Buddy was out in California doing the Carson show and some LA gigs. But when he got back, he came into the club late that night and I was spinning disco; this was 1975 so disco had just begun. 

“Buddy runs into my booth and tells me ‘Get that fuckin’ crap off right now,’ so I stopped playing. Everyone on the dance floor looks at us. Then Marty comes running over and says ‘Tommy, put that music back on.’ Buddy looks at us, furious, and says ‘Tommy take that shit off.’ Marty says ‘Tommy put that back on.’ So I say, ‘Hey I don’t like this guys,’ but they both kept yelling at me. Finally Marty had Buddy thrown out. And I quit.”

FINN & FEHER RE-GROUP

In the wake of Eightballs’ demise, Feher would find himself involved in a number of projects including a short-lived country band – “General Tom Thumb’s Killing Glance” – and a recording of radio spots of a jingle he wrote for erstwhile Left Banke manager Roger Rubenstein’s new venture, Earport.

TOM FEHER:

“I named our countrified folk-rock group after Tom Thumb, the celebrated midget who traveled with P.T. Barnum and was the toast of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. His wedding to midget Lavinia Warren knocked the Civil War off the front page of the newspapers: now that’s what I call clout! Anyway, “General” Tom Thumb had this sexy look he would give the ladies – a look that was supposed to make them swoon – and in a book I read it was referred to as his ‘killing glance.’ So I named the band after that – ‘General Tom Thumb’s Killing Glance’ – figuring no one on earth but P.T. Barnum (R.I.P.) would know what the hell I was talking about.

“The ‘Tom Thumb’ band consisted of me and three local Weehawken area musicians: Ace Banner on bass, Phil Fallo on guitar and Brian “Shakey” Kane on drums. It was something new for me, because in all the previous groups I’d been involved with, there was a goal to be ‘superstars’ and make mountains of money. These guys had regular nine-to-five jobs and were happy just to be playing, period.

“While the group was logging its total of about ten career gigs, I was busy working on the recording project for Roger Rubenstein of Ye Olde Rubott Management, that agency now deceased. Roger had established himself in the jewelry sales business with a chain of shops at airports in Miami, Phoenix and Los Angeles – I could be wrong, but I think those were the cities. Maybe Atlanta too. 

“The shops were all in airports and they would pierce ears and make custom earrings right on the spot. He called his shops Earport, and got me to write a jingle which I recorded in Weehawken with another alumnus of the old Left Banke circle and the big house in Englewood, Shelly Leder – who today goes by Shel Stewart and plays industrial rock.”

While the airport business was taking off, Tom Feher was on the runway himself, getting ready for the most ambitious recording project to date, again with old friends and associates. Rachel Elkind and Walter Carlos had continued to release product on Columbia and were making their brownstone studio facility TEMPI available to friends with demonstrated musical ability. Rachel had been championing Feher for a number of years and was still of the mind to help him achieve his goals with music despite his crude, combatative ways and his rejection of the Mercury recording contract she’d procured for him in 1968.

She’d even made an introduction for him to John Hammond Senior, the legendary Columbia A&R man who’d signed Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman and Bob Dylan to the label; Hammond had told Feher “Not bad… come back in six months, kid;” but Feher didn’t like knocking twice and never went back. It wasn’t long before Hammond found another kid from Jersey, Bruce Springsteen, who one supposes was more willing to fine-tune his work and parley.

In 1974, Rachel Elkind held fast as a friend and offered the studio if Feher could find a competent engineer. As luck would have it, Tom Finn was at this point well established and skilled as a recording engineer, and came in to record and co-produce the sessions.

FEHER:

“For the sessions, I got a hold of Damian Karch (ex-Eightballs) to play drums, and from the short-lived ‘Tom Thumb’ band, Ace Banner on bass. Finn brought in guitarist Marc Aaron and played some of the guitar parts himself as well as provided his exquisite harmonies. There was a horn player who either Tom Finn or I found playing on the street. Finn swears it was me, I swear it was him. In any case, we whipped up some easy parts for a head arrangement on the song ‘Kin Ya Love,’ and the guy did a good job blowing horn sections on it. 

“When the smoke cleared, we had an album worth of material, including ‘Kin Ya Love,’ a funky number in the old New Orleans rock style, ‘Gravy Train,’ a somewhat Dylanesque pseudo-bio folk song, ‘Sweet Bruce,’ a satire on out-of-the-closet gays, ‘Greta,’ about a nymphomaniac that ‘did it with the horses in the stable,’ and ‘That’s Alright With Me,’ a funny country-type thing in which Tom Finn did the backing harmonies as a chorus of cats (‘meow-meow-meow,’ etc. in three parts). 

“There was also a smooth country ballad ‘Daisy,’ a folk-rock song with a subtle anti-war message called ‘When Peace Comes Home,’ covers of ‘Cryin’ Time’ and ‘Ruby Baby,’ and one other original tune utilizing power chords which I can’t recall the title of no matter how I try.”

It was a somewhat awkward time at Tempi studio because the person known as Walter Carlos had some time earlier been to Scandinavia for what is formally called “sex re-assignment surgery” and had returned as Wendy Carlos. Sex change was still a rather touchy subject; Elkind and Carlos were keeping it temporarily under wraps, and only a few close associates – Feher included – were in on the details. Finn, at first was not privy to the information. Feher, though, had let the cat out of the bag and in the smart-ass tradition popularized by Steve Martin and then Jerry Hawkins, had given Carlos the nickname of “Wenderwalt.”

TOM FINN:

“Rachel was still keeping Walter’s sex change a secret, not from Feher but from me and any musician that came through. If I had a question about the console, I had an extension number to dial on the phone that rang upstairs to ‘Walter’s’ room, and Wenderwalt would answer, I’d ask the question and he/she’d tell me what I had to do to get the result I needed.

“I never saw Wenderwalt the entire time I was recording there; but I was there so often that eventually Rachel sat me down in the kitchen table alcove in the front windows and went into this long speech about, how sometimes in life we find ourselves privy to information about people, that we thought we knew, as one thing, were actually another entity entirely. 

  “‘Well Tom, Walter has actually changed his sexual identity and has physically become a woman. I’m sure you must have heard about such people.’ She went on to say, ‘I’m telling you this in the strictest of confidence and you’re not to tell anyone about this.’ Meanwhile, I think Feher had told me about it a few months earlier. So I totally knew what she was so seriously and sternly trying her best to convey to me. Ha, ha, ha, ha! As a matter of fact I’d seen Wenderwalt coming and going, many times, and I knew it was him/her. Then one sunny day Wendy herself came into the kitchen and I was now considered to be an insider.”

Under these fairly comical circumstances, the recording sessions continued until ten tracks were in the can. Both Finn and Feher were extremely satisfied with the results. Tom Finn mastered the studio set-up with seasoned capability.

 

FINN:

“As I remember, the whole process of the sessions was really professional and great fun. I didn’t have a lot of instructions from Rachel or Wendy, nor was I instructed not to touch anything in particular. I don’t recall the console or any other components being different or difficult, but they did have a pair of speakers hanging in the control room called Klipsh Cornwalls that I felt were not the best for rock and roll. 

“As for the material… I can recite with about ninety percent certainty all of Tom Feher’s songs (of that period), not just the spicy ones. Most of them are great. I’ll never understand why Feher didn’t get a major deal. Maybe it was his singing voice: he did have an intonation problem but so did Bob Dylan. When I did that work with him at Tempi, Marc and I both felt we were doing something very important. “To this day I have to say I like that album better than just about any music I ever heard, even the Beatles. That was a great album. Well… maybe Rubber Soul was pretty good too.”

ALBERT DAILEY

Albert Dailey was a  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz" \o "Jazz" jazz pianist from Baltimore who’d moved to New York City where he’d gigged with  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Gordon" \o "Dexter Gordon" Dexter Gordon,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Haynes" \o "Roy Haynes" Roy Haynes,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Vaughan" \o "Sarah Vaughan" Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Elvin Jones, Archie Shepp,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mingus" \o "Charles Mingus" Charles Mingus, and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Hubbard" \o "Freddie Hubbard" Freddie Hubbard. In 1967 Dailey played with  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Herman" \o "Woody Herman" Woody Herman at the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Jazz_Festival" \o "Monterey Jazz Festival" Monterey Jazz Festival, and from time to time with  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Blakey" \o "Art Blakey" Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. It also happened that he was an old flame of Rachel Elkind and in the 1970s lived not too far from her on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

TOM FINN:

“After the TEMPI project with Tom Feher, Rachel asked me to produce an album or start a project with Albert. So I stuck to him like a fly to honey. I really went to every rehearsal with him and later on he got a job as the piano player for Stan Getz. And then they played at Buddy’s Place. 

“I never wound up recording anything with him but I pushed him to do the song by Lou Reed ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ – to do it as a jazz instrumental and have Albert, in his deep Barry White type voice say: Hey Babe Talk A Walk On The Wild Side as the only lyric at the hook. I thought it was a great idea but Albert didn’t I guess. 

“One night Stan Getz came to Buddy’s Place ready to play but Albert didn’t show up. Buddy’s manager knew I hung around with Albert, so he asked me where I thought he was. I told him ‘I think he’s home sleeping.’ It was about one hour to Stan’s show. 

“I jumped in a cab and sped uptown to West Eighty-Sixth Street where Albert lived. I rang the bell over and over with no response. Then I thought of something, I said to myself ‘Albert is a great musician, so maybe if I start ringing the bell in perfect tempo and after about five or six seconds, go out of tempo… maybe that will wake him up.’ I did that – and on the third pass it worked. 

“Albert buzzed me in and I screamed at him, ‘get fucking dressed they’re all waiting for you down at Buddy’s Place!’ So Albert threw some clothes on as I went downstairs to get a cab. We got in the cab and got to the club about five minutes before Stan hit the stage. I announced Stan and ran back and forth to the bar to get Albert, orange juice and about five glasses of ice water. Man, he was so sick and hung over. Stan was mad at him but didn’t say anything.

“I also did a session at TEMPI studio with a girl group called ‘Hendricks, Getz, Thomson and Rich.’ I brought Bobby Scott in to play piano, and Anthony Jackson on bass. We recorded two of Bobby’s songs. The girls, except for Thomson, had famous jazz fathers. There was Michelle, John Hendricks’ daughter; Beverley Getz, Stan’s daughter; and Kathy Rich, Buddy’s daughter. The best singer was Deborah Thomson, whose father was a bus driver. 

“It was a funny session ‘cause Bobby Scott couldn’t get the drummer to play a simple shuffle. Unfortunately Anthony Jackson – one of the most brilliant bass players anywhere – brought in one of his childhood friends to play drums on our free-bee session. The guy really sucked, so Bobby Scott was livid, screaming at him and saying ‘A shuffle, a shuffle!’ like we were a bunch of fuckin’ Pollacks. ‘A fuckin’ shuffle, one-two-three – c’mon you idiot, a goddamn shuffle!’ I cringed under the console. I think he finally got it; but man, Bobby Scott was a wild man. He was part American Indian and he would sometimes head butt you as a greeting. Jesus… when I shook his hand I leaned way back.”

FEHER’S SLOW BOAT TO MARS

While Finn was playing hopscotch with Albert Dailey and Bobby Scott, Tom Feher was pounding the pavement with his Tempi production looking for a record deal. Feher put several copies of a five song “demo,” under his arm and began scouting the city for opportunities. He learned through a newspaper ad that Terry Cashman and Tommy West – career songwriters, and producers of the late Jim Croce – were holding court at the Barbizon Plaza on Central Park South, and were giving advices on success in the music business. They might just be looking for talent to sign to their new label, Lifesong Records. At the seminar, it was mentioned that demos could be sent in to a given address, and Feher hastily jotted it down, mailing out his tape at the first opportunity.

TOM FEHER:

“You can imagine my amazement when a few weeks later I get a phone call from Rob Stevens, a staff producer at Cashwest Productions, who has heard my tape, thinks it’s great and wants to cut some sides with me. I go to their office, meet all the principal players – Tommy West, Terry Cashman (birth name: Dennis Minogue) and a lawyer named Phil Kurnitt, about whom I will tell you more not too far down the line.

Cashman and West were no newcomers to the business. Cashman, with Gene Pistilli had written “Sunday Will Never Be The Same,” the song that had been offered to the Left Banke at their peak and turned down by them in early 1967 only to be taken into the Top Ten by Spanky and Our Gang. 

Cashman and West as a duo hit #27 in 1972 with their “American City Suite,” and they had done good business in singing on radio and TV ads. But their main claim to fame came when they teamed up to produce the recordings of Jim Croce, who between 1972 and 1974 logged eight Top Forty hits, including two Number ones – “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time In A Bottle.”

Several of the hits were posthumous releases, as Croce perished in a plane crash in October 1973. It appears that with the affluence garnered by sales of Croce’s recordings, Cashman and West moved up into more ambitious publishing and production and additionally launched their own label, Lifesong, to be distributed by Columbia.

FEHER:

“They sat me down and proposed to sign me to a triple contract: production, publishing and recording. Cashman had been in minor league baseball with the Detroit Tigers, so you know he had all the bases covered. He would later gain wider celebrity as the composer-lyricist of the baseball anthem ‘Willie, Mickey and the Duke.’ I remember initially balking at the idea of a triple contract – a few more baseball puns – but eventually I signed; I don’t recall if I had a lawyer look at it… I was literate and since Eightballs, I’d been accustomed to doing my own business. They did tell me, and it was in the contracts that I could opt out anytime I felt they weren’t doing their job; they also told me that no one had ever activated that clause. 

“They were also raving about the Tempi recording I’d sent in, calling it a ‘glamorous demo.” I didn’t bother to tell them that it was supposed to be a master. I signed and we got down to business. Rob Stevens, recently graduated from, I think, Berklee School of Music, and about eight years younger than me, was my producer and my regular contact at the company. He was also thrilled to be working with me, considered me a unique talent, and worked really hard to get me a good sound.

“Rob was a big fan of The Spinners, and being mainly involved in my own sound I might have passed them by completely if he hadn’t pushed their records in my direction; I would say that listening to Rob’s recommendations had a definite effect on my future songwriting.”

The first order of business was to get into the studio and cut some more tunes – vocal/guitar demos that they would use for copyright purposes and to prospect for hit material from Feher’s growing repertoire. He’d been writing at a clip of fifty songs per year and had a song bag bursting at the seams. Because of the Lifesong distribution deal with Columbia, they had access to Columbia’s studio facilities. 

FEHER:

“We recorded the demos in one of Columbia’s studios somewhere near midtown on the East side of Manhattan. The engineer was Brooks Arthur. I couldn’t believe my luck! After all those years playing second fiddle to Mike Brown, here I was, the artist, being treated royally and working with one of the top recording engineers in the business.

At the time Feher signed with Cashman and West, Brooks Arthur had served as recording engineer for “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Hang On Sloopy,” “Chapel of Love,’ and “Leader of the Pack,” – all Number One hits – as well as Van Morrison’s Blowin’ Your Mind album which introduced the rock classic “Brown-Eyed Girl.” And Brooks was just rolling up his sleeves for a long and illustrious career.

FEHER:

“I had told Rob that I had hundreds of songs, but I don’t know if he was ready for me, really. The first session I whipped out something like thirty-five songs, one after another, with my caustic comments between takes. I’ve heard the old tapes of those sessions, and he punches the talk-back button and is laughing kind of nervously sometimes, especially when I lay down a totally obscene song like ‘Hey! Red.’ At any rate, one session wasn’t enough, so we did a second and a third. I ended up putting one hundred and one songs on tape. For me it was a relief, like being constipated for five years and finally being able to take a dump. Now they had to figure out what to do with the shit!

“As it turned out, for my recording artist debut, he selected two songs from the Tempi demo to re-record – ‘Daisy’ and ‘Kin Ya Love’ – and two songs from the new demos, ‘If It’s Love You Want (I’ve Got It)’ and a brand new tune called ‘Slow Boat To Mars.’ ‘Slow Boat’ had been inspired by the tempo and groove of a great doo-wop oldie ‘The Wind,’ cut by Nolan Strong and the Diablos and later the Jesters in a higher-quality recording .

“Now that the four songs had been selected, Rob went to work on the arrangements and on booking the musicians and the dates. The basic tracks were recorded without me present if memory serves. Rob had a hot drummer friend of his come in, and he (Rob) played rhythm guitar and keyboards. Marc Aaron was brought in to overdub electric guitar parts, and he did a great job. Another pal of Rob’s came in and overdubbed three horn parts on ‘Kin Ya Love.’

“Now at this point I’ve gotta register a complaint. I would say that three of the songs were produced very well; but ‘Kin Ya Love’ lost all it’s funky, loose New Orleans street feel after Rob got a hold of it, and turned into something too precise and military for my taste. To this day I cringe at the thought of it. But that’s always been one of the risks you take in the recording business.”

Regardless of his disappointment with the one song, Feher was again thrilled to be working in a top professional environment – this time the RCA studios on Sixth Avenue at Forty-Fourth Street. As he was entering the studio for one of his vocal sessions, he saw two familiar faces on their way out. One was Warren Schatz, a producer and arranger he’d met through Rachel Elkind; the other was Vicki Sue Robinson.

FEHER:

“Vicki Sue was a real sweetie that I’d met back in 1969 or 1970 through – who else – my buddy Bert, when they were in the cast of Hair together. Bert promised me that she’d show me a good time, and by God, she did…. for one night, anyway.

“Something about her had changed. Like all of us, she wasn’t quite as innocent as before. But the real surprise was going into the studio where she’d just finished laying down some vocals and finding cigar stubs in the ashtray and smelling the smoke. Had this sweet little girl taken to smoking cigars? I guess I’ll never know. What I do know is that she was on her way to a Top Ten disco hit: ‘Turn The Beat Around’ made a solid reputation for her in June of ‘76.

“We recorded my vocals, and for the first time I actually had a coach on the sidelines giving me instructions. It was something new for me, and it was very helpful, but I don’t think Rob went far enough. Listening back to the tracks years later as a knowledgeable pro, I could hear the weak spots where a bit of extra effort could have pushed those vocals over the top.

“The background harmonies were splendiferous. Mike Corbett, my buddy from the Rubott days, and a great singer named Marty Nelson came up with some awesome doo-wop type vocals to back me up on ‘Slow Boat To Mars.’ Mike asked me over the intercom while he and Marty were in the studio working on their parts, ‘Do you want a plain yeah, or a whup-yeah?’ It makes a difference, I can assure you (I opted for ‘whup-yeah.’) Tommy West was evidently in love with the country ballad ‘Daisy,’ because he came in and personally sang the harmony parts. I later heard they had intentions of pitching the song to George Jones, but I don’t know if that happened. The ol’ Possum would’ve nailed it for sure.”

While the recording process was underway, one live performance was booked for the “Tom Feher Band” at My Father’s Place in Roslyn, Long Island. The band consisted of Feher, Ace Banner on bass, Marc Aaron on guitar, Rob Stevens on electric piano and Rob’s buddy Tommy, who’d played on the recordings, on drums.

FEHER:

“We opened for the James Cotton Blues band, and from the beginning it was somewhat of a mistake. Cotton’s audience – ninety-nine percent black folk – were sitting at tables with sangria pitchers in front of them and yelling ‘bring on the blues!’ When we started into our white-bread-and-mayonnaise pop music set, they got even rowdier and some began tossing the citrus slices from the sangria at us. It was really humiliating. James Cotton then went up and got full support from his people.

“Just before the second set, I said to the guys ‘I’m not going to go through that shit again.’ Somebody said, ‘Well, what are we going to do about it? We have to play a second set.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t have to go out there and invite them to kick our asses. Everyone up to full volume and rock!’ We carried out the plan, throwing in a bit of r & b, and the second set got some polite applause. At least they didn’t cream us.”

When all was said and done, Feher reports, the company had spent twenty-thousand dollars in his behalf. They now had four master quality recordings of a “new discovery.” Feher had high hopes, which slowly turned sour as he received news that the masters couldn’t be placed with a label. 

FEHER:

“This information was filtered down to me through Rob, my producer. He had kept me busy recording some new demos. We did a song called ‘Little Bit Of Be-Bop,’ which was originally called “Little Bit Of Doo-Wop,’ and was dedicated in a way to my boyhood hero, Dion DiMucci. Since Cashman and West had worked with Dion, there was a good chance that he might record my tune; but it never happened.

“Rob and I were at odds over another song we demoed, called ‘Keep It To Yourself, Joanne.’ I’d put a chord change in there that he insisted was illogical and couldn’t work musically. I’m guessing that this was based on his theory training at Berklee. 

“I kept making the point that if it was impossible to use chords in that sequence, how come I’d been able to do it? And factually, the chord progression sounded fine; it just wasn’t the typical ham and eggs. Well… it was becoming more obvious that Rob and I weren’t heading for a long-term artist-producer relationship.

“Meanwhile, he comes to me with this bit of news that Columbia and some other major label had heard the tapes and were not interested in signing me. To show you how stupid record executives can be and how unwilling to take a stand or risk on anything or even believe in an artist, this is how the reasoning went:

“Cashman and West, functioning as their new label, Lifesong, rather than stand solidly behind me, wanted to find out what other labels thought of the masters… or so I heard. So the guys at the other labels, rather than make up their minds for themselves on the music, reasoned this way: ‘why are they bringing this artist to us instead of putting him out on their own label? There must be something wrong with him.’

“In other words, no one wanted to be responsible for saying, “this guy is great,’ or ‘this guy sucks;’ it was a buck-passing festival. The guys at Cashman-West explained it to me that they couldn’t afford to release my masters on Lifesong and needed major input – of funds, I am thinking. Neil Bogart and Buddah all over again. But they managed to find enough dough to release the Henry Gross track ‘Shannon.’ 

“So I decided that I’d had enough of this shit and asked out of my contract(s). They would have acquired one hundred songs at two hundred bucks a pop and I would be back on the street. Now the trouble began. No one had ever asked out of their contract, even though they offered it as an option. This was not good for their image. So I talked to everyone on the team and finally ended up sitting facing Phil Kurnitt, the lawyer, the invisible third partner.

“I could see right away where the trouble was coming from. This guy didn’t like me, he didn’t like my voice, and he didn’t want me on the Lifesong label. But he also didn’t want to let me out of my contract, possibly because there was an outside chance that I would create a hit, and of course no one wants to be left out of the loop when that happens.

“I’m explaining to him the absurdity of offering a master to other labels when you have a label of your own, and how this looks to the other labels, and we’re going at it back and forth, point-counterpoint, while his face is getting redder and he’s sweating, and his glasses begin sliding down the bridge of his nose. Suddenly, he slams his hand down on the deck and yells with total spewing hatred, ‘You’re not going to get me on a point!’ and I knew right then I had a total Hitler on my hands. 

“There’s a saying that one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch; but I would tend to disagree. The guys at Cashwest were a great bunch, but this rotten apple spoiled it for me completely. I got up and walked out of there, cool as a cucumber and never regretted it, never looked back.”

It was 1976, which – besides being the U.S. Centennial year – was a transitional year for many of the Left Banke’s extended family. Bert Sommer was still in there pitching, having landed the role of “Flatbush” in the fictional band “Kaptain Kool and the Kongs” on the Krofft Supershow, a Saturday morning children’s show airing on ABC. By this time, Shep Gordon had long since parleyed Alice Cooper (no longer a band, but a personality) into a Million Dollar Baby and Vincent Furnier (Alice) was riding the album charts with Alice Cooper Goes To Hell. 

Michael McKean, of “the other Left Banke” had himself a major career jump-start, playing Lenny on the hit TV series Laverne and Shirley. Vicki Sue Robinson earned her gold record on June 19th as “Turn The Beat Around” hit #10 nationally. About the time Feher was walking out on his contract with Cashman and West, their production of “Shannon” hit #6 for former Sha-Na-Na guitarist Henry Gross. 

BROWN’S BECKIES

1976 was also the year that Mike Brown briefly resurfaced with a project and album titled “The Beckies.” Not much is known about the details because, as Tom Finn points out, “by this time Brown was very paranoid and secretive.” Personnel on the album included Brown on keyboards, Scott Trusty on vocals and drums, Gary Hodgden on vocals and bass, and Mayo James “Jimmy” McAllister on guitar. Co-production is credited to Michael Brown and Ron Frangipane, a music business veteran musician, arranger and producer with numerous credits. 

Brown had met Scott Trusty, a native of Kansas City, in 1969 in New York, where he had recruited Trusty to record the vocal on one of his current compositions, “Quarter Horses,” a clever piece using changes of time signature. Scott Trusty had a boyhood friend, Jimmy McAllister, who was playing back in Kansas City in a band “Chesmann Square” with Hodgden until the band broke up in 1974 and Trusty convinced them to come to New York to form the group, originally known as “Brown’s Band,” that would later become the Beckies. 

They rehearsed in an old warehouse building with brick walls and a sloping ceiling with a skylight under which was situated a funky grand piano. From interviews, they all seemed to enjoy the early days best; even Brown admits he had fun with the band. It seems that the fun deteriorated around the time it came to record. Originally, John Abbott, who’d worked with both the Left Banke and the Montage as arranger, was selected as producer; but apparently Brown had a falling out with Abbott, who walked out, and after a delay Ron Frangipane was brought in. The ever-harmonious and loyal Tom Finn was on hand for a number of tracks.

TOM FINN:

“I sang a double lead on ‘Right By My Side.’ What I mean by double lead is: a singer sings the lead melody and I sing one fifth under the lead. It's a harmony style I first heard on ‘Bring It On Home To Me’ by Sam Cooke. Smokey Robinson also employed this harmony on ‘You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me.’ John Lennon also used it a lot on songs like ‘If I Fell,’ but he also used it on other Beatle songs where Paul had a high lead melody. I sang on a lot if Beckies songs but ‘Right By My Side.’ was the only one that made it to the album.”

Finn also arranged the vocals and sang on “The Story,” a post-album track in which he incorporated the style of a round (overlapping repeated melody and harmonies) into a superb pop melody by Brown. The Beckies album was released on the Sire label. The group originally had trouble finding a label that would accept them because of Brown’s refusal to tour; but Sire accepted the situation and vowed to deal with it later.

Sire was the brainchild of Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer, formerly of the songwriting/production trio Feldman-Goldstein-Gottehrer aka The Strangeloves who gave us “My Boyfriend’s Back” (#1 for 3 weeks in 1963) and “I Want Candy,” on which they were also the artists. The label made claims to the Top Ten in 1973 with “Hocus-Pocus” by Focus and in 1977 with the Climax Blues Band. 

The executives at Sire managed to resist the lure of the disco craze and opted instead for oldies acts – the Turtles, Duane Eddy, Del Shannon – and a number of punk / new wave acts including, over the years, the Talking Heads, the Ramones and The Pretenders; their pot of gold would come in the 1980s when they signed Madonna.

Sire, it would seem, had its fingers on the changing pulse of the streets but knew its rock and roll history too; so an album deal with Michael Brown fit comfortably into their label programming. The Beckies, however, broke up immediately after the album was recorded, and Sire opted not to renew their contract. 

The group had played a total of one live gig. McAllister and Hodgden returned to Kansas City, where Hodgden enjoyed a measure of success with the band Shooting Star, the first American group signed to Virgin Records. Jimmy McAllister would continue to work on projects with Brown until his (McAllister’s) death in 2006.

TOM FEHER:

“Although it has not been released on CD, most of the tracks from The Beckies album can be heard on YouTube. I listened to them recently (having missed the original release) and I have to say this: regardless of Brown’s personal quirks and flights of fantasy, his songwriting and keyboard performance is as strong on this album as it ever was.

“I’ve noticed that some reviewers like to paint a picture of Brown as a musician caught in a progressive decline, but I beg to differ: that’s not the case at all. Mike may have declined emotionally, but musically he was still in there swinging a formidable bat. What declined was the music business and with it, the public taste. 

“Audiences were swilling up the industry slop that got progressively more prominent and tasteless year after year. Brown simply wasn’t going for that; he remained rooted in the ‘sixties when music had a finer overall creative edge. For all my disagreements with him as a person, I can still respect him for that creative integrity.

“I’d rather listen to the Beckies’ album than ninety-five percent of the crap that I hear coming out today. But to read the reviewers – most of whom can’t even pick out ‘Hot Cross Buns’ on a piano – you’d think they were referring to a lame production. That kind of unwarranted and unqualified criticism has probably ruined the lives of more artists in all genres than have alcohol and other drugs. People who appreciate diligent creativity should simply listen to the tracks for themselves. The critics can go to hell.

“Creatively, Brown didn’t ‘lose it’ as some writers would have one believe. The 1972 Kama Sutra tracks billed as ‘Steve Martin’ represent some of his finest work; the Montage album (if I say so myself) contains some melodic and lyrical masterwork; and the unreleased track from 1969 – ‘Quarter Horses’ featuring Scott Trusty on vocals – is right up there with his best… with anyone’s best. I’ve never developed a taste for Ian Lloyd’s voice, so I haven’t listened to many Stories’ tracks; but one I have heard – ‘Please, Please’ – is a masterwork and should be used in the soundtrack for a major film release.

“It’s really a shame that Mike Brown has such a low tolerance for crowds of people. He conceives of himself as a cloistered monk of a composer – in an age of showbiz, spotlights and stadiums. He has the calling card – the hit record that draws interest; any one of the groups he became involved with could have been up there with Emerson, Lake and Palmer, ELO, or Queen if they hadn’t been consumed by the internal conflicts issuing from his “me, myself and I against the world” attitude. However, as much as I disrespect Mike Brown for alienating his friends and associates, I’ll defend his musical ability against all criticism. It’s two different subjects, really.”

STRANGERS IN THE STUDIO

While Mike Brown was completing what would be his final album with his final group, the wheels were turning for Tom Finn to inspire a reunion of the Left Banke’s vocal trio. It happened like this: In the latter days of working Buddy’s Place, Finn made an invitation to Corbett (formerly of Mr. Flood’s Party) and his wife Lynn Taylor-Corbett, a celebrated dancer and choreographer, to visit the club and see the sold out show of Lou Rawls. As in any super upscale nightclub, the words “sold out” meant, sold out except for the eight to ten stage side tables which were held back for the likes of Frank Sinatra or for their best customers. Finn went to Buddy’s manager Stanley Kay and asked to reserve one of the stage front “two tops” (meaning table for two). Stanley approved his request and Finn paid the cover charge. When Corbett and his wife arrived, he greeted them and walked them up to the front of the stage. Finn tipped the headwaiter twenty dollars – a generous tip in 1975 – and handed the Corbetts a menu. They ordered dinner and he went back to get ready for the show. Finn had brought his wife Karin along that night, so she came with him when he went into Lou Rawls’ dressing room. 

TOM FINN:

 “I was going over the show cues with Lou when somebody said, ‘Hey Tommy somebody wants to talk to you.’ So I said to Karin, ‘Okay, Karin let’s go.’ Then Lou Rawls said, ‘She can stay here if she likes,’ and Karin said ‘Oh Tommy can I?’ I said ‘Umm! Okay, sure, I’ll be right back.’ Meanwhile, when I left her in Lou’s dressing room, Lou had just taken his shirt off. Now I’m thinking, is that fucking cunt fucking Lou Rawls right now? I talked to one of the opening act people about some sound or lighting cue, for about ten minutes and got back to Lou’s dressing room ASAP. I knocked on the door. Lou said, ‘who is it?’ I nearly died. I said ‘it’s Tom – the sound man.’ He opened the door and there was Karin sitting in the couch. Everything looked normal so I calmed down. I think Lou knew I was worried about Karin fucking him. 

“So he called me into his private bathroom and closed the door. He reached into his pocket and took out a small bottle of pure cocaine and said, ‘Here, Tommy… you look overworked or nervous. Here take a hit,’ as he laid out a few lines on the bathroom sink counter. I took a two and two (two snorts in each nostril) and we both came out. I got Karin a seat at Buddy’s table and the show began. After the show, I grabbed Corbett’s dinner check and paid it, and said goodnight. About three days later my phone rang; it was Mike Corbett. He invited me to lunch and I made an appointment.” 

After lunch Corbett suggested they go up to the offices of Cam-USA, the music publishing company where he was working, and while sitting there talking about Rubott and other music business memories, Corbett asked Finn if he was writing songs anymore. When Finn replied to the affirmative, Corbett asked to hear one of the new songs. At a piano in one of the conference rooms, Finn played his new song ‘Lorraine.’ Corbett was much impressed and called in his boss, publisher Victor Benedetto. Finn gave a repeat performance of ‘Lorraine’ for Benedetto.

FINN:

“After I finished, Victor said in his thick Italian accent, ‘Ooh! That’s-a very nice-a. Ooh! Beautiful melody. Ooh! Ooh!’ We talked for about ten minutes or so, and he asked me if I’d like to sign a publishing deal. He said he’d give me five hundred dollars for ‘Lorraine.’ I thought about it and said to myself, I might as well sign with him; after all he currently had two songs on the charts. 

“I took his advance money and went home a published songwriter. I’m convinced that the reason this all happened was because of me inviting Corbett down to Buddy’s Place and shelling out over two hundred dollars for him to see Lou Rawls. In other words, in my life it seems like whenever I did something nice or good for someone, without any motive or any selfish reason, I somehow got a reward – like God stepped in and said ‘now I’m gonna send you a little miracle.’” 

In 1976 Cam-USA had had a huge hit with Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” (#2 for three weeks, a platinum single). As an initial project with his newly acquired artist Victor Benedetto sent Finn out to Cleveland because Carmen, who was a fan of the Left Banke, needed a bass player.

FINN:

“When he walked into the rehearsal room he told about hearing the Left Banke at Coney Island (in Ohio) in the ‘sixties, and then he said his first hit, ‘Go All The Way’ by The Raspberries was stolen by inverting the chorus of ‘Walk Away Renée.’ He’d recently recorded ‘Renée’ on an album. I didn’t like Eric Carmen’s personality or his band; they were very nasty when I told them I knew Jimi Hendrix. One of them said ‘we don’t like that nigger shit.’ 

‘After playing a few songs with him I went back to my hotel and decided to catch the last plane out of Cleveland to New York City instead of going back to the studio the next day. Fuck them. The band was saying ‘don’t say this to Eric,’ and ‘don’t say that to Eric,’ and ‘don’t do this,’ etcetera. When Eric came in they all stood up and walked over to him and shook his hand. It was like he was a fucking regent or something. I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t wait to get out of there; he was a total jerk.”   

It was likely that Victor Benedetto had great affinity for Finn’s song “Lorraine” due to its similarity with Carmen’s big hit “All By Myself,” a slow, mournful ballad. But he also saw the potential of recording a more complete Left Banke vocal sound and suggested that they bring Steve Martin-Caro back to the USA from Madrid. 

Cam-USA also had publishing on a huge hit called “Emotion” by an Australian vocalist named Samantha Sang, a record produced by Barry Gibb with the Bee Gees singing harmony; “Emotion” reached Number Three in Billboard in early 1978 and was awarded a platinum record in the USA. Thus one can imagine that Victor was aware of the Bee Gees success in the ‘sixties and as Tom Finn remarks, “he didn’t hold it against us for being popular eleven years earlier.” 

Finn agreed with the idea of bringing Steve back to the US and began to be optimistic about reforming the group, to the point where he asked David White, who he’d met that same year at Bagel Nosh, to be their Road Manager. Concurrently, Mike Brown had appeared on the scene and was there when Steve got off the plane.

In the wake of The Beckies’ failure to chart, Brown was grasping for straws. He had been to see Star Wars several times, and inspired by the film he’d written a song called “May The Force Be With You.” Brown attempted to rope the Left Banke vocalists into one more project.     

FINN:

“I went to see Star Wars with Mike Brown in a big movie theater on Broadway; he’d already seen it two or three times. After the movie was over, we were walking uptown on Broadway when Brown walked up to a pay phone and called Seymour Stein. I said to him ‘What are you doing?’ He said ‘See this thin little dime? Well, I’m dropping this dime into this phone to call Seymour Stein at Sire Records and set into motion a deal to record ‘May The Force Be With You.’ He went on to say in his animated voice ‘See, Tommy, this small little dime is going down the chute, I’m making a ten cent investment, and gambling that I’ll hit the jackpot.’ 

“So he got Seymour Stein on the phone and said something like ‘I’ve got this great song that I’ve been developing and I’d like to set-up a demo session so I can show you how good it is.’ Seymour Stein must have approved the idea, and asked Brown to go ahead and put the elements together and then call him back

“We recorded ‘May The Force Be With You’ just before the Cam-USA deal was consummated. I remember rehearsing and recording with Steve and George. We were planning to do a group with Brown again but he had a mental breakdown and landed in a mental institution. Victor had met Brown and wanted nothing to do with him.”

With yet another sad Mike Brown tale to tell, Finn now procured an attorney and contracts were drawn up; the boys signed with Cam-USA where they were re-united with Mike Corbett. Under Victor’s direction, Corbett rented a house for the group in upstate New York on the property of Jan Hammer, a popular rock-jazz keyboardist. (Hammer had been an original member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early ‘seventies and would go on to score a Number One single with the Theme From Miami Vice in 1985). Corbett would come to the house every two weeks or so, and listen to their new songs, gauging their progress, harking back to the days of Feher’s, “Rock & Roll Boot Camp".” 

FINN:

“We went with Cam-USA and David White became our (ahem!) ‘Road Manager,’ the ‘road’ being the trip from the rented house Victor got us in upstate New York – Kent New York to be exact – back and forth from Manhattan and to the local bar Smalley’s, where George, Steve, Charly (Cazalet) and the gang spent a lot of their time. 

“David White made that otherwise disorganized time a real pleasure: with his wise cracks and one-liners he was really a stabilizing influence on all of us. I just can’t express how much Dave made that time seem so good.”

Dave White recalls meeting Tom Finn, Victor Benedetto, and some of his time with the Left Banke during the subsequent songwriting, rehearsals and recording.

DAVE WHITE:

“I was standing in line at a Bagel Nosh in NYC when this guy in line next to me asked ‘Are you a drummer? You look like a drummer.’ I was stunned because I had played drums in a band several years before in another country and figured only a true psychic could look at someone ordering a toasted bagel and make that assumption. In hindsight though, I suppose the bagel being ‘toasted’ was a dead give away.

  “Tom and I sat down and he explained that he was auditioning drummers that day in an effort to record some songs he’d written and I should give it a go. I might have considered it if I hadn’t been talking to Tom Finn of the LEFT BANKE and having him introduce me to Ashford and Simpson sitting at the next table and listening to everyone talk about the biz and recording contracts and the last release….Yeah, some dickweed that played drums in high school oughta fit right in with that crew. 

   “I did end up going to the session. I didn’t play but I did become friends with one of the coolest people I ever met. After that I would go over to Tom’s apartment and listen to tunes and songs he wrote on his piano in the corner of the room and basically just hang out. It was around this time that Tom decided he was ready to shop his stuff and get something published. I think he was a little shy about the whole thing and I kinda went along for moral support. We went all over the place. I saw a lot of offices with gold records on the wall for sure. There was a lot of interest in the songs but that damn disco shit had everybody thinking inside a very small box back then.

    “And then… enter Camerica Music, later called CamUSA, and Tom landed an interview with Vittorio Benedetto. Victor really liked Tom’s songs and had to know more about his influences. When he found out Tom was a founding member of one of his all time favorite bands he lit up. He had to put the band back together. All that was missing from that scene was Belushi, Ackroyd and a floating nun.

“Where were the rest of the boys? Rumor had it Steve was selling bibles somewhere in Spain, George was working in a movie theater in Brooklyn, Mike was on planet Claire or somewhere like it and Tom was on his way to a case of the hives. Victor, however, was bound and determined to make this happen. He opened the checkbook and stated, ‘I will make you very, very suc-a-cess-a-ful boys.’ Gotta love that man. I really think it meant as much to him as it did to anyone involved to get the Banke back.

  “So the stage was set: all aboard the year long ‘Magical Mystery Train Wreck.’ I believe it was Tom that told me he read an interview with Pete Townsend who said ‘There’s two kinds of bands that make it big and stay together – The ones where everybody hangs out together and are friends like the Stones and the ones who just click with the music and can’t get along privately like the Who.’ Some where bouncing in between those two walls was the Left Banke.”

White recalls an initial get together with Mike Brown at Brown’s apartment. It started out promising enough. All the boys around the piano going over a couple of tunes and then, as Dave tells it, the shit hit the fan. ‘”My way or the highway’ kinda stuff.” A few phone calls between Finn and Brown over the next few days, with a sprinkling of “who owns the name” thrown around, made it apparent Mike Brown didn’t want the train ride. The next couple of weeks were a blur of rehearsal studios and logistical nightmares of getting everyone in the same place at the same time in some form of sobriety. It was at this point the group was sent off to seclusion. 

DAVE WHITE:

  “Some highlights of this time frame for me include going to a session in the old Rockefeller center, getting off the elevator at the wrong floor, stumbling down the hallway carrying guitar cases and such. It was probably 11:00 am but we were still buzzed and got half way down the hallway before any of us realized we were standing in the middle of thirty naked women getting dressed in the hallway. It was the Rockettes. One of them smiled and asked if we were lost. I think George said ‘Not any more!’

  “Getting to go to the record execs’ only job fairs for up and coming acts and seeing this maniac from Jersey and this huge black sax player auditioning for the suits. Long live E-Street. RCA studios who apparently hadn’t quite got the hang of reverb units yet so they had a gymnasium where the walls and ceilings moved… all the after hours joints that changed location every week to stay ahead of the uncool... wondering what that bright hot ball in the sky was after leaving the aforementioned locales.

  “Watching Mike Kamen, dressed in a wrinkled pin stripe suit, T-shirt and worn tennis shoes, walk into a session full of New York Philharmonic players borrowed from a Roberta Flack session. All those smirks and eyes rolling… till he handed out the scores he wrote the night before and conducted them through three songs with on-the-fly score changes in one take. 

“The first chair violinist looked eighty years old. I couldn’t hear what he said to Mike after the session because I was on the wrong side of the glass but I could see him shaking Mike’s hand and nodding like a bobble head. You would think he had just found his long lost son! From the New York Rock Ensemble to the New York Philharmonic, Mike (Michael Kamen) is missed by all. 

  “Waiting in the lounge at CamUSA to see Victor and give him the monthly damage report. I was trying desperately not to stare at the two six-foot tall bombshells sitting on the couch across the room. The receptionist came out and said, ‘Are you Dave with the Left Banke?’ I nodded. ‘Victor will be right with you and happy birthday.’ 

“I had no clue how they knew it was my birthday but the bombshells came over to me and kissed me happy birthday and said what an inspiration the Banke was to them. They said they were with a group called Abba. I didn’t know who that was and thought they were referring to what came out of my mouth after they kissed me – ‘abba… abba… abba…’” 

   Dave White was present at a rhythm track session laid down by Hugh McCracken, Cornell Dupree, Anthony Jackson and Steve Gadd, a group of legendary session men. He then accompanied the Left Banke on their relocation to the country. Victor bought the group a station wagon and rented the upstate property. According to Dave, that got the creative juices flowing, and Finn was beginning to relax; but nevertheless, after several weeks began to make a regular commute to the city. 

DAVE WHITE:

  “Now it gets weird…should I mention the creative accounting for hospital visits, broken headlights, cracked toilet bowels, faucets torn from kitchen sinks, first aide kits enormous fuel bills, bar tabs that would make Charlie Sheen shudder? Nah... too commonplace. Suffice it to say a TV set flying out a hotel room window would probably have gone unnoticed. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Jan Hammer at Redgate Farm for the low rent neighbors he had to put up with. My bad, I was supposed to be keeping the bottle corked instead of drinking from it. I hope Mr. Pearlman got his cottage repaired too.

“Well, after a year or so some pretty damn good music ended up on tape. I didn’t have a clue which song should be the single release to spring the Left Banke onto the world again. I wasn’t alone. Don’t forget it was disco shit heyday which turned into the Left Banke’s M.A.Y.D.A.Y. The end of the fantasy for me came when the suits made the decision that none of the songs sounded like the fodder that was getting airplay at that time. The Cars’ album came out right after that, you short sighted turkeys.

    “So back to the studio to record a song that sounded disco enough to fit in. I hated it. It sounded like the Raspberries meet Donna Summer. I think Eric Carmen may have been the writer actually. Tom would know; I’ve blocked it from my memory. 

    “That was the end that I can remember. Lost my copy of the rough mixes after a divorce and never heard anything again until my sister sent me a URL about six months ago and said you’re not gonna believe this! It was ‘Poor Boy’ which was a song that Steve was working on up at the asylum (upstate New York) and I suggested he put a little reggae flair to it. The boys got together and made it a song. That brought it all back and reunited me with the Banke.

“Let’s talk about the boys. I can’t begin to relate to anyone the respect and admiration I have for these cats’ talents. Tommy, George, Steve, and the Kaz. The Kaz would be Charly Cazalet, a fun guy to hang with and a dynamite bass player. Steve blew my mind with his guitar playing one night. The dude could smoke a Strat! I hear it ran in the family. The anti-Christ with the voice of an angel. One of a kind. I never heard anyone get drunk and sing SHARP! I think the guy actually had perfect pitch. You rock, Carmello.

  “George could actually play pretty good drums when he wasn’t hung over. He always found that vocal harmony though. He also could get in a shit load of trouble. I think we hit every Blarney Stone and Olympia coffee shop in New York City. I still hear ‘Excuse me miss, pardon me miss, excuse me miss, can I buy you a drink? Where are you from? Excuse me miss’ …damn, we had fun.

  “Kaz was always crackin’ me up and a good influence on all. Tom? I love him like a brother and miss the hell out of him. He turned me on to New York City like I had never seen it: the studios, the park, Fascination at two am, the clubs, weirdos and good people. I will forever be indebted for his friendship. I only got to briefly brush by the entity that is the Left Banke but it is very much a part of who I am. I suspect a lot of people can say that. We are all blessed.”   

TOM FINN:

“One time we had no gas for cooking and no money for food. Charly led a shoplifting attack on the local supermarket and stole steaks and lobsters, but no gas for cooking it. No problem – we built a bonfire out behind the house and resourceful Charly showed us how to cook those steaks and lobsters out in the snow banks. I had to leave the house because I couldn’t take it. I was trying to be serious about the music. I ended up writing all the songs, either by myself or with a fragment that Steve provided. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. 

“But Dave wasn’t part of the problems; he tried to get us to do what we were supposed to do. He was actually called our ‘road manager,’ but the only road we managed was the highway from the Redgate Farm to Smalley’s bar and back. Where’s George? Nobody could find him… the next day he woke up on the roadside. He’d fallen asleep on the side of the road when he tried to go out and walk five miles into town to buy some more beer.” 

The deal with Victor Benedetto led to what would be called the Left Banke’s third and final album; however, from the beginning it was a project that centered on Tom Finn and his expanding scope of musical abilities, particularly as a songwriter. After all, the deal was sparked by interest in Finn’s song “Lorraine;” and one finds Tom Finn listed as writer or co-writer on nine of the album’s ten songs. It was possibly Finn’s finest hour.

TOM FEHER:

“When we worked on Left Banke Too in 1967-68, Tom Finn was just beginning to write songs; but it was easy to hear even then that he was going to prove as inventive and baroque (the word basically means ‘ornamental’) as Brown ever had been. Visiting Finn at his Upper West Side apartment around this time, I was struck by the quality of his new material; and he wrote with the trademark Left Banke harmony in mind.”

GEORGE CAMERON (from a 2003 Daniel Coston interview):

“I actually liked some of Tom’s songs. This was a new direction for us, I thought. Good melodies that had a little more punch then our old stuff. I guess I saw it as the next step from our pop days. This was more the kind of music I was into, and I think Steve felt the same way. It had a backbeat… good guitar riffs… a lot more soulful with a touch of blues. But the partying got the best of Steve and me. Some of those recordings were done with extreme hangovers.”

Cam-USA sprung for full costs on three tracks: “Queen of Paradise,” “And One Day,” and “You Say.” Finn refers to these as “the three big studio sides,” and they were recorded at RCA studios in Manhattan with Michael Kamen as arranger and recording engineer Joe Ferla as producer. 

The remainder of the album – seven songs – were produced by Mike Corbett (formerly of Mr. Flood’s Party and vocalist on Feher’s Cashwest sessions) at Kingdom Sound, a bargain studio on Long Island; they were never meant to be anything but demos, but were eventually released with the other master tracks to create a complete album.

Over a period of two months, they recorded the bulk of the album material including “Heartbreaker,” another Steve Martin-Caro fragment doctored up and completed by Finn, and a beautiful Tom Finn ballad, “I Can Fly.” 

“I lift my head up high to the sky; there is no turning back, 

And I know, for the first time:

I can fly, if I want to fly, I can be what I dare to be;

I can try if I want to try, I can be what I dare to be…”

“I Can Fly” – words and music by Tom Finn © 2013

Other than two hired pianists, the group members and friends all played on the demos. There was Charly Cazalet, a friend from the beginning, on bass; Jimmy McAllister, formerly of The Beckies on electric guitar; George Cameron on drums; and Tom Finn on acoustic guitar and  piano, and Mellotron on “Lorraine.” (For the uninitiated, the Mellotron is an electro-mechanical keyboard instrument developed in Birmingham, England in the 1960s. The sound of the Mellotron can be heard on the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” It has been used by countless recording artists.) “Queen of Paradise,” the one “outside” song on the album (not written by anyone in the group), was selected because it followed the disco trend that was dominating the charts in the late ‘70s.

TOM FINN:

“Michael Kamen came in as the arranger on the Big Three songs. One day we all got together, to pick songs for the major studio treatment. The disco song had to be done, that was the publisher’s one demand; but he left the other two up to us and Michael Kamen. 

    “We’re sitting there with Kamen, and he listens to all our demos. We decided on ‘And One Day’ which is a song that Steve wrote the first phrase only. I finished the rest which was about eighty percent of the song. George didn’t want to sing it because he felt he was a writer on it (and wasn’t getting credit). So to keep the peace I gave him a third of it, now George loves it. Now there’s one song left to choose. Kamen hears my solo ‘Lorraine’ and he says ‘Oh my God, that song is beautiful;’ it was the only song he liked a lot. But Steve and George refused to do it, because they weren’t writers on it, it was all mine.    “They chose another song that they both had songwriting credit on ‘You Say.’ I was over ruled and ‘You Say’ was done. It came out shitty; the original demo was one hundred percent better. If ‘Lorraine’ had been done, with Kamen’s knack for orchestral arranging it might have been so pretty that it could have been a hit. But Steve and George opted for ‘You Say,’ which is okay but not really commercial. So that really fucked my head up.”

“Lorraine, Lorraine, you know I still remember 

Last November, when I was with you.

Lorraine, Lorraine, I know we’ll make it one day,

Maybe Monday in a week or two.

 

Don’t you know that I wonder why, did we have to say goodbye,

When we could have gone on dreaming, yes dreaming,

Lorraine, Lorraine, your touch, it makes me shiver

And I’ll deliver all I got to give.

Don’t you know that I wonder why, did we have to say goodbye,

When we could have gone on dreaming, yes dreaming,

Lorraine, Lorraine, although it takes forever, come whatever, 

I’ll be there with you, ah … ah… Lorraine.”

 

“Lorraine” – words and music by Tom Finn © 2013

Tom Finn also had a preference for producer. Finn had kept contact with his friend Al Stewart whom he’d met in the early ‘70s and was currently in New York City while touring to support his hit single “The Year of The Cat” (US #8 / January 1977). Finn met him backstage at the Academy Of Music Theater (which later became The Palladium) on East Fourteenth Street, where Al had played to a packed house of about three thousand fans. 

FINN:

“Al finally got his hit record, I knew he would eventually. I love his lyrics to ‘The Year of the Cat;’ he could always spin a nice tale.  I was so happy for him. But, it made me a little sad that Steve and George weren’t taking themselves seriously. And here I was watching my old hardworking friend making it big. I complained a lot, yeah, and I still do. If Steve and George were more serious and dedicated to that project I would have felt a lot better, but it was a constant effort to get them to work. 

“There I was everyday at the piano… writing, arranging, singing, and fighting with those two lazy fucks about trying to be serious about that project. I finally had a nervous breakdown, and couldn’t live at the house anymore. I stayed in Manhattan with Karin and commuted by train every three days. While I was riding on the train I found it easier to write lyrics. Hah! Strangers on a Train.” 

Al Stewart’s current producer/arranger was Alan Parsons, who in addition to his work for Stewart would score a Number Three in 1982 with “Eye In The Sky.” Finn wanted Parsons as producer but was assigned Joe Ferla; there were a few concessions Victor Benedetto was not prepared to make. Ferla was no lightweight. He’d worked with everything from jazz trios to seventy-piece orchestras; but according to Finn, his pairing with the Left Banke just didn’t click.

FINN:

When I heard Parsons’ production of ‘Year of the Cat’ I said, man, this is the shit. But we got Joe Ferla – a major mismatch. Parsons was on the right page; He understood. Although Kamen’s involvement was a good thing, he just did what Victor wanted. I didn’t like his re-working of ‘You Say,’ but he did a great job on ‘And One Day.’ It’s just over-arranged; it actually sounds like a film score. ‘Queen Of Paradise’ was out and out disco.” 

Benedetto had bought the publishing rights to ‘Queen of Paradise’ which had been a minor hit in Britain. None of the group liked it, but Victor had laid out thousands of dollars on the house, a car, a road manager a weekly salary to all three vocalists, a sound system, payment for the demo studio time at Kingdom Sound, and various other needs. 

Now he was ready to lay out a bundle to record “Queen of Paradise,” “And One Day” and “You Say” at RCA studios on West Forty-Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. At this point Michael Kamen was chosen by the group as the arranger. Finn worked with him while he was scoring a twenty-five piece orchestra. 

As guitarist on the three masters, the boys wanted – and got – Hugh McCracken, who had worked on the first Left Banke album. Tom Finn wanted his friend Anthony Jackson on bass, and got him. The other musicians were: Cornell Dupree on electric rhythm guitar, Michael Kamen on piano, and an unknown drummer. Kamen conducted the orchestra at Media Sound; after that it was back to RCA studios for the mixes and vocals. 

FINN:

“Victor couldn’t get a deal for us, after all most of the tracks were of demo quality. George was drunk on most sessions. ‘Queen Of Paradise’ (the single) was panned by the music press. Victor created a deal with Relix Records, which was a Grateful Dead tribute label. He just took anything because our contract said that Victor had to get a release for us. ‘Queen Of Paradise’ was Victor’s capriccio (whim); he wanted to roll the dice to make his investment pay off. We all hated it; I was most surprised that Kamen didn’t say something. I guess at that time he must have looked at it strictly as a money gig. 

“We weren’t in any position to refuse Victor’s wishes; he’d dug deep down into his pockets to make the Left Banke a hit group. After this fiasco was over, I found that my piano playing skills were very good. So I booked myself into Kenny’s Castaways as a solo act with a French sideman guitarist named Jacques, who played excellently and was also a marijuana dealer. I played for one week and felt like it was a success. Steve came to see me and said ‘Now that’s the Left Banke,’ but it was now 1980 and that was the end of this last reunion.”

The sessions, both masters and demos, languished in the vaults for eight years. In 1986 they were shoveled together into an album release that came out in Europe on the Bam-Caruso label as Voices Calling and in the US on Relix records as Strangers on a Train. By the mid ‘eighties, the world and the musical environment in which the Left Banke had originally emerged was now ancient history. The album passed into obscurity, although die-hard Left Banke fans managed to locate it and post their favorite tracks on You Tube in the twenty-first century. 

TOM FEHER:

“I heard the single back in 1978 and detested ‘Queen Of Paradise’ from beat one. The only Left Banke song I hated more – even though I wrote the lyrics – was ‘What Do You Know,’ that weak attempt to emulate Buck Owens. But as for this album… I was unaware of it until the late 1990s when I was browsing through the bins in a used book and record store in Hollywood and found a cassette copy of Strangers On A Train. I said to myself, ‘What’s this… a Banke album that I’ve never heard?’ It had a really depressing looking picture on the front – none of the beautiful costumes and colors like Left Banke Too – but I figured I’d check it out to see what the boys had been doing.

“Some of the songs were familiar: songs that Finn had played for me during the period they were being written – ‘Lorraine,’ and ‘Only My Opinion.’ Others were a revelation: ‘Hold On Tight’ and ‘Heartbreaker’ really cooked! But my favorite was the tune ‘I Can Fly.’ You see, despite the ornate instrumentation, the Left Banke had made its reputation on dreary songs of bitter sentiments and lost love. There were lyrics like ‘You’ve been treating me so bad since the day that we met,’ (‘Something On My Mind’) and ‘Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes, for me it cries’ (‘Walk Away Renée’). Finn began to break out of that mold during Left Banke Too when he wrote ‘Nice To See You.’ But with ‘I Can Fly’ he really hit his stride in the direction of more positive, encouraging lyrics. I love that song.”

The demo sessions at Kingdom Sound produced two additional tracks that fans find of interest. “Claudia” was a song written by Finn about Claudia S. York, whom he’d met the day his marriage ended. “Poor Boy” was credited as a collaboration, although Finn describes the writing as a lopsided effort.

TOM FINN:

“Poor Boy was yet another Steve Martin-Caro fragment, and I believe George bulldozed his name onto the song. I actually wrote ninety-five percent of the song but I’ll concede that the Spaniards probably wrote some of it. I recall writing it at the house that Victor Benedetto rented for us in Kent New York on Jan Hammer’s property.

“Both ‘Claudia’ and ‘Poor Boy’ were done at Kingdom Sound with all the other stuff on the third so-called album. I played all the instruments on ‘Claudia’ and I sang all the harmony. Steve sang lead. On ‘Poor Boy’ I played all the instruments, George and I sang harmony and Steve sang lead. These two tracks were done with ‘Lorraine’ at the tail end of the sessions at Kingdom. I think we were already mixing all the other stuff with the band on it. So these three songs were just afterthoughts.”

TOM FEHER:

“‘Claudia’ and ‘Poor Boy’ have been posted on the Left Banke website. On first hearing, I thought to myself, these are the best of the lot. There was no attempt at fancy production, and the native ability of the group shines through. One thing, though: you certainly can’t call it ‘baroque pop-rock.’””

I LOVE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL: CATCHING UP WITH ALEECAT

When Alan Merrill (who at one pointed re-christened himself “Aleecat”) left New York for Japan in 1968, it was in the wake of a disappointing rejection by the Left Banke. Little did he know that his life and career was about to launch into a much wider orbit than the Banke could possibly have offered him. By September he was in a Tokyo-based band “Lead” on RCA records, and shortly thereafter became the first solo artist signed to Atlantic Records in Japan. Merrill also acted in soap opera on Japanese television and modeled for clothing ads and for Nissan automobiles. 

The Bronx boy who’d grown up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium then proceeded to co-found the first and most successful glam rock band in Japan, “Vodka Collins;” but in his own words “jumped ship” in anger in a dispute with band management over mis-handling of money. In late 1973, he responded to a call from none other than Jake Hooker, formerly of Feher’s band Benn Gunn, to travel to London and seek fame and fortune on the British pop charts.

ALAN MERRILL:

“Jake, who I’d known since Taft high school in the Bronx, called me in Tokyo and told me that he had a deal for us with the head of Decca records rock and pop division, Dick Rowe, and all I had to do was quit my band in Japan and fly over to England. 

“When I arrived in London I had no specific plan. Although I’d had hit singles in Japan, when I got off the plane I was flat broke, with only two guitars (one Hofner bass and one Gibson ES 340 TD electric) and a small suitcase. I later learned that Jake had actually sold a Marshall amplifier (paid for by Decca) to buy my plane ticket from Tokyo to London. Jake had been signed to Decca’s subsidiary label Deram, with a band called ‘Streak.’ They were dropped after one single release that flopped, ‘Bang Bang Bullit.’ 

“Streak” was a group that Jake and Alan had started with drummer John Siomos back in 1971 while Merrill was on vacation from Japan. Jake took the Streak demos that they’d made in New York and parlayed them into a deal in London with totally new players, Ben Brierley and drummer David Wesley (formerly of Benn Gunn) with Paul Varley later replacing Wesley. 

Brierley and Wesley, of course, were not on the original tape. This little coup amounted to a neat trick by Hooker since Alan was singing lead and had written the songs. The deal was done through Merrill’s friend and contact in London, manager Tony Hall, whom he’d met when performing for a week on the same pop bill with Hall’s act “Arrival” at Expo ‘70 in Osaka. 

MERRILL:

“My first meeting with Decca’s Dick Rowe was cursory and direct. I got the feeling by instinct that his relationship with Jake had already soured by the time I got to London. He said he didn’t think that Jake and I could have a successful unit, joking off the cuff that he had said the same thing to the Beatles some years prior, so not to be too disheartened by it. I wasn’t. But I was truly annoyed at Jake for exaggerating that there was a sure fire deal with Decca. Now that I was in the UK, there was no turning back to Japan, and I had no money. My back was to the wall.” 

The group formed by Merrill and Hooker eventually was named “the Arrows.” After a brief stint with Peter Meaden (a manager / publicist who’d been associated with the Who, The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry), the boys found their way into the world of Mickie Most. Most had made his reputation in the 1960s producing records for the likes of The Animals, Herman’s Hermits and Donovan. Most’s label, RAK Records was distributed through EMI. As Merrill tells it:

MERRILL:

“Time marched on, and around November Jake and I were actively seeking a publishing deal as a writing duo, with Peter Meaden suggesting places we should try. I needed money badly. My girlfriend was coming over from Japan and I still had no flat (apartment) of my own, living on Jake’s sofa on Mulberry Close. I had to get something soon, some earning situation, or be totally embarrassed when my girlfriend arrived.  “We toted acoustic guitars around the publishing divisions of various record labels, not using tapes: I sang the songs live, right there in offices of Motown, Bell records, CBS, others and finally RAK. Dave Most (real name David Hayes) was the head of the RAK publishing division, and he liked our live presentation so much he wanted to sign us to a publishing deal. He asked his brother, producer Mickie Most (real name Michael Hayes) to come in and listen.

“After hearing me sing Mickie had a whole other idea/agenda, with a song called ‘Touch Too Much.,’ a song by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn. David Cassidy had passed on the song, and Mickie had an ax to grind with Cassidy. I didn’t look unlike David Cassidy in those days; he thought: I’m gonna teach David Cassidy a lesson.

“Suzie Quatro and Sweet had also turned the song down. He wanted us to record it as a single for his RAK record label, and he said he’d produce the record himself. This all happened in one day. It was a bit overwhelming because Mickie was one of the biggest producers in the industry. He could practically guarantee success for an act.” 

And succeed they did. In March of 1974 “Touch Too Much” took the Arrows into the British Top Ten. Merrill was once again in the teenybopper market, but wasn’t about to complain. Peter Meaden, who informed Merrill that he would never be involved in any form of business with Mickie Most, dropped out of the picture.

MERRILL:

“Within six months of my being in Britain I was in the Top Ten. My girlfriend arrived from Japan, and I had a nice flat waiting for us to share at The Nell Gwynn House on Sloane Street, just off of the King’s Road. I would run into Peter Meaden from time to time, and he never disguised how disappointed he was that the band Arrows, who he knew as a real rock ‘n’ roll band right from the start, had sold out to the teen market basically for rent money and a retainer.” 

By 1976 the Arrows had their own weekly television show in Britain, acquiring a slot that had been vacated by the Bay City Rollers (if the reader is familiar with the Bay City Rollers, this will give him an idea of the type of music the Arrows were putting out.)

The song that clinched the TV show for them was a former B-side that had been flipped and became a minor hit for them in Britain. Written by Merrill and Jake Hooker, it was titled “I Love Rock ‘N Roll.”

MERRILL:

Joan Jett saw my band The Arrows do the song on TV when she was touring the UK with the Runaways for the first time in 1976. Legend is she sent a roadie out to track down a copy of the record. She got a copy, and tried to get the Runaways to do it but they refused. The band split up, and Jett recorded a few versions, including a 1979 version with the Sex Pistols and finally getting some corporate backing in 1982, with her second released version as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts going to #1. Her version only made #4 in England because the song was already old news to people there.”

The Joan Jett recording would go on to legendary status, taking Merrill to heights unimagined in the days of Rubott Management and the Bryant Hotel. But Alan Merrill would always admire the work of the Left Banke, as would become evident in the years to come.

TOM FEHER, RECORD PRODUCER

Not everyone in the left Banke’s extended family was quite as fortunate as Alan Merrill; but as we know, the show must go on. After his departure from Cashman & West, while Merrill was wowing the teens on British television and while Finn was developing the material for the final Left Banke album, Tom Feher managed to piece together a recording project of his own. He had found a studio in Saddle Brook, New Jersey operated by musician Roger Keay, and recruited Marc Aaron (guitar), Ace Banner (bass) and the drummer (name unknown) who’d played on the Cashwest sessions.

TOM FEHER:

“Roger’s facility was called Ant studio; he’d built it into his garage, one of the first studios of that type I’d encountered. I guess after recording in some of the largest studios in New York City I was coming down in the world; but to me it was a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience – and I was in charge of the proceedings! The tapes are lost, so I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible we recorded an entire album worth of material there. I recall five songs that were definitely recorded at Ant: ‘Mr. Record Man,’ ‘Love, Love, Love,’ ‘Boston Girl,’ ‘Ten Minutes To Midnight’ and ‘Echoes of ’63.’ The various elements in my songwriting were beginning to merge to where the lyrics were bold but not quite as ‘x-rated’ as the ‘Dirty Dozen.’ You got lines like “Ten minutes to midnight; our clothes were lyin’ all over the place. Ten minutes to midnight: I said come over here, baby, and sit on my face…’ or this autobiographical sketch in ‘Echoes of ’63:’ 

‘My oh my, you could sink your claws 

Into the flank of every single teenage vice:

Scumbags oozin’ on the floor of the balcony

Up inside the Loew’s Paradise

While down in the poolroom money changed hands

For every conceivable variety of contraband;

And the old folks stayed at home behind locked doors

On them hot Bronx nights…’

“Boston Girl” was another slice of real life, a ballad about a girl who picked him up in Greenwich Village on her way back from a cross-country trip; she wanted to have one last fling before re-joining her regular boyfriend in Boston. The melodies and instrumentation were inspired somewhat by Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger who were getting more and more noticed about that time.

It happened that while he was in the process of recording this material that Feher came across an old acquaintance, David Peel, in Washington Square. Peel, the reader may recall, fronted a recording act known as “David Peel and the Lower East Side;” at the time of this meeting, he had six albums released, one of which – The Pope Smokes Dope – had been produced by John Lennon, whom Peel had roped in shortly after Lennon’s arrival in New York City in the early seventies.

FEHER:

“Last time I’d seen David Peel was probably at the Woodstock festival. We got into talking and debating about everything under the sun while at the same time walking over to his apartment. It turned out that as we entered his apartment, we happened to be talking about social security; and in his trademark raspy voice, David said to me, ‘Social Security – who needs Social Security? That’s my social security!’ And he points up toward the ceiling where there’s a little ledge running along the wall.

“On the ledge are displayed all his albums and singles; and that’s his ‘social security.’ Before long he starts in about the music business and the major labels and their censorship of artists, a subject on which I had no problem agreeing. By the time I walked out of there I was convinced I should put out my own record – start up my own label. I got on the phone and pretty soon I had Rachel Elkind and Bob Spiniello lined up to bankroll my first (and last) 45 rpm single.”

Robert Spiniello had been a key figure in the life of Feher’s Eightballs, having played tuba in Junior High School band with Lee Farber and Damian Karch. Bob discovered that it was not in the cards for him to be a musician; but he had been born into a situation that enabled him to assist his musical friends in their numerous enterprises. 

Bob’s father Luke Spiniello had founded a company that re-lined the pipes in big city sewage systems; Spiniello Construction was one of only three such entities in North America, and as such became very prosperous. Thus it was that Bob Spiniello was on hand with cash and musical equipment when needed. He had a sound equipment company and had been a great Eightballs fan and archivist. 

FEHER:

“Bob and Rachel chipped in just about equally and helped me press two thousand singles of ‘Mr. Record Man’ backed with ‘Love, Love, Love’ on my own label – Eightballs Records. I’ll never forget the day that the truck dropped off twenty boxes of records at my house in Weehawken, New Jersey  – I was a record company owner and president!

“It was 1977 and I was a fully independent artist. At the time the concept of an independent artist was largely unheard of. The record was played on college radio in New Jersey, and I heard it on the air. It was ‘screw the big labels and screw the major broadcasting companies’ – you have no idea how good it feels to do it yourself when the rest of the industry has given you the finger or tried in some way to pervert your output by putting its own stamp all over it. This was mine, all mine; and I savored every groove on that forty-five.”

The lyrics to Mr. Record Man said it all:

“You talk about image; you talk about taxes;

Now let’s talk guitar, bass, keyboard and saxes.

When you’re finished renovating your house in Bel Air

Let’s draw us up a budget, get a record on the air!

Hey! Mr. Record Man, pay me a hundred grand:

I’ve got to get my music to the world.”

FEHER:

“ Now, I was ‘Mr. Record Man!’ It was a lot of fun for a while, selling and signing my own records. At four hundred sold, though, the game got old for me. I kept thinking I want to produce records, not sell them. I used the rest of the singles for promotion, gifts and frisbees.”

Tom Feher’s life went through many phases in the late ’70s, from working in a factory, getting involved in local New Jersey politics, and sweeping the streets of Weehawken. Street sweeping in Weehawken was done the old-fashioned way: with a broom and shovel and a cart – up and down hills that rivaled those of San Francisco. It was extremely hard work, physically demanding and also tended to be humiliating if one’s friends happened to see one out on the curb with a shovel full of grimy trash.

FEHER:

“I was grinning and bearing it. In fact I rather enjoyed street sweeping for a while. It was a service to the town and it kept me buff; but even more importantly, I’m sure I got more respect as a street sweeper than any Mayor, new or old, ever did. A lot of the older citizens would smile and say hello to me when they passed me on the street.

“Well, about this time I was also working on ways to get my music out; and I figured that since so many people were getting to know me through the campaign and now through my street sweeping, I would launch a concert at Weehawken High School. I got together some of my old pals: Damian on drums, Ace on bass and Marc Aaron on guitar and put together a rock ‘n’ roll set, oldies like ‘Ruby Baby’ and ‘You Send Me’ plus originals from the Eightballs’ catalog and the brand new single ‘Mr. Record Man’ as a big finale number.

“I wore white shoes, blue jeans and a dark red velvet jacket for that All-American color scheme, and I had the pockets of my jacket filled with play money… hundred dollar bills. When I got to the part in ‘Mr. Record Man’ where I sing ‘I’ve got to have a hundred grand!’ I pulled wads of the play money out of my pockets and threw them way up and out over the audience, where they came floating down like confetti. You know – the Alice Cooper show biz routine. The concert was a big hit.

“A few days after the concert, I’m out on the street with my push-cart, sweeping away, and Jill Fleming comes up to me with a rare look in her eyes. Jill was about seventeen and was living in her mom’s house with her sister and two brothers and was screwing a guy about twice her age. I’d known her since she was eleven, and this year she had gotten to be the best looking babe in town. I couldn’t keep my eyes or my thoughts off her but there was her sugar daddy to think about (not to mention the fact that I was a married man with a step-daughter and a young son), so I kept my ideas to myself. 

“Nevertheless, she comes right up to me near the corner of the High School, looks me in the eye with total teenage passion and says ‘What are you doing sweeping the streets when you can play music like that?’ Then she plants her mouth on mine and gives me a soul-sucking kiss that I will never forget. I never got into Jill’s pants, but what did I care? Some chicks can do more with their lips than others can with all the equipment God gave them. That kiss saved my life as a musician. The next day I handed in my resignation to Weehawken Public Works.”

BACK TO THE BIG CITY HUSTLE

While tramping around Manhattan in 1978, Feher would drop in every so often on Ron Singer, with whom he’d shared several escapades and one living experience. Singer, who’d also been involved in the 1968 Rubott publishing deal, now had a tiny apartment off Fifth Avenue near Washington Square.

FEHER:

“Ronnie was living a tiny little apartment that was smaller than some people’s kitchens. When I was in the area I’d drop in and often we’d work on songs together. As a matter of fact, we’d written a number called ‘Love, Love, Love’ about a year previous to this, and I’d put it on the flip side of ‘Mr. Record Man.’ Writing with Ronnie Singer got me into a new kind of groove. When I’d written for the Left Banke, the songs were intricate, with lots of chord changes, some of which were very unique an unusual; it was part of the Left Banke legacy, to be ornamental. Left Banke music wasn’t particularly dance music, it was to be listened to.

“But Singer was a club-goer, a party animal, and as an aspiring songwriter, he had a flood of dance rhythms swirling around in his head. We would sit together in his tiny little bathroom for the echo – him on the toilet seat and me on the edge of the bathtub – and he’d start up this repetitious rhythm on one chord only. 

“At first it would drive me nuts, it was so monotonous. I kept wanting to get into a fancy chord progression, or at least a four-chord progression; but the most I got out of him was two chords alternating within a measure. After resisting it for an hour or two, I finally developed that discipline and added it into my bag of tricks. The following year, 1979, was to be the United Nations’ Year of the Child, and Ronnie had the idea that we could cash in on the trend by writing a song called ‘Through A Child’s Eyes.’

“So he starts in with this pattern of G, A minor, G, A minor – over and over and over again, singing in his hoarse baritone ‘through a child’s eyes…’ That wasn’t making it for me, but I got into the groove and began plugging in my own melody and lyrics and wound up with one of the finest songs I’d written up to that time, a tune called ‘Grow Up And Be Young.’ I sent it to the Copyright Office as a Feher/Singer composition, but factually by the time I’d finished it up the only thing that was left of his original idea was the guitar rhythm. The Year of the Child came and went with the song heard by not a single soul on the planet.”

GAIL AND EDDIE

New interest in Feher’s music came from a couple he identifies simply as Gail and Eddie. The wife was introduced to Feher through a mutual friend, and was known to him as an ex whore-house madam. John and Jane began wooing Tom as an artist with the intention of having him sign a management contract. The couple lived in a slick apartment building not too far from Union Square and regularly entertained musicians and other artists it their intimate parties.

TOM FEHER:

“I recall one party up there that included Kinky Friedman, who at the time was going solo after fronting a band called ‘The Texas Jew Boys’ and Vaughn Meader, who my generation knew very well for his impersonation of John F. Kennedy on the First Family comedy albums. 

“Well, Gail and Eddie were showing me off to the other guests, y’ know – promoting me as the next big thing. Kinky was raucous and a musical rival, so he didn’t have much to say about my performance at the party; but Vaughn Meader, drunk as a skunk and about to debut a character he’d invented called Billy Sunday, flopped down on the couch and insisted that my song ‘No Title’ was the best piece of music he’d ever heard. He loved that tune and wanted me to sing it again and again. That made me feel good, but it didn’t solve my financial problems.

“I was being kind of cagey about signing a contract because you know, I’d been through that shit before. Meanwhile, I’m noticing that they were living pretty well, and one day I said to the husband, ‘Hey, Eddie – I see you have a nice car and this apartment and nice looking clothes and an expensive watch… but I never see you do any work. What, if you don’t mind my asking you, do you do for a living?’

“He looks at me kind of sheepishly and says, ‘Well, Tom, I know you’re not going to like this, being so righteous and all, but… I’m a coke dealer. I sell coke for a living.’ Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t really know; but I wanted to hear it from his own lips. So, I had to make a decision, do I stick with these people or hightail it out of there ASAP? I wasn’t totally committed yet to clean living and not sufficiently wised-up either, so I thought I’d hang in there for a while and see where this would lead me. 

“After all, he’d told me he had his own office at Warner Brothers’ records and he was going to invest in me to launder his dirty money and then drop the coke dealing when we hit it big. They did two things for me around that time. One was they gave me the keys to a little studio apartment up in the Murray Hill section that Eddie had occasionally used for doing dope deals; I had the place all to myself because he never went there any more. 

“The other thing was, they paid for me to do some new recordings at Mark ‘Moogy’ Klingman’s studio up on West End Avenue; I used Damian and Marc and Ace again for those tracks and I don’t think I ever got a copy. But I did get to see the office up at WB, and I saw some other things that put a deep-seated trouble into my mind. One night, Eddie takes me over to the Lone Star Café, which was at the time one of the really hot clubs in town. Kinky was playing there. He was telling some sort of whacky joke about Hitler going into potato farming and growing little Dick Taters, as Eddie took me into the back room to meet the musicians from the other bands.

“Well, Eddie is selling dope to anyone that wants it back of the Lone Star; he’s got the place all sewed up. And he says to me, ‘Tom, I can get you into any club in town. What’s more, I can get you onto the set of Sesame Street. You wanna see how Sesame Street is produced?’

“The Sesame Street show, which I’d first learned about while raising my kids in New Jersey, was a hit since the day it first aired in 1969. So of course I was interested. Eddie takes me up to the television studio, and I watch a scene being shot with a character named ‘Mr. Snuffleupagus,’ a whacky Muppet creature that looked something like a big fluffy anteater. Well lo and behold if after the shoot Eddie doesn’t introduce me to the back end of the muppet… and I discover he’s selling coke behind the scenes at this kids’ show; ‘Snuffy,’ as he was sometimes called was snuffling up in real life!”

Tom Feher was now wondering what he’d gotten himself into and how to get out of it tactfully. Meanwhile, he had been nurturing a new relationship and forming a new musical group. Feher had met Susan Abigail “Gae” Seaman while on a communication course at the Church of Scientology on West Seventy-Fourth Street before his first marriage went bust.

With this new relationship an entirely new chapter of his life hed opened up; but at the same time Feher was also in the process of forming up what he called the Tom Feher Revue, to which he later gave the name ‘Frontier.’ It included Brian Kane on drums, Peter Brittain on guitar, Feher on rhythm and a friend of Peter’s named Geoff Samuels on bass. There was also a girl named Linda, an actress who was looking to sing with a band, and they had her for a while singing vocal harmonies with Tom. According to Feher, “She was good to look at, but her stage presence – her dynamic energy as a performer – was zero.”

The Tom Feher Revue did one gig – a live show at WFMU college radio in New Jersey. “Frontier” also did one gig, at Carnegie Recital Hall on West Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. The recital hall was an annex of the larger Carnegie Hall and seated approximately three hundred people; it was used primarily for vocal and piano recitals by debut artists in the classical field.

FEHER:

“What happened around that time was that Gae began singing some harmonies to my vocals, just for enjoyment when we were alone together. I was getting sick of the lifeless tone of that girl Linda, and at the same time I noticed the sweet tones of my girlfriend harmonizing with me. I booted Linda out and invited Gae into the group.

“I now discovered that Gae’s father, Norman Seaman was in very tight with the Carnegie Hall people as regards the use of the recital hall. He’d produced the debut performances of scores, maybe hundreds of musical artists over several decades and had all the connections soldered in. Norman, by the way, went way back to hanging with Pete Seeger and the Weavers and was an early supporter of Yoko Ono; from what I know, it was he who helped John and Yoko find the apartment at the Dakota when they moved to New York City.

“Well, in this case, with me now squiring his daughter, he set up a date for us at Carnegie Recital Hall. I called the concert ‘An American Night,’ included several of my pro-American songs and re-named the band ‘Frontier’ for continuity. Gae shot some photos of me down at the public library in Greenwich Village, in the building that had formerly been the Women’s House of Detention.

“I used two of the photos in a program folder, and suddenly realized that I was doing all this without the input of my prospective managers, Gail and Eddie. Which was just as well, because it tipped me over the edge in my decision to cut them loose. I had a conversation with Eddie in which he repeated his intention to quit the drug dealing as soon as the music made enough money. ‘Let’s face it,’ I said. ‘You’re not gonna quit selling dope, even if something happens with the music – you like the easy money too much.’ So that was it between me and them.”

“An American Night,” with Tom Feher and Frontier played to an audience of approximately forty people in some of the worst weather of that year. Feher assured them they were true pioneers and encouraged them to move into the front seats of the three-hundred seat hall. The show was comprised of what would become a typical Feher mix over the years: about eighty percent original tunes with twenty percent oldies, and three ballads to every nine rockers or mid-tempo numbers. The program listed two of Feher’s American themed numbers as well as Wilson Pickett’s “634-5789” and Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me.” According to Feher, the group had excellent potential; but not too long thereafter he made the decision to wrap it up and disband.

FEHER:

“I was all set to rehearse the band for a studio recording of several songs. To understand what happened next, you’ve got to remember that I’d been free from street drugs since 1969 – as a matter of fact, at this point I’d also quit alcohol. Of course, I banned any kind of drug use in rehearsals and shows, so what these guys would do is meet outside the rehearsal place, light up their little hash pipes and take a hit before coming into the room.

“We’re working on the vocals to one of the songs and the harmonies are just way off, really bad. After several tries it’s getting worse if anything. So I start complaining – threatening to call off the recording session – and one of them says, ‘well, your vocal is off.’ I’m about to go ballistic. ‘My vocal is off? I’m not the one who comes into rehearsal high on fuckin’ hash!’ They look at me dumbfounded, as if I didn’t know what they were up to. So I ask ‘em: ‘If it was you, would you want to spend your money recording this shit?’ And of course they say ‘no.’ So I tell them that I won’t either and the recording is off. And that basically was the end of the band. It was now me and Gae, drug free and singing in harmony.”

Tom Feher would never revert to drugs, either illegal or government sanctioned, not even as much as an aspirin or an over-the-counter medication. It was 1979 and there was one more career phase for him before the ‘eighties came rolling in. During the short time that his group has been together, the guitarist, Peter Brittain, had introduced Tom to a songwriter/entrepreneur named Stan Satlin. Stan’s entrepreneurship included drug dealing, but Feher didn’t know that right off the bat. Stan lived in Tribeca, or spell it ‘TriBeCa’ – the ‘Triangle Below Canal Street’ (between Broadway and West Street) that had become increasingly attractive to artists as a place of work and residence. 

FEHER:

“I think the place Stan lived in was partially government funded. His big project at the time was built around a complete set of songs he’d written telling the tale of Robin Hood through music. According to one of Stan’s songs, Robin Hood ‘took from the greedy to give to the needy.’ He was recruiting actors and vocalists to help him with a series of backers’ auditions to raise funds for a scriptwriter and an initial showing.

“Stan was intent on making the ‘Robin Hood musical’ fully contemporary in nature, including equality for women and the establishment of a vegetarian in the outlaw band, a character who chastised the others in a song called ‘Don’t Eat Meat’ while they chomped on their venison. When he met me and heard my stentorian tones, developed to full power from the days of singing in front of the Biltmore theatre at intermission time, Stan was ecstatic: he cast me as both Robin Hood and Little John in backers’ auditions. It was a neat trick, let me tell you, but we pulled it off.

“There was an audition at a private party in a penthouse suite up over West Twenty-Third Street. From that I began to understand what schmoozing was all about. We did another audition at a place high up in a building over Times Square – I think it was the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. A piano that had belonged to Fats Waller was on display there, roped off so no one would touch it. The place was packed with people, so when the security guard was off in another section, I ducked under and played a few measures just so I could say ‘I played on Fats Waller’s piano.’ I didn’t get too far before the guard came running over and that was the end of my warm-up act at the backers’ audition.”

The auditions apparently were going well, and everything was fine according to Feher until Satlin made a trip to Haiti and met up with Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, then President of the Caribbean island republic.

FEHER:

“Stan moved in some mighty interesting circles, which I am assuming was due to his involvement with drug trafficking. He came back from Haiti all goosed up about voodoo, of all things. I had been working on a cool script that included the vegetarian and a female character named ‘Scarlet’ to take the place of Will Scarlet in Robin’s Merry Men. 

“But now he wanted to set up the story so that Robin Hood was into voodoo, and at that point it was time for me to say goodbye. I still have my script somewhere in a banker’s box in storage, but I can’t recall the songs from a hole in my head. It’s too bad, really. Stan was a great songwriter in the folk and musical theatre tradition; we might have had a huge hit on our hands.”

THE EIGHTIES

ROCKABILLY REVIVAL

By 1980 with Left Banke hits, hustles and harmonies far behind, Tom Finn was looking at an open road. Where to go… what to do? He certainly wasn’t going to throw in the towel on music and go in for a career in cab driving or one of the construction trades as many other once-successful musicians might have done.

TOM FINN:

“After the Strangers sessions were over and Steve took off to wherever he went, I was feeling extremely sad and depressed and I thought: why do I always end up like this with this group? I reflected on the so-called group, and the way they made decisions, and how three guys who had limited talents banded together to make a democratic musical entity.

“But something was wrong with this. I wondered: what did the Beatles know? They were a good seven or eight years older than us. What about the Stones? What did they know? How come they were able to stick together and strive ahead keeping their eyes on the prize? What was it about the fuckin’ Hoost and angry Steve that just couldn’t be strong and determined enough to weather the storm?”

As Finn tells it, his search for enlightenment and further advancement as a musician came in a roundabout way when he crossed paths with a “drop dead gorgeous sexy blond” named Claudia. He’d met her on the day he broke up with his first wife, Margaret.

FINN:

“Margaret had gone to talk to her shrink about us breaking up, and whatever else she had on her plate. I went to the East Side to wait for her to finish her shrink session. While waiting outside on the street, I saw a beautiful blond smiling at me. I walked over and started flirting. She was doing her laundry at a laundromat. 

“Things started heating up and then Margaret came out the door of the shrink’s building. I saw her and I turned back and slipped into the laundromat with Claudia, who was making me forget all about Margaret. So, I decided to just go home get my guitar and a big backpack and split from Margaret and my marriage. I ended up in a few hotels until I got my apartment on West Seventy-Fourth Street. Claudia and I were quite involved but I knew she just wasn’t the right girl for me; she was just too fuckin’ crazy. I kept in touch with her and we hung out a lot. That was back in 1974.”

One day in 1978 Claudia called Finn upstate at the house that Victor Benedetto had rented for the Left Banke during the Cam-USA project. She said she needed a place to stay, but Tom was living with Karin now on Seventy-Fourth Street, so he brought Claudia upstate to the rented house. 

FINN:

“She and Steve (Martin-Caro) started carrying on, so at least she had a place to stay. She stayed with him until he started beating her up. She left and ended up getting married to a bass player named Rockin’ Rob Stoner. It’s now 1980. Claudia S. York changed her name to Ruby Blade… a punk name, after a bloody knife. 

“She and her new husband Rockin’ Rob Stoner invited me to their new loft apartment down in Union Square. They were having a housewarming party. I was still very depressed because of the group’s breakup and failure of the Cam-USA project, but I went to the party anyway. The party was filled with musicians like Robert Gordon, Chris Spedding, Rick Derringer, and about a dozen more guys that I didn’t know. I found out that Rob Stoner had been the bass player and musical director of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour which was a huge tour with dozens of musicians. The tour was over but Rob was now playing bass for this singer named Robert Gordon. 

“Robert Gordon had a great voice and his hair stood up in a flat top buzz cut about six inches high. He dressed in a silver sharkskin suit with zebra piping on the slacks and on the jacket lapels. He had on two-tone shoes with faux leopard skin tops. He looked like he stepped right out of the 1950s, but not like Sha Na Na; he wasn’t trying to be nostalgic at all. No bullshit Happy Days type corny shit. This guy was dead serious… he was like the living incarnation of the coolest part of the ‘Fifties. 

“All the musicians at the party brought their instruments and played all night. There was a guitar player that had played with Elvis too. The quality of the musicians was mind boggling, I was stunned. These guys didn’t play Chuck Berry songs like every other bar band you’ve ever seen, they played better than the Beatles or the Stones, but the style was decidedly ‘Fifties. It was like I got into a time machine and was transported to that decade. One of the bass players brought an upright bass and was slapping the strings like his hands were made of steel.

“Each one of these guys had brought tapes of their own current projects. Not only were some of them playing for Robert Gordon’s tour, but they all had solo projects too. I felt totally outclassed as a playing musician. These guys were playing rock and roll like it was a high science. I now was having a revelation. These guys were solo rockers, they were accomplished players, not guys like the Left Banke, who just sang from the viewpoint of the Beatles and onward. I realized the Left Banke were spoiled wimps who couldn’t play shit, who knew nothing of the deep history of rock and roll. 

“I had my answer: I had to learn how to play. I had to study the history of rock, and be an individual that could play on other peoples’ projects and create my own as well. That’s what was missing. Eventually Rob Stoner asked me to be the bass player in his solo project. I said yes, and we started playing hundreds of clubs and bars. We played at the Ritz, the Bottom Line, the Lone Star, and every other club in the tri-state area. We played and jammed with Neil Young, Levon Helm, Bruce Springsteen and a hundred more. I was playing ‘til my fingers were bleeding. 

“But Rob and Ruby started doing heroin and dealing it too. So at that point I got out of there pretty quick. By now I had cut my hair off and combed and greased it up high into a ‘fifties quiff. ‘Quiff’ is what British rockabilly artists call their haircuts. I was buying every single cool ‘fifties record I could find. I bought a Memory Man slap echo pedal, and played my guitar along with the records I was buying. I quickly realized what the Beatles and Stones knew. I also bought the ‘fifties black music. I did so much work I could have gotten a PHD in the ‘Fifties music Rock and Roll school.’ Now I knew!”

As a rockabilly musician, Tom Finn also played with a band called No Frills, consisting of drums, bass, and guitar with a singer named Freddy Frogs. Freddy’s actual name was Fred Toscano, who’d been a member of Atlantic recording group Mr. Flood’s Party in the days of Rubott Management; Toscano passed away in 2009. The playing was great fun; but Finn’s interest in rock and roll history and his expanding record collection would soon lead to yet another major phase of his musical life and career.

FINN:

“After playing with Rockin’ Rob Stoner, I became a really good bass player. So I was a pretty well known musician on the New York City rock scene in the ‘Eighties. I played all day long trying to become a great rock guitar player. I bought thousands of records. I’d blast them as loud as I could and play along trying to copy riffs from the old ‘Fifties records. I learned that a lot of early rock and roll guitarists were coming from a jazz background. Back in the ‘Fifties there was no overdubbing so, you had to have pretty good chops to record. I tried and tried over and over, but I didn’t have the chops to play lead guitar. Some guys had a good fingerboard hand, I just didn’t have the knack; but I was pretty good from all that practicing.”

During this period, having increasingly immersed himself in the 1950s, Finn’s interest in one of rock ‘n’ roll’s pioneers was sparked when he went to see The Buddy Holly Story, the 1978 biopic starring Gary Busey as Holly, a native of Lubbock, Texas. Tom immediately rushed out and purchased the Buddy Holly lifetime catalog package which included recordings from the time Buddy was a child to the day he died, demos and all. 

FINN:

“For about three months, I delved into this fabulous eight record box set, with a really great booklet inside that was about thirty pages. I also read a few books, by people that knew him well. As I recall, Buddy married Maria Elena a Spanish secretary at his record company. He was getting totally screwed by his manager, publisher and producer Norman Petty. Petty even put his name as co-writer on Buddy’s songs – sound familiar? 

“Anyway… Buddy asked his group to move to New York City with him, but they chose to remain with Petty. So Buddy put a new band together with musicians including a very young Waylon Jennings on bass guitar. I think Maria was pregnant and Buddy was flat broke, even though he had hit records, because Petty refused to pay him. So, having no choice he took a winter tour of the upper Midwest. You know what happened.”

As most ardent popular music fans know, Buddy Holly, along with Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (“the Big Bopper”) perished in a plane crash during the Midwest tour, an event set to music as “the day the music died” in Don McLean’s 1971 hit “American Pie” (a Billboard #1 pop hit for 4 weeks).

TOM FINN:

“I hated Norman Petty when I read about his business style – just like Harry Lookofsky. A lot of Buddy’s home demos that he made in his apartment were really great. He had a lot more songs to do. He also had strong desires to become a producer. 

One last thing: when he first came to New York City he wrote a letter to his parents, an excerpt was printed in the box set booklet. He said; ‘the niggers up here act like they own the place.’ When I read that, I laughed my ass off. Buddy really liked the Village; he walked around and made new friends. His band planned to rejoin him after the tour. But… too late.” 

One day while Buddy Holly was up in New York with the Crickets, they rehearsed all day for The Ed Sullivan show, and during a lunch break, they recorded ‘Rave On,’ at Bell Sound Studios, a half block away, where Finn had cut his teeth as a recording engineer. “Talk about working hard,” Finn remarked. One imagines the thought of Bell Sound brought back many memories for him, hopefully more pleasant than the Norman Petty/Harry Lookofsky connection. 

AND ONE DAY... HEARTBREAK

TOM FINN:

“One day my next door neighbor from Iran knocked on my wall. I looked out my window and he said ‘Hey Man! All my friends love the music you’re playing, I have friends from all over the world, and whenever they come to visit me, they hear your music and they love it.’ I thought he was talking about my playing, so I said ‘Thank you very much, I’m trying very hard to be a guitar player,’ to which he said ‘No Man! Not your guitar… they love the records you’re playing.’

“I was embarrassed and shocked; I said ‘Okay, thanks’ and closed the window. The next day he knocked on my door and said, ‘My name is Parviz and I’m a nightclub promoter. I want to invite you to a new club that some people I know are opening. They have a girl spinning some records down there and they want her to play disco, but I was thinking you could teach her to play the records that you play.’”

Finn didn’t particularly want to be bothered but he said he would check it out. He went down to the club, unnamed as yet, an old restaurant with a big marble floor and a big steam grill with a swordfish and a big old neon clock on the wall. 

FINN:

“It held about two hundred legally but you could pack about four hundred in illegally. It also had a basement just as big as the main floor. Parviz introduces me to the DJ Sharon Lee. I said hello and saw she was playing some disco, some Motown and ‘sixties stuff. I said to her ‘Why don’t you play some ‘Fifties music?’ She called security and wanted me to be thrown out. Parviz stepped in and smoothed things over. Then I met some of the owners.

“They said they were gonna take down the swordfish and neon clock and rip out the floor and completely renovate the place and make it a flashy disco. I said to them ‘I think you should leave everything just like it is, even the steam grill and the old wooden telephone booths. I think it’s a very cool old ‘Forties and ‘Fifties style diner.’ Parviz told the DJ Sharon Lee to listen to me about the music. She said ‘Okay, I’ll take him record shopping with me.’”

The owners liked the idea, and Parviz brought in some audio people that Finn recommended from doing the installation of my Buddy’s Place sound and lighting systems. Parviz, being a club promoter, knew how to advertise and get invitations made up. He got an artist to create a logo for the club which they decided to call Heartbreak after Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” The invitation for the official opening night in August 1982 was an Andy Warhol type of pastel colored 45 rpm record cover of Elvis’s face and the logo right over it.

FINN:

“I had sort of gotten involved with the DJ Sharon Lee, who was yet another hot sexy blond. I taught her how to play the fifties music, and while I was helping her. I was learning how to be a DJ, which is something I never wanted to do. But, I just learned by helping her and watching how she played them in a DJ set. 

“She was a very provocative sex pot. She would stand on the top of the food counter where the DJ area was located, and she would wear a miniskirt and while she was mixing records she would be throwing free drink tickets out to the crowd that was clamoring for them. You could see her panties and she’d be dancing too. “From the back of the club all you could see was Sharon dancing and crowds of people cheering all around her. Very clever! Eventually, she needed to take a break from her seven days a week schedule. So, one Sunday I filled in, but I got together with Parviz and developed a ‘Fifties night, where only ‘Fifties music would be playing. 

“I was wearing a pompadour haircut and dressed in pink silk suits with Zebra piping on the jacket and pants – just like early Elvis. I had a limo at my disposal and all the cocaine I could snort while hanging out with Mick Jagger. This period of my life was hard to resist but in about four years the drugs started to kill me. I had to quit it all and get sober in AA in 1985. 

“I hired a host who was very well known in the ‘Fifties Rockabilly community. We developed a mailing list and let everybody in for free if they had an invitation. But I only invited Cats and Chicks that dressed up in ’Fifties clothing and knew how to jitterbug and lindy hop. We called ‘em the ‘Fifties Kids, or Rockabilly Kids. 

We also rented about eight vintage ‘Fifties cars and had them parked outside the club. The pink 1956 Cadillac was a killer. After the first night, ‘Fifties Night (Sunday night) was constantly packed; everybody paid except for our ‘Fifties Kids and dancers.” 

After a week or two, the line of limousines was two blocks long, and all the other nights were getting packed too. Now the place was filling up with models and celebrities – people like Cher, Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Teddy Kennedy, Goldie Hawn, Bono, Keith Richards, Belinda Carlisle, Bruce Willis, Eddie Murphy… the list went on and on. The club was a hit, and Finn was making real money. The key to it all, Tom Finn insists, was the ‘Fifties revival in real time.

FINN:

“It had an air of authenticity that blew people’s minds. You see it really wasn’t nostalgia. I didn’t play ‘Rock Around The Clock.’ I had people there that wanted to boogie. So I’d play songs like ‘It Ain’t The Meat ( It’s The Motion)’ by the Swallows or ‘Daddy-O Rock’ by Jeff Daniels or ‘Bad Boy’ by the Jive Bombers or even ‘Juke Box Baby’ by Perry Como, which was so corny but it really was great to dance to. I was in heaven, and this is how I really got into being a DJ. 

“Here’s why Heartbreak went over so well: 1. The club looked like it was right out of the 50’s but not fake, no Coca Cola signs and ‘Fifties memorabilia all around. 2. The music was great, made by people who were in their prime. 3. The ‘Fifties kids that dressed up and danced there every Sunday night gave it the look and the energy that the records were dictating. 4. It was before all those Time-Life commercials about the oldies CD collections; as a matter of fact there were no CD’s yet. “But mainly it was the young people dancing to the original records, instead of fat guys with gray hair playing their old hits but without that sexual energy that the records had. It was like being in the Nineteen-Fifties again. And at about that time, the baby boomers were anxious to relive their childhood.

“The records that I played were oldies, but they were made by Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or anybody that was young and full of energy when they made those great old records. Even though Jerry Lee Lewis was in his sixties in the ‘80s, when he’d made ‘Great Balls Of Fire’ he was a teenager or in his early twenties – the same age as our Rockabilly Kids. I had the original energy of the ‘50s records and the matching energy and wildcat sexual appearance of the dancers. It was a very special situation. I want you to really understand this because, in fact, this was the whole enchilada. 

“These Rockabilly Kids were only about eighteen to twenty-five years old. The paying customers were mostly in their thirties and forties. Think about that for a minute... that means the older folks might have dressed a little bit ‘Fifties when they came to Heartbreak, but they definitely didn’t walk around the streets of New York City dressed like a fully decked out super cool, high pompadour hair styled ‘Fifties Kid, now did they? 

“There was a kid called Vinny, he showed up every Sunday in his 1952 Ford convertible he had a flat top haircut and talked like Humphrey Bogart, exactly. Anyway one night I went with him to a party he brought his girlfriend. It got late so, we all stayed over at this girl’s house where the party was held. In the morning Vinny had a bath towel wrapped around his waist, and his girlfriend was ironing his boxer shorts that were right out of the ‘50s. So you see, these Rockabilly Kids were ‘Fifties fanatics right down to their underwear. 

“And don’t forget the girls wore crinolines, big gigantic wide dresses. So, when these kids danced – and they knew how to dance – all the older folks, including all the famous celebrities just stood there with their mouths wide open watching the spectacle.” 

Aside from his revelations regarding the 1950s revival in the ‘Eighties, as a result of his experience with Heartbreak, Tom Finn stepped up into the world of the professional DJ, something he had not planned on but which would define his life for decades to come. For those technically inclined about these matters, Finn describes his equipment and procedure.

FINN:

“What I had done at Buddy’s Place in 1975 was achieved by me going from one cassette player to an 8 track player, back and forth through a mixer. For instance: On the first channel of the mixer I had the cassette player. On the second channel of the mixer I had the 8-track player. I started playing the first song on the cassette player on channel 1, and then sometime before the song ended I brought in the 8-track machine on channel 2. This was extremely amateurish but I kept ‘em dancing. 

“At Heartbreak I had two professional Technics-1200 DJ turntables and a professional DJ mixer. So I was able to cue up better and make smooth transitions. Sharon Lee was a professional DJ and knew every trick in the book. She actually taught me how to DJ. I knew a lot about sound and mixers from my years at Bell Sound, so I was a prime candidate to be a DJ. However, I didn’t know about overlaying records (mixing) seamlessly and also didn’t know about BPMs (Beats Per Minute) which help you label your records with a BPM so you knew the approximate tempo of a record. 

“So, say you’re playing ‘Johnny B. Goode’ and the BPM is (176) then for your next song you can choose a record with a similar BPM and the tempo will be the same or very close, thereby enabling you to do a smooth mix and keep people dancing, with no breakdown of the tempo. 

“There were a lot of other DJ techniques that I learned that helped me make my music presentation sound like tight medleys. Actually Sharon knew a lot. But I knew more about music. Other things I’d take into consideration were keys of songs and types of beats like shuffles and drive 4/4 beats and waltz 3/4 tempos and reggae or calypso soca beats, etc. All these things helped you to widen your choices for what to play, and when to play it.”

Tom Finn worked at Heartbreak from 1982 until 1985. It was during this time that he made the acquaintance of Steve Rubell, whose story is well documented and need only be given a brief summary here. Brooklyn-born Rubell was the co-owner of the club Studio 54 at the height of the disco era (the late 1970s) with partner Ian Schrager, whom he met while attending Syracuse University. Although Studio 54 was a monumental success, it also netted the partners a prison sentence for income tax evasion.

Rubell and Schrager were released from prison in January 1981 and immediately went back into business. In May of 1985, they opened Palladium at the site of the former concert venue of the same name (also once called the Academy of Music, where Finn had gone to see his friend Al Stewart in concert) on Fourteenth Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue.

FINN:

“When they got out of jail they weren’t allowed to have a liquor license, so they went back to Studio 54 as consultants. During this time Steve was running all over Manhattan to see what had been happening while he was away in jail. Studio 54 was dying now, so Steve was very eager to pin down the hottest new trend. 

“He came to Heartbreak and soon found out that this was the hottest place in town. He also realized that the music was very much at the center of this brand new phenomenon. He approached me and asked for my phone number, after which he invited me up to the dying Studio 54 and asked me to play some guest sets. I did, but the people that went there wanted mostly disco. I felt that I should learn disco so I crammed on it. I only played the biggest hits and mixed it up with rock and roll and oldies. Steve liked what he heard. But I wasn’t leaving Heartbreak yet; I felt that my work there was what I enjoyed playing. Steve kept coming back to Heartbreak, as did all the superstars of the day. 

“That’s what made Steve tick, he was in his element. He would call me late at night when I got home or early in the morning, asking me how many people came to Heartbreak, how many people paid to get in, how much did they pay, etc. He was very interested in the club and me. I stayed at Heartbreak until 1985. I would work from ten pm until four am, then I’d go to an after hours club to snort coke and drink booze, until one pm the next day. Sometimes I’d stay awake for one hundred hours, which is over four days straight. 

“I hung around with jet setters, rock stars, drug dealers, and mafia types. When I quit in 1985, I was burned out from all of that; I knew people that were murdered and this was getting sick. So I quit and joined Alcoholics Anonymous on July 8th 1985. “Meanwhile Steve Rubell’s new club had opened. Steve was trying hard to open a new club, but he couldn’t be the owner because of his bust, so he found backers to be the owners: he and Ian would be the figure head owners in name only. They were still ‘consultants’ but, they actually ran everything. The club was to be called Palladium.”

RANDOM ORBITS

The Extended Family in the Early ‘80s

While Tom Finn was boning up on Rockabilly and setting up shop as a spin doctor, several of members of the aforementioned Left Banke circle of friends and associates were enjoying new periods of productivity and success.

Wendy Carlos, whose output in the ‘seventies had included scoring for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Switched On Bach II, and Switched On Brandenburgs, opened the 1980s by releasing score selections from Kubrick’s The Shining and in 1982 scored the film  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(film)" \o "Tron (film)" Tron for  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company" \o "The Walt Disney Company" Disney, incorporating  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestra" \o "Orchestra" orchestra,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choir" \o "Choir" chorus,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_(music)" \o "Organ (music)" organ, and both analog and digital synthesizers.

In 1980 and 1981 Alan Merrill spent time on the road with Rick Derringer, who’d progressed from The McCoys to performing with Johnny and Edgar Winter and was now a celebrity guitarist in his own right. Merrill describes the period thusly:

ALAN MERRILL:

“Derringer tours were the most hedonistic I’ve experienced in my life. He was everything you imagined about rock ‘n’ roll excesses, and we lived it like a roving gang around the country. I learned that he’d played on (Tom Feher’s) ‘I Have Been Searching’ because he told me on the tour bus in 1980 when I brought up the Left Banke in conversation. Derringer was one of the best guitarists I’ve worked with. He has a great depth of talent.”

Alan Merrill had seen considerable success in Japan and Britain as a glam rocker and teen idol. But Merrill’s star was about to rise to heights undreamed of in the Spandex ‘Seventies. Joan Jett had been aware of the Arrows’ version of “I Love Rock and Roll” as early as 1976 when she heard Merrill’s band the Arrows perform it on British television.

Determined to record the song, Jett cut a version in 1979 with Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones, then another version in 1981 as Joan Jett and The Blackhearts. The Blackhearts version hit US #1 in February of 1982 and stayed there for seven weeks, becoming the fifth highest charting record of the entire decade, and launching the career of Joan Jett as a solo artist.

MERRILL:

“I met Joan Jett when I was with Derringer on the road in 1981, before her hit with the tune. It was in Florida, spring break I think. We were playing the same club. Joan was buzzing about her recording of the tune, which was about to come out. This was in 1981. We were in a club in Florida together. 

“She did say she loved The Arrows version and that it’s a great song, but after she had the hit in 1982 she pretty much clammed up about The Arrows in the press. The spin had started to create the illusion that she wrote the song, even to the day where The Runaways movie has the song coming (to her) out of a dream. It makes me laugh. But... she has always been cordial and polite to me, never close.”

Although it also made Number One on the Canadian and Dutch singles charts, “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” peaked at number four in the UK, having already been a hit there for the Arrows. It should go without saying that the songwriting royalties also made life a lot more rewarding for Alan Merrill and his co-writer Jake Hooker – something that would soon have an interesting side effect on the career and outlook of Tom Feher. 

Mike McKean, the soft-spoken thespian/folksinger who’d served briefly as guitarist for “the other Left Banke” that never played a single gig, had made his mark as an actor by the mid 1970s. In 1976 he’d portrayed the character of Lenny on the TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley. McKean directed one episode of the show, and in 1979 released an album titled Lenny and the Squigtones which featured a young  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Guest" Christopher Guest on guitar. McKean left Laverne and Shirley in 1982, and created the character of  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_St._Hubbins" David St. Hubbins in the cult spoof “mock-umentary” movie  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Spinal_Tap" This Is Spinal Tap about the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional" \o "Fictional" fictional  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music" \o "Heavy metal music" heavy metal band  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_Tap_(band)" \o "Spinal Tap (band)" Spinal Tap. For the film, Guest reprised his Squigtones’ character, guitarist Nigel Tufnel. This Is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner (who also appeared in the film) saw release on March 2, 1984 (1984-03-02).

About this time, Jeff Winfield – the Left Banke’s original guitarist – wrote, arranged and produced a series of demo recordings that included Winfield on guitars, Tom Finn on backing vocals, Howie Wyeth on drums and Frank Vicari on Saxophone. The tracks were eventually posted on the Left Banke website under the album title The Switch. 

TOM FINN:

“Jeff asked me to help him with harmonies, so I brought Josie Kuhn in with me and we did the backing vocals. Josie was a locally popular singer songwriter who knew a lot of downtown musicians; she was also given an award by the New York Rock Awards show at the Beacon Theater. She was a pretty good artist and I even hooked her up with my good friend at the time – Chris Spedding, who’s a guitar god, ala Beck, Page, Clapton and others. He’s also British and he has released about fifteen albums. He had a pop hit in England in the 70’s called ‘Motorbikin’ with Josie; he produced her album.”

Kuhn was still active as of 2011 when the first draft of this book was completed, composing, recording and performing Tex-Mex, swamp blues and country music, having been hailed as “one of the leading ladies of the Americana movement.” Winfield unfortunately passed away in 2009 – gone, but not forgotten, and well loved by his many friends and associates dating back to the Left Banke’s genesis.

Finn’s friendship with Spedding extended to collaboration on two tracks financed by the owners of Heartbreak. The recordings of Finn’s “Heartbreak Limber” and “Rockabout” were done at the Record Plant in June 1983 and early 1984 and included Finn on lead vocal and harmonies, Spedding on guitars and bass, and Anton Fig on drums. The songs were pressed on vinyl but never distributed.

While Finn was recording the two songs with Chris Spedding, Chris was flying back and forth to London where he was playing in a band with McCartney and Ringo. They were doing a movie called Give My Regards To Broad Street. The film of “Broad Street” proved to be a financial disaster, but the soundtrack album sold well. Around this same time, Finn endeavored to hook Chris Spedding up with Michael Brown, with what can only be described as “the usual results.”

FINN: 

“I kept telling Spedding about M. Brown. So he wanted to meet him. I brought Brown to his apartment in the city and Mike started to play the piano. Spedding picked up his guitar and was playing the most amazing guitar parts I ever heard in my life. Brown couldn’t take it. He kept changing the song he was playing. But Chris would change with him and play great guitar parts, finally Brown started screaming, ‘Get me out of here Tommy! Get me out of here.’ So I excused myself to Chris and walked Brown out the door and put him in a cab. 

“I said to him, ‘Mike what happened? Chris was playing brilliant guitar.’ Brown said ‘Did you see his apartment was so dirty, he had beer cans all over and all his clothes were thrown over everything.’ Then the cab sped away. And that ends the story of the greatest guitar player Brown ever heard. If there was one person in this world that would have been a perfect guitarist for the Left Banke it was Chris. And Brown couldn’t handle it.”

SOMMER HEADS NORTH

 

For Bert Sommer, the New York City music business and his resulting career had been a string of disappointments. He’d been on the spot for one of the all-time Broadway success stories as a cast member of the musical Hair; he’d been onstage as a soloist at the legendary Woodstock festival; he’d had four albums released, a role in a children’s television show, and still it seemed that public recognition had eluded him.

On top of that, he’d been dropped by Capitol in mid-production on yet another album. Feher, faced with the same situation would have scornfully laughed and gave both the industry and the public a rousing Bronx cheer; but Bert was more sensitive and it ate away at his insides. It was his friend Johnny Rabb that in 1983 convinced Bert to leave “the fast lane” and begin a new life apart from the wheeling and dealing of the official music industry. As he stated in a 1985 televised interview:

BERT SOMMER:

“From 1980 and 1981, ’82 I was sitting around Los Angeles and Hollywood getting’ in trouble… and I wasn’t doing anything. So about 1983 I was depressed, I was sitting in my house and Rabb – Johnny Rabb – had been living out there for the last eight months of that time, and he said to me, ‘Hey Bert – why don’t you come to Albany? You know, you can play, there’s a million places to play, and you can get out of this…’ because at the time, Hollywood was killing me; I mean that, it was murderous. And I said ‘well what have I got to lose?’”

Bert Sommer went to Albany, and found a degree of satisfaction when he became involved with Rabb in the formation of a band, “The Fabulous Newports” with Kevin and Carla McKrell. In that capacity, he enjoyed local popularity until his passing in 1990. Feher, in the early ‘80s – aside from fathering (and home-delivering) four children in four years – was barely getting by with financial assistance from his in-laws and sporadic gigs like those from the Musicians’ Emergency Fund (MEF).

TOM FEHER:

“The MEF is worth mentioning, because it helped define my later career with music: whereas the music business I’d known was all about me, me, me, ‘make me a star,’ this was about helping others. I may have heard about the program from Stan Satlin. There was a pool of funds supported by philanthropic individuals and organizations and administered through an office at NYU on Washington Square. MEF created jobs for needy musicians to perform in prison facilities, hospitals and senior homes. They paid from thirty to one hundred dollars per gig… not too bad when you’ve got nothing. I guess that’s why it was called ‘Emergency.’

“At one job, they sent me into a youth prison facility to play for some of the teen inmates… it was like going back to see me through a time tunnel. The security guard that ushered me into a room filled with angry faces said ‘Good luck. There was a girl folk singer came through here about a month ago, and one of these kids broke her guitar over her head.’ Great. Just what I needed to hear. So… I play one of my happy-go-lucky new tunes and they’re not going for it. I can hear the growls, like lions about to pounce on fresh meat. One of ‘em is laughing at me derisively. 

“It was time to change gears. I hit ‘em with the Elvis Presley version of ‘Hound Dog,’ making it even more ferocious, and by the time I was finished they were slapping me on the back and telling me to come back soon. Flashback to the James Cotton gig! I was learning that a professional performer gears his material and his attitude to each particular audience.”

At another outing for MEF, Feher found himself in a large community room in a senior facility on Roosevelt Island in the East River, facing a group of octogenarians in wheelchairs. At this gig he was clever enough with his material. He had a set prepared that included songs from the early part of the century: “Swanee,” “Side by Side,” and “My Blue Heaven.”

FEHER:

“For sick old folks they were showing promising signs of recognition, and some of them were even limply applauding; but there was this one old gal back against the wall that just sat there like a stone statue, her head hung, her eyes glazed, drooling down her chin… and no matter what I said, sang, or did she gave no response. I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna get this creature to acknowledge my presence if it’s the last thing I do on earth.’ With my guitar hanging from my neck I walked right up in front of her wheelchair, got down on one knee, looked her in the eye and loud enough for the whole room to hear I put on the Al Jolson minstrel routine and with my outstretched hands I said ‘Mammy!’

“Her eyes lit up and she broke into a big toothless smile. So I was satisfied and finished up my set. As I was leaving the facility, the floor supervisor came over to me and said, ‘Do you realize that you performed a miracle here today? That woman hasn’t spoken a word or moved a muscle in two full years.’ I more or less downplayed my role as a miracle worker to the supervisor; but I thought to myself one day I’m gonna write a book about my life and then I can crow about my exceptional abilities with audiences.”

In some cases, Feher’s ability to arouse interest and joyous excitement were not looked upon with great favor.

FEHER:

“I remember one time… while performing in a coffee house run by a Moravian Church, I think it was over on Lexington Avenue, they had a bunch of somber old guys playing checkers and reading newspapers, and when I had sung a few songs, a couple of the men were tapping on their tables with teaspoons and singing along in a kind of off-pitch fashion. The social worker type that was in charge of the place came over and told me to tone it down, they were getting too excited. And boy, did I get pissed. Sure, they were excited – they were having fun, and fun was the one thing they weren’t supposed to experience under house rules. Refusing to ‘tone it down,’ I stormed out of there yelling my defiance until I was a block away from the coffee house entrance.”

While working MEF gigs Feher was also having a go at street singing; it was nothing new, he’d done it in the theatre district as early as 1968 and ’69. For whatever reason, Tom never did very well financially in the role of busker: perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he looked at it more as writer’s research than a route to monetary gain.

FEHER:

“Up near the Central Park Zoo there was a husband and wife team that did very well, and a horn section that made out like bandits. Blaring horns are a novelty that’s hard to ignore; I was just a run-of-the-mill songwriter with a guitar and no amplification.

“I did the circuit down in Greenwich Village too, by which I mean I stand on one street and sing until some neighborhood resident complains and the cops come to shut me down; then I go around the corner and set up again until the cops came back for round two, and so on. That was the circuit. Just off Washington Square I met another sidewalk artist, a fine artist who painted amazing original canvasses that had crowds standing around and gaping. His name is Rico Fonseca, and he’s still out there year after year, with a website on the internet too.

“I found Rico’s story just amazing. When he was a little boy growing up in Lima Peru, he dreamed of coming to the United States and making ‘the big time.’ He came up and somehow or another got himself a studio in Providence Rhode Island where he would paint six months of the year, and then each Spring he’d come to Greenwich Village and hang his paintings up on a fence. He’d put huge prices on the originals – like fifty to one hundred thousand dollars – and set up tables with his prints at anything from five to twenty-five bucks. The prints went like hot cakes. Rico is a jovial character you can’t help liking and he knows his subject very well.”

  While family life seemed determined to monopolize Feher’s attentions during his secondary residence in the Bronx, music was never farther away than the nearest guitar or piano. His songwriting entered into what he refers to as a “gospel period” resulting from a spiritual awakening and the presence of a baby grand piano that had been left in the Seamans’ Bronx house by Gae’s uncle Eugene, an internationally acclaimed classical pianist.

For performing purposes, it was guitar, and harmonica on a neck brace. His wife accompanied him on vocals and flute; they named themselves “Big Kids” as a duo and through a connection made by Roger Keay, recorded an album of Feher’s late ‘70s folk material with Joel Katz at the latter’s home studio in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Katz, having gained his engineering experience at Plaza Sound in New York’s Radio City in 1975 was employed as an East Coast field engineer by Ampex from 1977 to 1981 until the company’s recording division folded. It was also in 1977 that he opened his Broadway South recording studio.

FEHER:

“Joel Katz was a wonder to behold. The first time I entered his studio, I saw a fellow rather short in stature, mustached at the time, brimming with the nervous energy of enthusiasm for music – he just couldn’t wait to show me some of his recorded work, his equipment, and set up for our session. He had a habit of tapping his hand against the side of his leg and sort of moving slightly up and down as he spoke. He’s still out there today performing, and, I assume recording… and here’s the thing: Joel Katz is one of the great doo-wop crusaders of all time.

“He’s made numerous albums of his own, been in at least a half-dozen New Jersey doo-wop and acapella groups, and practically idolized the late Johnny Maestro (of the Crests and Brooklyn Bridge), whom he closely resembles in vocal tone and style.

“Joel is an awesome vocalist – a tenor – and a meticulous producer of modern updates of classic doo-wop oldies as well as having been involved in more recent original material in the ‘Fifties mode. He made me aware of Ronnie I, UGHA (United in Group Harmony Association), the continuing sub-culture of group harmony, doo-wop and acapella that exists to this day though the major media tend to ignore it. If no one else were to carry the torch, I know that Joel would single-handedly keep doo-wop alive until his last breath on earth.”

Despite Katz’s love of oldies, his studio was available for recording all types of good music and he had an enjoyable time recording the Big Kids’ album Come and Take a Look. All tracks were very simply recorded live performances – Tom Feher’s career-long preference of one or two takes – with himself on guitar and lead vocals and Gae on harmonies and flute or tambourine. Among twelve tunes was one entitled “One Flight Up.”

FEHER:

“‘One Flight Up’ is a track worthy of extra attention. Aside from being a quality performance with a great flute line and tight harmony, it has a true story behind it and is in itself a compact version of that same story. In the late ‘70s – 1978 or ’79 – when Gae and I had first become a couple, I ran into my old friend David Paul Wesley, alias ‘The Whip,’ the drummer from our former band Benn Gunn. 

“Sometime around 1973 The Whip had gone to London with Jake ‘The Snake’ Hooker and I suppose he just missed out being in on the Arrows because when I ran into him again his main item of attention was Brazil: at one point or another he’d been down to Rio once, maybe twice with his friend Simon and it seems they came back up with Brazilian wives or roommates… whatever. I only know the Latin rhythms were in the air.

“The point is, though, that Simon was a hairdresser, and he had a high class salon over on East Seventy-Second Street where David, for lack of anything better to do or maybe for room and board would chit-chat with the ladies in the waiting area and then he’d shampoo their hair before Simon let his scissors fly. Every once in a while I’d come by with guitar in hand and play a few songs to liven things up. The most memorable event was a time when Simon came over and asked me to personally serenade one of his lady customers who’d had some tragedy… probably a younger guy turning out to be a cad and dumping her after fleecing her for whatever he could get. 

“At any rate, this lady was in a terribly blue mood, so I whipped out a ballad called ‘Maybe,’ about looking on the bright side when things were really going bad. The song hit home for her, and she perked up quite a bit, smiled and relaxed; it was another sort of a miracle with music.

“Simon’s shop was next door to a movie theatre and up a flight of stairs (no elevator) on the second floor with a big picture window looking out on Seventy-Second Street. The shop was called One Flight Up. I put the entire scene into a song lyric and we recorded it for the Big Kids’ album at Broadway South. In 2008, Gae and I performed the song for the first time in decades at one of my fundraising productions, and it still had a certain magic: one of those songs that grows better with age.”

ONE FLIGHT UP

words & music by Tom Fair © 1980, 2013

One door down from the movie house, one flight up on the stair,

David answers the telephone and Simon cuts the hair.

Men walk by in their business suits,

Girls come in and the boys get cute,

And sweet Brazilian music fills the air.

Sunlight falls through the window pane as Simon checks on his tools.

David gets the appointment book, and also the morning news.

Many an item he will consume

To pass the time in the waiting room:

A conversation the customers will approve.

The sweet Brazilian music fills the air;

David does the shampoo, and Simon cuts the hair.

One flight up; one flight up; one flight up – upon the stair.

Time goes by and the scissors fly all through the busy day.

Tom comes by with the old guitar, and many a song to play.

Friends drop in from around the world:

Entertainers and fashion girls,

And all the while those scissors snip away!

The sweet Brazilian music fills the air;

David does the shampoo, and Simon cuts the hair.

One flight up; one flight up; one flight up – upon the stair.

And the girls go “oo-oo-oo-oo Simon,” “oo-oo-oo-oo Simon,” 

One flight up; one flight up; one flight up – upon the stair.

When the recording of the album was finished, Tom had it packaged in cassette form and sold it by direct mail order; he also used it to promote their duo in the interests of drumming up gigs. He met a surprising rejection from a children’s programs administrator in the New York Public Library.

TOM FEHER: 

“You have to understand that our album was full of songs of love and hope and joy. It was bright and exciting – exactly the kind of material you’d want to raise your kids on. And this insane woman tells me that my songs are unrealistic and will give kids the wrong ideas about life! ‘Life,’ she said, ‘is not this rosy.’ I could’ve clobbered her on the head with my guitar, but finally I was learning to keep my cool.

“We sang at my niece’s public school, in the park, at the beach and even on the city subways. Making money was not the main concern; we wanted to make people happy, and we did. My wife was one-hundred percent behind me in everything I dreamed up. At one point we decided to open an artists’ booking agency – all we had was use of my father-in-law’s office and phone and a lot of spunk.

“The office had a back room with an upright piano against the wall, and we decided to try our hand at artist management. We didn’t have the vaguest idea how we were going to do it because we had no experience whatsoever. But we were young and foolish and in love with life: we actually came up with a few results.”

Through the father-in-law’s connections, the couple acquired an opportunity to install a weekly showcase in the Riverboat Restaurant in the basement of the Empire State building. This was no small coup, as the Riverboat (originally titled ‘Mark Twain’s Riverboat’) was at one time the flagship of the Longchamps restaurant chain in New York City. At this time, the Riese Organization was promoting it as Leo Lindy’s Riverboat Room.

FEHER: 

“It was early 1984. I suppose Finn was wowing the crowds at Heartbreak at that time, although I had no knowledge of it whatsoever; our paths had well-separated by then. Gae and I placed ads in Backstage, the entertainment publication and one other magazine, calling for performing artists to audition for our showcase. We interviewed and auditioned something like a hundred applicants in the little piano room over Broadway at Seventy-Second Street.

“I barely recall the names of the artists we eventually booked, but there was wide variety and some of it was really excellent. Lots of vocalists, pianists, a few comedians, a magician or two. We called our showcase Spotlight ’84 and it ran for seven weeks in the Riverboat. I became so enthused with the locale that I wrote a musical revue – the Riverboat Revue – basically a musical tour of American history from pioneer days to the present, and sent it up to the restaurant management with a proposal to run it as a regular feature.

“They were grabbing at straws – anything to recover their dwindling volume of clientele – but it turned out I was too late on the chain with my musical revue. Something happened in the management area and I believe the restaurant changed hands once more… and policy too. I know we certainly didn’t bring in the huge crowds that they were gasping for. After modest attendance at our showcase, we were out of there and that basically was the end of White Knight Artists. Up the river without a paddleboat! But it was fun and a great learning experience. Imagine… launching our first showcase production in a restaurant in the Empire State Building.”

KISSING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY GOODBYE

While Feher had drafted a “Declaration of Independence from the Music Industry” in 1979, he was to have one more go at the fame game when in mid-1984 two former associates of musical projects offered him an opportunity to “make a few bucks” on a series of recordings. 

TOM FEHER:

“I don’t recall exactly how I found out about Jake… it was probably through David the Whip. Jake (Hooker), for as long as I’d known him had been an industry ass-kisser and a social climber. At this point in his life he was 1) Married to Lorna Luft; and 2) Had co-writing credit with Alan Merrill on “I Love Rock and Roll.” Somehow he’d finagled himself an office on West Fifty-Seventh Street down from Carnegie Hall, and set up shop as an entertainment manager, including an exclusive sub-publishing deal with Arista. He also had his hooks in a Christian artist (whom I won’t name because the artist might not want it known that he was ever associated with Jake Hooker).

“Well, as it was, Jake had got a hold of Rick Derringer, another old face from the ‘sixties who was riding high on the album and singles charts since his production of Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘Eat It’ parody of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ brought Yankovic international fame. 

“So Rick was producing the sessions for the Christian guy and Jake was pulling the strings behind the scenes. He got me plugged into the project as a rhythm guitarist and also into the Arista thing by informing me that he could get any song I submitted directly up the line and actually listened to by the head of publishing up there whose name I forget at the moment. Billy Meshell, maybe.

“The publishing opportunity was the thing that really excited me, so much so that during the months of June, July and August I wrote at a clip of one song a day – ninety-two songs in three months – all of which I submitted and all of which were refused. It wasn’t too bad for me because some of them were very good songs which I still own and have documented; about fifty percent I threw away. But it just goes to show how much a writer can get done if he has even a ghost of a chance of his work published.

“Meanwhile, the sessions are scheduled and I begin hanging out at the studio, I think it was Right Track on Forty-Eighth Street, waiting my turn to play. From the beginning, I knew there was something not kosher about the set-up. The first day I arrived, the bass player was up in the musicians’ lounge sick from some bad cocaine.

“The engineer comes in and slaps a great big zip-lock bag full of home grown pot on the recording console and says ‘help yourself.’ Rick or Jake, I forget who, told me that the artist is dead against weed so they’ll smoke in the control room and keep him out in the studio. I guess he was tha naive – it was his first recording session – that he never asked to go into the control room. After doing my bit, I was sitting back there behind the console and I was literally getting sick. My eyes were itching and my nose was running.

“I realized it was a manifestation of the sick feeling inside of me watching these supposed professionals bamboozling this poor sucker, so I took Rick aside and I said, ‘Listen, you ought to know by now I’m a Scientologist, and as such I don’t tolerate drugs. I can see the way this project is going, and I know I’ll be wasting my time trying to get you to change your habits on my say-so.’ Rick is just looking at me, waiting for the punch line. So I tell him, ‘I can sure use the money and all and the chance to play; but this is against my code, so I’m dropping out of the project.’ 

“He looks at me really serious and says ‘You can’t do that; it’ll jinx the sessions and we want a platinum record.’ I’m thinking to myself, wow… this is almost as bad as Stan Satlin and his voodoo Robin Hood. Superstition ain’t the way. And I told Rick, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to go.’ My sinuses cleared up almost immediately on leaving. That was my last day in the official music business: I walked out on that scene and never looked back. And I guess I jinxed the session, because they never did have that hit. Boo-hoo.”

Alan Merrill, whose career had been entwined with that of both Hooker and Derringer, adds his own observations regarding these personalities during this period.

ALAN MERRILL:

“Rick and Jake had a negative symbiosis, and they were a force of dark energy together. It was all very childish, and amateurish, from a business standpoint. I understand Tom’s bowing out of any such situation around that time. I sang on The Wrestling Album that Rick produced. Jake was the coordinator; Tom Edmunds the engineer: the unholy trio. They were really an axis of evil. I was the ‘ringer’ lead vocalist on the hit song off the album, ‘Land of a Thousand Dances’ in 1984. I was unpaid and un-credited, although they promised me $600 for the session and a name check on the album. I have never worked with Jake or Rick since and never will. But I’m glad Rick has found his way out of that murky maze and some bright solace in religion: as radical a change as that is for him it’s good.”

Ironically, Rick Derringer – having apparently pulled the wool over a Christian’s eyes in 1984 (Feher doesn’t know whether the singer ever discovered the deception) – eventually returned to Christianity himself. He can be found on the Internet attesting his faith in both interview and recent recorded works. As for Jake Hooker… time will tell.

The episode with Derringer and Hooker signaled the closing of one era for Feher and the beginning of another. By the end of 1985 he was moving his family to Los Angeles, where his children would grow to adulthood. That last year in New York City, Tom and Gae did a few performances as ‘The Dynamics’ vocal duo. Feher did some studio piano work for a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn named Zev Yourman, and on sessions for Joel Katz and Twilight’s Once Upon A Time album of oldies remakes, for which he also wrote the liner notes. 

TOM FEHER:

“I’d worked long enough for my father-in-law at basement wages for both of us to agree that I wasn’t indebted to him any further. I’d taken a job with CBS-TV hauling people in off the streets to rate new television shows, and for the first time was saving up some money. Gae and the kids were up in her mom’s family house in Brewster while I worked the five weekdays and slept on Zev’s Brighton Beach couch at nights, going up to see the family on weekends and handing Gae most of my earnings so she could start stashing some of it away for our move away from New York City and the tumultuous past. But just before we left, I fulfilled a long-term dream to learn to read music. I suppose this was parallel to Finn’s really getting his bass chops down and playing with Rockin’ Rob. And, similar to Finn’s progress, it opened up a whole new career opportunity for me.”

Tom Feher had been playing guitar for twenty years, and piano for almost as long, and everything was from the head or from hip, or as more relates to music, by ear. He mastered musical notation, and wrote his first lead sheets in 1985 – slow, painful work, but successful – and in 1991 in Los Angeles began a twenty-year career as a music teacher.

1985: FINN ROCKS PALLADIUM

When Tom Finn left Heartbreak in July of 1985 and joined AA, his personal habits too were bound to change somewhat; but he was now committed to being a professional DJ. He took a job at a club called Nirvana in the penthouse of Number One Times Square where the ball dropped every New Year’s Eve. 

TOM FINN:

“I just played music and went straight home after we closed. Now that I was out of Heartbreak I had to be more versatile with the music I spun. I had to play modern music, but I mixed it up with rock, funk and oldies too. The crowds still loved me and I hadn’t lost my touch; but now when I tried to play some ‘50s music, it was more difficult to sell to the dance crowd. I crammed and shopped for records and I joined a record pool called Rockpool. I now was a more current music DJ but I never gave up on my retro stuff. I soon became very popular and I received offers from several newer styled clubs, so I started working at four clubs a week. 

“It was at one of these clubs that Steve Rubell saw me and asked me to spin at Palladium. So I went there but I raised my fee because I knew that Palladium was the hippest, biggest and most popular nightclub in the city. I got a gig working one night at Palladium (that’s the name, no ‘the’) where the promoter for the night was none other than the famous ex-Yippie, turned Yuppie, Jerry Rubin.  

“Jerry had a big night at Palladium; his promoting drew over five thousand people a night there. I was perfect for the job because I knew how to slam the big records. I guess I was in the right place at the right time, because every DJ anywhere wanted to work there. I’m talking about career DJ’s that were much more skilled at the wheels of steel than I was. But I had the magic formula and I soon was doing up to three nights a week on the big floor. 

“After my first night Steve Rubell congratulated me on my stunning debut. It was amazing, every time I mixed or slammed into a new record the crowd would cheer really loud, like a home run at a baseball park. I got Chuck Berry a booking at Palladium on New Years Eve 1986. I suggested Chuck and they went for it. I was spinning for the crowd when they told me that Chuck wanted to talk to me. I went to his dressing room where he was sitting with a red robe on and a young sexy blond sitting on his lap. 

  “He said ‘Mister DJ, I want to thank you for getting me this job. I said, ‘no – thank you for creating Rock and Roll.’ At that moment the club’s manager rushed in and handed Chuck a briefcase with $25,000 dollars cash… off the books of course. At the end of his performance I walked him to the back door and he got into a rented car with his guitar, his briefcase and his blond who was carrying his clothing bag and drove off into the night. Man, if that ain’t Rock and Roll, what is?”

COMING AROUND AGAIN

In 1985, when one might have assumed the world had all but forgotten, Rhino Records, the respected re-issue label founded by Richard Foos and Harold Bronson, released The History of the Left Banke.

This unusual collection contained not only a selection of the group’s hits and subsequent singles, but two tracks – “Ivy, Ivy” and “And Suddenly” – by “the other Left Banke” featuring Bert Sommer’s vocals, two tracks by Michael Brown’s group Stories, and two Steve Martin-Caro vocal rarities, “Myrah” and “Pedestal.” The Buddah “Steve Martin” sides, “Love Songs In The Night” and “Two By Two” were also included.

Finn, Brown, Cameron and Martin-Caro were interviewed and the interviews included in the album’s liner notes. Martin-Caro, rarely if ever heard from in published articles, gave insight to the bitterness in his character. 

STEVE MARTIN-CARO (interviewed for the liner notes):

“Looking back, the Left Banke was only a positive experience for a few months. Mostly it was negatives – bad management, bad vibes. The initial talent was there on my part; I gave it all I had, but I came from European ancestry and I wasn’t ready for New York in the sense of everyone lyin’ and cheatin’. 

“The way we did things in Europe wasn’t cut-throat. I don’t want to mention any names, but there were several people in the organization who were not looking out after my interests. The only thing between us and the door of success – if you ever study the Left Banke history – was a succession of constant negative output not only on the behalf of the members, but just bad vibes all around.

“I’m not a bad person. I’m just average, I don’t go out of my way to hurt anybody. And I’m not a slick operator either. But there were people in New York who just tore me apart. Nobody ever treated me fairly; nobody gave me a fair shake.

“I’m not retired. I plan to regain my rightful place in the music industry; a lot of people want to work with me. I never asked for any publicity, I never bother anybody, I never want anything from anybody but people call me all the time. I’ll never work with the Left Banke or any people from the past again.”

Tom Feher notes that Steve’s attitude had not changed much since the group’s formation, saying, ”From the first day I met him, Carmelo Esteban Martin Caro was a haughty, moody, sarcastic, condescending type, something I guess that was a result of his Castilian upbringing. Who knows? None of us were ever quite good enough for him, except maybe M. Brown. It created problems in personal relationships, but somehow became magic when he stepped up to the microphone. His voice is one that simply can’t be ignored.”

Between 1985 and 2001 Dawn Eden Goldstein – possibly best known as author of her 2006 book The Thrill of the Chaste – worked in the music industry in public relations, as a rock journalist and a writer of liner notes for CD re-issues.  One of her early interviews, done in 1986 for fanzine The Bob, and later re-issued in Goldmine, were done with members of the Left Banke. She states “…I was an utterly obsessed 17-year-old fan. They were a learning experience for me, as I was just getting into ‘60s pop.”

The interviews, originally done with Mike Brown, Tom Finn, Rick Brand and Alan Merrill – and later including George Cameron – are posted on the Left Banke website, leftbanke.nu, maintained by Charlemange Fezza. They are noteworthy as it seems several of the interviewees were caught off guard and said things they might ordinarily have not wanted to see published; but most intriguing is Brown’s complete fabrication of how the hit “Walk Away Renée” was written.

TOM FEHER:

“Brown talks about the lyrics, with which he had little to do – I was at some of the songwriting sessions, by the way, quietly observing – as if the ideas came out of his own head, when as one learns by a reading of this book, the lyrics were approximately ninety percent the work of Tony Sansone. 

“In the Dawn Eden interview Mike puts out the complete falsehood that the ‘sign that points one way’ was at a street corner in Brooklyn in his old neighborhood when in fact it was a street sign in Tony’s neighborhood in the Bronx. Some fellow on the internet got a hold of this and started spreading the ‘corner of Falmouth and Hampton Avenue’ myth as gospel truth via his blog.

“Brown goes on to say how he wrote the words to the third verse, never crediting Sansone with a single line; but you have to understand that when Brown wasn’t playing music business politics or bragging about his own talents, he was in a fantasy world uninhabited by anyone else than himself, because he had no real close friends.

“It’s kind of sad – pathetic, actually. If you read that interview carefully, you can see how he swings from relative coherence to wild unintelligibility. I’ve sometimes wondered: did he pick this up from Dylan? Bob Dylan, you may know, was known for twisting the minds of reporters and interviewers with gobbledygook and outright falsehoods, but more as a military tactic to fend off the attacks of the insatiable journalists. Dylan had a field day mocking the press. With Mike Brown, I think of it as more of a compulsion to be odd, and a desire to be so repulsive as to make people want to leave him alone.” 

INTO THE 1990s: THE BAND KILLER

Tom Finn rode out the 1980s on the waves of acclaim in circles of high society. For the time, his performing days as a musician were over and his life as a DJ blossomed into ever-expanding opportunity and recognition.

TOM FINN:

“I was at Palladium from July 1985 through November 1987. My career at Palladium led me to the private event business because of two things: 1) Steve Rubell started sending me out of the club to do parties for his famous and wealthy friends; and 2) that led me to Robert Isabell, an absolute genius at decorating events, and I don’t use the word (genius) lightly. One day at a party I looked up and saw famous people all over the place; but unlike Heartbreak’s famous patrons, this crowd was comprised of the wealthiest people in the world.”

Robert Isabell, a native of Minnesota, first made his mark on New York’s social scene when hired by Ian Schrager to work on events at Studio 54. In the late ‘70s, Isabell arranged to have four tons of glitter dumped on the floor of Studio 54, with an effect described by Schrager as “standing on stardust.” Overseeing the creation of events worldwide from his event production house in the West Village, Isabell eventually acquired the reputation of being the “king of the event world.” Tom Finn, through his introduction by Steve Rubell would enter the circles of the high and mighty by DJing at such events. Finn considers Isabell a unique genius.

FINN:

“I just don’t throw the word genius around lightly. The man had the golden touch. When he did a party, it was something you’d never forget. For around twelve years he told everyone that I was the best DJ in the world. So, with people like that behind you... you get noticed. But – he was another one like Steve Martin, he really was extremely hard to like. He was very nasty to most people, even the people that hired him. 

“I did parties with him that were unbelievable. The only thing I did that made him like me so much was I really knew how to get people to dance their asses off. You’d be surprised how many DJs and bands don’t know how to do that. There were many times I sent large bands packing up after they only played for about twenty minutes or so. I was known as the band killer. What happened is I used the Heartbreak format to give middle aged people from thirty-five to sixty years old the time of their lives. 

“After a year or so, the bandleaders kept a musician around and copied down all the songs I played and in what order I played them. So, in a little while every party band in New York City was playing my sets. Then I had to change everything. But they learned and in a few years everybody was saying ‘all these bands and DJs sound the same.’”

Finn’s website  HYPERLINK "http://www.djtomfinn.com/" \t "_blank" http://www.djtomfinn.com lists many of his events and illustrious clients.

FINN:

“I couldn’t list a lot of people I worked for: because of my position, I had to keep quiet about private clients so I listed mostly public figures. But I did weddings in Europe and even Hong Kong; Jackie, John Jr. and Caroline Kennedy were common party clients. I did Whitney Houston’s wedding, Lionel Richie’s, John MacEnroe’s, Robert De Niro’s, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s wedding to Matthew Broderick plus many weddings of billionaires and plenty of them too. Old money… the Rockefellers and every major wealthy name I can think of. I was the first DJ to play at The White House. I rang in the New Year at the White House Millennium event as the only entertainment at that event. Also I was on the front page, yes – the FRONT PAGE of the NEW YORK TIMES on December 6th, 2006 in a long feature article titled ‘The DJ That Moves the Movers and Shakers.’”

THE FLAME THAT WOULDN’T DIE

As Tom Finn rose in the realm of high society, 1992 saw the most ambitious Left Banke re-issue project of all. CDs were fast becoming the standard media for the industry, and this meant a renewed marketability for all forms of past successful record releases. PolyGram had acquired the Mercury label in 1972, and along with it the Smash label, on which the original Left Banke recordings had been released.

TOM FINN:

“The first I heard of the 1992 compilation was when I was contacted by Andrew Sandoval and Bill Inglot. I did the whole liner notes thing with Andrew and I had Bill over to my apartment and gave him every Left Banke tape I had. I figured it would be better if our music was in the hands of an expert, because at least they know how to preserve tapes and we don’t. I gave him demos and everything.” 

Bill Inglot is a sound technician who began working part-time for Rhino Records in 1982 and became a full time employee in 1985. His job was usually as the producer of audio content and the supervisor of mastering. One of the first records he worked on was the aforementioned The History of the Left Banke compiled in 1985 by Rhino’s co-founder Harold Bronson. Inglot had assembled the LP master from tape copies obtained from PolyGram and Essex Music, owners at that time of the Buddah masters which included the “Steve Martin” single and the Stories sides. 

BILL INGLOT:

“My arrangement with Rhino in 1992 was I could do ‘outside’ projects as long as there were no obvious conflicts. Bill Levenson was the Catalog Department head at PolyGram in New York. We had worked together on several projects and he was looking to expand their CD catalog and compile some great but more obscure (at that time) artists as high-quality single-disc CD anthologies. 

“I pitched the ‘Complete Left Banke’ to Bill as a title that should be done and he immediately OK’d its development. He gave me a proper budget that allowed for good mastering, quality liner-notes and nice packaging. I brought in Andrew Sandoval to do the essay and band interviews and Lisa Sutton to design the artwork. 

“The whole project took about three months time to put together. Of all of the records I have worked on over-the-years, it was one of most satisfying to work on and one of the ones I still play a lot. (Trivia note: The flowery, paisley-esque background used in the artwork is actually scanned from the fabric pattern of one of my vintage ‘60s shirts!) 

“For There’s Gonna Be A Storm (the eventual title of the new compilation) I did our tape research at the PolyGram tape library in Edison, New Jersey. There were some interesting discoveries such as the unreleased ‘Men Are Building Sand’ track. After quite a bit of hand-searching the shelves, all the original masters were located. They were then sent to Los Angeles where we did some mixing at Penguin recording (Eagle Rock, CA) and all the mastering at A&M studios (Los Angeles).

“The decision was made to work from the four-track masters on some of the first LP songs due to some sound quality concerns we had and also some aesthetic reasons as some of the mixing on the original 1967 LP seemed very ‘rushed’ or didn’t match the ‘feel’ of the what was issued previously on 45s . We wanted to create a complete package that stated a case for the greatness of their music. We also worked very hard to come up with a sequence that played down well and that was as compelling forty minutes in as it was at the start.”

The Polygram CD release came at a very opportune time for Tom Feher, who in 1992 was struggling to get his fledgling career as a music teacher off the ground. In order to get back into music, Feher had in 1991 quit a fairly lucrative job selling defragmentation software, and was singing at kids’ parties and had a few client schools as an independent music instructor. His own four children were still attending private school thanks to some assistance from the in-laws, but his severance pay from the sales job, and meager saving were fast diminishing.

TOM FEHER:

“One day, out of the blue, I got a call from Tom Finn who informed me of the PolyGram CD release. In our traditional New York City street talk, he says to me, ‘Feher, I smell money in this one.’ So I hauled out the typewriter and wrote to the PolyGram publishing department in New York. It took several rounds of letters, but eventually they sent me a proposed contract. Because my co-publishers on the songs from the second Left Banke album were all out of business, I became the sole publisher of those songs – ‘Goodbye Holly,’ ‘Bryant Hotel,’ and ‘Sing, Little Bird Sing.’ 

“Now here’s an interesting development in all of this. Back when I’d been working with Rachel Elkind, she’d introduced me to a music business lawyer named Hy Shore. Cool name! I phoned Hy in New York City and I asked him to go over the contracts for me. Hy says to me, ‘Tom, this isn’t like the old days. I’ve gotta have a retainer of at least two hundred and fifty dollars.’

“As I have already explained, money was really tight, and I told him so. I offered to give him a percentage of the royalty sum when it arrived on my end, but he refused. So, bottom line: I went over the contracts myself with a fine tooth comb. By this time in my life I knew something of music business law, and found a serious defect in the contract – they were offering to pay me for sales beginning at the date of contract signing; however, they’d already been selling the CDs for six to eight months. 

“I inserted a rider with a ‘retroactive’ clause, ensuring me royalties from the first day of CD sales. The heaviest volume of sales usually occurs right after release when the promotional program is in operation. As it worked out, I not only got my songwriter and publisher royalties for all PolyGram CD sales, but Rhino also issued me checks for back royalties on the 1985 album.

“I wouldn’t say I hauled in a king’s ransom in that deal, but all told I collected almost ten thousand dollars in a period when my teaching income was practically nil. It was in fact the first royalty payment I’d ever received for the songs I’d written for the Left Banke beginning in 1966. The checks really helped me and my family. As for Hy Shore, he’d foolishly refused the ten percent which would have brought him considerably more than the up front sum he’d asked me. Sorry, dude… such is life.”

There it was 1992 and the Left Banke was for the most part gone… but not forgotten: they had made it into the digital age, shattered and scattered personally, but still alive on disc and in the hearts of a faithful worldwide fan base. 

Rate Your Music or RYM, founded in Atlanta in the year 2000, is a database site that solicits input from members who vote on their favorite albums, EPs, singles and other items. The Left Banke compilation CD There’s Gonna Be A Storm was rated #21 out of one thousand CD compilations released in 1992, placing them ahead of the Ronettes, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Traffic, Wilson Pickett, ABBA, The Police – and far ahead of ‘60s contemporaries Chad and Jeremy, whose Painted Dayglow Smile clocked in at #1000 to round off the chart. It was becoming obvious that the Left Banke’s popularity was still a factor where the public was concerned. But there was more to come. 

THE RECLUSIVE ELUSIVE MISTER BROWN

Through the decades since “Walk Away Renée” hit the record charts, the legend of Michael Brown, the erratic genius continued to grow, and die-hard fans were consistently aching to learn more about him and hear more of his music. But, true to his reputation, Brown was typically unavailable for comment; it seemed he had disappeared into the bowels of the Garden State, New Jersey. 

In the mid-‘90s, the composer/keyboardist married his current wife, Yvonne Vitale; Tom Finn recalls attending their wedding reception on the Binghamton party boat docked on the Jersey side of the Hudson River near Weehawken. It was also the last time Finn saw Michael Brown’s father Harry Lookofsky, the original Left Banke manager who passed away in 1998. 

TOM FINN:

“It was very cordial. I always gave Harry a pass when it came to anger and resentment; after all, without him recording us and selling the master of ‘Renée’ to Fach (Charlie Fach, VP at Mercury in 1966), where would we be? Was Harry a greedy selfish son-of -a-bitch? You bet he was. Would it do me any good to hate his guts? Not really. I had to move on and learn my lesson. Which was: make deals with people but keep your eyes open and try your best not to make mistakes.” 

Around the same time, Finn and Brown engaged in a number of recording projects together. In these collaborations, Finn’s decision to rise above anger and resentment were truly put to the test. Around 1995 he started working with Mike Brown at Brown’s home studio in New Jersey. Finn was playing bass on several of his projects. 

Jimmy McAllister (formerly of the Beckies) was the guitarist; he flew into New York City every few months to record with Mike and Tom. They used different drummers; one was Jerry Polci who at that time was married to Frankie Valli’s daughter. Jerry had been in the Four Seasons: he sang lead on “Oh What A Night (December 1963),” a huge hit (#1 for 3 weeks) in 197).

FINN:

“Brown tried everything he could to try to recapture his glory days. He was using Big Steve Jerome as a recording engineer for a while. He also booked some recording time at Johnny Abbott’s studio in Staten Island. We also had Steve Jerome on those sessions. We did some recording for Mike’s wife Yvonne. We also recorded with a friend of Mike’s named Shane Faubert. He was working for Mike as a tape archivist; he kept track of Mike’s hundreds of demos and cassettes. Shane fancied himself a singer and he did a song on that big Left Banke tribute album that came out in 1999. 

“Brown wrote songs throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s albeit he wasn’t very prolific. He wasn’t recording to document his songs; it was always some sort of project, whether Shane Faubert, Yvonne Vitale, Steve Martin, Sasha Lazard or Ian Lloyd. For instance Brown wrote a song called ‘Airborne’ which he recorded or tried to record with Steve Martin, Shane Faubert, Sasha Lazard; I think Yvonne might have taken a crack at it. It’s on YouTube under Airborne, with Steve’s vocal, attributed to the Left Banke. 

“He liked to do projects. He was always coming up with new or different recording engineers to work in his basement studio. The Shane Faubert project was a long one; we practically did a whole album’s worth of Brown songs. The Yvonne Vitale project took up a lot if time also, and this wasn’t the album that Mike eventually wrote and produced for her. That album actually got released, probably by themselves (Mike and Yvonne). It was called On This Moment and it contained about twelve Brown songs which I had nothing to do with; he probably recorded it in the ‘90s.

“All in all, I’d say from 1990-2004 he probably wrote about one hundred twenty-five songs… two hundred if you included fragments or unfinished songs, but that’s just a guess. He’s been taking pretty powerful psychotropic drugs over the years and his fingers were fatty and maybe somewhat swollen, so his piano chops were nowhere near his ‘Desirée’ and ‘Ballerina’ days. 

“After Yvonne had the kids he tried his best to be a good father to them. Actually I think Yvonne and he have done a good job raising them: both boys show talent and they seem happy and well adjusted. I just couldn’t take working with him anymore, I didn’t feel as if any creative ideas I had were given any thought; but toward the end he started to trust me a lot more.            

“Jimmy McAllister was a talented guitarist who played in Mike’s group the Beckies. He played on the majority of songs on ‘Left Banke 3’ (Strangers On A Train). He was a soft spoken well mannered guy that played with some very talented musicians over the years, such as GE Smith, the Saturday Night Live band leader, who played on many hits for people like Hall and Oates, etc. Jimmy was the type of guy that was super kindhearted and never had a bad word to say about anybody. People really liked him, me included. They just don’t come any kinder than Jimmy.”

TOM FEHER:

“While all this sense and nonsense was going on in New Jersey, I was doing better and better with my music school and beginning to record again. I’d found a production partner, Todd Fifield, and we did three albums worth of material in the mid-‘90s. 

“One of them was a kids’ collection of my originals titled I Love Reading, which we marketed direct mail to children’s librarians and which I sold at my family event gigs. I had a friend in LA named Jean Dale, who’d founded a children’s performing group, “Kids On Stage For A Better World;” our own kids had gone to school together. 

“Jean sent a few of my recordings to some people she knew in Chicago and they became a big hit there with a kids’ performing group called ‘The Happiness Kids,’ organized by Gigi Faracci Harris. I flew to Chicago and made a week long tour of boys and girls clubs, a library and a church or two with Gigi and The Happiness Kids in 1992. The group later changed their name to ‘The Happiness Club’ and performed my songs in their sets on the Bozo TV show and out on Wrigley Field for the Chicago Cubs.

“One day – I think it was in 1996 – I opened up a big Rolodex on my desk, and it flopped over to Mike Brown’s address and phone number. Possibly I’d gotten the information from Finn, because I hadn’t spoken to Brown in well over fifteen years. 

“So I figured, what a coincidence, I’ll just call him. I got Mike on the phone and after preliminaries proceeded to tell him about my successes as a music teacher and so forth. Every bit of good news I offered him he shot down with some critical remark; but I kept at it, thinking maybe he’d get into the spirit of the thing. Finally, he interrupts me in the middle of a sentence and says, ‘Tom, I’m trying to tell you something.’ So I said, ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ and he replies, ‘I’m not your friend.’ 

“Well… I suppose anyone with half a brain could’ve figured that out; but I guess I was hoping beyond hope that my newfound sense of universal brotherhood would somehow rub off on him. I was also getting a more practical attitude about things. I thought over his response for about thirty seconds, and I said, ‘why, in that case, goodbye – and good riddance. And I hung up the phone. I haven’t spoken to him since.”

A COLOSSAL RELEASE

As the decade came to a close, the Left Banke’s legendary status was given yet another boost by the release of a tribute album. A compilation of twenty-two tribute recordings of various Left Banke songs and at least one extra (“Brother Louie”) was issued on Brobdingnagian Records, the label title meaning “colossal in size” and derived from a commonly incorrect reference to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

A twenty-two song compilation can indeed be colossal in size, and at least one reviewer (Justin Stranzl, writing for Pop Matters) gave it a colossal thumbs up, calling it “fantastic” and giving it a score of “nine out of ten.” This was a younger generation of Left Banke admirers, musicians with a different sense of aesthetics derived from a different set of societal circumstances; but their love for the Left Banke’s music transcended the times. 

Among the better-known artists was Jason Falkner, who already had an impressive track record, having been active as a musician since 1980; Falkner contributed with a rendition of “Pretty Ballerina.” Mike Brown’s former tape archivist Shane Faubert had a go at “I Haven’t Got The Nerve,” and the group Grip Weeds plugged in with a high energy delivery of “Lazy Day,” – all these songs from the Banke’s first album.

1999 was a significant year for Tom Feher too. In addition to a number of his songs represented on the tribute compilation, he opened the year in January with Evolution, a four-hour concert in the Garden Pavilion in Hollywood, celebrating 33 years as a published songwriter. Feher considered the concert one of the finest performances of his career, and edited a one-hour segment for distribution on CD and promotion on the internet.

TOM FEHER:

“For whatever reason, this concert proved to have a magical content unlike anything I’d ever done before. It was probably the result of having so many of my new friends – most of whom had never heard  even a fraction of my work – sit in on a total overview of my songwriting career in all its phases, except the ‘Dirty Dozen,’ I skirted around that collection because it was a family event.

“I had some great musicians performing with me and ranged from folk to pop to gospel to rock to children’s music… a broad variety of the many types of music that I love, all given my own original twist. The audience laughed at all my jokes and most of them – kids included stayed the entire time until midnight and gave me a standing ovation that wouldn’t stop.”

Feher included the Left Banke’s “Bryant Hotel,” and related anecdotes of how his band Eightballs got its name, and how he wrote a musical “ad” to recruit a new wife after his first marriage had failed. Highlights included his monster song “Blob In The Basement” and a six-minute Dylanesque ramble, “The King of France.”

TURN OF THE CENTURY: FINN IN THE OVAL OFFICE

December 31st, 1999: New Year’s Eve in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. The Clinton Administration has staged a spectacular event at the Lincoln Memorial: “America’s Millennium Gala,” produced by Quincy Jones and George Stephens Jr. and hosted by Will Smith. A partial list of guest and guest performers includes Muhammad Ali, Patti Austin, Bono, Ruby Dee, John Fogerty, Senator John Glenn, Tom Jones, Diane Keaton, Kris Kristofferson, Bobby McFerrin, Don McLean, Jack Nicholson, Kenny Rogers, Luther Vandross, Edgar Winter and Edward James Olmos.

In addition to a star-studded concert and the world premiere of the Steven Spielberg film ‘The Unfinished Journey,’ viewers are treated to a spectacular high-tech sound and light display between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument at midnight to usher in the new millennium. And Tom Finn, “the DJ who moves the movers and shakers,” is ringing in the New Year on the South Portico of the White House and preparing for the exclusive A-list dance party to follow the event.

TOM FINN:

“I got the job from Robert Isabell who had been recommended to the Clintons by Jackie O. The actual party took place at The White House. The President and Mrs. Clinton heard about the gift of my services for the dance portion of the evening (which means I did it for free) so their social secretary called my hotel room and said that the President and Mrs. Clinton would be delighted to invite Karin and I to dinner. (So, what was I going to do, say no?) 

“At about seven pm a presidential limo arrived at my hotel and whisked us away straight through security and right up to the White House. I later found out that the limo was already cleared to go straight in. Which, strangely enough was a perk that all the other guests didn’t have, they all had to be searched and walked through security. They did pat me down once I was inside and they sent two strong men to carry my CD collection into a back office where I assume it was checked out. “Before dinner was served the approximately three-hundred fifty guests were invited to roam through the White House; the only area that was off limits was the upper floor (the residential area). Karin and I just sauntered around going in and out of all the various rooms. We ended up with the black guests (Mohammed Ali, Will Smith, Jesse Jackson, etc.) because they seemed the most at ease about the whole thing. I went up to Mohammed Ali and I introduced Karin. He grabbed her by the arm and whispered in her ear ‘Is this guy treating you good? Because if he isn’t, you can always count on me.’ Very funny! 

“I went into the Oval Office and sat down and called my sister Barbara who said ‘Where are you?’ and I said ‘I’m calling you from the Oval Office.’ She freaked out, but then she told me she was watching the entire event on C-Span TV. 

“Karin and I got on a receiving line and formally met Bill, Hillary and Chelsea, after which we had dinner. Yum yum yummy! It was delicious. At about eleven-thirty a few buses arrived to take all the guests except me (I chose to remain at The White House) down to the Washington Monument to start the festivities to ring in the new millennium. There were performances by Will Smith and others that were nationally televised. I was standing on the South Portico of the White House with Karin when the clock struck midnight. 

“I said to myself, Wow! Look where I am!! I’m in the fucking White House. Just think about that – all the presidents that have stood here, and all the history and at midnight of a new century and who’s standing here? ME! WOW! I WAS TOTALLY STOKED. “They all came back at about one am and I was set up in the Rose Garden, in a gigantic heated tent, with a kick-ass sound system. There were a lot more celebrity guests, like Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro (I later did his wedding in 2005) and just some really cool people. Bill Clinton is a really good party person: he got up on the dance floor (built by Robert Isabell) and danced with five or six young friends of Chelsea’s. All told, the party (dancing wise) was okay; but a good majority of the guests were contributors to the Clinton campaigns and for the most part they were fat and boring.

    “I played until about four-thirty in the morning. So it was a good party. The only bummer was Bobby McFerrin who requested an obscure Stevie Wonder song that I didn’t have so he made a face like, you don’t have it, well then you suck. Robert Isabell left early: it wasn’t a good schmoozing crowd for him. They weren’t rich or fabulous enough. You know, he just had better things to do. I heard Bunny Melon (super wealthy socialite) sent one of her private jets to pick him up.”

MORE PROJECTS, NEW INTERVIEWS

Founded by Bob and Mary Irwin in Coxsackie, New York in 1989, Sundazed Records is a re-issue label that began by specializing in obscure and rare recordings from the 1950s to the 1970s. Early Sundazed releases included work by Left Banke contemporaries such as the Knickerbockers (“Lies” / #20 in 1966) and the Five Americans (“Western Union” / #5 in 1967). In 2001, the label re-issued the Michael Brown-produced Montage album packaged with artwork and photos from the original release, as well as detailed liner notes by rock journalist Richie Unterberger. The Montage album, obscure and rare indeed had survived into the digital age, proof that someone out there was listening and appreciative despite the neglect of reviewers and the larger music industry.

In summer of 2001 Mike Brown, guitarist Jimmy McAllister (formerly of the Beckies) and Tom Finn laid down some basic tracks at Brown’s studio in New Jersey. When the tracks were done were done Steve Martin-Caro came up from Tampa and put his vocal on them; George Cameron, Yvonne Vitale (Brown’s wife) and Finn did backing vocals. According to Finn, they recorded “about five songs.”

TOM FINN:

“It wasn’t a Left Banke reunion; it was Brown trying to get Steve to sing his songs, which were not very good. I did it as a sort of a nostalgic get together. Jimmy and I were doing a lot of recordings with Mike at that time anyway. I was the one that brought George in to sing harmony. However, the vocals were done poorly. George was out of tune and Mike wanted Yvonne to try her luck, but she and George together didn’t work very well.”

One might think that with all the time between and all the failed recording projects, the Left Banke would by now have become not just history, but ancient history – the kind that’s easily forgotten. But such was not to be the case. 2002 and 2003 brought renewed interest once again through several published interview articles.

TOM FEHER:

“At one point in my own life and career, I’d begun to deny the fact that I had anything to do with the Left Banke. For one thing, back in New York I’d more or less conceived myself to be a snarling rocker – not exactly punk rocker, because that was to submit to a social label. But during the Eightballs phase I downplayed my connection with the Left Banke because it was considered ‘pop’ rather than rock, and in the opinions of many of my musical associates was even what we’d call wimpy.

“Later, in California, when I’d become a good deal more sociable and well-bred, an educated musician with a wide variety of tastes, I was prepared to have a second look at the music we’d made – when Brown again threw it all in a sour light with his condescending attitude that ended our association rather abruptly and permanently. But in 2001 I was contacted out of the blue by Richie Unterberger for the interview that produced the liner notes for the Montage CD release; and that began what I would call the Left Banke revival phase. The following year I received a call from Iñaki Orbezua in Spain, who wanted to interview me for a special issue of his music magazine Otoño Cheyenne. 

“Otoño Cheyenne, which means ‘Cheyenne Autumn,’ was named after a John Wayne movie of that name. This issue included articles on my boyhood hero Dion DiMucci, on Richard Thompson (founding member of Fairport Convention), on Van Dyke Parks and Jack Nitzsche. Most of the articles were in Spanish; but the interview with me and the one with Tom Finn were published in English, and quite a bit of the magazine was devoted to those interviews and the additional information on the Left Banke. It was in this interview that I first made a public statement as to the character of Mike Brown, comparing him to Phil Spector and asking ‘How can anyone who makes such beautiful music be such an asshole?’ Thank God, at least Brown hasn’t been indicted for murder.” It later dawned on me that a major factor in Mike’s behavior must have been the lifelong dependency on pills provided by ‘professionals’ who were supposed to be ‘helping’ him.”

TOM FINN (from the interview in Otoño Cheyenne):

“…Mike Brown, I’ve talked to him and he just sticks like a dog to the Beatle past, and that’s not bad. If he’s gonna do that, he should do it the way we used to do it; but it’s not easy sometimes trying to talk to Mike about your ideas, because he was never really one to relinquish control. When he was younger... it might sound like I have resentments against him and I probably do, but I still respect him tremendously in another area, as a creator. 

“He once said ‘I like to think of the Left Banke as a horse with blinders and I’m sitting in the driver’s seat with a whip.’ And I’m not too happy about that; it’s not a great thing. He’s given plenty of great ideas, and he rejects everything immediately and later may take it in as something that he decided to do rather than something you decided to offer him. So, it’s a pretty difficult if not impossible situation.”

In 2003, another article on the Left Banke was published, in The Big Takeover out of New York City. The bi-annual music magazine, which at the time was produced on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was founded in 1980 by Jack Rabid, to promote what he described as ‘music with heart.’ The Left Banke interview article, well researched and organized by Daniel Coston, was derived from input by Finn, Cameron, Feher, and guitarist Rick Brand as well as brief statements by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of the Turtles. Not surprisingly, vocalist Steve Martin-Caro and Michael Brown were unavailable for participation.

DANIEL COSTON:

“The 2003 Left Banke feature was my idea, and I brought the idea to the Big Takeover. I had discovered the band in late 1999 and after I found a copy of There’s Gonna Be A Storm at a used record store (for six dollars, which is a huge bargain now), I was hooked. I started looking up information on the band online, and couldn’t find very much. Since so little information was available on the band during that time, I started wondering if I could pull together an interview series on the band. “Over a period of months, I tracked down everyone that I could get in touch with. I think that I found both Tom Finn and Rick Brand through the Left Banke mailing list. Tom Finn led me to Tom Feher, and as I was almost finished with the interviews, George Cameron popped up. The interviews with Finn, Feher and Cameron were done via e-mail, and Rick Brand’s was done one night in a two-hour phone interview, which I wrote down as we talked.

“Everyone was very nice to correspond with, and seemed happy that I had reached out to find them. The additional quotes from Flo and Eddie of the Turtles came early on, when I wasn’t sure how many Left Banke members I was going to find, and wanted some additional quotes. Both Flo and Eddie e-mailed me back that same weekend, and their quotes fit perfectly in the final edit.”

Stressing the role of the group in the popular music timeline, Coston’s documentation served to contribute to the growing evidence that the Left Banke was being favored by generation after new generation of music audiences. The article, well written, barely scratched the surface of the drama of the chaos and conflict so richly documented for the first time in this volume.

TOM FEHER:

“I usually tell current friends, concerning those earlier times, ‘I wouldn’t want to live through it again; but boy, what stories to tell the grandchildren… there’s a wealth of material for at least three Hollywood movies.”

Hmm… Hollywood movies? Time will tell, no doubt. 

In 2004, Finn and Brown collaborated in a sense once more, this time on the recording of several songs by Paul Thornton, a friend of the Left Banke since their early days of formation on Broadway. Tom Finn wasn’t working with Mike Brown creatively at this point; but he put up the money for Paul Thornton to record a few of his songs at Brown’s studio. Finn paid the engineer and Brown donated his studio. 

TOM FINN:

“It was fun, because Thornton is a riot. He thinks he’s Hank Williams or something like that. Later on we went to see Paul at a theater. He invited us to the opening of a fairly big budget feature film (Mail Order Wife), in which he had a co-starring role. Paul has a very good film agent and does a lot of work as an actor. He recently appeared on Saturday Night Live doing a skit with Paul McCartney. 

“The reason I quit working with Brown is he tried to get me to pay for some sessions he wanted to do with Ian Lloyd: Brown knew I was making good money so he was trying to use me. That pissed me off and I stopped working with him. The only thing Brown is interested in is the price of gold. He told me that’s all he wants to do. Buy and sell gold coins, PERIOD!!!!!!!”

SPREADING THE JAM

2004 brought Tom Feher – now firmly established as Tom Fair – to the realization of a lifelong dream: a band of his own that measured up to his standards all the way ‘round. As with many dreams, there was a flaw.

TOM FAIR:

“Once you’ve had a taste of a true group situation, it’s hard to envision anything better. The early Left Banke was like that, with Warren on drums, with Winfield on guitar. The group thing just comes together so naturally because of common interests and it sounds so good and natural too.

“Eightballs was finished in 1974. Thirty years later, in Los Angeles I finally put together what was for me an ideal group musically speaking. It was a five-some, with me on lead vocals and guitar, Bozz on bass, Barry Shereshevsky on lead guitar, Joe ‘LA Joe Rock’ Scoglio on drums and Gina Jackson on lead and harmony vocals. It started out as the “Tom Fair Revue,” and later became Homemade Jam.

“I came up with the name and everyone else kind of pooh-poohed it at first, then as they came around to liking it, I was onto something else and it got to be a real point of contention, so we sent out a survey to see which name would go over best; sixty percent of the people surveyed voted for ‘Homemade Jam.’ That name was so popular, it was like magic. Every time I mentioned it, even after the group had broken up, people would say ‘Wow! What a great name.’

“I went on the internet and discovered several other bands around the country had stumbled on it too. Often we’d refer to ourselves as ‘HMJ’ which worked very well. With Gina up front to take half the leads, I was getting a little rest for my voice, which was really nice. Gina had a smooth soulful vocal style and was a good looker; she knew how to work a crowd, and did so.

“Homemade Jam was a party band, a dance band. We did Motown, Aretha, classic rock such as ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and some Rolling Stones and CCR,’ oldies like ‘Sunny’ and ‘Unchain My Heart,’ and even some disco gar-beige. We worked a few of my originals in there too, and my signature cover tune which was Robert Cray’s ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.’

“We played fundraisers, house parties, a Century City street fair; we played ballrooms in big hotels in Denver, Las Vegas and San Francisco; we played in churches and on the Santa Monica Pier. I’d finally got over my prejudice against cover bands and so we had good potential for making money because people love to dance to familiar tunes and will pay to do so. At our very first gig, we each took home thirteen dollars; in a period of a little more than two years, we were pocketing two-hundred fifty bucks apiece on some gigs.

“Just when everything was going fairly well, I made a really big mistake as leader of the band: I fired Gina over some minor matters. It was a really stupid mistake. We tried a few other vocalists, and we added Tom Gillotte (‘TG’ to my ‘TF’), who toted around and rocked out on a real Hammond B-3, but it was never quite the same. 

“I should have thought back to the time when Jeff Winfield was booted from the Left Banke for similar stupid reasons, but I hadn’t been a formal member of the Left Banke at the time, and the coincidence didn’t really hit me until I began working on this book. There is a magic in an original grouping that can never quite be reproduced in any other way; you can add to it, but you’d better not subtract an original member.

“In 2009 we had a one-gig Homemade Jam reunion with Gina and TG both involved, and it was absolutely awesome. In my book, HMJ will never be beat. We kicked some mighty fine butt.”

 

BROWN’S CLASSICAL BLUNDER

TOM FINN:

“In 2005 I said to him ‘Brown, I’ll get you some artists to do your songs. I know your quasi-classical style, leave it to me,’ and he agrees. I go out hunting and I find a gorgeous female singer that is what today you would call classical crossover. Her name is Sasha Lazard and she already has a record deal on Virgin Records. She’s like a Sarah Brightman or Enya type singer; she does classical arias and has a nine piece band with cellos and electronica funky players behind her. So I set up the thing, I sold Brown to her.

“She bought the idea, and rehearsals start at Sasha’s apartment in Chelsea; she had a Steinway grand piano in her living room. Her album The Myth Of Red (2002) was already out when we worked with her. Now the agreement is that I’m supposed to be the producer, because I don’t think he’s capable. We have about eight or ten rehearsals, and time spent trying to get Brown to write new material for her. “Finally, Brown’s true colors come out. He tries to ban me from rehearsals, saying that I’m getting in his way. What it really was, is Brown had the hots for her and was trying to win her over to his sick way of doing things. Meanwhile, she has absolutely no interest in his fifty-seven year old body. I walked out of the project and she was afraid to be around him while I wasn’t there. The girl was engaged to be married to a guy her own age. But Brown couldn’t accept that, he was going to be her Svengali or nothing. “If Brown would have listened to me, he would have probably had a hit crossover record, which sell big in Europe and get on dozens of compilations. The business had changed and I was totally right on the mark for what I tried to do.” 

Finn couldn’t have been more right, at least in his selection of artists. Dominique “Sasha” Lazard followed The Myth of Red with Moonfall in 2005 and with soprano Shawna Stone, Siren in 2007 – all to critical acclaim. Her star continued to rise. Once again, Brown had missed the boat. Nevertheless, Left Banke tributes continued to pile up. In 2005 Alice Cooper – whose career had been a mere glimmer in the Left Banke’s final touring days – released his twenty-fourth studio album, Dirty Diamonds, including a surprisingly sensitive version of “Pretty Ballerina,” very faithful to the original.

In the tradition of enthusiastic Left Banke historians, Norwegian Even Johan Ottersland assembled a four-part radio documentary The Michael Brown Story for Glockenspiel Productions, interviewing Brown, Finn, Feher, Vance Chapman, Jimmy McAllister, Scott Trusty and Jude Lyons.

In 2006, alt-rocker Matthew Sweet and ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs included a cover of the Banke’s “She May Call You Up Tonight” on the album Under The Covers, Vol. 1, celebrating their favorite tunes of the ‘60s. Also in 2006, having long since swallowed his disappointment on being denied membership in the group, Alan Merrill began work on a tribute CD Rive Gauche (“Left Banke” in French). The CD, released in 2007 on his own Geltoob Records, included “Walk Away Renée,” “Pretty Ballerina,” Desirée” and “Sing, Little Bird, Sing.”

For Tom Finn personally, 2006 proved to be the peak of his public celebrity as a society DJ. In the November issue of Town & Country Magazine, he was touted as the top party DJ in the world in a five-page spread called The Party Masters. The following month found him on the front page of no less than The New York Times, which celebrated his achievements in a one-thousand word article, “The D.J. Who Moves the Movers and Shakers.”

THE BANKE HITS THE NET

Beginning in 2005 a new era and a new look was to begin for the Left Banke, due in great part to a lady named Charlemange Fezza and her work in founding the website leftbanke.nu, presenting classic Left Banke tracks in machinima videos and assisting in the establishment of The Official Left Banke Fan Page on Facebook.

Charlemange Fezza was born in Amityville, New York and raised on Long Island when “new wave” music was popular. She listened regularly to (now defunct) WLIR when Men At Work, Duran Duran, A Flock Of Seagulls, and the Clash were popular. This was music far removed from the Left Banke repertoire; but Fezza was also enamored of ‘60s music and would ride her bike to the WGLI 1290 AM station in Babylon, New York where she would “hang out” with the deejays and thus gained her knowledge of music from that bygone era. 

CHARLEMANGE FEZZA:

“I talked to DJ’s John L. Sullivan, Bill Trotta, and Tommy D. I would help repair album covers and some of the doo wop groups would visit and tell stories. I also started buying Billboard books to learn more. I was friends with Lenny Coco and the Chimes and would get free tickets to shows where I would see or meet the Brooklyn Bridge, the Delrons, the Five Satins, and more. Bill Trotta may have been the program director or Tommy D (he went on to WPIX ‘nothing but love songs’). A few years later, someone set the station on fire.”

She’d first heard “Walk Away Renée” back in the 1970s when WCBS FM was “a real oldies station,” and having borrowed many records from her uncle was able to enjoy the original Left Banke single on the Smash label. Fezza became one of the loyal multitude of fans, and states: “It’s emotional sounding and original. I honestly believe that ‘Walk Away Renée’ is one of the finest pop songs ever recorded.”

Charlemange joined the Navy in the 1990s. She was one of the first female Fire Controlmen and the first female to shoot an SM-2 missile off of an Arleigh Burke destroyer. She was an AEGIS tech and manned the MSS console as a 3rd class, a job normally reserved for a 1st class or chief. Charlemange was stationed on the USS Hopper as part of its original crew. Now… fast-forward to the twenty-first century: we find Charlemange Fezza no longer in the Navy, but rather, surfing… the Net. By a happy accident, the Left Banke was about to obtain a strong new voice in digital space.

FEZZA:

 

“I was visiting a website called Road Ode and they had a Four Seasons video I wanted to download. I saw that they also had a video for The Left Banke, so I downloaded that too. I was surprised how young the band was and wanted to know more, but there wasn’t much in the way of good information or pictures. I started leftbanke.nu (it was originally called Left Banke and Beyond) with a couple of pictures, some info about related bands, and Dawn Eden’s interviews. From there, I acquired more pictures and info though auctions and fans and the site grew. I used a .nu domain in case any member of the Left Banke ever wanted to use .com or .net. Also .nu domains provide the people on the island of Niue with computers and internet access.”

Fezza launched the leftbanke.nu site in 2005 and bought the domain name in May of 2006. Today the site is rich with materials including photos, articles and downloads of rare recordings. But there were more developments waiting in the wings that would serve to move the Left Banke repertoire more firmly into the digitally entrenched new millennium.

In 2004, Charlemange became involved in playing The Sims 2, a strategic life simulation computer game developed by Maxis Software, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. The technology involved with the game she was playing is known as “machinima” – in which real-time  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_computer_graphics" 3D computer graphics  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering" \o "Rendering" rendering engines are used to create a cinematic production. After becoming proficient at the game, she was able to utilize the technology for creating videos illustrating selected tracks from the Left Banke repertoire. 

FEZZA:

“I was annoyed that there wasn’t very much in the way of videos for the Left Banke, and I don’t really like slide shows, so I decided to do something about it and make an animated video. I taught myself how to use Sims 2 to make the video and Sony Vegas to edit it. I spent several weeks creating the Left Banke characters which was a challenge because I didn’t have many pictures to work with.  The characters have been ‘upgraded’ over time as new photos and better content for Sims 2 became available.

“Making the machinima videos is similar to making a live movie. You build a virtual set, have costumes (wardrobe) and you tell the characters what to do. My Sims game has been modified to be used primarily for pictures and movies. The program has its own recording function. I take many clips, do a cull and keep the best ones. I then add the clips to Sony Vegas and edit them accordingly. My first few attempts were not great, but I got better at it over time.

Charlemange completed her first Left Banke video in May 2007, illustrating Tom Feher’s “Goodbye Holly” from the album Left Banke Too. That year she also produced videos for “Desirée,” for Tom Finn’s “Lorraine” and “There’s Gonna Be A Storm,” and for “Walk Away Renée.” She followed in 2008 with “She May Call You Up Tonight,” “Her Evening Gown” and “Love Songs In The Night.” Her 2009 rendition of “And One Day” (from Strangers On A Train) was featured at a machinima viewing in Milan. The videos are viewable on You Tube.

FEZZA:

“I never had any video making experience before making ‘Goodbye Holly.’ I just read some tutorials online, decorated the sets the best I could and used movie making hacks for the video. The video program I made it with, I only used once. Sony Vegas was used for all other videos.”

While Charlemange was laboring away at her machinima productions, Tom Finn was laboring to understand and deal with the ramifications of social networking. 

FEZZA:

“I met Tom Finn on the internet. I think at first through that stupid Yahoo group. We only began to talk a lot when I joined Facebook, and we got along well.”

TOM FINN:

“When I joined Facebook I was becoming very uneasy about what I thought was a voyeuristic and bad replacement for letter writing. I started getting people I didn’t even know asking for friendship. Also, I recall a guy that I ‘friended’ who started contacting a bunch of the pretty women I knew and asked all of them for friendship. I even got questions from some of the women about who was this mutual friend that was trying to flirt with them.

“So I said to myself okay, that’s it! So, I threw the guy off my page and also threw off about twenty-five people, men and women that I didn’t know personally. I posted a message on my profile that said ‘I only accept friendships from people I know personally.’ Anything to cut to the point. I was getting about ten friend requests a day from Left Banke fans. I would send back a message saying ‘I’m not interested in answering questions about The Left Banke.’ I would usually get a nice message back saying ‘OK Tom I understand; I just wanted to tell you how much I love your music.’ This went on for a few months and I just got tired of sending messages to fans so, I just ignored them. 

“But after a little while I started to feel a little guilty about ignoring the fans. So… one bright and sunny day I decided to start a fan page and that way I’d be able to answer questions and do it all in one broad stroke. I asked Charlemagne Fezza to be my administrator, and that was it. She said yes. We started it up on March 3rd 2010 and within a few months we had about five hundred members. I stayed on for one year, and then I turned it over to Cookie and Carrie from the old ‘60s Left Banke fan club. Now there are about 1,450 fans or something like that. I never did anything to promote or advertise the page, or there’d be five thousand fans.” [Editor’s Note: by March, 2013, the fan page had quietly accumulated just over 3,000 fans]

TOM FEHER:

“The Official Left Banke Fan Page on Facebook was a stroke of genius. Or maybe I’m waxing poetic… I could say it’s simply a sign of the times. But in truth, it brought a great many old musical friends back together and really established the fact that the Left Banke was not a dead issue, not with the old-timers nor with the constantly growing legion of new and younger fans. I’m sure the buzz on Facebook had a lot to do with the roaring success of the reunion concerts in 2011.”

GEORGE CAMERON (interviewed by Daniel Coston):

“When I first saw the page on Facebook, I was floored. I had forgotten about it, but people were still saying how much they loved it, and how much they missed it. I was like, ‘We’ve got to do this.’ The fans are behind you, and you did something that somebody else likes. You don’t always realize that you’re different, and it takes somebody else to see you, for you to see it yourself, in a way. Because it was just music to us. We just went for the music the four of us wanted to write, and it turned out to be great.”

EVERYTHING RETURNS AGAIN

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEFT BANKE

ENCORE: THE NEW LEFT BANKE

MISSION: HIGHLY IMPROBABLE

In late 2009, something began to stir in the Left Banke universe that would serve to defy all reason. Given the many failed attempts to re-unite, the personal difficulties and disagreements, one would tend to think of the group as one of those memories in an old scrapbook, in terms of “it was nice while it lasted.” An actual successful reunion of any kind was at this point unthinkable. But as drummer George Cameron explained, “Life is unpredictable.”

GEORGE CAMERON:

“I had given up on music… tried playing with various bands leading nowhere: a lot of jamming is what it felt like, and no melody. One day this guy (Paul Alves) is walking with his guitar and I was going with my stick bag. He says ‘hi’ and gave me a CD of his music. We hit off right away we started jamming on his songs; then I heard about the web page (The Official Left Banke Fan Page on Facebook) and was surprised to see how many people still loved the Left Banke. I was humbled. I told Paul I wanted to put the band together – the band meaning Steve, Tom and me. 

“We always had a great blend and I thought, yeah we sang pretty good together; so I called Charly, our friend for years, who played bass on our third album – who better to remember all the chords… When we began to play tighter Paul found Mickey Finn (pianist): gotta love that name! He proved to be a great asset. 

“Now there are four of us. We worked for around seven months, made a CD with a little help from our friends, sent one to Tom and one to Steve. Tom came by and got everyone on the right chords. I had more guitar on the songs (than on the original recordings) since we never ever had a real guitar player. Tom convinced me to go original, meaning how it was recorded. He worked out the arrangements; then Mike Fornatale came in through Tom and we were sounding not bad. We decided to do a show this time with live strings and samples. It sounded unreal. 

“We got this gig at Joe’s Pub and I must say when Mickey Finn came in with the piano lead on ‘She May Call You Up’ that night on stage I felt the energy we were creating and I knew we finally sounded like we always wanted to. 

“The energy from our fans was amazing. Now we are looking forward to more shows and record a new album of songs. Steve loved the CD I’d sent him; he played it all the time while I was visiting him in Florida. He said ‘you found something.’ I said ‘come to New York and play.’ He couldn’t make Joe’s Pub but be sure he’s on board for the next shows. Tom and I had found the magic in the songs, and here we are two sold out shows first time out and fans asking for more which we will deliver pretty soon. After years of neglect from our old managers we can now say we rock.” 

Paul Alves, a Professional Music/Arranging Major at Boston’s Berklee College of Music from 1990 to 1993, and in 1994  guitarist for R&B super group “Total” produced by Sean “Puffy” Combs may have seemed an unlikely catalyst for doing what all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t accomplish. For the piano oriented Banke with its sweet harmonies, Alves with his guitar and pedal board would appear as “baroque rock” as the Ramones or the New York Dolls. But somehow the chemistry between Paul Alves and George Cameron set into motion wheels that would not stop turning.

PAUL ALVES:

“…another fine day in the world’s most progressive and influential neighborhood, New York City’s East Village... so I run past George (Cameron) yet again… stick bag in tow… wondering who this apparently seasoned Rocker is.... having my guitar with me (as usual), I finally stopped and made conversation with him... he tells me he’s jamming with a few friends, and I say, ‘cool! You’re a drummer; I’d love to jam with you!’ 

“I had just parted ways with my own drummer after recording a new record, of which I passed a copy on to George, and said ‘here, check it out… I have a space in the Lower East Side, we can jam anytime.’ He mentioned he was in the Left Banke, the pop hit group from the ‘60s and I was like… cool! I was familiar with ‘Walk Away Renée,’ but not much else. A few weeks go by and I get a call from George... ‘Man! You’re great! I love your record man!’ He was REALLY enthusiastic about it and I said ‘cool! Thanks! Let’s jam!’ There began our friendship... It ends up he lives around the block from me – literally! We start jamming once a week in my little rat hole basement space underneath a beauty salon in the Lower East Side. I believe it was November 2009. 

“I’m using a loop pedal... creating loops, jamming, riffing, we really started communicating and playing off each other almost immediately... we started hangin’, going to see some rock ‘n’ roll shows, I start re-introducing him into the music ‘scene’ of today, having a blast the whole time ! One day, fast forward a few months and he says to me, ‘hey man, I’ve been thinking... I want to put my old band together, I’d love for you to be a part of it… can you help me do it?’ ‘Fuck yeah!’ was my response. So George went on to introduce me to the Left Banke catalog which I completely fell in love with shortly after! The sound, the uniqueness and diversity of the material was/is astounding! And for the era it came out in... completely ahead of their time! 

“The first person in the picture – in March 2010 – was Charly, who George had been telling me about for a few months. Charly came over my house with his bass, and we hit it off right away! We started learning a set of tunes that George came up with. We were spicing it up a little bit... more on the guitar tip. (George was PSYCHED to have a guitar player that could play... as he put it… as opposed to never really getting to work with one… piano being the key instrument in the Banke. 

“Off the top of my head, the set spanned all three albums… ‘Walk Away Renée,’ ‘Desirée,’ ‘Hold On Tight,’ ‘Ballerina,’ ‘Haven’t Got The Nerve,’ ‘Heartbreaker’… once we had about ten tunes together, I made a few phone calls so we could find a drummer (George wanted to focus on singing) and a pianist (which would be key – no pun intended. 

“In May 2010 we got Mickey through a friend of mine who is a piano tuner. Being a piano tuner himself, he has an AMAZING ear, not to mention a cool easy going vibe, killer chops, and all around nice guy! He worked out instantaneously!” 

Mickey Finn had been a professional musician for over twenty years.  He graduated from SUNY Cortland in 1991 with a minor in music (and a major in Broadcasting), then became somewhat of journeyman musician for the next ten years working as a radio DJ, ballet accompanist, doing solo jazz gigs, as a church organist and gigging with numerous bands. Mickey eventually landed in Detroit where he began working for well-known acts there. He was a backing musician for many of Detroit’s best known artists including Motown acts Barrett Strong (Grammy award winning songwriter) and The Miracles and also Detroit soul legends Enchantment who had a #1 R&B hit in 1977 with “It’s You That I Need.” He toured all over the United States with Enchantment from 1996-2000 sharing the stage with classic soul acts like The Dramatics, The Chi-Lites, The Stylistics and The Delfonics.

Mickey started on the path to learning the trade of piano tuning and in 2000 relocated to Brooklyn, New York and began working as a piano technician for various companies in New York City. In 2001 he opened Brooklyn Piano through which he serviced some of the finest arts institutions in the world including New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, Mark Morris Dance Group and numerous recording studios. 

MICKEY FINN:

“In the spring of 2010 I got a call from a piano tuning colleague named Glen Bingham who worked for Steinway. He mentioned a friend named Paul Alves was putting a band together and needed a keyboard player. After talking to Paul on the phone I decided to try out. I was well aware of ‘Walk Away Renee’ having been raised on classic ‘60s music by parents whose first date was seeing the Four Tops. 

“I was not aware of the greater impact The Left Banke’s ‘other’ music had upon their many fans some of whom discovered them long after their initial success had faded. Paul had a dingy rehearsal space on the Lower East Side and he and George Cameron and Charlie Cazalet had worked up some versions of Left Banke songs. I tried out with ‘Walk Away Renee,’ ‘Only My Opinion’ and ‘Pretty Ballerina.’ 

“To be honest I knew some of the material better than any of them and when Paul offered me the gig I was reluctant. I told him originally that they could call me in a few months when they had it more together. After some consideration and admittedly some cajoling by Paul I realized that they really needed a keyboard player to get anywhere and I committed to the project with the stipulation that it had to continue moving forward. 

PAUL ALVES:

“We got a rock n roll drummer for the interim time as well. we worked on the ten-to-twelve song set for a few months and when we had them going on, recorded a demo of these new versions with an engineer friend of ours Gaby Savransky. George called Tom in June 2010 and set up an appointment for him to come down and hear us live. 

“Tom dug it and wanted to get involved. He started coming down to rehearse with us, he helped us tighten up a lot of the chord structures… and once he and George started singing together, there it was! MAGIC!! That sound! It was unexplainable, comparable to no other! I knew we were onto something. We still didn’t have a lead singer though. 

“George was and is still hoping (I think we all are…) that Steve will one day join us on stage. But that was something in the works. Tom put it out there on the inter-web that the Left Banke might be back into action. Enter Mike Fornatale around July 2010; he came in as a HUGE fan, already knowing much of the material and we worked on getting it back to sound like the original versions as much as possible. 

“A few months later, in October, our drummer was not working out, enter Rick Reil: being a friend of Mike’s and a HUGE fan of the band as well, he knew I think nineteen out of the twenty some-odd songs we had worked up by then. Fast forward another few months: it’s March 2011, and we have a full on nine piece band, strings and keyboard/sampler peoples included, two SOLD OUT shows at Joe’s Pub, the Public Theater, in New York City.” 

While George Cameron tends to be a “what – me worry?” Alfred E. Neuman type – buoyant and positive, but unconcerned with technical precision and the details of business – Tom Finn is the perfectionist and the realist. His view of the Left Banke’s reunion project, especially in the formative stages, was not entirely rosy.

TOM FINN:

“I was speaking to George about once every two weeks or so, and I would tell him about all the interest there was in the Left Banke. I told him about everything that was happening on the (Facebook) fan page. He got excited about my bi-weekly info so he decided to start a Left Banke tribute band made up of Charly and a few guys that he had gotten together with the idea of starting a band that might eventually back up Steve, me and him as singers only, thereby releasing us of the encumbrances of playing an instrument and singing simultaneously.

“Who said the Hoost doesn’t have a brain? It was genius on his part. George’s concept was to put The Left Banke together, but to have the band be a backing band for Steve Martin-Caro, George Cameron and Tom Finn who were the three singers in the original Left Banke. Also, he wanted the band to be hard rock version of the group. He invited me down to what he called the ‘Left Banke with a modern edge.’ 

Finn had no intention of joining the band; but to make George happy, he went. The band was practicing in a postage stamp sized rehearsal studio and it was really hot and humid. Finn brought Tom Feher’s son Robin, who was living in Brooklyn at the time to the rehearsal because “I knew he was a singer and I also knew that George wasn’t.” Robin sang a few of The Left Banke songs that he knew. The band was so loud, Finn says, that he had to cover his ears.

TOM FINN:

  “Right then I realized that without a really good lead singer this combo was doomed. I asked George “Where is Steve?” (Steve Martin-Caro) George said ‘I’m speaking to him in Florida, he’ll be up here in NYC soon.’ George told me that same thing for the next two years. Steve never came up because of his personal problems. He also wanted a guarantee that he’d make some really good money. I figured you can’t blame the guy for being cautious, after all The Left Banke hadn’t performed since 1968.  “I thought George had done a decent job putting this band together but, there were a lot of problems. First of all they were way too loud and the players were playing mostly songs from our third album Strangers on a Train, which was totally obscure. It had ten songs and they’d been mostly demos. I wasn’t impressed even though I’d written eighty percent of it. After the rehearsal, George followed me outside and his true motive became clear, he wanted me to be in the band.  “George literally begged me to join his group. He offered me to be the band’s producer. I flatly rejected his offer. I was now a DJ; I played private events and was doing very well. I remembered The Left Banke as a very negative group of self centered jerks. Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t carrying a major resentment around with me, so many years had passed, I forgave everybody and moved on. I told him I’d come back and try to help him but I wouldn’t join.

“Then for some reason I went to another rehearsal. Mostly for the fun of rock ‘n’ roll. As I was driving my Lexus SUV down to the Lower East Side, while at a red light on Broadway, right in the middle of the Times Square area, I stuck my iPhone camera out the window and took a shot of the hustle bustle in NYC; and later on as a teaser I posted the photo on my Facebook Left Banke fan page, and wrote ‘I’m on my way to a Left Banke rehearsal,’ because I knew a lot of folks really wanted to see The Left Banke play live. But I was only fooling around. 

“I went to my second rehearsal but nothing much had changed, still too loud and no vocals. I mean George was whispering lead vocals but his voice was weak. I knew after that first rehearsal that without Steve they had no chance, so I agreed to join if we’d get Steve to join. George assured me that he’d get Steve on board, so I said ‘okay, but I want to be the band leader.’ I started to go to rehearsal once a week but I could see that we desperately needed a singer. 

“I hinted on the Facebook Fan Page that we were rehearsing and needed a singer. When page member Mike Fornatale sent me a message saying ‘I don’t usually do this but, since it’s the Left Banke I’d like to offer my services,’ I asked him if he knew all our material and could sing Steve Martin-Caro’s lead vocals. 

“He answered yes he can. I said ‘okay then, come on down,’ and he did. Mike Fornatale came to rehearsal in the summer of 2010, probably August. He sang ‘Pretty Ballerina’ and I thought not bad, but nothing near Steve. He started to sing ‘Lazy Day’ and I said Wow! That’s fuckin’ great. So, after that, he was in.” 

As Fornatale tells it, he’d spent several years looking in on the Yahoo Group called Leftbankism, which he dubs “a wasteland.”  Finn joined it for a short time and then bailed. But Mike Fornatale had taken the time to copy down Finn’s e-mail address.  

MIKE FORNATALE:

“Good thing I did. Because in August 2010, on the Left Banke Facebook page, (to which you cannot send a private message) Finn posted that photo of Times Square taken through his windshield with the teaser, ‘This is what it looks like when I’m on my way to Left Banke rehearsal with George and Steve,’ or something to that effect; it mentioned Steve.

  “I dug out his e-mail address, and fired off a quick ‘Hi, you don’t know me, but...’ note.  I said I didn’t know if he had a band together yet or not, but that I was a big fan and utility player who could contribute guitar and background vocals and that I was something of a mimic and could ape Steve’s voice pretty well, which might help with the way the background vocals would sound onstage. 

“‘…if you have a band already and don’t need any other background vocalists, then best of luck; see you at the first show, blah blah.’ I wasn’t thinking in terms of being ‘The Singer’ at all, since I thought Steve was on board.”

TOM FINN:

“The rehearsals went on through the summer and I privately griped to him (Fornatale) about the fucked up arrangements and George’s absolutely horrible out of tune singing. He agreed with me and then I called the piano player Mickey Finn who also agreed with me, so at the next rehearsal I started to criticize the drummer’s parts and the guitar player’s (Paul Alves’) parts. I asked them to play differently; I said ‘I’ve been in five different Left Bankes and I never heard any of them play what’s on the recordings.’ 

“I went after Charly Cazalet and told him he was lazy and his playing was sloppy. He got angry but he changed his bass lines to what I told him. Paul Alves was pretty easy – he just did what I said – but I had to tell him what to play on every song. He did it, but his playing wasn’t great. I simplified his parts so that he played more like a rhythm guitarist. 

“The drummer and George were tough. I eventually had to fire the drummer, because of his bad attitude and he and I got into big fights at rehearsals. He just didn’t want to play what I told him to play. George was furious at me because he wanted the band to sound more like a hard rock Left Banke. 

“I fought him tooth and nail on this point. I said, ‘it has to sound exactly like the records.’ Obviously I won and got my way. But along the way I had many verbal fights with Mike Fornatale who was trying to take over the leader of the group’s role. I wouldn’t budge on that; but the guy was an animal when it came to hard work, he wrote the chord charts and the lyric pages and he even copied John Abbott’s string parts off the records. He brought in our new drummer, Rick Reil who was also on our Facebook fan page. Rick is a great guy and he listens to me. Plus he knows all our songs and loves them. When Rick came along things got much better, much more quickly.”

GRIP WEEDS AND RAT SHIT Rick, much like the other members in this new grouping, was no stranger to the music that brought them all together. Among the twenty-two acts on the 1999 Left Banke tribute album were the Grip Weeds, formed by brothers Kurt and Rick Reil at the end of the 1980s. Prior to that they had played together doing mostly covers of obscure ‘60s material, the kind of material they personally loved. In fact, their influences coincided very closely with those of the formative Left Banke. The brothers took their band name from John Lennon’s character ‘Musketeer Gripweed’ in Richard Lester’s film How I Won The War.  

The Reils’ musical inspiration came from the Beatles, the Byrds and the Hollies, from which they developed their vocal harmony, and also the Who and the Yardbirds, from where the ‘power’ in the ‘power pop’ derives. They were partial to the music of the Doors and Pink Floyd, and name numerous British influences – the Pretty Things, early Fleetwood Mac, Yes, early King Crimson and early Genesis.  

RICK REIL:

“By the early ‘90s we started writing our own music, which not only owed a debt to these influences but incorporated whatever modern music we liked at the time, much of it usually coming from England, like Oasis or The Verve.  Not long after we started writing we became recording engineers due to unacceptable results in ‘professional studios.’  We also added to the lineup an extraordinary female lead guitarist, Kristin Pinell (now Reil) who eventually married my brother. And after many bass players (like Spinal Tap’s cursed drum chair) we finally got an extremely gifted musician, bassist Michael Kelly, who is also a marketing professional. This has been our lineup since 2003.”

Rick Reil had discovered the Left Banke by accident on a Rhino Records “Nuggets” compilation album. It was not ‘Renée’ that hooked him, but ‘Pretty Ballerina.’ Also on that album was the Montage track ‘I Shall Call Her Mary,’ which also became one of his favorites. It was 1989 and Rick became a serious fan of the Banke, collecting every album and CD he could find, and introducing the Left Banke to the rest of his band. 

REIL:

“The (Left Banke’s) relationship to the Grip Weeds’ sound was the harmonies, the great lead voice of Steve Martin-Caro (which I’m sure influenced my brother’s singing), and the incredible songwriting. I was also attracted to the arrangements, and even the production which I felt had a really interesting ‘dark’ quality to it, well recorded for the time but not too polished, even a little garage-y. 

“I not only loved the ‘pop’ tracks like ‘She May call You up Tonight,’ but also brooding rockers like ‘Let Go Of You Girl’ and the incredible ‘Barterers And Their Wives’ which sounded like it could have been recorded 500 years ago. I also loved Left Banke Too, the amazing full orchestrations on tracks like "Nice To See You" and ‘My Friend Today’ coming out years ahead of ELO. 

“The final work of genius was the last single made by the original group, ‘Love Songs In The Night/Two By Two,’ easily among their best. To make a long story short, I was and still am a passionate fan of this group. Little did I know I would end up as the drummer in the current lineup.”

In early November 2010 the Grip Weeds were playing a gig at Kenny’s Castaways in New York’s Greenwich Village and longtime Grip Weeds fan Mike Fornatale was in the audience.  After the set Fornatale pulled Rick Reil aside and asked him if he would be interested in taking over the drum chair in the Left Banke.

REIL:

“I was a little surprised, first because not that many people know that I’m a drummer (I play guitar in The Grip Weeds), but drums were my first musical instrument and I have always been comfortable on them, playing on many demos and the odd gig in a few bands. But my reaction was ‘I don’t think I can do it.’ The problem was, in addition to The Grip Weeds, I am in ANOTHER band called the Wyld Olde Souls which is sort of a psychedelic folk band fronted by two female singers, one of them being my wife Ivy Vale. I just didn’t think I could spare the time for yet another band, and anyhow I had no idea what state the group was in or what this lineup sounded like, so I told Mike I would ‘sit in’ at rehearsals until they found a permanent drummer.

“When I arrived for the night of the audition, the first person I met was George. He was still recognizable from their publicity shots from the ‘60s.  He knew who I was already, and I hit it off with him immediately. You know George, he’s incredibly friendly. Next to him, in the shadows, in black and partially obscured by a black hat and visor, was Tom Finn. He also seemed to be expecting me and knew a little about me. Now I had always been fascinated with Tom. First off, he had an amazing look for late ‘66 – long black hair parted in the middle, great clothes. And somehow I instinctively knew that he was most responsible for the group’s harmony vocal sound.  

“The rehearsal space turned out to be a dark, dank basement on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side, and I was told to watch out for the ‘rat shit.’ Downstairs in the basement was the rest of the band ready to play: Charly Cazalet on bass, Paul Alves on guitar, and Mickey Finn on keyboards. Last to arrive was my sponsor, Mike Fornatale. Apparently this group had been rehearsing for months in this ramshackle dive. I got behind the drums, and Tom asked me, ‘Rick Reil, what songs do you know?’  

  ‘All of them,’ I replied. ‘You're scaring me, Rick!’ added George.  

“If I remember correctly, we started with ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ during which Tom stepped forward and conducted the group through the bridge and its famous breakdown. I wasn’t the slightest bit nervous as I knew all of these songs backwards and forwards, inside out and outside in. And the fact that I was a guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer allowed to me to approach these songs more as a songwriter would and less as a typical rock drummer, so I played ‘parts.’ ‘Good tempo,’ said Tom. We went into ‘She May Call You Up Tonight,’ which sounded really terrific with great energy. Then it was time for ‘Desirée,’ with its tricky timing. I had the famous orchestral riff down well; after we ran through the song Tom exclaimed, ‘That’s the way Desirée should be played!’  

“At that moment I started to realize that maybe I wasn’t just sitting in. By the end of that first rehearsal, we had run through many of the numbers we eventually played at Joe’s Pub. We had a ways to go to perfect ourselves, but it already sounded tight and exciting. And the members of that band welcomed me like a lost member of the tribe. I don’t think I ever had an audition with such immediate chemistry, and I knew I was going to be in trouble with my already difficult schedule of juggling bands. 

“The next morning on my Facebook page was a message from George that read, ‘Guy, you’re perfect for us; how can I steal you away?’ Being in the Left Banke was something I just could not resist, so I kept coming back.”

Mike Fornatale was twelve years old when ‘Renée’ came on the radio, an adolescent boy with a full load of testosterone which had nowhere to go and he remarks: “I was not, definitely not, a fan of ballads.” He would skip over the ballads, even on Beatles LPs. But something about ‘Renée’ and also The Critters’ ‘Mr. Dieingly Sad,’ which came out at roughly the same time, really turned his head.

 MIKE FORNATALE:

“I didn’t get the Left Banke LP until about a year later. Left Banke Too I missed completely, never finding a copy until the mid-70s. I loved it even more than the first album, and still do. And I finally found a copy of the Ultra Violet soundtrack (Hot Parts, including ‘Two By Two’ and ‘Love Songs In The Night’) in the mid-80s.

  “I sort of back-burnered the Left Banke until the Mercury CD came out, in the early 90s.  For some reason this thing made me an even bigger fan. Finn disagrees with me on this point, but the re-sequencing really made a positive difference. ‘Renée’ belongs first. ‘Nerve’ second. Yes. And the way they re-sequenced the songs from Left Banke Too on there made even more sense.”

Fornatale’s 2010 offer of services was answered not on the Left Banke fan page but by a personal communication from Tom Finn indicating that the band had a full complement of instrumentalists but that Martin-Caro was not going to make the reunion and he (Fornatale) was welcome to come aboard as lead singer on the celebrated Left Banke vocalist’s leads. The vocalist woke on the morning of August 20, 2010 and found the following message waiting for him: “Hi Mike.  Listen man, I'd like to see how serious you might feel about taking a shot at the lead vocal job in the Left Banke. Right now things are a little sketchy as far as Steve Martin-Caro is concerned. George has put together a good quartet.”FORNATALE:

“I just stared at the screen for awhile... Finally I wrote back and said sure, where and when?  I still don’t know who’s in the band or what’s going on. I definitely don’t know about the tug-of-war going on between Finn and Cameron concerning The Steve Issue. Nor do I know that Steve hasn’t actually been at any rehearsals and is still in Florida. Finn writes back that he has to talk to George about it and he’ll get back to me.

  “The next day he writes back and gives me four songs to know and a time and place to show up. So on Thursday, September 2nd I’m strolling along Stanton Street. Finn didn’t know the address of the place, as it turns out.  He just said it was across from Arlene’s Grocery and that they’d be outside waiting for me.

  “I’m still two blocks away when I see a couple of guys standing at a sidewalk cafe at the corner, and one of them is staring at me. Some guy with a baseball cap. When I finally approach, I see it’s Finn (I recognized him from a recent online article about his DJ business) and he says ‘This must be Mike Fornatale.’ He introduces me to Charly and George. George seems to be not quite sure what I’m doing there.  “We go downstairs through a sidewalk grate to this dank little cave and I meet the rest of the band. They had a drummer, a keyboard player, and a guitarist who plugged into a huge re-covered green Marshall amp. Oh-oh. This was REALLY not what I had expected.  And George was wearing a cut-off Velvet Revolver t-shirt. 

“I recognized Paul Alves (the guitarist), but I didn’t know where I knew him from. I did know that he had sent me a friend-request on Facebook a couple of months earlier, just by pure coincidence; but the photos of him on his page weren’t very good. I friended him anyway, for some reason. It wasn’t until sometime later that I realized where I knew him from: he had poured me about a thousand draughts over a period of three years or so, as the bartender at Luna Lounge on Ludlow Street. (R.I.P.)

For Fornatale, dedicated to performing cover material in such a way as to be faithful to the original version, the heavy-handed renderings of Left Banke songs approached the bizarre. He observed that the members of the band were not looking at one another. Giving his best effort to a “ham-fisted” version of “Walk Away Renée,” he observed a look of mild approval pass between Finn and Cameron.

FORNATALE:

 

“We did ‘Ballerina’ and that was kind of over-rocked-out as well.  Paul was playing the oboe solo an octave lower on a distorted electric slide guitar. Ugh, I thought. I wonder what these guys are thinking. Any audience that hears this is going to throw shit and leave angry. But I didn’t say anything. It was still early days, I figured. ‘Desirée’ was the one where I saw that Finn and Cameron were both pretty impressed with me. Good, I thought, looks like I win. The odd thing was that this was never sold to me as an ‘audition’ or anything like that. I was just ‘in.’

“It wasn’t until way later that I found out that Finn had bulldozed me into the band, saying to the other guys ‘There’s no way Steve can do this, he’s a drunk, he can’t sing anymore, and I know this guy who will blow you away.’  

“We went through several rehearsals wherein George and the rest of the guys were of the opinion that I was just standing-in until Steve arrived, and I had no idea. It wasn’t until the third rehearsal that I felt brave enough to start talking about the arrangements –  which were not so much ‘arrangements’ as ‘big piles of broken glass being dropped from a helicopter.’ This concept came from George. This is also something I didn’t find out till way later -- the way George and Paul put the band together with an eye toward ‘updating’ (George’s term) the Left Banke sound. I was horrified.”

While band developments were taking place in New York, Tom Finn and Tom Feher were working on the Left Banke book project, which Finn had initiated by suggestion in April of 2010. From his home in California, Feher was monitoring the Left Banke reunion project with interest. They were communicating almost daily by e-mail, so in addition to Finn’s contributions to the book content, he was also using Tom Feher as a sounding board for his concern about the development of the band. He was waffling on whether he should join the group; Feher encouraged him to go down and give it a try. 

TOM FEHER:

“He told me Steve was up to his usual… drinking, grouching, wanting to see the money before he sang a single note, etc. I was in contact with Fred Adams and we tried to get Henry Smith, who’d been road manager for Alice Cooper and Aerosmith, to go over and deal with Steve. I think Henry went over, but nothing was happening. I couldn’t even get Steve to be interviewed for the book. Finn told me they had some guy named Mike Fornatale, who’d been with a group called the Monks, come in and sing Steve’s leads. I jumped on You Tube and checked Fornatale out. The guy had a great set of pipes and I told Tom ‘go with him, you don’t need Carmelo (Steve).’

“I was also getting e-mails from George every so often. I’d sent him a CD of some of my recordings and he was enthused by the idea that I had a rock format for my material. But I could see from the distance of three thousand miles that there was going to be a certain amount of conflict between Tom and George. Tom is more of a party planner where George is more of a party animal. Tom has a much more specific and developed idea of quality.

“I make no secret of this – I’ve told George directly – that while he has been in neutral for most of his life, coasting on the success of the early Left Banke, Finn has been educating himself musically and technically, expanding his horizons. George had not only failed to advance, but from what Finn was telling me had lost his sense of pitch.

“Another thing was this idea of ‘updating’ the Left Banke. As much as I wanted to hear the Left Banke kick ass, I didn’t think it was going to come from altering the original Left Banke sound, and in this I have to agree with Finn and Fornatale. It’s a toss-up as to whether copying the original arrangements would be as creatively satisfying as coming up with an entirely new sound; but the bottom line is paying the bills, baby. You give the public what it wants and expects to hear. You take it to the bank and then you can afford to innovate.

“In researching for our book, every day on the internet I was coming across a new recording of ‘Renée’ or ‘She May Call You Up Tonight’ a song which didn’t even chart for the Banke back in the ‘sixties. These guys were bona fide legends. They should all be living in mansions, and they could still make it happen… but not by altering their original sound – the sound that still knocks out first-time listeners.”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“Meanwhile, what songs had they been working on? As it turns out, George’s favorite Left Banke album is ‘Strangers on a Train.’ They had worked up literally five tunes from that one, plus the ones I mentioned earlier and a couple of others. I told them at the next rehearsal, in no uncertain terms, ‘Look: your fans want to hear the first two albums and that’s ALL they want. You can play them maybe two songs from ‘Strangers,’ but if you add any more at the expense of the other stuff, you’re gonna have some very unhappy fans.’

  “I would have to walk this same tightrope at every subsequent rehearsal, and it wasn’t easy, believe me. Thank goodness for Finn being there and being on my side. Paul was a bit crestfallen at this, but he seemed game to try and sound like the record. Mickey got it right away, and gave me the impression that this is what he had been wanting to say all along. The drummer, Wylie, was another matter. Very nice guy, I liked him, but he wanted to kick some Sonic Ass and he really resisted any effort by anyone to tell him to play the songs the way they needed to be played.”

 

Wylie, of course was eventually replaced by Rick Reil and one could say that at that point the group was actually rolling on the same track, though not thoroughly in social harmony. At the beginning of October, the group, as Mike put it “moved out of that hellhole into a different hellhole,” on Rivington between Norfolk and Essex. It was literally rat-infested. Finn was getting much more insistent on making the songs sound like the records. Fornatale wrote up some lead sheets and had them playing some tunes they never thought they’d ever try to render; he had many battles with George over the set list. At one point Cameron even walked out of rehearsal, and later said something like “you know where the door is” via e-mail. According to Fornatale, “It was really rough.”

TOM FINN:

“Over the entire span of The Left Banke’s new get together, I’ve had big problems with Mike Fornatale and George Cameron. Mike is a guy that seems to be happy when he’s calling the shots, (leader of the band) because he believes he knows what’s best for the group. He bases this on his experience of playing with numerous bands throughout his career. With all the problems I was having communicating with Mike Fornatale I noticed that no matter how much he bothered me, Mike was an unbelievably hard worker. 

“He got a few string players, which added a great deal to our sound. He also wrote and transcribed charts for the strings and was constantly composing set lists and stage plots. Then he worked out a booking for us at Joe’s Pub which is the best showcase club in New York City. As a matter of fact, Mike did a thousand and one things to help the band and because of his work ethic he contributed a lot to the band getting off the ground and to top it all off, he got great reviews from the press that attended our Joe’s Pub debut.

“George Cameron, on the other hand just lost his intonation; the guy can’t sing harmony very well, if at all. Over the two year period of rehearsing the band, George’s singing out of tune and not remembering his lyrics had reached the boiling point. 

“George wouldn’t or couldn’t face up to the fact that he was holding the group back. The reason for this would be better explained by a doctor. I always liked George and got along very well with him in the early days of The Left Banke, but now he was angry and full of denial regarding his singing. He blamed his problem on Mike Fornatale and me. Everybody in the band tried to help George and we spent hundreds of hours collectively to give him help. I used to get to rehearsals an hour early and sit with him in my SUV and I put on a Left Banke CD and we’d go over every song, but, it didn’t help.”

“After one year into this band, I was ready to quit. I wasn’t feeling good about the lack of respect I was getting from Mike Fornatale and the fights with George were getting worse. I had spent many years of my life working in the music field, and I’d collected records from the ‘20s ‘30s ‘40s ‘50s ‘60s ‘70s, etc. I worked as an audio engineer along side of major artists just about every day for many years. I learned so much from my extensive experience that I don’t think anyone has a wider point of reference than I do.

“I dug so deep that all I did was listen to music and play along with the records I collected. I was very interested in jump blues and rockabilly from the 1950s. During the year and a half leading up to our Joe’s Pub debut, George’s singing was only slightly better, but my guitar playing wasn’t good. I used to be pretty good strumming chords and finger picking and I had a beautiful Gibson J-200 with great action. But, after years of not playing I just thought I lost it.”

Today, looking back it’s easy to understand why Finn had so much trouble playing. It was due to a severe case of cervical stenosis of the upper spine. By 2012 his fingers were numb and they weren’t very flexible at all. He ended up having major surgery and was on the operating table for nearly eight hours. The surgery helped a little but the damage was done. Tom Finn had major nerve damage and both of his hands were totally numb. He dropped everything he tried to pick up; he couldn’t even sign his name. But in 2011, the condition wasn’t as advanced, and the reunion was just around the corner. The new Left Banke was about to debut after a hiatus of forty-plus years. 

MIKE FORNATALE:

  “I had mentioned live strings by this point, a concept no one else had bothered to bring up. Well, how on earth are you gonna do these songs without them? You need another keyboard player and a violin and a cello. I volunteered to write the charts myself -- only because I wanted them done right the first time. I also found the string players. ‘When are they gonna start coming to rehearsals,’ I would constantly be asked. ‘Right before the show, unless you want to pay them fifty bucks for every rehearsal they attend – that’s the way real musicians operate.’

  “They must have really liked my singing, I guess -- because I literally had to keep throwing these carefully-worded fuck-yous in their faces on a regular basis. They must have hated me. I can hardly blame them. I had walked in and taken over, although that certainly wasn’t my intention. I let Finn do most of the talking when it came to how the arrangements had to go, and I just held the reins on logistical issues. I booked the Joe’s Pub shows, with help from a manager-friend (who was doing me a personal favor, for free). I got the string players and Joe McGinty at a ridiculously low price, for the same reason.

  “We kept dropping songs from the set list. Joe’s Pub didn’t want us to play for more than seventy minutes. So one by one, I gently made them throw out all the Strangers on a Train stuff – including ‘Heartbreaker,’ which actually sounded pretty good. When I finally got the two string players to come up to rehearsal, everything changed. Suddenly everybody was happy. And when McGinty came up, it was better yet. We never had a rehearsal with everyone in the room at the same time though, until sound check.”

“It was kind of uncomfortable for a while. I had had quite a bit of experience working with ‘60s reunion bands, and one thing you can never get away with is trying to ‘update your sound.’ Anyone who pays money to come to your show wants to hear the music the way they remember it. I’ve been standing in the wings or in the audience on many an occasion where the band proudly trots out the brand-new reggae version of the song you came to hear. The look on the audience’s faces in those situations is heartbreaking. They look like the audience in ‘Springtime For Hitler.’

“To be fair, an awful lot of bands back in the day -- especially the ones with only one or two hits – didn’t play anything that sounded like their album when they went out live.  Often enough they wouldn’t even do any of their own songs.  They’d play their two hits and half an hour of Stones, Yardbirds, and Zombies covers. So the whole idea of actually replicating your sound onstage is something that didn’t really happen during the Left Banke’s lifespan. Now, though, it’s what the audience expects.”

BELIEVE IN MIRACLES

  On Saturday, March fifth and Sunday, March sixth 2011, the impossible happened. From the rat cellars and head-butting rehearsals on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the new Left Banke emerged to completely own and delight audiences at two sold out shows in Joe’s Pub, the popular showcase venue located in Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre, which had opened in 1967 (the same year that “Pretty Ballerina” charted) with the world premiere production of the musical Hair. The concert attendees heard classic Left Banke material from the first two albums, dynamic, well-executed and faithful to the original arrangements. The response was overwhelmingly favorable and enthusiastic. 

MIKE FORNATALE:

”We had rehearsed for a total of about six months, and managed to keep the whole thing completely under wraps. We booked the two nights at Joe’s Pub in New York City and it sold out fairly quickly. We had been careful to advertise that it was Tom and George and, by inference, that it was not The Other Two Guys. I have no idea what the audience was expecting, or if they were going to throw their very expensive drinks in my face. But it went great. 

“The audience was just so happy to hear this music, played properly. And it was great to see the look on their faces every time the band launched into another unexpected deep-cut from one of the two albums. When George stepped up to sing ‘Holly’ and ‘Bryant Hotel,’ and Tom stepped up to sing ‘Nice To See You’ and ‘Storm,’ the audience just went crazy. I don’t think anyone went home disappointed.”

TOM FINN:

 “Joe’s Pub went very well. The tickets sold out very quickly; Joes Pub asked us to do another night, which we did. The first night of our Joe’s Pub debut – March 5th – was made brighter by the arrival of Tom Feher, our long lost lyricist and songwriter. Tom flew in from his home, Los Angeles CA for the last (approximately) thirty years. He joined us on stage for ‘Sing Little Bird Sing’ his great song from our second album The Left Banke Too. That made the evening for me. 

“Mike Fornatale did an amazing job on lead vocals, but the harmonies sucked and my guitar playing sucked too. The band however was tight after rehearsing for a year and a half we added two string players (cello and violin) with a second sample keyboard player who padded the string parts and made them sound bigger.

 “So, whatever problem we had with the vocals it wasn’t mixed loud enough to ruin the songs The people who balanced our live sound lowered the volume of the harmony voices. We got some very good reviews but no management and no booking agency offers were in sight. We now hit the stage with ten performers, which made our prospects of making any money impossible.”

RICK REIL:

“Joe’s Pub (was) unforgettable because it was the first. Nobody knew for sure if it would really work or if we would be accepted by the audience. Since we had the second show the next day, I was able to read some of the reviews that were immediately posted on the internet and even see some videos of the show. Tom Finn needn’t have worried: the response was overwhelmingly positive.” 

Backstage, it was a reunion of old friends, some of them seeing each other for the first time in forty years. Along with Tom Feher, Mary Weiss, Alan Merrill, Paul Thornton and journalist Daniel Coston joined in the after-show hurrahs on Saturday night, and Feher penned a rave review the next day on the plane back to California, well before the second show had taken place:

LEFT BANKE

OPENING NIGHT at JOE’S PUB

Saturday, March 5, 2011

I made a rare journey from the Los Angeles basin to New York City – my second day in The City in twenty-four years – to attend the Left Banke reunion concert, that concert representing the first public stage appearance by the group in forty-two years. I think, as the Left Banke’s first exclusive lyricist, my interest was more on tagging with old friends than in examining the music; but I have to say it was the music that took this reunion over the top and into the realm of Legend.

First, one must recognize that some of the performers and songwriters in attendance on this festive night in March had not set eyes on each other for some thirty-five to forty years. Charly Cazalet, current bass player in the Left Banke band, actually goes back in their history to the early days of the group’s creation – something that will be explained in greater detail in the soon-to-be completed Left Banke bio-book. I hadn’t seen Charly in close to forty years.

Also in attendance: Godz founder Paul Thornton, global rocker Alan Merrill and Mary Weiss, who once fell for “The Leader of the Pack.” It was truly Old Home Week for many of us. Backstage was a series of rolling waves of hellos, high fives and hugs. It was a supreme pleasure for me to be present and witness my lifelong friends Tom Finn and George Cameron emerge from decades of hibernation, and shine.

Joe’s Pub – reputed to be the choicest showcase venue in town these days – was sold out and filled with an additional crowd of enthusiastic standees. I was there primarily to be a member of the audience, although called on stage to supply my original guitar part for “Sing, Little Bird, Sing,” one of my songwriting contributions to the album Left Banke Too.

But… what about the show? Ah… the show! The boys opened up with what is arguably their most likely candidate for a Top Five single aside from “Walk Away Renée” – the rockin’, sockin’ “She May Call You Up Tonight.” Their set included practically all of the first two Left Banke albums, enhanced by the addition of their finest single efforts, “Two By Two” and “Love Songs In The Night.”

How to tell you if you weren’t there? From the first note, the audience was captured and enraptured. I can tell you this with absolute certainty because I took a walk through the crowd eavesdropping on rave comments, and made quite a few such comments myself in Merrill’s ear. The group’s performance was simply fantastic!

Consider first of all that fans of a musical artist or group tend to want to audition the material in the form in which they first experienced it – the original recordings. All arrangements that night were faithful to the originals and fully recognizable by the most discerning fan; and yet the energy of the group actually surpassed that of the historic Left Banke recordings. It was as if a group of storybook characters had leapt off the pages and emerged in three and four dimensions.

One might think that given the absence of keyboardist Michael Brown and lead vocalist Steve Martin-Caro the performances would fall short of expectations; but this was so very much NOT the case. Mickey Finn (no relation to Tom other than band mate) does an outstanding job of duplicating Brown’s established piano/clavinet parts; and Mike Fornatale’s vocals frankly put the formidable Martin-Caro in the shade.

Fornatale, who I understand wrote up the charts of John Abbott’s original string arrangements for the band’s accompanying cellist (Eleanor Norton) and violinist (Susan Aquila) also added an element of unbridled onstage enthusiasm that confirms this concert to be the finest in the group’s history. One needs to consider how particular I am about such things to really understand the significance of this night. As I overheard one audience member say to her escort, “these guys rock.” Many things have been said about the Left Banke’s music, from the craft of Mike Brown as a composer, of the genius of merging the classical elements with pop music, of the rich vocal harmonies of the group; but my friends, I guarantee that this is the first time I’ve ever heard – and fully agree – in addition to all their other sterling qualities – the Left Banke ROCKS!

Finn and Cameron too, took their turns on lead vocals, with Tom singing his absolutely stunning “Lorraine” in addition to his self-penned numbers from Left Banke Too; and George did me proud on “Bryant Hotel” and “Goodbye Holly.” Rick Reil on drums covered the original parts so well one could close his eyes and see one of the legendary Local 802 session players behind the kit. Joe McGinty served as an additional keyboardist to bring in those vital elements of the original sound. Paul Alves, besides ably delivering the guitar parts, has been along with Cameron the driving force behind this reunion project for over a year. 

Coming close to the set’s finish line, the band, strings, and vocalists thundered out what I think was the first-ever public performance of their final chart single “Desirée” (lyrics by Yours Truly) and completed the set in the manner that has become a standard feature of many concerts – with “the song that started it all,” “Walk Away Renée.” This of course was followed by a roaring ovation and the required encore.

The Left Banke has never sounded better, and all this after a hiatus of forty odd years… just incredible. For those eager fans (also reunited, by Facebook) across the nation and the world, I urge you to demand a Left Banke performance in your area. You want a tour. You know you do. Right here. Where the days and the nights are all alike dear.

Tom (Feher) Fair

March 6th 2011 / in the air over the great Midwest.

On March 13th the following article appeared in The Huffington Post:

Left Banke at Joe's Pub: Utterly Transcendent 

By Holly Cara Price

The last time the Left Banke stepped onto a stage to perform together as a band was 1969, so to say those in the audience at Joe’s Pub last weekend were breathless with anticipation would be an extreme understatement. 

Two shows had been scheduled - March 5 and 6 - and sold out in a bohemian fingersnap. Original band members Tom Finn and George Cameron and longtime musical associate (although he was never “in” the band) Charly Cazalet were joined onstage by Mike Fornatale (lead vocals, guitar), Paul Alves (guitar), Mickey Finn and Joe McGinty (keyboards), and the Grip Weeds’ Rick Reil on drums – in addition to a string section consisting of Susan Aquila on violin and cellists Eleanor Norton (on Saturday) and Jenn DeVore (on Sunday). At the Saturday show, one of the band’s original lyricists, Tom Feher, also joined them onstage.

This august group played 21 songs, many of them from the first two Left Banke albums which have been languishing on the dusty shelves of rock & roll history lo these many years – but, thanks to Sundazed Records, will be reissued this spring (with an attention to detail sorely lacking in the original releases – mastered properly for the first time from the original two and three track mixes). 

Long out of print, Left Banke compilations are currently going for over $150. And one thing these shows proved beyond a doubt: there’s far, far more to this band then their 1967 hit Walk Away, Renée. Just about every song is a miniature baroque-pop masterpiece. Starting with She May Call You Up Tonight, each song sounded as fresh as the last time it was played onstage, and if you squinted and didn’t look too clearly at the stage or register the drink prices it could have been 1968 again. Especially when the psychedelic light show bathed the walls behind the musicians. 

I scribbled notes as best as I could in the semi-darkness, later reading back perfunctory comments like “perfection,” “spun sugar,” and “impeccable.” And again – it wasn’t just the songs I remembered, like Pretty Ballerina or Barterers and Their Wives - but also songs I didn’t remember at all, like Dark is the Bark and Sing Little Bird Sing, Shadows Breaking Over My Head and Lazy Day.

Mike Fornatale, without whom – holy Jesus – this could not have happened, told me that the genesis for the reunion began about a year ago when George Cameron and Paul Alves met by chance and started to jam together. They brought Charly in to join them and eventually started talking about getting something going. Most of the original string charts had been done by band member and lyricist Michael Brown’s father, a professional violinist. 

Once Mike Fornatale contacted them and came into the mix as lead singer (original lead singer Steve Martin-Caro being in Florida, and well out of the music business), he also painstakingly recreated those string charts freehand in order to bring back the original sound that made this band so very special in the 1960s. This took several months.

Fornatale, who has the uncanny ability that is the hallmark of a great singer to go from an angelic soprano to an exquisitely controlled scream, brought everything he had to this show and then some. He made this band, and their songs, live again – and thrive. 

When it came time for the end – and of course, Walk Away Renée was the final song before the encore – you couldn’t hear anything but the music for that space of just under three minutes. No ice tinkling in a glass. No coughing. No whispering. Nothing. Just perhaps the most perfect piece of pop music ever created, luminous, sparkling like a jewel: “Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes...for me it cries.”

In an interview for The Big Takeover magazine, Daniel Coston asked Finn, “How is it to hear those Left Banke songs again? Not only to hear them but in a live setting as you have been rehearsing them for the last few months?”

TOM FINN:

“It’s been unbelievable because, like I said, we’ve never ever done that! Not even in the ‘60s. First of all, when we went out on stage with Mike Brown and Steve Martin in the early days, nobody had monitors! I couldn’t hear the vocals! And George behind the drums, he couldn’t hear anything at all. As a matter if fact he just stopped singing, it was pointless. I mean, we didn’t even do our own songs on stage, that’s how bad it got. Because, you know, when you are in front of an audience, they want to rock and they want to dance and they want to have fun! And The Left Banke material, what are we gonna do, ‘Barterers and Their Wives?’ 

So Steve started doing music by black groups… The Temptations, and James Brown, and things like that. So, as incongruous as it sounds, it’s like oil and vinegar, but The Left Banke on stage was like a... black r&b group. And so as far as our songs, the only songs we did were, ‘Walk Away Renee.’ ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ ‘Desiree’ and ‘She May Call You Up Tonight’ and everything else was cover songs, we never did any other Left Banke material. And for the second album, we NEVER played any song on stage. So when you ask me how it feels to be doing both full albums live, with vocals, and hear it through monitors, I gotta say that it sounds great, because I’ve never heard it before!”

Cameron, asked by Coston “How is it to talk about the Left Banke as a living, breathing entity again?” responded thusly:

GEORGE CAMERON:

“It’s kind of weird. It’s like, you don’t quite believe it. Doing that first show was like, ‘Wow.’ That’s the way we should have gone out, in the first place. Not the way we did get thrown out to the ring, with nothing. But this time, it’s even better. The people that managed us before were products of the 1950s. They threw the groups out on the road, and they kept all the money, and the band made their living off the road. They [the managers] didn’t think it through. They didn’t care about what kind of product they had, and that it would have been viable to put a quartet with us. So this time, we have more control over our situation, and we’re being smarter

“For me, it was like an unfinished product. We just dropped out of sight. We never really got to show our potential, to keep going, and show what else we can do. And hopefully, we’ll be recording an album soon, and you’ll see the progression. New songs, new stuff, and go on.”

Coston’s phrasing, “living breathing entity,” was right on the money. The Left Banke had died a thousand deaths. For decades, the group had been firmly consigned to a dusty tomb; but the reunion concerts had breathed new life into an impossible dream – fanned the dying embers into a roaring burst of flame. 

THE NEW LEFT BANKE

A buzz went out on the internet: the Left Banke is back, and better than ever! Fans in virtual space were now demanding a tour. Whether the tour would happen was anyone’s guess, given the extremely trying circumstances that produced the reunion concerts.

  But in Spring of 2011, Sundazed was preparing to re-issue the two original Left Banke albums on CD and Tom Feher was collaborating with Ralph Affoumado cross-country to develop new material suitable for recording by the Left Banke, assuming Steve Martin would come out of hibernation and step up to the microphone. Feher wrote: “Michael Brown, as may be expected, will probably remain in his New Jersey home studio collecting royalties on “Walk Away Renée” and possibly contribute a new classic tune for the boys to record. Just close your eyes, and he’ll be there.”

It seemed now that most fans, old and new – though slightly disappointed that two key original members were not involved – were ready to accept the new lineup as “The Left Banke.” Indeed, as a performing unit this combination had already demonstrated far greater potential for success than the original group. But the ghosts of the past and all its conflicts continued to haunt them even as the public accolades continued to mount.

TOM FINN:

“After the Joe’s Pub gig of March 5th and 6th of 2011 I watched the reviews come in. They were all overwhelmingly positive. Just about every person that was there was thrilled by our show. Mike Fornatale was a standout as lead singer; YouTube was loaded with live videos of the two shows. I was horrified by the harmony vocals; they were way out of tune. The only thing that saved us was that the videos were shot on cell phones or pocket cameras. Backstage at Joe’s Pub we had a meet and greet, where the audience was allowed to come in and say hello, get autographs and take pictures, etc. I was very happy to say hello to Mary Weiss and her husband Ed. Mary, whom I had invited, is the former lead singer of The Shangri-las.”

“After awhile I realized what my motive for sticking around and not quitting was about. I just loved letting people or fans hear what we should have sounded like in the ‘60s but never had the chance to. The strings and harpsichord sounded great together. I knew it was never about the money, for me or the other players also. It was about the love of the music. 

“As far as I’m concerned we sounded okay, but not great. The problem with the vocals killed everything for me. I was always known for my harmony and blending with the lead vocals; but when one person in a vocal trio is out of tune, it kills the sound. A person or fan can’t tell who is out of tune; they just know it’s sour. I just wish that people would admit their problems and work hard to make it better.” 

At the second show, Ralph Affoumado – who the reader will recall had generated a recording project with the original Left Banke in 1969 – showed up and was very demonstrative about his feeling for the group’s music music. Affoumado was a Julliard graduate who’d majored in conducting and was now employed as the choirmaster of the NYU All Collegiate Choir of The Tisch School of the Arts. 

FINN:

“Ralph seemed like he was very enthralled by our Left Banke project. So, when he showed up at a gig that George and I did with Alan Merrill for the Japanese Tsunami victims, I sensed he wanted more than just recalling the old days. He wanted to be our producer and had a plan to use us to appear with the choir at a Christmas show for The Tisch School of the Arts. I thought it was a great idea. 

“Ralph became more and more involved in the everyday functions of the group. He came to rehearsals and tried to help the band phrase better and worked very hard on our vocals. Mike Fornatale didn’t like Ralph’s criticism of his vocals and was very short and curt with all of Ralph’s efforts, band wise and vocally. We had yet another Mike Fornatale problem. 

 “I went to Ralph’s apartment on the beautiful West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village many times trying to get his input on the varying issues we were facing. I was hoping he could help George with his out of tune vocals. Ralph assured me that he’d have George singing like a bird in no time. I didn’t believe him and I told him so. I knew exactly what George’s problems were, but I decided to let Ralph take his shot.

 “While I was visiting Ralph, he played me a lot of music he thought was good for The Left Banke and I found it had very little to do with a group that was honed on clever pop tunes and Michael Brown melodies. So, I kept listening, still nothing. He was playing me Irish Folk songs by some of these incredible Irish vocalists which has much more to do with Enya than The Left Banke. Then he played me a patriotic song he wrote complete with flags flying and orchestras soaring. I said to myself ‘Man! this isn’t what The Left Banke is about;’ I started to wonder about Ralph as the band’s producer. Then after several months he threw his hands up about George’s vocals. I figured ‘Here, this guy is a friggin’ Choir Master and he can’t get George to sing simple parts.’ I hate to say I told him so.”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“Tom decided we needed some sort of musical director that everyone would have to listen to, because we were just butting heads all the time. Ralph Affoumado, who had produced a couple of the radio commercials the band had done in 1968, had come to the Joe’s Pub show and liked what he heard.  Tom decided he’d be a perfect sergeant-at-arms for rehearsals, as well as a producer/svengali for any new material we might record.

“Ralph came to a rehearsal and immediately took over, virtually barking orders, which normally would not sit well with me. But as it turned out, he was exactly what was needed.  He’s a choir director at NYU.  He knew how to tighten things up, and things needed some serious tightening up. It was pretty disconcerting to have to stop fifty times in the middle of a song, but it was necessary. Tom had been filling that role heretofore; and when a band member does that, there’s going to be some resentment.  Also, when Tom gets frustrated -- especially with George -- things can get a bit touchy.

“Ralph came in and sat at rehearsals barking orders like D. W. Griffith on a movie set. [laughs.] He had the khaki shorts and everything. All he would have needed to complete the picture would have been a megaphone and a big white pith helmet. I was thinking of bringing him one.”

Feher, who had begun a cross-country songwriting collaboration with Ralph Affoumado, had been monitoring band progress and emotional strife via the internet.

TOM FEHER:

“Finn and I have been pals for many decades, and we’d been working on this book together… for several years at that point. In addition to keeping me up-to-date on performance developments, he was likely to unload his frustrations on me, particularly the nerve-wracking experience of trying to get George to sing on pitch. I pointed out that George, a very charismatic character, seems to be lost in the ‘sixties when it was routine to get up on stage and just strike a pose and the girls’ screams could drown out any sour note. 

“Some of us have worked really hard improving our technical skills over the years, but it seems as if ‘the Hoost’ is just suspended in time and thinks he’s doing just fine without really inspecting and fine-tuning (pun) his output. As a music teacher for over twenty years, I can tell you that there’s nothing more difficult than trying to instruct someone in something he thinks he already knows.”

CHARLY CAZALET:

“Tom and George don’t get on well mostly because George forgets the lyrics and vocal parts and (there are) personal things between them. George has issues with Mike F. Some bad blood spilled out between Tom and George at a few sound checks in front of the stage crew. The booking agent heard about it. Not good!”

FARTHER ON DOWN THE ROAD

It became obvious, as the weeks and months rolled out from March 2011 on, that the ”new” Left Banke was going to be accepted – and not on the basis of “it has to be the original group or else.” What mattered to the audience was faithful reproduction of the material and the familiar arrangements that caught their interest on first hearing. There is something about the construction of those musical works that tugs at the heartstrings and simultaneously satisfies the aesthetic mind. In pursuing the original sound, Finn and Fornatale have been vindicated (and Mickey Finn no doubt relieved), especially since so few people had the opportunity to experience the works in live performance.

Although it wasn’t quite certain at the onset, it also became evident that the new group would continue, although the Left Banke “curse” of conflict would hound the current members as it had done for decades every time a reunion was attempted. Nevertheless, there were still a few pleasant surprises in store. And Alan Merrill, who’d been rejected by the group decades earlier, proved a steadfast and loyal friend, who would join the group on several future gigs. Not too long after the reunion shows, on March 24th, Merrill played an acoustic show in aid of the Red Cross efforts for the Tsunami victims in Japan; he was joined onstage by Cameron and Finn for a combined performance of the Banke’s “She May Call You Up Tonight,” “Walk Away Renee” and his own “I Love Rock N Roll.”

In June of 2011 Sundazed Records, the re-issue label that had previously released the Montage album, came out with a re-issue of the two Left Banke Smash LPs, Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina and The Left Banke Too, on both CD and vinyl. The albums were presented in their original form, including the original artwork and design. Fans were delighted as were the reviewers.

In July, a show was booked at Littlefield in Brooklyn; prior to the gig, Rick Reil had set up a live recording and interview for the group on WFMU 91.1 FM in Jersey City. On July18, DJ Irene Trudel interviewed Tom Finn and Ralph Affoumado while spinning five tracks that had been recorded by the full group with the addition of live strings in the WFMU studios the previous Sunday – ten performers in all on ten live microphones. For such a large group in such a small studio, the results were very gratifying.

Both Finn and Affoumado seemed quite enthusiastic about the prospect of Ralph as the Left Banke’s producer after the many long years since the commercial project in the late ‘sixties. Ralph pointed out that the younger generations, including his own choir students, enjoyed the Left Banke’s music as much as had their parents and grandparents before them. Finn contributed an anecdote about a time that Jimi Hendrix had driven him up to the Bryant Hotel to pick up his (Finn’s) guitar prior to a jam session.

After the live recordings had been aired, and interspersed with the interview, DJ Trudel spun another seven Left Banke cuts from various recordings. The full playlist included, live, in studio: “Something On My Mind;” “Pretty Ballerina;” “Bryant Hotel;” “Desirée;” and “Walk Away Renée.” Prior recordings: “There’s Gonna Be A Storm;” “She May Call You Up Tonight;” “Goodbye Holly;” “Heartbreaker;” “Sing, Little Bird, Sing;” “I Can Fly;” and “Dark Is The Bark.” It was a bright moment, but the undercurrent of conflict and unrest continued.

TOM FINN:

“After the Joe’s Pub gigs we were all hoping that we’d score a manager and/or a booking agency, but nothing immediate came in on either front. We were disappointed but there were so many good reviews and fan comments that we figured we needed to do another show or two. The band was just too large to make any money but we figured we had to be so good on stage we could bump it up and try to play bigger venues. 

“We did sell out Joe’s Pub so maybe we needed to add about three hundred more seats. So, we got busy rehearsing again, mostly on the vocals, and Ralph Affoumado was now working with George on his singing and was drill instructing the band. The main band problem was dynamics, mostly caused by playing too damn loud. My acoustic guitar playing was getting worse. I just couldn’t understand why. But, I was in for a major physical problem and a cruel surprise.

“George was furious that he only had two songs to sing lead on, so he resented everything and anything that Mike Fornatale suggested as far as our set list went. You see, Mike has seen so many bands try to do new or different songs and fail miserably. So his opinion was very strict and one sided. I agreed with George on this point because to us The Left Banke was always a very creative group and always looked forward to new songs. I totally understood where Mike was coming from and agreed with him up to a point. 

“We did manage to get a few newer songs in the set list. They were from our 1978 Strangers On a Train album. Ralph was not getting anywhere with George and I kept telling everyone that the band was playing too loud and George can’t hear himself. That was a big part of the problem but there was a lot more. After our first shows at Joe’s Pub didn’t produce any booking agency or management we decided to book ourselves, so Mike Fornatale found a venue in Brooklyn called Littlefield. It was in June of 2011 and we had no money to promote this event so, we crossed our fingers and booked it anyway. 

“The venue was on a factory street in South Brooklyn and was bigger than Joe’s Pub so we needed to draw a bigger crowd to fill the seats. We had information that (Little Steven) Van Zandt was coming so, we figured this was a good sign. Anyway, Mr. Van Zandt didn’t show up because of a scheduling problem. Some of our hard core fans did show up as did Holly Cara Price from The Huffington Post. The sound system was pretty good so, we sounded good.

“Also showing up for this Brooklyn event was Andrew Sandoval who was in town from LA to produce The Monkees tour. I spoke with him after the show and I told him we’d like to play a few gigs in The UK and Europe. I suggested that we do some shows with The Zombies and The Hollies. Andrew was really very interested in us; he had been the reissue producer of our 1992 CD compilation There’s Gonna Be A Storm on PolyGram. He and mastering engineer Bill Inglot had put a very nice package together for this.

“I realized that we were never going to make enough money to keep our ten person band together for very much longer, so I was trying to get the band to do high profile gigs. The Brooklyn gig went well but the seats were more than half empty. This didn’t surprise me because we didn’t have any advertising or promotion. I looked at it as a gig to keep us from getting rusty. We needed to get something going soon. 

“At this juncture all eyes were on an upcoming Bearsville Theater gig in Woodstock NY. I was hoping that Sundazed Music would help us promote this show and that it would be billed as a record/CD release party; however Sundazed wasn’t interested in promoting us. I was very disappointed but I guess they just weren’t into laying out any money or product (CD table) or posters, etc. This event was also under-attended and it was also Marg’s (Margaret Rubin-Finn) first managerial endeavor.”

Margaret Rubin and Tom Finn were married in 1969, separated in 1974 and soon thereafter were divorced. Marg’s life and Tom’s life definitely went in different directions after the divorce, but they somehow managed to keep in touch every five years or so. She was an extremely motivated production person who was employed by a Dutch consortium; she lived and worked in Athens Greece and Moscow for quite a few years. 

TOM FINN:

“Marg is not your easy going person. She is an extremely aggressive go-getter that doesn’t take no for an answer from anybody. When she asked George and me if she could manage the group, she assured us that although she had never been an entertainment manager to her it was an easy job.” 

Both Cameron and Finn were caught totally off guard by this request. They listened to her concept regarding both of their positions in The Left Banke, and how she could get the group in shape to have a booking agency and a real accounting of their past and current record sales and performing rights royalties. She spoke of George and Tom forming a partnership and how this would also apply to Steve Martin-Caro when he was secure enough to come to New York City and join them. As Finn puts it, “after listening to her sales pitch we both bought the farm.” 

She drew up a one page agreement that would last one year and took the boys and the contract to a notary public to witness the signing. Marg then started by paying for rehearsals and buying suits, clothing, computers and various needs the band had. 

MIKE FORNATALE:

“It was a fait accompli. There was no discussion. Well, fine, we need a manager.  Some of these guys just run around like headless chickens and someone needs to crack the whip every once in a while. But a few of us were wondering about the choice, without even having met her. Band being managed by the ex-wife of one of the members? What could possibly go wrong?  [laughs.]

“George and Charly knew Marg from way back in the day. They seemed like they weren’t too sure about the idea either. Someone, I think it was Mickey, asked them what they could tell us about her.  George rolled his eyes and Charly shook his head and smiled. Oooookay.”

TOM FEHER:

“I too know Marg from back in the day, when she was still Margaret Rubin, and I can tell you this: she’s as hard-headed as described and if memory serves, can be difficult to work with. However, she was a good influence on the Tom Finn of early Left Banke days: in the ‘60s he tended to be a bit lazy and of course there were the drugs and slack morals that seduced all of us; but Margaret lit a fire under his ass and made a hustler out of him. I watched him change from a laid-back “what, me worry” type into a creative go-getter; I would say Marg had a lot to do with that. Finn had the raw ability, she provided him with a sharp edge.

“But one also has to remember that Marg represents the non-musician business world, and for as long as I can remember there have been conflicts of interest between the artists and the music business executives. A lot of this has to do with artists not learning to read contracts properly and understand them; they make agreements that they later regret. If they knew their legalese, they would know how to obtain a contract that gives them better control over the agent, promoter, manager or publisher. The artist is supposed to be the boss (ask Bruce Springsteen). It’s a rare artist who can think like a businessman, and a rare businessman who can think like an artist.”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“She really did provide some much-needed discipline, but in the end it just didn't work out at all. Tom and George were already at odds a lot of the time, and the addition of Marg – who is, for better AND for worse a serious control-freak – made things interesting, to say the least. Tom and George were and are like matter meeting anti-matter. The results, as any science-fiction fan knows, are not necessarily going to be much of a party. When you add Margaret to that mix, you now have matter, anti-matter, and something even worse… something that hasn’t even been discovered yet. 

“There were brawls onstage during sound checks, brawls in dressing rooms – and all of this taking place in front of outsiders, promoters, people that worked at the venue. She had some good ideas, but she had some other ideas too. And she was absolutely unwavering. Early on, I tried to arrange a sit-down with her so we could find some way to work together. She blew it off and it never happened, which is a shame: she really had the right stuff to be a good band manager.”

BEARSVILLE THEATER AND THE ENDLESS CONFLICT

The new Left Banke had been booked to play the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, New York on the evening of August 20, 2011. Finn decided to drive Marg and her videographer Froylen) upstate for the even. This time they were all working hard on promoting this show. Ralph Affoumado came along and helped them get a good sound in the house. He also recorded a few live local radio spots, telling the listeners all about the group’s history, etc. He also setup a few radio interviews for Finn to do. 

For an opening act the club had booked Pete Santora, who had played the part George Harrison in Beatlemania on Broadway and in London. Santora performed solo acoustic and had a good reputation. The group was promoted thusly on the Bearsville Theater website:

Formed in 1965, The Left Banke were the originators of “baroque rock”, which fused exquisitely crafted, melodic pop songs and vocal harmonies with classical influences, harpsichords and string quartets.  In 1966 The Left Banke scored a worldwide hit with “Walk Away Renee” which featured the band’s classical stylings and reached #2 on the Cashbox chart, #5 on the Billboard chart, and went to #1 in Canada. The Left Banke’s work ranks with the greatest American music of the 1960s, and remains beloved by discerning pop connoisseurs around the world. 

The band will include founding member guitarist/vocalist Tom Finn and original drummer/vocalist George Cameron, along with longtime associate Charly Cazalet on bass, lead vocalist Mike Fornatale, keyboardist Mickey Finn, guitarist Paul Alves, and drummer Rick Reil, also a member of New Jersey neo psychedelic rock band The Grip Weeds. The group will be augmented by a string section and will feature over twenty songs including selections from all three studio albums, singles and more.

TOM FINN:

“Ralph was overseeing our, and Pete Santora’s sound check. It was ninety-nine percent about our needs and Santora only needed two microphones, one for his vocal and one for his acoustic guitar; Ralph did a favor by acting as his sound producer. Pete asked Ralph to also produce his video. Marg had brought her own videographer (against my warning) and she refused to let Ralph use her video guy (Froylen) to shoot this opening act. Well that’s when the sparks flew. Marg’s position was, ‘it's my videographer and I want him to be fresh when he starts shooting.’ Ralph’s position was ‘I’m the producer of this appearance, and I’ll say what’s going to happen.’ As you might guess this was a battle of two very big egos. They screamed at each other hurling threats and innuendos back and forth.

“I was in a quandary; I guess I sided with Ralph because I could understand how controlling Marg could be. This was her first live event with The Left Banke and I know she wanted to completely control every single aspect of the show. But Ralph had made radio spots and he’d contacted stations to set up interviews for us to do.

“To make a point about how much control Marg wanted: I decided to drive Marg and Froylen up to Woodstock for the show, which was about a three hour drive. Since it was a nice day and we were leaving very early I decided to take route 9W all the way to the venue. However Marg wasn’t having it, she kept insisting that we take the route she wanted to take, which was boring and had no scenery at all. I was getting angry but to keep the peace I drove her way. Then she started telling me what lane to drive in. I said to myself, OMG what did I do? How could I have signed a one year management contract with her?”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“With Marg on board, the whole Ralph thing went sour very quickly. Ralph was intending not only to produce us, but to write most or all of the material himself. I have no idea what he would have come up with, because it never got that far. We heard one song, that he had Tom Feher write lyrics for. It didn’t sound much like the Left Banke to me, but I was game to give it a shot. But Ralph and Marg in the same room was way worse than Tom and George in the same room. Now it was matter, anti-matter, something even worse, and a fourth thing that Isaac Asimov couldn't have dreamed up on his best day.”

TOM FEHER:

I wrote lyrics for two or three of Ralph’s melodies. It was fun; he’s an excellent composer and arranger. I think the song that Mike is referring to is “Anthem,” which I sub-titled “In Freedom’s Name.” Ralph had high hopes for this tune. He had plans to get one or more of his former students who were now successful on Broadway, I think, to sing solos; he aimed to get the completed recording to someone he knew on the White House staff. “Anthem,” if I may blow my own horn, was a superb collaboration; but I didn’t particularly hear it as Left Banke material.

“From my perch three thousand miles away, I possibly see the situation more objectively… I hope. If Ralph was actually intending to do all the songwriting for the Banke, I think that would have been a big mistake. Look at all the creative input available: Finn is a competent songwriter with a few classic tunes under his belt. George was co-writer on the first Left Banke recording ever. Charly has written quite a few of his own or in collaboration with Steve Caro; as a matter of fact, he wrote a tune back in the ‘60s called “I’ve Got Time” which I think would suit the group perfectly. Rick too, I believe is a songwriter. I don’t know about the other band members, if they write or not.

“I’ve done some production myself, and had productions done on me, and my overall consideration on the subject is: as a producer, one has to allow the artist to BE the artist – to make the primary creative decisions; then, one comes in and separates the wheat from the chaff, fine tunes the presentation, and gets the music recorded for posterity. I would have instituted an open call for everyone involved to submit songs and then take a firm stand in selecting the best. Of course this is backseat driving, but who knows, I just may have made a valid point.

“In addition to asking these guys for contributions, I would have recommended a listen to one of my unheard tunes from the first Left Banke era, “Nightingale;” I would have urged a listen to Charly’s “I’ve Got Time” and proposed a new recorded version of “She May Call,” “Lorraine” and one or two other songs from Strangers on a Train. You want material that flows naturally in the twenty-first century from the original Left Banke sound of the ‘60s. Meanwhile, “Anthem,” as presented by the Choir at Saint Patrick’s, I thought was done up perfectly; it’s the kind of a composition that thrives in the choral element, sung by a large throng of patriotic voices.”

On the face of it, it appeared that the new Left Banke was moving successfully into a new era of popularity. But behind the scenes it seemed as if personal conflicts and friction were destined to hound the group until the end of time. The beauty of the musical creativity was constantly overshadowed by the drama of clashing opinions and old scars that had never healed. This drama was to spill increasingly over into public view.

TOM FINN:

“Before the show at The Bearsville Theater in Woodstock faded into our memories, Marg called for a video editing session with her engineer at a film school on Ninth Avenue. I dreaded this session, because I knew the vocals were really bad; but I showed up there with George and Marg. I was really angry at Marg for taking it upon herself against my wishes and warnings to shoot this video. Again the audio mix was horrible and so badly out of tune it hurt. I told Marg as I would later tell Ralph, that YOU CAN’T RECORD A VOCAL GROUP WITH A LIVE BAND WITHOUT APPROACHING THE SOUND AS MULTI-TRACK RECORDING THAT IS LAID DOWN AND MIXED BY A COMPETENT AUDIO ENGINEER. 

      “When I told Marg this, she ignored me and acted as if she knew better. In essence she was taking the audio feed off the live room mix in the theater. Also she was relying on the stereo feed from the built-in camera microphone which is worse than amateurish; it’s unacceptable. It was idiotic and pissed me off beyond belief. Now the band got to see and hear this video and it was so bad that everyone cringed. It sucked.     “I’m not going to go into the correct way to record a band live with vocals it would take too long; but this wasn’t it. The band started to gear up for some upcoming gigs. The first was a small club on the lower east side called DROM. As the date drew near (11/I2/11) I couldn’t believe that Marg was going to video tape the show just as she did before. I was now not talking to her. She was a control freak. I was hating her guts.”

 

    Despite Finn’s misgivings, the DROM show went well; it was attended by Steven Van Zandt (Little Steven) who’d missed the Littlefield show. He said he liked the band and told Finn that he liked his song ‘City Life,’ which presumably made Tom Finn’s evening. However, Finn was soon demoralized by the video shot at DROM; he reports that “it still sucked and she still wouldn’t believe me regarding how to record a live band.” She asked him to pick some videos that he liked from the two forty-five minute Left Banke sets done did that night. Finn picked what he calls “the best of the bad videos;” he was shocked to think that Marg posted them on YouTube. 

FINN:

“I lost it. I screamed at her so loud you could hear me in Africa. All that I had told her meant nothing; she was going to put these horrible group-destroying videos on YouTube for the whole world to see. I begged her to take them off YouTube; she said ‘Tom, you’re the only one that thinks they’re bad.’ I could have killed her after that remark. She did it yet again when we played our next show at BB King’s club. She recorded the same way because a video guy associated with the club told her it would be fine. WRONG!! It sucked again. Only this time the owner of our booking agency was there and was horrified by the out of tune vocals.”

Despite Finn’s misgivings, good reviews were coming in:

“That they played the exquisite Pretty Ballerina (which Finn said is now overtaking ‘Walk Away Renée’ as the most popular Left Banke song) third tune into the set, was fine, since lesser known singles like ‘Desiree’--which was a minor hit--and ‘Sing Little Bird Sing’ were no less breathtaking.”- Jim Bessman/Examiner.com (November 2011)

“Reconstituted, The Left Banke at the Drom had nine people on$stage, to deliver a Phil Spector-like Wall of Sound to replicate the ‘baroque rock’ aural sheen that permeated its vintage records.”- Rock’s Back Pages (November 2011)

DECEMBER 2011:  SAINT PATRICK’S BASILICA

TOM FINN:

“The big show with the Tisch NYU choir was now drawing close and it was to be filmed and recorded by Ralph’s tech crew. I was told that since we were recording in Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral there would be no amplified instruments, Mickey Finn played a small piano console, Charly played an acoustic bass guitar, Paul played an acoustic guitar and I strummed my big J-200 Gibson. 

“I warned Ralph that he wasn’t recording the thing correctly. I told him there had to be some tight mic’ing on our vocals and instruments otherwise they’d be drowned out by the big choir and the echo from the hard surfaces and high ceilings of the church. He said, ‘I’ve worked with my tech crew many times and they know just how to overcome the acoustical problems.’ I couldn’t believe he said that. 

“When the video or film came back and was roughly edited there was no piano, guitars, bass backing vocals and the lead vocal by Mike Fornatale which was run through an antique church microphone was practically inaudible. Ralph did a really good job arranging the choir on our song ‘Desiree’ and the overall effect was really nice, but the sound of The Left Banke was non existent. I honestly hated to say I told him so. In defense of Ralph’s holiday show, I must say that ninety-nine percent of all the listeners were overwhelmingly positive about the YouTube video. The effect of ‘Walk Away Renee’ and ‘Desiree’ with a full young choir was outstanding. As far as its shortcomings, the actual core group was not evident. But it was still a great concept.” 

The Basilica of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, or “Old St. Patrick’s,” built between 1809 and 1815, is located at 260-264  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_Street_(Manhattan)" \o "Mulberry Street (Manhattan)" Mulberry Street between  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prince_Street_(Manhattan)&action=edit&redlink=1" \o "Prince Street (Manhattan) (page does not exist)" Prince and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Street" \o "Houston Street" Houston Streets in Manhattan. It was the seat of the  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Archdiocese_of_New_York" \o "Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York" Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York until the current  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Patrick%27s_Cathedral,_New_York" \o "St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York" Saint Patrick’s Cathedral opened in 1879. The church was designated a  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Landmarks" \o "List of New York City Landmarks" New York City landmark in 1966. 

The program at St Patrick’s Basilica took place on December 10th, 2011 and featured Ralph Affoumado’s pride and joy, the Tisch School of the Arts Choir, Drama Cantorum, eighty strong, with guests Alan Merrill and the Left Banke. According to reports, it was attended by an audience of approximately one thousand.

MIKE FORNATALE:

“In December of 2011, Ralph was putting on his annual Choral Festival at Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral – the original cathedral, downtown on Mulberry Street. He had had the idea to have us come down and sing ‘Renee’ and ‘Desiree’ with this huge choir of college students. I think we had two or three rehearsals with the choir in the month before the event. Ralph had been drilling the choir separately for weeks, of course, so it all went fairly smoothly. Great bunch of kids. And they laughed at all our jokes.

“Unfortunately, I had another gig that same night, with Losers’ Lounge, back at Joe’s Pub on Lafayette Street. Two sets. I was singing ‘Love is Like an Itching In My Heart’ by The Supremes in a big pounding rock-and-roll arrangement. Timing-wise, I figured I could do all three. I had to go to Joe’s, scream my lungs out, run offstage, grab my bag and sprint the ten blocks or so to the cathedral, jump onstage, and find my schoolboy voice for two songs, then run right back up to Joe’s for the second set. 

“Somehow it all happened without any issues. I wish I could have hung around at the cathedral afterwards. Our two songs were in the middle of the program, so I had to leave without being able to thank any of the kids. They were fabulous. There’s video of it online. With a great shot of Paul grimacing at the violinist, who started ‘Desiree’ off way too fast.”

ALAN MERRILL:

It was an absolute thrill to sing with a choir. Ralph was an incredible musical director for the whole evening. I did ‘I Love Rock N Roll’ and ‘Automatic Pilot;’

having that huge parachute, all those voices lifting me up on the choruses was a unique experience I’ll never forget it. The classic baroque based music of the Left Banke was probably better suited to the choir, and they sounded great on ‘Desiree’ and ‘Walk Away Renee.’ Still, Ralph was great at getting the choir to fit my rock songs as well! It worked.

The audience seemed to really enjoy it.”

The name “Left Banke” and the subject of argumentative conflict seemed, through the years to go hand in hand. Possibly other groups had suffered from the same malady and kept it tactfully under wraps; but in this case, with a new cast of characters, the traditional free-for-all continued well into another year.

MIKE FORNATALE:

“Some time between the cathedral concert and the following April, Ralph was outta there. I don’t know what happened or when it happened. Tom said Ralph was pushing too hard for complete control of all the material. But the whole Ralph-and-Marg thing can’t have helped any. She had a contract, Ralph didn’t. I don't know how much that led to Ralph’s leaving, but it can't have been insignificant. It really was like a big bloody brawl all the time. Ralph wanting complete control over the music, Marg wanting complete control over literally everything, 

George wanting to ditch the seminal Left Banke material for more of the ‘70s stuff, me insisting loudly that the audience wanted to hear the first two albums instead, and Tom getting upset about vocal parts and band dynamics. Without blaming anybody specifically, I don’t know how we survived it intact. I’m not sure we did survive it intact. There might still be some metaphorical teeth and limbs still missing… which was again, a shame; because Ralph and Marg both had a lot to bring to the table. But with both of them jockeying for position, something had to give.”

TOM FEHER:

“The last time I e-mailed Ralph about this book project, he wanted nothing to do with the final chapters; he just clammed up. Mum was the word. Same with Marg. That gave me pause to think back over the years and see if I could find a common reason for all this nonsense. I boiled it down to one word: “ignorance.” What I mean is this: the greatest conflicts I’ve ever seen through the years – not just with the Left Banke, but with any musical project in which I was involved – derived from someone who thought they knew all about something which they really didn’t know much about at all.

“The result is, you find certain persons stepping into the domain of others where they don’t logically belong. For example, back in the ‘60s there were so many business types trying to get a slice of the rock music pie, that the role of “manager” was divided into two parts: “business manager” and “creative manager.” It was assumed that the musical artist didn’t know his ass from his elbow, so he needed to be creatively “managed.” Which basically means, fiddle around with his music. The business type doesn’t belong there.

“I’ve seen it in the studio, where an engineer, who was supposed to be getting the best out of the machines under his control, started to make suggestions about the lyrics and arrangements of the songs being recorded. But the bottom line on all of this is the artist himself… his own ignorance. He should be sufficiently schooled in business so that he knows what the manager’s job is, and if the guy oversteps his bounds, put him back in place. And if he’s missing some technical points regarding his art – in this case, music – he ought get down to the local music school and bone up. George, are you listening?” 

SURPRISE GUEST AT B.B. KING’S

If the Joe’s Pub reunion concerts in 2011 held the promise of greater things to come, the following year bore out that promise in several favorable developments. The first development, much desired by long-time fans, but considered a practical impossibility, was the appearance of the group’s primary composer and pianist, whose audience shyness had taken on a legendary character.

TOM FINN:

“One day Marg called and said she’d got the booking agency to get us a night at BB King’s in NYC. We all liked this because it was legitimate nightclub with eight hundred seats. I thought that this might be a nice place for us to play. It had a big stage, good sound system and all the things a band needs to make a good showing. As the date grew closer, I kept thinking of a way to make our show special. The record release party was out of the question so I started thinking how great it would be if Michael Brown had the nerve or the desire to join us on stage. 

“George always was working and scheming as to how to get Steve Martin-Caro to join this band. I always thought that Steve was coming to New York. George kept insisting that Steve assured him he’d be up here soon. Michael Brown was a different story: I never thought that he’d be interested at all. I know Michael Brown pretty well and I was sure that he’d never go on stage, especially with The Left Banke without Steve.

“I like Michael and I’m friendly with his lovely wife Yvonne. So, I took a shot and instead of asking Mike, I asked Yvonne how she thought Mike would like this idea. Yvonne said she liked the idea but she’d have to ask Michael about it. She got back to me and said Michael would like to do it. I couldn’t believe my ears. Michael Brown said he’d like to do it. Okay!! 

“But now I’ve got several big problems:

      1. George Cameron said if I ever invite Michael Brown up, he’d leave the stage.       2. Marg Rubin-Finn was not happy about a move like this.       3. I had to sell the idea to our booking agency; they were worried that fans would expect him to join us on future shows.      “So I kept it a secret from George and Marg. I really wanted Mike and Yvonne’s two twin boys to see their dad getting a few standing ovations. Mike wasn’t playing a lot lately and wasn’t very happy about the way his career was going. So this was perfect for him and for us. I wanted the rumors of us hating each other to stop and I knew this would help immensely. So… come the date of the show.”

The B.B. King’s show was booked for April 29, 2012. Alan Merrill appeared as guest artist, with a trio consisting of himself, New York Blues Hall Of Fame inductee Amy Madden on bass, and Steve Holley on drums (ex Paul McCartney’s Wings).

Merrill performed his Arrows UK chart hits “Touch Too Much” and “My Last Night With You” as well as his perennial favorite “I Love Rock N Roll.”

ALAN MERRILL:

“We did all right considering we didn’t get more than a three minute sound check! The Left Banke were great, given recreating the intricacy of the music and the large band, with nine or ten people on stage if memory serves. The Beatles never tried to recreate that type of music on stage. (It’s) highly commendable that the Left Banke did just that and they made it work.”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“The show didn’t start off too well. We had problems at sound check. Nobody was cooperating with the monitor-mix guy, and he had a hissy-fit.  His supervisor actually had to send him away and take his place for the show. Someone, over my very loud objections, had engaged a guy to introduce us. Marg took issue with the way he was dressed. I took issue with his very existence. This was the kind of act that needs to just climb onstage – new guys first, George and Tom bringing up the rear – check tuning and start playing, without a word. There’s something really wonderful about that kind of opening when it’s done right. When you slam into the opening bars of a song that the audience instantly recognizes. You can’t buy that kind of thrill. There’s a big collective ‘whoooaaaa!!!’ out in the crowd, and it really sets up the show.

“We’re all trying to get in position so this guy can announce us. Tom has to go all the way around to the other side of the stage, and the guy starts talking before we’re ready. He runs out of words and Tom’s not in position yet.  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, The Left Banke!!’ And...nothing. We lost our moment and we never really got it back, I don’t think. I think after a minute or so of silent embarrassment I said something like ‘how do you like the show so far?’ I never saw that guy, Jason, again after that. I think Marg may have killed him and ground him up into sausages. “So now Michael Brown is going to come up and play ‘Pretty Ballerina.’  Which is the third song in the set. We really should have bumped it further back in the show, to better effect. But he came up and played his heart out… the audience went crazy. It was really very special.”

TOM FINN:

     “I introduced Michael Brown and he came up and played ‘Pretty Ballerina’ which he wrote at seventeen years old. The crowd – nearly a full house – roared their approval. Michael Brown was signing albums and photos all night long. He played fine and we never had a rehearsal and it didn’t matter… they loved him.” 

RICK REIL:

“Mike Brown joined us onstage for ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ performing live with The Left Banke for the first time since 1967. We had heard that Brown might make an appearance, but since there were no rehearsals with him and he didn’t appear for the sound check, we weren’t sure if it would actually happen. It did happen, and Mike came up to the stage, and with a little help, sat behind the keyboard, and played his song nearly perfectly. It was a great rock and roll moment.”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“The funny thing is, I never got to meet the guy. Still haven’t. He was mobbed after the show, of course, and every time I tried to make my way over there someone else would come up to me and want to talk. By the time I made it over to his table, he had already gone home.” 

CHARLY CAZALET:

“The crowd at BB King’s was the best. Partly from Mike Brown’s appearance and some one asked me to sign my own album and had hoped to hear the songs that Steve and I wrote from that album. I didn’t mind the NYC gigs but the out of town gigs were a little much to travel for a few hundred bucks. And we made shit with The Zombies. Tom and George brought Margaret in as manager who took ten percent and was basically doing the road manager’s work when we already had one. She was a nightmare.”

SUMMER AND THE ZOMBIES

The summer of 2012 brought what must have been a dream pairing for many fans: The Left Banke were booked for a number of East Coast dates with their British counterparts, the Zombies. Climbing the US Billboard charts in 1964 with their #2 hit “She’s Not There,” and in ’64 and ’69 with “Tell Her No” and “Time of the Season” respectively, the Zombies’ well-crafted melodies and ornate arrangements made them the perfect tour-mates for Finn, Cameron and company.

The Zombies were formed in 1962 in St. Albans, England by Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone. Argent on vocals and keyboard, and Blunstone on vocal leads were still a strong draw; their reputation in the U.S. was more widespread than the Banke, giving them top ranking on the bill. But the new Left Banke was a force to be reckoned with.

MIKE FORNATALE:

“Right from the beginning, I had suggested to Tom and George that our ideal move was to go on tour opening for The Zombies. (It was) basically our perfect audience, not an ‘oldies show,’ where you play your two hits and a couple of Neil Diamond songs, wave, and split. But I knew that anyone who wanted to see the Left Banke but who wasn’t sufficiently moved to fork over for tickets might well change their minds if The Zombies were on top of the bill.

“I had met Rod and Colin a few years earlier, when I was working at a place where they did a four-night residency. It just seemed like a perfect fit. I went as far as to contact their booking agency and let them know that The Left Banke was back and available, even before the Joe’s Pub show. As it turned out, once Marg came on board she had the same idea. She put some pressure on them to come see us, which I hadn’t done. They came to a show we did at a little place on Avenue A called Drom, in November of 2011.”

RICK REIL:

“We were up against the great veteran band who unlike us, had been performing as a reunited unit for ten years. They were a very tight band, technically perfect in many respects. But for every performance we did with them, I looked to my right and saw Rod Argent seriously watching every show from the side of the stage. I knew then that we were doing well.”

MIKE FORNATALE:

“These shows all went very well. With a minimum of bloodshed. The Zombies loved us. At the final show, (at the Howard Theater) in DC, I looked over to my right and saw Rod standing there, watching, grinning. One by one the whole rest of the band joined him, and they stood there and watched our entire set. That felt good. It’s something an opening act doesn’t usually get.”

TOM FINN:

“Our venues were now getting much larger as we were the opening act for a more established group. We had a good time with them they were very friendly and made us comfortable. We did a big show at the Highline Ballroom in NYC and we did very well, except I was in a lot of pain. My feet were killing me and my both hands were numb; I kept dropping my guitar picks. This kept getting worse, so I had to buy bigger shoes because my feet were swollen. 

“I was not going to let this bum me out, because I wanted to do good shows, which we did; but when we got back to NYC from Philadelphia and Washington DC, I went to a doctor. The doctors took blood tests and didn’t find any problems. But now I had no feeling in both hand and both feet. To make a short story long, I went to a neurologist who did some Cat or Pet scans and found a very extremely severe case of cervical stenosis. My upper spine had basically collapsed. I needed major surgery immediately.” 

Re-united with the group at the reunion concerts in 2011 was Cookie Wrublewski Dakes (now a grandma), who with Carrie Reda Cavalluzi had headed up the Left Banke fan club in 1967. At some point, Cookie accepted the nomination as the new Facebook fan page administrator and resumed her role of service to the group whose music she loved so much.

COOKIE WRUBLEWSKI DAKES:

“I think I must be the Left Banke’s biggest fan....from the closing of Rubott to the birth of the fan page.....Carrie and I never stopped trying to find out what happened to them. When I first found the fan page I nearly died... and the first time I spoke to Tommy brought me back to those days at Rubott... I was in heaven!

“Tommy asked me to take over the fan page as administrator but I still run the fan club along with Carrie the other girl that was at Rubott with me. I have been to every show except Parilla and Annapolis and went on the road with them in the van. The only reason I didn’t do those two shows was because Tommy and Marg were fighting so much that I didn’t want to get involved between them so I stayed home.”

So, the dark side even made its impression on the group’s most devoted fan. Nevertheless, we have Cookie’s impressions of  the Left Banke / Zombie’s shows in the summer of 2012. Apparently the music had survived through it all.

Tupelo Music Hall Londonderry NH July 6th

This was an okay venue.....it was like a barn type setting with the group on the same level as the audience. Acoustics sucked....everything bounced around but they were well received. Lots of local people showed up but also a lot of fans. The meet and greet at the end had a line out the door. Very small audience sitting in folding chairs. Highlight of the day.....great sea food at local restaurants!

                                                                                                                                    I n f i n i t y   H a l l   N o r f o l k   C T   J u l y   7 ,   2 0 1 2  

 G r e a t   v e n u e ! ! ! !   V e r y   o l d   t h e a t e r   w i t h   c a t h e d r a l   c e i l i n g s   m a d e   f r o m   w o o d .   A c o u s t i c s   w e r e   f a n t a s t i c ! ! !   T h e y   s o u n d e d   G R E A T .   T h e y   r e c e i v e d   m a n y   s t a n d i n g   o v a t i o n s ! ! ! !   A   m u s t   o n   a n y   t o u r .   T h e   s t a f f   w a s   f a n t a s t i c . . . . t h e y   t o o k care of everyones needs!!! A sold out audience full of fans!!!!

Highline Ballroom / August 5 & 6 2012

(Daniel Coston on hand to take photos)

Great gig played to standing room only audience both nights. The audience was spilling out into the hallway there were so many people. Zombies were fantastic and very friendly to everyone. They love playing together as a group.....something I wish the LB would do. There was no fights between Zombie members.....can’t say the same thing for the LB. Lots of celebs came to see the gig....Jim Kerr, Peppy from Blues Magoos, etc. The LB sounded great and actually sounded better than the Zombies the first night. Best tour....these two groups should always play together!!

World Cafe Live, Philadelphia PA, August 8, 2012

Very large venue....they played to a packed house. One of the better shows......they sounded great. Well received by the fans. Most profitable merchandise table. Sold out on most of the items for the meet and greet. Largest meet and greet of all the gigs. Only downfall was having to drive to Washington DC right after gig. Would love to go back again! Marge ordered Philly cheese steaks for all of us.....she has her moments! I think they were riding high on the gig with the Zombies.....haven’t seen them this happy in a long time!

Howard Theater, Washington DC, August 9, 2012

Best gig of the whole tour.....being with the Zombies again was fantastic. People came from all over just to see these two groups together LIVE!!!! Beautiful venue which was restored and only re-opened a few weeks. Both groups were well received. The Zombies don’t do a Meet & Greet so we took over the front entrance of the venue. Lots of fans were there. They told the Left Banke that this type of show should happen more often. What a GREAT time for everyone.

As of this writing, the new Left Banke made a return visit to Joe’s Pub, on June 6th, 2013. Once again, their show was enthusiastically received. Violinist Susan Aquila, a celebrated performer in her own right, joined in the harmony, her voice taking the higher register once easily attained by the ailing Tom Finn. And once again Michael Brown – introduced by Finn as “The Great Mazooma” – joined the group onstage, this time for his classic “Walk Away Renée.” 

Despite the never-ending personal friction between certain characters in the ongoing drama, the music supersedes all, and has carried the original members into continued acclaim when and wherever people are fortunate enough to experience their live performances. No new recordings have come forth, but that remains to be seen. Finn’s health is in question, as Cookie reported following the Joe’s Pub show, “Tommy is really not doing well. He has a hard time walking unless he uses his cane.” As of this writing, Finn is scheduled to return for additional surgery.

TOM FEHER:

“I think it’s fascinating that the power of music has triumphed over such overwhelming and innumerable obstacles. If the readers are interested, I’ve documented another side of the picture we’ve scarcely touched: the idiotic mountain of red tape that has become the music publishing industry; I’ll include it in an appendix. But to formally end on a bright note, there are a few comments from an interview with Rick Reil, who as far as I can tell is the guy who keeps his head when all others are joining in the verbal fracas. Since I met him, I’ve never known him to say a disparaging word about anyone.”

EXCERPTS FROM RICK REIL INTERVIEW

What were your expectations for the "new Left Banke"? Did you think it would ever get past the initial rehearsals?

RICK REIL:

“I was the last to join and the last piece of the puzzle. I had fairly high expectations because I felt the band gelled immediately. I think there was some worry, maybe from Tom Finn, that the audience might not accept a Left Banke without Steve Martin or Mike Brown. I was less worried about that because I brought a digital recorder to the rehearsals and listened back afterwards. We weren’t perfect – but we were good, good enough I thought to make an audience happy who wanted to hear these songs performed as they were on record, by musicians who cared and felt strongly about the material.”

Are you happy with the technical quality that was eventually achieved?

RICK:

“Most musicians are never totally satisfied with the technical quality of any performance. We want it to be perfect but perfection is rarely possible, particularly when there’s not a lot of funding behind the band. Also these songs are not three chord garage songs, but are very nuanced and ambitious. There is plenty of room for improvement in our presentation.

“That said, I’m happy with what we’ve achieved so far. And the more we play together, the more confident and relaxed we get with the material, the better it gets.  In fact, I’m writing this after the first rehearsal of the rhythm section since our show with The Zombies and we immediately fell back into place, it sounded great and it was fun.

Were live strings used on every gig, and if not, how did the quality compare without the strings?

RICK:

“So far we’ve used live strings on every gig. But there may come a time when we have to do some shows without them simply because it’s an expensive show to do. The strings are wonderful, but I feel the band is good enough to put the show over without them if we have to.”

With so many performers on stage, did you guys actually go home with any pocket money? If you think this is nobody's business, don't answer. RICK:

“Money is a major problem for most musicians. We are a big band, so in most cases we all could have used a little more. Funding a band of this size is a challenge.”

The Left Banke has a history of dramatic disputes and histrionics. Generally speaking, have you been able to get along with the other group members? 

RICK:

“I get along with everyone in the band very well. I feel happy and honored to be part of this great group. I have strong friendships with both of the original members, Tom Finn and George Cameron.”

There seems to be a considerable demand for the group to continue and tour. Do you think this will occur, and how long do you think it might last?RICK:

“We’re hoping this will continue, and we’re hoping to make some new recordings. As to touring, we would like to, but we have to solve the financial problem of putting a band this size on the road. There’s also Tom’s health and physical condition: he had major surgery last December and he needs to recover fully before a tour can be seriously considered.”

Rick also provided us with these “mini-reviews” of the original Left Banke members:

On TOM FINN

“A totally underrated talent, a great talent in many respects. He’s first and foremost one of the great harmony singers of the classic rock era, sort of a New York David Crosby. Tom doesn’t have to learn harmony parts, he creates them intuitively in the moment, in every moment that he sings, including rehearsals, and he can change his parts at will to accommodate what the other singers are doing. I just wish he would quit smoking (sorry Tom).

“I also love his songs, and he’s got many great ones that nobody has heard but should hear. How this guy did not become a solo artist or at least make one solo album in the ‘70s is a mystery to me. He still has a nice sounding voice and I think I could produce a great Tom Finn solo album. I really hope that happens one of these days.

“Then there is his humor. The darkest and most biting humor you can imagine. I room with Tom on tour, and there are times when he had me in stitches, laughing so hard I couldn't speak. Onstage he can be riotous as the band’s spokesman and he does great interviews. He has a quick mind and somehow, after all his escapades as a famous DJ and all that goes with that, he remembers EVERYTHING, every last detail about the band all the way back to meeting Steve in 1965. He is the embodiment of the expression ‘one of a kind.’ Tom also loves animals, especially cats and a little peach faced love bird named Beppo.”

On GEORGE CAMERON 

“No matter what anyone says about George (ha!), I maintain that he is one of the friendliest and nicest guys I have ever met. I have heard all kinds of rumors about his past behavior and antics, but I find him to be very positive. George is the one always pushing us to get back to work, which I’m sure is not what he was doing back in the days when he was hitting the sauce too hard. Left Banke fans might find it interesting that George has appeared live with my band ‘The Wyld Olde Souls’ several times in New York, and we just might record a version of ‘Walk Away Renee’ featuring George on lead vocals.”

 

On MICHAEL BROWN

“My good friend Tom Finn took me to Mike Brown’s house in New Jersey last summer, a few months after Mike has performed with us at BB King’s in New York. I must say I was charmed. The man was friendly and funny, and has a very nice family, which includes a beautiful wife and two really smart and talented boys who are twins and play the violin. Imagine that in our act? The best thing was I got to hear him play some piano in an intimate setting. 

“Mike himself was dismissive about it, saying that he was out of practice. Out of practice or not, I was hit with the full force of his musicality. He played some Beatle songs and other things, and there was an incredible force of music which still comes through him, and I could plainly see what the fuss is all about. His piano playing is a cross between classical and boogie-woogie, performed with great gusto. He played an incredible rendition of ‘Lady Madonna’ right in front of my eyes and ears. As a recording engineer I would love to record him and one of his unrecorded songs, of which I hear there are many.”

On STEVE MARTIN-CARO

  “The spectre of Steve Martin hangs over us like a ghost sometimes. Mind you, in my opinion Mike Fornatale has done an amazing job. My wife thinks he sounds more like Steven than Steve. And Mike Fornatale’s work and dedication to The Left Banke has been one hundred and ten percent. However, certain members of the band, particularly George, are very attached to the idea of Steve coming back, at least to sing a few songs onstage with Mike.

“The problem is, Steve never shows or communicates with the band. This is very mysterious. Can he still sing or can’t he? Was he disfigured in some kind of accident and won’t show himself? You would think Steve would have been curious enough to attend one of our shows in the South last summer, by which time most Left Banke fans knew that the band was doing a great live show, or at least have sent the band an email, like ‘good job guys.’  George still maintains that one of these days he’ll show up. I hope he does so soon while all the original members are still with us.”

*        *        *        *

CODA: LOOKING BACK

QUOTES

Despite all the years between, the changing musical trends and the failed group reunions, the Left Banke has remained popular, partly because of the stature of “Walk Away Renée” as a classic “oldie,” but also because of the complete repertoire, which – when fans dig deeper – elicits new praise from many quarters.

It seems that the Left Banke has carved a niche in the annals of popular music that is unique unto itself, a form of music that invites no comparison because it is an original twist in an industry too often overrun with imitations. Praise continues to pour out from many quarters. Richie Unterberger is author of nearly a dozen rock history books, including Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators & Eccentric Visionaries of ‘60s Rock, which includes a chapter on Mike Brown.

RICHIE UNTERBERGER:

“The Left Banke were the ultimate fusion of the best of 1960s pop-rock and classical music. While much of this could be attributed to the genius of keyboardist and songwriter Michael Brown, there was very much a group effort behind their recordings. Steve Martin’s gorgeous lead vocals were ideally suited toward bringing the material to its most vivid life. The group’s vocal harmonies ideally complemented the melodies and arrangements, much as the Beach Boys’ full backup vocals made their records both magnificent and distinctive from anyone else’s. “Though the Left Banke are sometimes mistakenly categorized as one-hit or two-hit wonders for their smash singles ‘Walk Away Renee’ and ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ they also stood out in the mid-1960s scene for having numerous strong album tracks, before the LP overtook the 45 as the prime commercial medium in rock music. Those album cuts included some gems that were not just as outstanding as the hit singles, but also displayed quite a bit of versatility, from breathtaking ballads like ‘Shadows Breaking Over My Head’ to the all-out raunchy rock of ‘Evening Gown.’ The underrated late-‘60s album by Montage -- on which Michael Brown served as producer, keyboardist, vocal arranger, and co-writer of most of the songs - also exhibits many of the qualities characteristic of the Left Banke's finest work.”

In 2010, when Tom Finn established the Official Left Banke Fan Club Page on Facebook, fans old and new, friends and musical associates began checking in to pay their respects, forward lost photos, memories and words of praise. Here is a sampling:

A FAN NAMED “C:”

“You know what I really like about the Left Banke? They never sold out by recording some corny ‘Yummy Yummy’ type song or put out an album full of lame cover tunes like some of their contemporaries did. They also did not give into goofy trends, they kept it real.”

ROB NORBERG:

“When you listen to both albums, there aren’t any throw away songs. They are all gems as far as I can see.”

BOB MESHNICK:

“The Left Banke had such a unique sound. There was nothing like them at the time and there’s been nothing like them since. There are certain artists that inspire passionate enthusiasm in their fans, and the Left Banke fall into that category.

“As much as I’ve tried to think of specific words to describe the appeal of The Left Banke, I keep coming back to ‘the sound’ which is so unique. It’s not simply the beautiful soaring vocals, nor is it just the magnificent arrangements. 

“It’s the total package coming together to create songs that sound as fresh all these years later as they did when they were first released. I could single out the baroque arrangements and the haunting vocals, but the sum is much greater than the parts, so I’m back to ‘the sound,’ which makes me feel better every time I hear The Left Banke.” 

DAVID MINTON:

“Bob has hit the nail on the head....the unique sound with the combination of instruments and vocals, has never been heard before or since. There are only a handful of artists that have such a distinctive sound that you can recognize instantly and the Left Banke is one of them.”

MINDY LEDBETTER-FLORES:

  “The Left Banke was in part a soundtrack of my life when my ex-husband and I first fell in love twenty years ago, especially ‘Pretty Ballerina.’ Their music was and is timelessly beautiful and emotionally intelligent in that way only a person who knows love feels.  It’s not the words alone, more in the way they are put together; the lyrics are greater than the sum of their parts. The Left Banke’s music brought out the colors that resided in my soul at that time. One album in particular will always be a treasure to me, a reminder of one of the happiest times in my life.” 

MILLIE BESSEY:

“It was beautiful music that touched your soul!  I know I’m ‘old’... I know my musical tastes are draped in the ‘60s but this stuff today has no substance.  ‘Pretty Ballerina’ and ‘Shadows Breaking Over My Head’ are still in my Top 20 favorites.  

“It’s amazing when you think about it as there are thousands of songs I've liked over the years but those two are really something else: wonderfully written, beautifully arranged, and expertly sung.  

  “My son was in his twenties in the ‘90s and purchased a Left Banke CD...acted as though this was some obscure discovery from the ‘60s that somehow I had missed... he and I listened to that thing until we nearly wore it out.” 

DUDE STEWART:

“The Left Banke was a group that made magic, in a magical time. Pop music, thanks to the Beatles’ George Martin, had blazed a trail into the classical world.  The Left Banke, thanks to Mike’s father, had the ability (and opportunity) to create in this medium. 

“Two years later, the trail was abandoned and Pop music was all about volume and bombast.  Even if the Banke had been able to stay together, they would have had to change their sound to continue to sell records. Maybe going all twinkly and progressive for a while would have helped them survive disco, but what would they have done when the ‘80s hit and The Era of Hair Bands arrived?

“Five hundred years after they were created, most people only know one painting of Leonardo da Vinci’s and one statue of Michelangelo’s. If I had to pick which Left Banke song will still be sung that far in the future, I’d say ‘Walk Away Renée’ - but I’ll never know. I know I’m still listening to it, forty-some years later, and I sing it every time I perform. It’s on its way.”

BILL DeYOUNG:

“Clearly, the songwriting is a major factor. But I would argue that the band’s enduring legacy comes from the melodies and the arrangements: between the instruments and the vocal harmonies it was some of the most intriguing stuff on AM radio in ‘66 and ‘67. Other artists have been stealing pages from the Left Banke book for years. 

“Until about two years ago, I had not heard ‘Pretty Ballerina’ since it was new. I remembered eventually that it was on the radio alongside ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ But over the years I never heard it again, and had pretty much forgotten it. When I heard it again, I was floored. It all came back in a rush, forty years later. This was a perfect pop single – and like those (few) other perfect pop singles, time had not diminished its power. Quality lasts.”

SHELLEY CAREY:

“The songs really stand up to the test of time; they are gorgeous.  The music is very melodic.  Steve Martin’s vocals are so expressive and really bring the lyrics to life – really I’ve found few from that era that even come close. Then add to that the great harmonies. Even though some of the lyrics are poignant, there’s such beauty in the songs it lifts my mood no matter what. 

“Once you look beyond all of that, you find an interesting band story. When you think of the odds of finding such a talented group of guys in a circumstance that allowed them to make this beautifully orchestrated and “grown up” music at such a young age, it just blows your mind.  

“You start to listen again to the music with a sense of awe and you develop a deep appreciation because you realize you are listening to a masterpiece of pop. When I wrack my brain to think of who has or could have done this better, I can’t think of anyone – another measure of something great.

  “I grew up with the AM radio in the late sixties as a child and seventies as a teen. I recall hearing the Left Banke’s music as young as five years old. As someone who listened to music daily for years, the music of the Left Banke is something that I never get tired of.”  

RALPH AFFOUMADO:

“I for one had and still have a very deep emotional connection to the Left Banke and their music. I met them in the ‘60s and worked briefly with them. To call their sound merely ‘Baroque Rock’ is not enough. It was and still is the combination of the melodic line, vocal timbre, and harmonic content that get to us and strike an emotional chord down deep in every one who hears them. No wonder that so many people comment the same way.

“Bach, Beethoven and Brahms contributed more to music than the Left Banke. Many pop groups contributed more also. However, in their own little niche, and while they lasted, the Left Banke were certainly not to be overlooked. They made a huge mark on a lot of listeners and that mark still exists today over forty-five years later. Not too shabby for a bunch of kids who didn’t get along. 

“Their original sound still haunts me a lot. Steve Martin’s voice and the harmonies behind him can make me cry even now. I can’t say that much for many hundreds of singers both popular and classical I have worked with over the years.”

BILL INGLOT:

“The Left Banke has never been off my playlist. I have followed the other things Michael Brown was involved with and the Left Banke’s records were a big part of my life. Obviously the band’s full story and ‘struggle’ is an interesting story that needs told, but the real big story to me is this amazing feat: that the band continued on without a key member and still managed, with Left Banke Too, to compose and create one of the 60s’ most stunning pop albums.”

Possibly the most eloquent praise comes from professional journalist Daniel Coston who in 2003 conducted an in-depth interview of the group members for Issue #52 of The Big Takeover magazine. It was obviously not just another job for Coston, but a labor of love. Here are some of his additional observations from April 2010, given especially for this book.

DANIEL COSTON:

“When ‘Walk Away Renee’ was released in June of 1966, both radio and the record shops were full of garage rock bands. These bands were usually regional bands that had four guitar chords, and a Mick Jagger-esque lead singer. The Left Banke’s debut single was totally different: a string quartet and flute married to a pop/rock band backing, held together by three singers who could sing both lead and harmony with equal assurance.

“From the start, the Left Banke was something different, and continued to be throughout their career. When Leonard Bernstein cited the band for praise for its second single, ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ with its all white piano-key structure, he recognized a group of individuals that made up a greater collective. 

“There was not one sound to the band; there was a mixture of several. It was orchestral pop, straight-ahead rock, harmony pop, and all things that music could be before ‘pop’ became a four-letter word to many. All of those things apply to the Left Banke. “Another reason why their music continues to reach so many listeners is that the music does not feel dated. There were many changes in the music scene during the short time of 1966 to 1969. Mod gave way to psychedelia, and teenage freedom turned into ideas of ‘us and them,’ and revolution. Nearly every group of that time has an album, or singles that are submerged in one of those trends, dating it permanently. 

“Somehow, the Left Banke managed to avoid all that. Listen to their records now, and you hear a great band with great songs. If someone today hears the Left Banke for the first time, their first thought isn’t, ‘Wow, that sounds like 1967 all the way;’ they think, ‘Wow, what a good song.’

“Above all else, it is the songs that continue to draw people to the Left Banke. While people around the time may know that the band only had three songs hit the singles charts, second and third generation fans such as me have no idea of such things. We’re responding to the music, from Michael Brown’s astounding compositions on the first album, to the equally catchy songs of Tom Feher and the band on their second album.

“‘Shadows Breaking Over My Head,’ ‘Desiree,’ ‘Goodbye Holly,’ ‘Sing Little Bird Sing:’ those songs weren’t Top 40 hits? Maybe not back then, but they certainly are in my life, over forty years after they were created. 

“That is why I listen to the Left Banke, and I believe why others also do. When the years fade, good work always remains, waiting to be re-discovered. That much never changes. Long live the Left Banke!”  – Daniel Coston  / April 18, 2010

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APPENDICES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ETUDES : SHORT STUDIES OF LIFE IN PRE-BEATLES NYC

BROOKLYN ETUDES

MURRAY THE K’S BROOKLYN FOX SHOWS 

By Tom Finn

Starting in 1963 while living in Brooklyn I got hip to Murray the K’s Brooklyn Fox extravaganzas. For a kid like me, who absolutely loved music, seeing my first Murray the K show blew me away. I paid my two-fifty or whatever it cost, went in, got some popcorn and watched a movie. When the movie ended, the curtain came down across the entire stage. The Fox was a magnificent old theater, with all of the rococo moldings and brass filigreed ornamentation. It was just stunning. 

Through the curtain, you could hear the fifteen to twenty piece orchestra tuning up, which raised the tension and everyone there felt a sense of anticipation. Then suddenly the orchestra starts the Murray The K overture, the giant curtain rises, and out comes Murray The K, yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Whaddaabe, Whaddaabe, Zuma Zuma, Zoa!’ The crowd answers, ‘Whoooooa!’

Then the show begins with Murray doing his radio shtick, and warming up the crowd. Then he introduces the first act, (each act does two songs, with an encore, maybe) Then the stars start coming, and I mean stars: Dion, Jackie Wilson, the Ronettes, Little Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Tom Jones, the Four Tops, the Crystals, and the unbelievable showstoppers: Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles, the Isley Brothers, doing ‘Shout’ This is just an example of the variety show Murray had there. The reason it worked so well is they had one orchestra that backed up all the acts. So it moved very smoothly with no dead time between acts. Entertainers had key musicians that jumped up and plugged right in, and some had a conductor that switched with the house orchestra’s leader. 

If something big had to be done like a set change, the curtain came down and Murray would grab the microphone and stall, but he was really good at motivating the crowd. In between shows they’d clear the theater out and clean up; and if I had any money left, I’d go back for the second show. Every six months Murray had a new show, and every one of them was great. Once, in between shows, I went outside around the corner to the stage door entrance. There signing autographs I saw Smokey Robinson. He had on a silver sharkskin suit with zebra piping, a pair of pointy black boots and his hair slicked back, he had green eyes and teeth so white, they looked like Chiclets gum. He was super nice to the fans, always smiling, and totally polite. 

I never was into autograph seeking; I always figured these people don’t need me to be another pain in the ass. But seeing those shows had a profound influence on me. I saw the Shangri-Las perform there, and I nearly died when I saw Mary Weiss singing, she was gorgeous. All the girls in my neighborhood tried to dress and look like them.

If there’s one thing I miss from those days it’s, the Variety Show. Never a dull moment, compared to today, where people stand around for hours to see one band, with an opening act or two, just doesn’t cut it for me. But things have progressed in a good way also… no complaints here.

LOST LOVE / Brooklyn, 1964 

By Tom Finn 

When I was fifteen years old I was singing out on the street in my old Brooklyn neighborhood with a group of guys… you know, we were singing harmony together. When all of a sudden, a Spanish girl named Desirée comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder. She says ‘Hi my name is Desirée, what's your name?’ I say ‘My name is Tommy.’ 

Then she says ‘My girlfriend Joyce likes you.’ I said ‘What?’ She said ‘Look she’s up there on the rooftop.’ So I look up to the top of this three story brownstone and I see this image of a girl that had an aura around her. I strained my eyes to look closer and Boom! – there was this young teenage blond smiling at me; her name was Joyce Aquavella. I had never in my young life EVER, seen any girl or woman that was as beautiful as she was. She eventually came downstairs and approached me, the closer she came the more beautiful she was. I was stunned. She said to me in the voice of an angel, ‘Hi Tommy, I’m Joyce and I think you’re really cute.’ I couldn’t believe my ears and I actually thought I might be dreaming. Never before in my life had anybody been so up-front and honest with me, she spoke in a voice so warm and soft I started to think maybe this is a joke someone was playing on me. 

Anyway, she said ‘meet me in the park tonight at eight pm, I’d like to talk to you.’ So at 8:00 pm sharp I was there. She came walking up to me and I swear, she looked like an angel walking on a cloud. We both sat down on a bench as the cool evening breeze gently wafted over us, giving us the first reprieve from the warm summer night.

She told me about herself as plain and naturally as could be, with no feeling of pressure or stress of any kind. I started to relax and told her that I wanted to be a musician and a singer. Then after about an hour of talking she said she had to start heading home, because her mother wants her home by no later than ten pm. So we held hands for a minute and then we kissed. I got the chills from head to toe; I just couldn’t understand how such a beauty could possibly want to be with me. As I walked her home she said, ‘Tommy, I’m dating a guy named Jimmy, he’s a little older and he’s going away to be in the Navy. After he leaves next week, I'd like very much to be your girlfriend.’ 

Well I said to myself, Aha! I knew this was too good to be true. But she told me, ‘I’m sorry about this, I don’t love him; I just feel sorry for him.’ she said ‘Please believe me Tommy.’ I thought, my god she’s sooooooo honest. How can I doubt her and why would she tell me this if it wasn’t true? So I said ‘Joyce, I'll wait for you.’ Then we kissed again, this time more passionately and I walked her home. When I left her at her doorway and slowly walked home, I truly felt like I was weightless. I had fallen in love for the first time in my life. 

After I went home, I slept like a baby; I somehow felt that my life made sense and that I would definitely marry this girl someday. But, first I had to make something if myself, and now my motivation was clear and straight ahead. The next night I walked the ten blocks to her home and sort of hung around hoping to see her. I didn’t make myself too obvious because, I remembered what she said about this guy Jimmy. On the street in front of her house was the usual crowd of street kids and gangsters. This was South Brooklyn in 1964 most of the kids hanging around are now dead, in jail, moved away or are in the Mafia. 

Joyce lived in a four story walk-up above an Italian butcher store. I looked up at her windows and saw the lights were on, but I had this feeling that I should get out of there fast. Just then, Joyce’s girlfriend Desirée approached me. She looked troubled and nervous as she spoke to me, she said ‘Tommy, listen do you see that guy over there with the red hair? That's the guy Joyce is dating, Jimmy. Tommy, you have to be a man and you have to show Joyce how you feel about her. Tell Jimmy that Joyce is going to be with you.’ I was struck with fear, this guy was much older than me and I could see he was really tough. I didn’t know what to do... here was Joyce’s friend telling me to confront Jimmy and me feeling as scared as hell. I thought about it really deeply and said to Desirée, ‘OK, I’m not a coward; I’ll tell him what’s going on.’ So I walked over to Jimmy and yelled out loud ‘Hey Jimmy come over here I’ve got a bone to pick with you!’ 

Meanwhile all the guys around the area sensed a big fight was about to happen, so, they all got up from where they were sitting and made their way over to the doorway where I was standing. Jimmy walked up to me with no delay. He was about eighteen and was very strong and muscular; he also had scars and a flattened nose. This guy was gonna kill me. He walking front if me so I couldn’t escape from the doorway and he said ‘I know what you’re gonna say, you’re gonna tell me that you want to hang out and look after Joyce while I’m in the navy right?’ I couldn’t believe it: he was giving me a way out. Just then, Joyce arrived, she was hysterical and she started screaming ‘No, No, No! Please don’t.’ I saw Desirée smiling; I thought ‘I have to be a man’ so, I said to Jimmy, ‘No you’re wrong I don't want to look after Joyce while you’re in the navy, I want Joyce to be my girlfriend.’ Then I looked over Jimmy’s shoulder and heard all the guys saying things like, ‘Oh shit, this kid said this, he’s gonna die.’ and ‘Yo Jimmy are you gonna let him talk to you like that, hit him, stab him.’ Jimmy was furious, Joyce was devastated, and I was preparing to die. Jimmy looked at me and growled, ‘How old are you? I said fourteen (I lied, I was actually fifteen). He wrenched his fists and punched the wooden door right over my head. Them he thought for a minute and said ‘I’m gonna tell my younger brother to beat the shit out of you.’  Whew! I was off the hook. He must have thought twice about beating my brains out, he probably figured, he’d get into a lot of trouble if he beat me up. There were dozens of witnesses and he didn’t want to jeopardize his navy induction. So that was that. Joyce was crying hysterically and I felt like, I let her down, but, why would Desirée tell me to confront him? I never found out. About a week later Desirée told me ‘Joyce said she still wants to see you;’ but I realized I’d let her down. 

I was too ashamed to talk to Joyce. I let time go by and I stayed away from her neighborhood for two reasons. I was ashamed that I’d put her through that trauma and I didn’t want to get beaten up. I figured if I beat up Jimmy’s brother, that wouldn’t be a good thing. So, a year went by and I left Brooklyn to pursue my musical dreams in New York City. The very next year I met Steve Martin-Caro and the rest is history. I never forgot Joyce, but I met a new girl named Renée Fladen, and she was my first girlfriend that I went all the way with. But as we all know, she Walked Away.

Over the years I asked people that I knew from Brooklyn about Joyce, but, nobody knew what happened to her. When the Internet became popular, I searched for Joyce’s name and only saw it once in an old friend’s girls’ high school yearbook. It said Joyce was voted by the students as the best looking of more than one thousand girls.

Footnote: In early 2011, I entered Joyce’s name into the Facebook search engine. As usual nothing came up except a small page that said “PS 107 Alumni.” I don’t know why but I clicked on it and it opened and I finally saw her name. It wasn’t a link to her; she was just listed as a preferred person to join this page. So I contacted the page creator named Paula Maliani or something like that. And Paula answered me yes, yes, yes she knew Joyce, but hadn’t seen her in many years; she told me that the last time she saw her Joyce said she’d gotten married to one of the New York Yankees and had a baby girl. That’s all she knew. Lesson learned? Maybe I should have gone back to Brooklyn after The Left Banke became successful and found her.

FROM BROOKLYN TO GREENWICH VILLAGE 

By Tom Finn

I was born in Brooklyn NY to an Italian American mother and an Irish / English father. My mother died when I was two years old of melanoma (skin cancer). After her passing, I ended up in an eight year succession of foster families. I was treated very cruelly and was beaten and abused, whereby I ran away when I was ten years old to find my father. He was a retired policeman who had a relationship with a woman named Marjoie Payton who had a nine year old daughter named Ann. 

When I found my father he was a very extremely sick alcoholic who abused his girlfriend and her daughter. Shortly after my arrival at his doorstep, I was returned to the foster home that I had run away from. I ran away again, and this time he decided to keep me with him and his girlfriend and her daughter. I was enrolled in school and tried to settle in to a normal family life, but because of his heavy drinking, this was impossible. So I knew that I would have to get out of there ASAP. 

When I was twelve years old I enrolled in the marching band of our local church, and was taught how to play the bugle. I learned quickly and really enjoyed playing it. I used to love getting up early in the morning and going to the church lobby to see what masses, weddings or funerals I had to do that week. I really liked it. I had to learn the mass in Latin, which was fine: I could do anything that I enjoyed; I never had a learning problem. 

Now I started Junior High School. I saw a beautiful young girl with a trumpet case going into the auditorium. I followed her in there and sat on an audience chair, she went up on the stage where she sat down with the Junior High School Orchestra. I listened and watched; I was mesmerized by her and the band. After a song ended the conductor Mr. Paul Falcone looked at me sitting alone twiddling my thumbs. He shouted to me ‘Hey You!’ I said ‘Who me?’ and he said ‘Yeah, you. What are you doing sitting there twiddling your thumbs?’ ‘I like the music,’ I said. Then he said ‘Well then, go to the office and sign up for Orchestra Class.’ I did. Right then and there I met the only person who believed in me in my life so far. I took trumpet, because of the beautiful girl, and because I already played the bugle in the church marching band. I was pretty good on bugle, so when they were teaching me trumpet, I already had a big head start. As it turned out I was the best and brightest member of the orchestra. I never got to know the pretty girl because she was a grade ahead of me. 

Because of my father’s alcoholism, I couldn’t keep up with all my classes; most of the time I had to ride the subways all night back and forth between Coney Island and Grand Concourse in the Bronx. I couldn’t go home. He was horrible, and he would get into fights with the neighbors. When the cops came, they never did anything because he was a retired cop now. He never paid the rent; there was no food in the apartment, and sometimes no electricity. Then the truant officer came, and saw him drunk off his ass. I was sleeping in a closet, hiding; I jumped out the back window and ran… I was so embarrassed by him.

My sister Barbara took me in to live with her; she was old enough to have her own place now. Mister Falcone the music teacher knew of my problems at home, so he went around to all my teachers and asked them to give me a passing grade, so that I could move on to High School. Living with my sister was good. I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show at her place. I also tried to go to High School. I started in the middle of a semester and I didn’t understand algebra and other classes that were ahead of me, so I continued to cut classes. 

While I was playing hooky from school I would go to museums, libraries, pro baseball games, the zoo, and to Coney Island. The South Brooklyn neighborhood was very tough and very violent, many times I escaped being beaten up or killed. There were constant gang wars and dangerous encounters. I even saw a man beaten to death because he was black and made the mistake of walking down the wrong street. I don’t think the police did anything about it. I knew right then and there, I hated these violent gang members and hated the whole Brooklyn scene.

I didn’t fit into the High School Band either; it was like the military. So I started to get jobs. Delivery boy was one, shoe shine boy was another. Then one day my singing group (the Castels), with whom I’d been with since 1963 got news of a place to perform at The New York World's Fair 1964-1965. We played there at the New York State Pavilion, which had an open stage for acts that registered. I loved it because now we had a back-up band. While at the Fair, I made a few friends that helped me get a job there. I got the job, and loved every minute of this type of atmosphere. 

I saw the Beatles play at Shea Stadium, which was right there, next to the Fair. When I saw them it was like the hair on my arms stood up and I got the chills. I said, Oh Man! I can’t go back to Brooklyn. I met a very trendy teeny bopper girl named Sandy Rose Puma, who took me to Greenwich Village and introduced me around to all the beatniks she knew in Washington Square Park. 

But it was when we got to the corner of MacDougal Street and West Third Street, that I saw these two guys sitting on a wooden case outside a news stand: they both had long shoulder length hair and they were both staring up in the air. They were stoned; they looked like mannequins. I stopped dead in my tracks and said to Sandy, ‘That's the way I want to be.’ So I kept going to the Village, back and forth from Brooklyn as often as I could.

BRONX ETUDES

DA BRONX 

by Tom Feher

A story has to begin some time and somewhere, and this one begins in the boroughs of New York City in the 1950s. Almost without exception, a group or a solo artist that made a reputation in the mid-to-late 1960s had to be growing up in the ‘fifties and had to be immersed in the music of that time. We find nostalgic recollections all over the internet, from people who remember with fondness the Howdy Doody show, the Cracker Jack boxes, the crinoline petticoats and sock hops, the duck tail haircuts and the double feature movies with their cartoons and newsreels. 

For me, Tom Feher, this era was experienced in the Bronx, New York. I arrived there through a series of events that began in Weehawken, New Jersey with my mother’s death from cancer when I was three years old. My then one-year old brother and I were shuttled around from relative to relative until we finally found devoted guardians in my German-American aunt and uncle – my mother’s sister Charlotte and her husband, Willem Bruno Karl Scheel – Uncle Willy.

Because we were raised as brothers to my aunt and uncle’s daughter, Antoinette (“Toni”), the kids in our neighborhood always referred to me as “Tommy Sheels,” which sometimes became “Tommy Shields.” At school, where the teachers used my proper name, “Feher” (a Romanian-Hungarian name pronounced “Fayer”), I was often referred to as “Fear,” “Fee-ber,” “Fee-her” or “Feather.” That right there should tell you something of the quality of life in the Bronx of the nineteen-fifties: it was do-it-yourself intelligence with “anything goes” as a rule of thumb.

Aside from the fact that I was almost always in trouble with the local building owners, the Catholic School superintendent down the street or the local police, my most vivid memories are of the various store owners, many of whom employed me between the ages of twelve and fifteen. There was Joseph Tischelman, the pharmacist; Walter the butcher; Ruby Siegel, the grocer; Rommer, the barber; and John Czernak, the shoemaker. I ran errands for Tischelman and Ruby, and also handled stock for them – something which later got me in trouble when I got to hanging with local addicts who convinced me to pilfer codeine-based cough syrup from the pharmacy storeroom.

My ultra-conservative aunt did her best to keep sex a secret from me; to her, it was a subject that should never be communicated to children in any way whatsoever. So I was surprised one day when I broke into her and Uncle Willy’s bedroom (I was good at breaking in) looking for money and found paperback copies of Peyton Place and Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the drawer of their night table.

I saw my first nipple when delivering groceries, when a woman reached down into the grocery box I’d put on the floor and one of her tits came into plain view. It was a scrawny tit, and had some wiry black hairs surrounding the nipple. Humble beginnings. I also got my first electric shock as a grocery delivery boy, in the building where I delivered to the family of Robert Strom, a kid who went to my elementary school – P.S. 26 – and became famous for winning the big prize on a television quiz show called The $64,000 Question. 

One day in the seven-story building, I was returning from having delivered groceries, and put my finger into a socket where there should have been an elevator “Down” button. My finger touched a wire and I took the full load of the current on that particular circuit.

I was stuck there for about a minute, absorbing the current, and I have to tell you that I enjoyed the sensation. About a year later, I accidentally placed my finger in a light bulb fixture and had a similar experience. I tell you, I really enjoy a jolt of electricity! But I have not had a desire to visit Death Row just for the thrill of it. 

Another merchant I worked for was John, the Shoemaker, a Czech immigrant with a thick accent and a sour disposition. He had a balding head with gray-white hair coming down in wisps around his ears, big gnarly hands that knew their work, wore Gepetto (as in Pinocchio) glasses and endlessly griped about the world and its people. But he took a liking to me, and even let me see some of the pin-ups in his back room. After I’d worked as a delivery boy and shoeshine lad for him for a while, he began to instruct me in how to re-sole and re-heel shoes; but he kicked the bucket (died, for those of you unfamiliar with the term) unexpectedly before I had an opportunity to excel in that area.

One thing the merchants taught me was the spirit of private enterprise and the concept of hard work and perseverance, and service to the community – the basis of true financial success. This was so different than the way the world would drift in the days of ever-increasing “get-rich-quick” schemes and government handouts. Rommer the barber was where I went for my haircuts. He was all business, but his wife – who looked a bit like the singer Keely Smith – would cordially greet customers and as kids she would give us lollipops. 

In the back room, where there was a water closet when one had to pee, there was a life-size picture of Rommer’s wife in the days when she must’ve been an actress or something. Her shiny black hair, in the picture, hung almost down to the floor! I was mesmerized by it, and asked what happened to her hair. She laughed and pointed to Rommer with his scissors snipping away, then told me she had sold it for a great deal of money.

All these merchants were located on one block, across the street from P.S. 26. They all provided learning experiences for me; but the most exciting experience of all was to be had at Skippy’s candy store! You just can’t find places like that anymore. 

Skippy’s was the last in the row of merchants – the corner store on the first block of Burnside Avenue heading downhill toward Underwood Avenue and the Harlem River. That put it right across the street from the corner of P.S. 26 where at least half of the school kids would cross on their way to and from school; it was perfectly located for commerce with the younger generation.

I imagine that practically every neighborhood in New York City must have had a place like Skippy’s; but for me this was the only one, Heaven on Earth in one ten by fifteen commercial space. How they crammed all the merchandise in there and then fifteen to twenty kids at a time is beyond me; but they did it.

There were two booths in the window, where we could select our favorite jukebox tunes. The booths were always occupied before and after school; in all the years I attended P.S. 26, I never once got to sit in a booth. The only times they weren’t occupied, like on Saturdays, I was on my way to a stickball or table hockey game at a park down on Sedgwick Avenue.

But let me tell you about Skippy’s. This was the Everything Store. Any and every item a kid ever wanted was right there in that one little box on the corner. If you were a kid in that era, you probably remember the gum ball machines; some of them were filled with little plastic charms for making charm bracelets or just collecting. The counter and glass-fronted case was filled with candy displays: M&M’s, Tootsie Rolls, Hershey’s chocolate bars, jujubes, Red Hots, 5th Avenue bar, Butterfingers, Peter Paul’s Mounds and Almond Joy, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy, sugar candy charm bracelets, candy cigarettes and candy lipstick, loose malted milk balls, Wrigley’s chewing gum… I’m only scratching the surface.

On the counter by the cash register there was a tall transparent plastic canister with a red top, inside of which you could see the stick pretzels, and a stack of soft twist pretzels coated with rock salt stacked up on a stick. Don’t forget the black and red stick licorice. There were also potato chips and bag pretzels, cheese crackers, peanuts and popcorn, and the ever-present Cracker Jacks with their alluring prize contents.

Candy items could cost anywhere from a penny to ten cents. Of course there was Seven-Up and Coca Cola in the ten-cent classic bottles, and all sorts of soda fountain specialties, the most legendary being the “egg cream” (no egg and no cream) and the Cherry Lime Rickey. Behind the counter they also served up ice cream from their freezer and would make egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches. But wait – we’re only getting started. Let’s move on from the edibles.

Skippy’s carried all the popular comic books on a rotating rack. At the time it was DC and Charlton Comics… Superman, Batman, Archie, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch, Richie Rich, and Archie and his friends. The boys could get all their favorite bubble gums cards for trading there – I had my major league baseball cards, Elvis cards, Davy Crockett cards and Zorro cards. We would either pitch or flip the baseball cards to win the ones we needed to make a full set. That’s how I got to know the great Yankees such as Mickey Mantle, “Moose” Skowron, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and others, because in all the years we lived just a few miles from Yankee Stadium, my German-born aunt and uncle never once took me to see a baseball game.

(I saw my first professional baseball game at the age of twenty-seven, as a birthday present from some friends at Cashwest Productions – the Mets versus the Pirates at Shea Stadium, a practically scoreless pitching duel between Tom Seaver and a Pirate pitcher or two whose names escape me. Oh, well.) But back to Skippy’s treasure trove. What Skippy – a Jewish giant with a black mustache named Dave – couldn’t get up on the counter or behind the counter (like tobacco products and pipes for the adult customers), he would hang from the ceiling or hook up on peg-board walls in the rear of the store. 

There were stick ball bats, baseball bats and gloves, and of course balls, including hard and softballs, black handballs, a football or two and the tennis balls and Spaulding pink balls we used for stick ball, stoop ball and punch ball games. Since the official Spaulding’s were a bit expensive for many of us, he also carried a line of cheap imitations. He had hockey sticks and hockey pucks, baseball caps and kneepads. There were paddle ball sets, jump ropes, hula hoops and flashlights, pen knives and other such artillery which I think were reserved for a certain age group, because I never got any. But I could buy one out of the great selection of cap pistols on display – I owned eleven cap guns in my time. Skippy, of course, also supplied us local cowboys with holsters and boxes of caps.

In addition to all that, because he was right across from a large public elementary school and downhill from a large Catholic parochial school, our local jack-of-all-wares kept his trading post well supplied with school items: ring binders, loose-leaf paper, gummed reinforcements, theme notebooks, pencils, pens, erasers and pencil sharpeners; staples and staplers, paper clips and paper fasteners… you name it, it was there.

What I remember as standing out most of all was the sled hanging from the ceiling. I have no idea whether anyone every bought it – whether it was the same sled that hung up there for years, or he kept replacing sleds as they were gobbled up by the hungry customers. Like I said, the store was always stuffed to the rafters with kids, but that all came to an end one day when about for the third time, a fight broke out on the corner and some kid went through the big glass window. I guess Dave got tired of boarding it up, stuffed his loot in a suitcase and retired to Florida. One day, the place just wasn’t there any more.

LIFE BEFORE THE BEATLES by Tom Feher

I was born on July 27, 1947 in Christ Lutheran Hospital in Jersey City, NJ. My dad was a merchant seaman shipping out of San Francisco and visited about twice a year at the little Weehawken apartment where my mom and I lived with her father, my grandfather. When I was two my brother hadn’t yet been born, and I was the pride of the family. My mom’s family – she included– were German immigrants, and my mom loved music; she played violin and also, from what relatives have told me, was fond of eating raw potatoes, a trait that I must have inherited from her.

In my grandfather’s apartment there was a huge walk-in closet in which I as a toddler found stacks of old 78rpm records, thick and brittle. Included there were German folk song recordings and pop songs of the era, including Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. My mom and her sister had as young German-American immigrants quickly become bobbysoxers and were devoted fans of “Der Bingle” (Bing Crosby) and skinny Frankie (Sinatra), the smooth crooner from Hoboken. 

The records were played constantly on the old turntable in the living room. German was my first language until the age of five, and I got to know the German songs by heart.

There was one song I especially liked, “Fliege Mit Mir In Die Heimat” (rough translation: “fly with me in the homeland”). I knew that song so well that my family began bragging about my talents one weekend afternoon at the local German Brauhaus in Union City. We were all seated at a big round table, and they stood me up on a chair to sing. The place went wild with enthusiasm. The bartender brought over a small blue ceramic replica of a German beer stein and handed it to me as a trophy. I knew right then and there that this was what I wanted to do with my life: stand on chairs and sing.

My mom died of cancer when I was three years old and my brother was barely one. We were shuttled around for a few years from relative to unwilling relative, but finally landed with my mother’s sister Charlotte, and her husband Willy, also German-born.

Because I had been born with asthma, elevation was a chief consideration and at age five we moved from the meadowlands of Queens to the hills of the Bronx. I grew up in the West Bronx near the corner of Burnside and University Avenues.

Life in the Bronx developed my teenage attitude and my taste in music. On the street, we had to be tough. I remember the time that a fellow named Tito and his entire family, cousins and all moved up from Puerto Rico. Tito challenged me for territorial rights to our block. We wrestled on the ground for about a half hour while my brother and one other friend cheered me on, and Tito’s numerous brothers and cousins cheered him on.

We fought to a standstill, which was good because we had a sort of truce going there; no one was the loser and we both “owned” the block. Tito and I respected each other for toughness and became good friends. Another time, a kid named Joey Fink moved into the neighborhood when his parents became superintendents of our apartment building at 1924 University Avenue. 

I guess with a name like Fink he had to expect some teasing; he had trained for boxing and won a local Golden Gloves competition and thought he was hot shit. He was also a bully. Immediately after moving in, he began to challenge me with insults and bragging about his boxing ability. Joey was taller than me but skinny and he had a red face full of boils. I mean, he was kind of a terror to look at. Most of the kids were intimidated by his swagger and his talk, and I decided it was my duty to knock him down to size so everyone could breathe easy again.

I didn’t go for boxing. The idea of pounding the bones of someone’s face with the bones of your hands was distasteful to me. But I was pretty good at something we might call street wrestling. I’d learned a few holds from watching televised wrestling matches and a few other things from an older kid up the block. So Joey puts his ungloved fists up in the air in some sort of official challenge, and I dive in close avoiding his fists and began applying a headlock. 

A few more moves like that – squeezing the breath out of him with a scissors lock, twisting his arm to the point of breaking – and I had him crying “uncle.” Now don’t get the idea that I was the King of the Hill in my neighborhood. I took my share of beatings too, but I’m not going to talk about those. That, however, was the trademark of life in the Bronx, something I put to music in a song of the late ‘70s, “Echoes of ’63.”

The one thing that held my life together in those turbulent years of growing up in the Bronx was music. I can recall back to before Elvis, when we had a family radio tuned to a station, WNEW on which William B. Williams hosted the Make Believe Ballroom. There was also in the late fifties WMGM. The broadcast music of the fifties in the tri-state area was very diverse. I heard everything from Patti Page to Elvis, from Dean Martin to the Platters, from Tommy Dorsey to Harry Belafonte. There were rockabilly and doo-wop groups, swing bands, folk singers, novelty records and Broadway show tunes; it was a truly eclectic mix.

Here’s a WMGM Radio survey – its Top 20 records of 1958:

 

  1. AT THE HOP - Danny & The Juniors (ABC-Paramount)

  2. NEL BLU DIPINTO DI BLU (Volare) - Domenico Modugno 

    (Decca)

  3. ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM - The Everly Brothers

    (Cadence)

  4. TEQUILA - The Champs (Challenge)

  5. PATRICIA - Perez Prado & His Orchestra (RCA Victor)

  6. IT’S ALL IN THE GAME - Tommy Edwards (M-G-M)

  7. LITTLE STAR - The Elegants (Apt)

  8. WITCH DOCTOR - David Seville (Liberty)

  9. TO KNOW HIM, IS TO LOVE HIM - The Teddy Bears (Dore)

 10. TOPSY (pt. 2) - Cozy Cole (Love)

 11. YAKETY YAK - The Coasters (Atco)

 12. TEA FOR TWO CHA CHA - The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

     Starring Warren Covington (Decca)

 13. TOM DOOLEY - The Kingston Trio (Capitol)

 14. BIRD DOG - The Everly Brothers (Cadence)

 15. GET A JOB - The Silhouettes (Ember)

 16. THE PURPLE PEOPLE EATER - Sheb Wooley (M-G-M)

 17. TWILIGHT TIME - The Platters (Mercury)

 18. RETURN TO ME - Dean Martin (Capitol)

 19. ROCK-IN ROBIN - Bobby Day (Class)

 20. WHO’S SORRY NOW - Connie Francis (M-G-M)

So we didn’t have music designed for specific narrow markets the way it is in 2010. One didn’t have to find his music on one specific station. Everyone’s music was on every station and we all got to know each other’s favorite music. It was an education in roots and style. 

I think that because of this broad variety in programming, I grew up with a very broad taste in music, and I think that this is what’s missing today in music programming on most stations. Fortunately we have the Internet with as broad a variety as you’ll ever find; the only thing is that younger people usually have to be directed to the older forms of musical product in order to be aware of its existence much less be able to appreciate it. As a music teacher, I try to give that kind of direction.

The first record I ever owned was bought for me when I was maybe five or six years old. It was a red plastic record, the kind they make especially for kids, and it had Gene Autry singing “Git Along Little Dogies” on one side and “Red River Valley” on the other side. I loved those songs and I still sing them every once and a while to my music classes or just to entertain myself or my family. Around the same time I also had a yellow plastic record of Popeye singing “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” on one side and a recording of “Blow the Man Down” on the other side.

The other record I remember from that era was “The Teddy Bears Picnic” by Bing Crosby. My aunt was just ga-ga over Bing, and I got to know and appreciate a lot of his recordings Like “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral,” “Don't Fence Me In” (with the Andrews Sisters) “Swinging On A Star,” “True Love” (with Grace Kelly) and “Easter Parade.”

Another institution impressed upon me by my aunt Charlotte was the Lawrence Welk television show which she would have us watching religiously every weekend – Saturday night I think it was. Her favorite was Myron Floren and his accordion – I thought he must’ve been German and looked somewhat like my uncle Kurt – and the Lennon Sisters with their incredibly smooth harmony. The waltz and polka stuff was a far cry from the rock ‘n’ roll that I was destined to absorb, but it had its place in my musical vocabulary. And there was one Lennon sister that sent me to heaven every time I looked at her face.

Meanwhile, like every other kid in the English-speaking world I was also grooving on Elvis. One of the first Elvis records I remember owning was “Any Way You Want Me,” on 78 rpm. I wasn’t a hopelessly devoted Elvis fan, but certain of his records really got to me. There were also the Elvis bubble gum cards which to me were almost as much fun as the records. 

The first record I ever bought with my own money was a birthday gift for my sister. She was in fact a cousin – my aunt’s daughter, Antoinette, but because we were brought up in the same family, Toni became my sister. The record I bought for her was one she just loved to death: “To Know Him Is To Love Him” by the Teddy Bears. Little did I know at the time that the songwriter and one of the members of the Teddy Bears was Bronx boy Phil Spector who would go on to become one of the legends of the popular music business.

Two other Bronx boys got my undying loyalty in the Fifties: Bobby Darin and Dion DiMucci. Both of these guys had class through their entire careers, and even today their musical legacy carries weight. Bobby Darin was the heir apparent to the Sinatra legacy, and it’s a shame we lost him so early in life. Besides being a great performer, he was a songwriter who produced some very fine and memorable material: “Eighteen Yellow Roses,” “Things,” and a beautiful ballad recorded during the “British Invasion” by Gerry and the Pacemakers, “I’ll Be There.”

Dion – I can’t say enough in praise of him. He made it cool to come up from the Bronx streets. He was a great doo-wopper and later a great solo artist. I went to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church one or two blocks down from Belmont Avenue, and I remember going over there to see if I could spot the stoop on which they might have practiced their harmonies. I mean, these guys were Bronx royalty as far as my generation was concerned.

Dion put out an album Yo Frankie in 1989, this album should have been #1 for a year. Dion really rocks on that one; it’s a classic, produced by British rocker Dave Edmunds with guest appearances by Paul Simon, Lou Reed,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.d._lang" \o "K.d. lang" k.d. lang,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_Smith" \o "Patti Smith" Patti Smith and  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Adams" \o "Bryan Adams" Bryan Adams. A single release from the album “And the Night Stood Still,” written by the phenomenal Diane Warren, made it to #75 on the U.S. charts which only goes to show how soon the industry forgets. This song should have been played every half hour on the hour for ten months as soon as it was released. 

Fortunately for lovers of his music, many Dion live performances have been preserved and posted on You Tube, including a UK tour featuring Yo Frankie material with guitarist Steve Cropper in 1990 and a 2004 Atlantic City gig in which you can hear for yourself how strong Dion’s voice is after all those decades. Of course he was honored by being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but really – there should be a special branch of the Hall of Fame in the Bronx on Belmont Avenue. In my opinion.

When I was in my teens, a family named Kraskian moved into the apartment building two doors down from me. It was actually a widowed mother and her three sons, Alan, Gene and Kenny Kraskian. Gene was something of a loner and had a job, so we didn’t see much of him. Kenny, the youngest, was really good friends with my brother Leo and a kid from across the street, Chucky; the three of them were into body building and would lift weights in the Kraskians’ basement apartment.

I wrote about it in a song, in the late ‘70s:

‘How do you think we spent the bulk of our free time

When I was flushing out my early teens?

Sittin’ around like toads in Alan’s apartment,

Reading tit ‘n’ muscle magazines…

A little bit o’ that, and a little bit o’ this:

Boy, we sure did know just how t’ clench our fists;

Hot summer afternoons lookin’ outta

Those filthy basement window screens.’

Alan was the oldest of the three, and he was somewhat of a musical inspiration to me. He was gone on rockabilly. His all-time hero was Gene Vincent. He was constantly combing his hair back in the fifties’ manner, and he walked with a dramatic swagger. Alan introduced me to “Be-Bop a Lula,” and to the early recordings of Elvis and Johnny Cash, like “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” and “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” I ate that stuff up.

There was a black fellow named Earl who lived a few blocks away, also in a basement apartment. His parents were superintending the building, and he had set himself up a little practice room under the heat pipes near the boiler where he would do his renditions of Elvis songs. Imagine that – there was Elvis interpreting black folks’ music for white kids, and with Earl it was coming back the other way.

I remember standing in front of the mirror for hours, as a ten year old, trying in vain to get my hair to stand up in a pompadour like Elvis. My brother could do it, for some reason. We used Brylcreem in those days, but it didn’t do me any good and I couldn’t stand the greasy consistency so I later changed to Vitalis. But I couldn’t get that hair to stand up; it would always flop down on me. 

In October 1962, I was fifteen. The Beach Boys went into the Top 20 with “Surfin’ Safari.” Dennis Wilson’s sandy hair flopping down over his face changed things quite a lot for me. I could look people in the eye without flinching. The Beach Boys were my heroes. And then came the Beatles! Suddenly, there was something to BE. And a pompadour wasn’t required, not at all. 

A LONG ISLAND ETUDE by Joan (Padney) Aupperlee

I was born in Van Nuys, California. I lived there until I was about four and then moved to Massapequa, New York on Long Island. Growing up in Massapequa was great. To me it was like living in the country.  There were several open lots on the block that were thickly wooded.  My brother and I were always in the woods climbing trees, and playing.  He built a tree fort (strictly for boys) but I would climb up and poke my head in when he wasn’t around.

  I had lots of friends.  We would all gather after school and walk into town (about seven blocks away) and go to the ice cream store, sweet shop, record shop or library.  Everyone hung out in town.  The record store was great because you could go in and say you might be interested in buying a record and you could play all your favorite records and walk out without buying anything.   The sweet shop had a juke box and that was really heavenly….the music would blast out and take you away.

The first time I heard the Beatles, my dad was driving me someplace….don’t remember where, but this was 1964 and that music was like nothing I had ever heard before. The sound and the harmonies were unbelievable.  I immediately was transfixed and in love. I went to school the next day and went across the street to the Bar Harbor Record Store and bought ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’  I stared at that picture sleeve and practically wore holes in it… thought Paul was the cutest so he became my favorite… until I saw them that summer at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium.  Once I saw John in person, I fell ultimately head over heels, and still am in love with him till this day.

A MANHATTAN ETUDE 

GROWING UP IN HELL’S KITCHEN by Fred Adams

It was the end of one era and the beginning of a new generation. There were still vegetable vendors that would clop down the street in their horse drawn wagons shouting “vege-tables!” in an Italian accent out of central casting. We’d find a way to attach ourselves to the back of the wagon and ride until the driver turned around, saw us and threatened us with his whip. It was a game that happened like clockwork every Saturday. As soon as we jumped off, another group of kids would jump on. This happened over and over until the wagon reached the end of the block and hit busy Ninth Avenue. 

We wouldn’t think of riding on the back of the wagon on a busy avenue. We all knew that if the local beat cop saw you he would grab you, drag you home to tell your parents that you “had almost gotten run over” and that if he ever caught you doing it again, he’d “take you to jail.” That never stopped the bigger kids. They were the “tough guys” that would ride the wagon and steal whatever they could grab. I think that the veggie man was a little smarter than the thieves. All they ever grabbed were rotten tomatoes and the black bananas he had placed in strategic wooden crates and baskets. 

  There was always something to do. We would pitch pennies or play “bottle caps” or marbles. We’d flip baseball cards, play stoop ball or spin tops. On hot summer days we would wait for the ice truck to deliver ice to the small restaurants or maybe an apartment on a high floor. We would attack that truck like ants on a piece of sugar picking up the pieces of slippery, chipped ice and run away with a prize as precious as any ice cream cone. When we got bored with the same routine, we’d challenge each other to a race around the block. I wish I had one tenth the energy I had then. 

From what I’ve been told and from the research I’ve done regarding the creased, yellowed black and white photos that survived through the years, I grew up living within a fifteen block radius from where I was born. I don’t remember my parents being around too much. I know my father was working a full time job and then going to school in the evening on the GI Bill. My mother worked during the day so I was raised by my grandparents. During those early years we made about four major moves. The first was moving from a small two room apartment on Fiftieth Street to a larger two room apartment on Forty-Ninth Street. 

I think we spent a short time on Forty-Eighth Street too; but it didn’t matter much because all the streets in the neighborhood pretty much looked and smelled the same. There was always a cabbage smell from the Irish and German families, or garlic from the Italian families, or even more garlic from the Latin families. We didn’t need television. There was always some type of drama going on in the apartment building. You’d have kids screaming running up and down the stairs, parents yelling at their kids, arguments between husbands and wives, people talking on the public telephone in the hall or housewives leaving their apartment doors open while they cooked so that they could talk to the housewife next door while she cooked. 

Add to the mixture of all the diverse sounds, radios playing the pop hits of the day. The earliest songs that I remember are “Hey Good Lookin,” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” It was a little later that I discovered records. I remember my dad watching over me while I examined his precious jazz record collection. I was fascinated by the fact that these big, black discs with colorful labels and words that I couldn’t read made music when put on the “bik-tor-ola.” 

I must’ve been about five when we made the “big” move. We were approved by the city to move into the brand new development on the West Side on Sixtieth Street, “The Projects.” Man, that was uptown! We had an elevator; I had my own room; the bathroom was in the apartment and not down the hall, and the lights worked! George Jefferson couldn’t have had it any better. But all good things come to an end. I don’t know if it was the fact that my dad started making too much money or that our new dream home fell prey to the druggies and gangs that ruin everything they touch. Or maybe it was that my Dad’s car was vandalized or it could’ve been the urine smell in the elevator. Maybe it was just time to move. 

From about the age of seven, I spent my summer vacations in a small town a few miles from the Canadian border in upstate New York, with my dad’s sisters and their families in a “Beaver Cleaver” setting. There was one movie theater that we’d line up for every Saturday morning for a twenty five cent matinee. The rest of the time my cousins and I would play baseball, go bike riding or go fishing. We’d play all day only to take a break for lunch and then go back out until we’d be called in for dinner. 

This was a place where people didn’t lock their doors and smiled at each other. What a difference from the way I had been raised! Steaming cement sidewalks were replaced by cool grass. The tall tenements were replaced by tall trees and the relief from a slight breeze of a small electric fan was replaced by the cool breeze coming off of a huge seemingly endless lake. My beach was no longer the cement sidewalk and the stolen water from a fire hydrant, but a real honest to goodness sandy lakefront beach. These “escape from New York” summers went on from my grade school years and through my early junior high years. But when I try to recall certain moments, all the summers blend together except for my last. 

  I was laying there laying there on a damp towel on the warm sand listening to Little Eva while watching the girls walk by and thinking about my friends in the city and what new adventures going to high school would bring. I didn’t know it but this was the last summer that I’d spend in Plattsburgh as a kid. 

When I got back to the city, my mother had moved to Ninth Avenue between Forty-Seventh and Forty-Eighth streets. My dad was living in a small hotel. They had started divorce proceedings. That fall when I got back to the city I realized that the neighborhood was getting uglier and dirtier. Maybe it had always been that way. Maybe I was just “growing up.”

PAPER CHASE: 

TRACKING DOWN LEFT BANKE SONGWRITER ROYALTIES 

by Tom Feher

March 31, 2011: First contact with Tim Livingston of Sundazed concerning upcoming releases. He had asked me for the correct spelling of “Schierhorst” for the liner notes. I asked him about the release date.

Hey Tom, Good to hear from you. I'll keep you in the loop as the releases unfold. These albums were always among our most requested titles for issue, and we’ve always been big fans of the group and those albums. Really looking forward to it.

Best regards, Tim Livingston / Sundazed Music

July 16, 2011: I’d missed the June release date, but gathered from something I’d seen that the product was “on the counter.” Being the writer or co-writer of songs on both albums, I contact Tim for copies of the releases. HYPERLINK "https://blu168.mail.live.com/mail/" \o "" 

Tim, somehow I missed the re-issue date on the Left Banke CDs. Can you arrange to have me sent a copy of each album? 

July 21, 2011: CDs arrived from Sundazed. I e-mail Tim to thank them, and ask this question: 

Who do I get in touch with at Sundazed regarding an agreement on the mechanical royalties?

July 22, 2011: Tim informs me: 

Glad you got them ok. Our licensing deal with Universal Music is a "finished goods" deal, meaning they do the manufacturing of the titles and also they are responsible to pay all mechanicals and artist royalties on their end. You need to contact them for that. Best regards, Tim Livingston

I then ask him: 

Do you have a contact name and/or e-mail or phone number at Universal? 

Tim: I will find out for you.

August 1, 2011: 

Tim says, Have not forgotten making some calls to find out who you should speak to. Me: Thanks. It shouldn't be too difficult - we need to contact Universal's publishing arm and get something like a copyright administrator on the line. I did it back in 1992 when the Mercury/Polygram Left Banke compilation came out.

August 2, 2011, Tim: 

Yes, I know but I wanted to get you a name rather than send you to the switchboard. I should have today. 

Tim, later: I was told you should start here:  HYPERLINK "mailto:Gene.Zacharewicz@umusic.com" Gene.Zacharewicz@umusic.com 

AND SO BEGAN THE MERRY CHASE. I’m pretty sure I sent out a query immediately, but found the message in my saved “Drafts” folder and resent it on August 9, 2011 to Gene Zacharewicz at Universal Music: 

Gene, your e-address was forwarded to me by Tim Livingston at Sundazed Music. I am the co-author of three songs on the first Left Banke album, co-author of two songs on the second Left Banke album and the sole author of three songs on the second Left Banke album, recently re-issued through Sundazed.   co-author on Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina"Barterers and Their Wives""Her Evening Gown""What Do You Know" on Left Banke Too"Desirée" (co-author)"In The Morning Light" (co-author)"Goodbye Holly" (sole author)"Sing, Little Bird, Sing" (sole author)"Bryant Hotel" (sole author) My co-publishers on the sole-authorship songs are no longer in business, and the publishing has reverted to me. I contacted Tim querying arrangements with writers/publishers on mechanical royalties for these tracks. He informed me that admistrative publishing functions are being handled through Universal and on my request supplied me with your name. I'd like to know what arrangements Universal would like to make for mechanical royalties derived from sales of these re-issues. Please let me know what you need from me in terms of contact information, etc. 

Yours Truly, Tom Feher

Gene replied, same day:

Tom, I’ve added Scott Ravine who is our Senior Director of Licensing at UME.  We are responsible for paying both the artist and mechanical royalties for this reissue release.  I imagine Scott will forward you to the person responsible for paying the mechanicals for this project.  If you don’t hear anything in a few weeks please let me know. 

Gene Zacharewicz / UME

August 10, 2011: Gene informed me:  

Scott forwarded to Mark Mooney who normally handles all of our mechanical licenses.  I noticed he didn’t copy you, and so I’m just giving you an update.

Me: much appreciated.

This came later, from Mark Mooney:

Hi Tom,

We confirmed and licensed your writer shares on behalf of EMI and Bug Music through the Harry Fox Agency as shown below: 

 

co-author on Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina"Barterers and Their Wives" – Bug Music"Her Evening Gown" – Bug Music"What Do You Know" – Bug Music on Left Banke Too"Desirée" (co-author) – Bug Music"In The Morning Light" (co-author) – Bug Music"Goodbye Holly" (sole author) – EMI Unart Catalog, Inc."Sing, Little Bird, Sing" (sole author) – EMI Unart Catalog, Inc."Bryant Hotel" (sole author) – EMI Unart Catalog, Inc.

 

from the BMI website:

ORANGE SKIES MUSIC

Phone:  (323) 969-0988

Fax:  (323) 969-0968

Contact: BUG MUSIC

BUGINFO@BUGMUSIC.COM 

 

EMI UNART CATALOG INC

Phone:  (212) 492-1200

Contact:

75 NINTH AVENUE 4TH FLOOR

NEW YORK, NY 10011

http://www.emimusicpub.com

We recently processed the payments to HFA for 2nd quarter.

Let me know if you need any further information.Thanks, Mark Mooney

A copy went to Mona Rudolph. Same day, I sent: 

Thanks, Mark. If you have specific names to contact at either of these publishers and even at the HFA, I would appreciate it. Tom

This came back:

Hi Tom,

 

Per your request, I’ve attached the contact for EMI & Bug…

EMI – Linda Santiago –  HYPERLINK "mailto:Lsantiago@emimusicpub.com" Lsantiago@emimusicpub.com

Bug – James Knerr –  HYPERLINK "mailto:Jknerr@bugmusic.com" Jknerr@bugmusic.com

Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Mona Rudolph

Universal Music Group / Copyright Royalties

6301 Owensmouth Avenue, 6th Floor / Woodland Hills, CA 91367

Same day, I contacted James Knerr:

James (or Jim, depending on your preference), I'm contacting you with regard to mechanical royalties that may arise from the recent re-issue on Sundazed Music of the two Left Banke albums originally released in the late '60s. I am the co-author of three songs on the first Left Banke album, co-author of two songs on the second Left Banke album and the sole author of three songs on the second Left Banke album. My participation in these copyrights is under the name "Tom Feher." (I then gave song and album information as above).

    I had a question regarding how payment of mechanicals was to be made. Sundazed referred me to Universal, and Universal referred me to you. Bug Music had previously made payments to me when the Left Banke CD compilation There's Gonna Be A Storm was released on Mercury/Polygtram in 1992. However, I want to submit my current contact information. I was told that the final three songs on the list, of which I am the sole author, are now licensed through EMI catalog, which I do not think was the case on the 1992 release. Any communication on this matter will be appreciated.

 

Sincerely, Thomas L. Feher / pka Tom Feher, Tom Fair

August 15, 2011: Four days later.

Hi Tom, 

I’m going to forward this along to our Royalties Dept. who may be able to assist you better. Thanks, JJ

James R. Knerr, Jr.

At that point, I must have gotten busy with other projects because nothing occurred for several months. December 29, 2011: This was after the Left Banke performance at St. Patrick’s Basilica, and it seem that Marg Finn had stepped in as group manager at this point. I e-mailed Tom Finn: 

Finn, have you had any information on how the Sundazed re-issues are selling? Have you been getting statements from Universal? TFe   copy: LB Management (Marg Finn)

Finn Replied: 

Feher, Yeah, Marg, has been on it. She just asked for a year end summary. It's probably something like 30,000 to 35,000 copies of all. Either CD's or Vinyl. You can ask her. I think you should be in touch with her anyway because she's our best hope to get a book deal. Something tells me we're not looking at this the right way. But be Nice. Her friend Holly Cara-Price will be the one that get's this book placed. I just know it. 

TFi

I replied to Finn: 

That's good, that Marg is on it. She e-mailed me back too. Just between me and you, my nickname for her is The Bulldog. I picture her sinking her teeth into the butts of those corporate people and biting down hard until they cry "Uncle!" and cough up the dough. Then she picks up the sack of loot in her jaws and trots back to us, and drops the $hinola at our feet. I just keep my fingers crossed that she doesn't decide to bite us too and keep the loot to herself. TFe

Marg had replied: 

Just requested end of year statements from Sundazed yesterday. Will let you know what I receive. Happy and healthy New YearMarg.

I replied to Marg: 

I'm glad you're on top of it. Basically I hate the business end although I often do it out of necessity and because I like to eat. Last year I went through a daisy chain of names and e-mails to get to the right person, which I'm not sure I got because I haven't yet been sent a statement. The way I understand it is that Sundazed is not the one that does the accounting and issuing of royalties - that's handle by Universal. If you want the names and e-mail addresses I can supply them, and also the string of communications... it will take me some time but I can find them. TFe

Marg replied:

Ha! Sure send me what you have by email/fax or copy and mail. 

I then sent her the entire time track of e-mails with publishing personnel as listed above.

NOW… note: four months go by, and nothing whatsoever happens without me nudging various individuals. I e-mail Marg on May 10, 2012:

Marg, it's been what, a year? And I haven't seen a single statement from Sundazed or anyone else on the LB re-releases sales figures. Have you been on top of this? T Feher

Marg replies:

The only thing I am involved with are Artist Royalties. We have no publishing on the first one, and on the second album, Purple Flower has four songs. I think Tom got a check last year for that. Don't know about your stuff and who has your publishing. Hope all is well with you.

Marg

As far as I knew, based on my 1992 contract with PolyGram:

I'm the publisher on my stuff. All I want to find out from you is: have there been enough sales to make it worth my while to track down the publishing royalties? If they've only sold a few hundred CDs it might not be worth the trouble, at least for now. Feher

Marg: Yes it is worth while. We have sold over 16K Units total both albums as of end 2011.

Me: Thanks - I shall go fishing. TFe

The same day, I sent out this e-mail to Linda Santiago, Mark Mooney, James Knerr, Mona Rudolph, and Gene Zacharewicz:

Please pardon the gang e-mail, but the last time I inquired about this I went on a daisy chain that wound up in a dead end and got me lots of names and addresses and a few cordial greetings but no tangible results.

     The Left Banke’s manager informs me that the Sundazed 2011 re-issues of the two Left Banke albums have sold somewhere in the vicinity of fourteen thousand units. As primary publisher and/or writer or co-writer of eight songs included on these two CDs I have not yet received a communication, statement or mechanical royalties with regard to this product.

      Please respond with one or more of the above (communication, statement, royalties) – preferably all three. Sincerely, Thomas L. Feher (pka Tom Fair)

The following reply came from Mark Mooney:

Hi Tom, We licensed and paid your shares for both releases through HFA.  I have cc’d Lisa Robinson on this email to further help provide you with statement and payment information. Thanks, Mark Mooney

Lisa Robinson at the Harry Fox Agency turned out to be the most communicative and helpful. When she got involved, things picked up. I received this communication from her:

Hello Tom, So I can direct your inquiry to the correct agent in our Client Services Department, please confirm the name of your HFA publisher. Thank you.

 

Lisa J. Robinson / Manager, Income Tracking / HFA

I replied thusly:

Hello, Lisa:     I am going to coin a new term for this situation and call it a "paperwork pretzel." Here is the pertinent data to the best of my knowledge. (I supplied album and song information as above).    The co-writes with M. Brown were originally under either Twin-Tone Music, Minuet Music or Apricot Music. My co-publishers on the sole-authorship songs - Rubott Music - are no longer in business, and their publishing percentage has reverted to me. Unart Music was also involved in that publishing arrangement; I tried contacting them but could find no access.     Tim Livingston at Sundazed informed me that publishing was being administered by Universal, and referred me to Gene Zacharewicz. The communication went through two or more people at Universal and finally I was given these names by Mona Rudolph: Linda Santiago at EMI and James Knerr at Bug Music. If you can make out from all this who and what are the publishers of record, you should get a medal. Thanks for looking into it. Tom Feher  

Lisa replied to this:

Hi Tom, Can you kindly give me a call?  This may translate better by phone.

I am here today until 5pm EST and tomorrow, here beginning at 8:30am.

Thank you.

I called, and we spoke. Now, May 11, 2012:

Hi, Lisa - nice speaking with you yesterday. Reminder: you were going to get me the names of those people to contact at EMI and Bug Music. Tom

Lisa replied:

Hi Tom, It was a pleasure speaking to you, too. Thank you for the reminder. I have since learned that the Global Services Dept at EMIMP and the Administration Dept at Bug (soon to be BMG) handles inquiries concerning writer payments. At Bug, please contact Maite Bursic at EMIMP, I am waiting to get the contact name which I should have before EOB on Monday. I prefer to get you a name to avoid further delay in the handling of your inquiry. Thank you and will contact you shortly.

Regards, Lisa

“EMIMP” would be EMI Music Publishing. A week went by. 

Me to Lisa, May 17, 2012: Lisa, have you been able to get that contact name at EMIMP? Tom  Lisa: Dear Tom, Please try Matthew Barletta. Regards, Lisa

To Maite Bursic at Bug/Emi:

Hello, Maite: Your name was given to me by Lisa Robinson at the Harry Fox Agency. I have been trying to track down my royalties on last year's CD re-release of two albums on the Sundazed label. 

I also queried Lisa about something that had been puzzling me. After all these years, I was still in the dark about some aspects of music administration:

Thanks. Now, what I'm trying to figure out is this: I just read a message from Mark Mooney at Universal that I'll paste for you here.

 

Lisa: Hi Tom, We licensed and paid your shares for both releases through HFA.  I have cc’d Lisa Robinson on this email to further help provide you with statement and payment information.

 Me: He says Universal paid for my shares through HFA - so where is that money? Do they send it to HFA and then HFA sends it to me? Or does HFA just monitor the process and I'm supposed to collect from these other people you're sending me to? Then he says you will help me with statement information. Do actually have figures on sales and royalties available to you and thus to me? I know there is probably not a whole lot of dough involved, but y'know a gallon of gas here, a latte there... Best, Tom

Lisa replied: Hello Tom, HFA pays the publishers who then in turn pay their songwriters. I have already confirmed that these royalties were reported by HFA to the publishers as per Mark’s email. At this point, EMI and Bug/BMG should be able to advise of the writers’ payment information including statements. 

Regards, Lisa

Me: Thanks, Lisa. I never quite understood how this works; I never had any direct contact with the HFA before although I had read up on it a bit. And the publishing on these particular tunes has a long and twisted history. Tom

Lisa Robinson: Tom, It is my pleasure.  Keep me posted on how it works out.

Regards, Lisa

I also sent an e-mail to Matthew Barletta:

Matthew, Your name was given to me by Lisa Robinson at the Harry Fox Agency. I have been trying to track down my royalties on last year's CD re-release of two albums on the Sundazed label. (gave him album and song information). Some of these tunes are under EMI publishing. I'm pretty sure the three highlighted sole author tunes were handled by Bug Music, which I understand is now under BMG. But the co-writes from what Lisa tells me are now under EMI. I'd appreciate your help in sorting this out and getting me my accounting and royalties. My information from the Left Banke's management is that 14,000 units have been sold to date. Tom Feher

Maite Bursic got back to me the same day, then sent me request for information: Hi Tom, Thanks for your email. We will look into this inquiry and get back to you shortly. Sincerely, Maite

Hi Tom, Please fill out the attached, sign and return back to me via email.

It seems that we do not have an address for you in the BUG system. Any other questions, please let me know. Thanks, 

Maite Bursic / Manager, Audio Visual Rights 

May 23, 2012, I sent the following message to Matthew Barletta EMI music publishing, and Maite Bursic BMG-Chrysalis, with a copy to Lisa Robinson at Harry Fox Agency:

Hello, folks. You recall, I inquired about this last week. From what I've been told, the Left Banke CDs re-issued on the Sundazed label have sold a combined 14,000 units; that's from the Left Banke management, who tells me that the artists have received their royalties. Not any great amount, but it's income. HFA informs me payment has been sent to the publishers, the publishers being EMI and BMG-Chrysalis. Sales date back to last year - what's holding up an accounting? Do you have my writer's percentages and current address? Do you need any additional information from me?    Sincerely, Tom Feher (Thomas L. Feher pka Tom Fair) 

Maite Bursic: Hi Tom, I sent you a W9 form to fill out last week. Please fill out an send back to me. Thanks, Maite

Me: I haven't received it. What is the current address you have for me? TomBetter yet, here is my current address. If necessary, please correct the address in your files.

May 24, 2012: Matthew Barletta, or Maryann Barletta, who was never introduced to me, sent me the following:

Tom: Attached please find a copy of a W-9 that needs to be completed and returned to me at your earliest convenience.  If you have any questions please let me know. Kind regards, Maryann M. Barletta

June 13, 2012: I sent queries to both publishing contacts:

I printed the W-9, entered the information and sent it by postal mail, a week or more ago. Have you received it? T. Feher

Maite responded same day: 

Tom, Thanks. I received your information and we have updated our records. I will follow up with royalties On when you can expect your next statement. Maite

June 14, 2012: Barletta responded the following day.

Good afternoon Tom: I did receive the completed W-9 and I have updated our records.  I am in the process of gathering previous period statements and will forward them shortly. Kind regards, Maryann M. Barletta

July 8, 2012: I sent identical queries to both publishing entities. Notice – at this point I am not asking for royalties, only an accounting. I want to know how much money they have received in my behalf. I had personally figured it could be anywhere between fifty and five hundred dollars… just a guess. At this point I wasn’t so interested in the money as I was in getting them to be responsible music publishing executives.

Hello. It's now over one year since the Sundazed re-issues were released, several months since I initiated this inquiry, and three weeks since this last exchange of information. I am still waiting for an accounting. What's up? 

Tom Feher

July 9, 2012 – response from Maite Bursic at BMG-Chrysalis:

Dear Tom, Your statement is due August 30. Thanks, Maite

August 8, 2012 – the mailbox service I had been using went out of business. I immediately notified both publishers to send statements to my home address from thereon out. Maite required a new W-9 to be filled out with my updated address information. I complied with her request.

September 7, 2012, to Barletta at EMI:

I haven't received any reply to my last two e-mails, so I'm wondering if they have arrived and been read at your end. As songwriter of several songs on the Left Banke CD releases on the Sundazed label, I have been asking for over three months to see a royalty statement; when is this going to arrive? Tom Feher

Reply:

Mr. Feher: We received the information you forwarded and have updated our files.  Please accept our apologies for not corresponding sooner. We are currently in the process of reporting royalty income for the period ending June 30th, please note that you will be receiving your statement and payment, if due, will be mailed on October 1st. I will be on vacation next week but upon my return I will gather previous royalty statements and forward them via email. Thank you for your patience and again our apologies. 

Kind regards, Maryann M. Barletta / Client Services SpecialistGlobal Services, EMI Music Publishing

September 9, 2012, from me to Maite Bursic: 

Maite, 1) Did you get the W-9 form with my new address in zip 91001? 2) Did royalty statements go out on August 30th? 

Maite’s response: 

Tom, Your statement was mailed out on 8/31. Maite

September 9, 2012, from me: 

Maite, it's been ten business days since 8/31 and I still haven't seen the statement. Can you check and find out if they used my new address over in Accounts? Thanks, Tom

October 3, 2012, from me to Maite: 

Re: Sundazed Left Banke re-issuesMaite, I sent you an e-mail about the statement just before you were out for a week, so now another week or more has gone by, and the statement which you informed me went out on August 31st has still not appeared in my mail. What can be done about this? The product on which the royalties are based began selling in Spring 2011 - this is an awful long delay. Tom Feher

October 11, 2012: I e-mailed my contact at the Harry Fox Agency, Lisa Robinson.

     Lisa, you’ve been really helpful in getting me to specific parties at Bug-EMI and BMG Chrysalis publishing in regard to the Left Banke re-issue royalties. However, I have to tell you that I have no success in obtaining an accounting from either company. One told me statements were going out on August 31st and the other on October 1st and I have not seen a scrap of paper from either one. Are you in a position to furnish me with information as to the movement of funds from Sundazed through HFA to these companies? 

     I know we're probably talking about a small sum, but it's the principal of the thing - every business enterprise that has benefitted from the product, from the label to the performers and publishers owe it to the existence of the songs, and the songwriter(s)' rights should be respected. The product has been selling since Spring 2011.   Sincerely, Tom Feher

October 16, 2012, from Lisa Robinson. Her e-mail was copied to a Walter Tucker at HFA, whose function is unknown to me, but I had hoped it was a higher up who could demonstrate some clout in this matter:

Hello Tom, Since receiving the below, HFA contacted both BMG and EMIMP. 

I understand Maite from BMG has advised that the mailed statements were returned. You have likely since provided her with the correct address.

     Regarding EMIMP, as you know there have been major staff changes.  Matt Barletta who was originally researching is no longer with the publisher. However, I have since contacted Robert Briggs there. He is going to look into and either he or someone on his team will contact you. Thank you. Lisa J. Robinson

Maite’s response (also October 16) to mine of October 3rd:

Hi Tom, Just wanted to touch base and let you know I’ve followed up with our Royalties Dept. It seems we had some issues with returned mail. It could be that your statement was returned to us. Keep you posted.

Best, Maite Bursic / Manager, Audio Visual Rights

October 22, 2012, from me to Maite Bursic: 

Dear Maite, royalty statement and check were received by me on Monday 10/22. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. Tom Feher

To Lisa Robinson: Lisa, the statement and royalty check from BMG have finally arrived; thank you so much for the assistance. I have not heard anything from Robert Briggs or anyone else at EMIMP. Tom Feher

From Lisa Robinson: Dear Tom, You are more than welcome. Glad to hear that this is halfway resolved. I would suggest you follow up with Robert; please remind him you reached out to me first. Regards, Lisa

I wasn’t able to find Robert Briggs’ e-mail address, contacted Lisa again and she sent it to me.

November 8, 2012, to Lisa once again:

     Lisa, I know you've been having some extreme weather conditions in NYC, but I'm hoping all is well with you and you are on the job despite all. This business with EMI is beginning to stretch out even longer than the one with BMG etc. and in this case, I'm not even getting an acknowledgement that they have received my e-mails. Maybe I should contact someone high up on the executive ladder? Would you know who can be responsible for this?   Your help always appreciated, Tom Feher

Reply from Lisa Robinson:

Unfortunately, I do not know the chain of command there.  Due to the sale of EMIMP to Sony ATV, there have been many staff changes. Most recently EMI moved offices which may explain the delay in response. If Robert is not replying by email, I would suggest giving him a call. The main number is 212-492-1200. 

Regards, Lisa

I called and got voicemail and no response. 

November 19, 2012, to Robert Briggs:

Robert, this is the third or fourth time I'm trying to contact you by e-mail, on the information from HFA that you are now the person to contact concerning royalty statements for my copyrights on the re-release of the album Left Banke Too on Sundazed last year. Are you getting these e-mails? Are you reading them? Do you have the details? Time is stretching out on this since I was informed in the summer that statements were scheduled to go out on October 1st. Tom Feher 626-319-9289

December 6, 2012, from Robert Briggs: Hi Tom, A copy of your Jan – June 2012 statement is attached. We are looking into if there is any income collectable for the release you mention below. Best, Robert

December 6, 2012, from me to Robert Briggs. I was beginning to get a bit sarcastic (entirely premeditated):

Top of Form

Nice to hear from you. Has SONY/ATV swallowed up EMI? I never read the trades anymore, but when I went out to Santa Monica to drop in on the EMI offices there, I discovered they'd moved to the SONY building in Century City.

    Looking into this pdf, I note several things. First, the document is dated October 1, and is addressed to me at this address; however, I did not receive said Royalty Statement Pack at this address at any time since October 1st. There also seems to be a royalty balance of $644.38 which obviously I did not receive either. And there is no itemized accounting of where such royalties derived. I am not interested in direct electronic payments on these copyrights; any royalties owed me should be sent by check to this address; I like to support the U.S. Postal Service.

   Now, here is the background on this account: I am a songwriter on nine songs recorded by the Left Banke in the 1960s and re-issued on the Sundazed label in Spring of 2011. Six of those nine are co-writes which in recent times have fallen under the administration of BMG/Chrysalis. After much delay, BMG paid me on those copyrights, about six weeks ago.

    The other three are songs in which I am sole author/composer and are included in the second Left Banke album Left Banke Too. Titles: "Goodbye Holly," "Sing, Little Bird Sing" and "Bryant Hotel." According to the Harry Fox Agency, these are now administered by EMIMI, unless the property has changed hands again. And also, according to HFA, monies were collected from Sundazed 

quite some time ago and distributed to both current copyright administration firms.

    Now, to the point: I am quite aware that these are relatively small sums. I make my living as a music teacher; if I had to depend on song royalties for income I'd have kicked the bucket thirty years ago. But there is a principle involved here: publishing companies owe their existence to the productivity of songwriters both large and small, and the songwriter needs to be respected and compensated for his work that makes work possible for others. And a songwriter shouldn't have to nag the publisher month after month. So I'd really appreciate a complete and full accounting, and whatever royalty payments may be due on all monies received from the label through the Harry Fox Agency, from first date of sale. Thank you. 

      Tom Feher (pka Tom Fair)

 

December 13, 2012, one week later, from Robert Briggs:

Hi Tom, The -644.38 on the statement is not a royalty amount owed. It is the unrecouped balanced which our records indicate is on your account. As I indicated below, we are looking into any income collectable for this album. If you have any questions in the interim, feel free to let me know. Best, Robert

 

From me:

Sure. Tell me how it is that I owe your company money. Send me accounting details, specifics. As far as I know, I have not purchased anything from EMI nor has it advanced me anything. HFA forwarded payments from Sundazed sales something like six months ago, maybe more. I'm finding it difficult to believe that an established publisher is "looking into" figures that should be instantly obtainable from either of said entities and/or your own accounting records.    Tom

January 10, 3013, from me:

Robert, I have not yet seen the account details with regard to my songwriting royalties on the Left Banke re-issues by the Sundazed label in Spring of 2011. It was my understanding that you would be able to assist me on this. Tom Feher

January 24, 3013, from Robert Briggs:

Hi Tom, These accounting details should appear on your next statement, which according to our records is due to you on April 1st, 2013. I have copied in Vincent Famulari, to whom you should send any future inquiries regarding your royalty account. Best, Robert

My reply:

April 1st - all very well. But you say "next" statement. Where is the previous statement? I shouldn't have to wait until April for that. Sundazed began selling the product in Spring of 2011. Surely you have the previous figures. Tom

Some two weeks after April 1, – they must have thought me an April Fool, and maybe I was – I received the accounting in question. Included in the statement was contact information for discussing any matters relating to the statement. So I e-mailed to  HYPERLINK "mailto:usaroyaltyinquiries@emimusicpub.com"
usaroyaltyinquiries@emimusicpub.com 

April 18, 2913:

Let's have a look at Distribution account #309184679, under my name, Thomas Leo Feher. I recently received a statement (statement group 32) for the period July 2012 to December 2012. This statement proceeds with an opening royalty balance from the "last statement" - a statement which I have never received. In addition, it is listed as a minus balance. Since I have no recollection or record of receiving an advance of any kind from EMI music publishing, I am curious as to how this minus balance came about. Please, if you would, supply me with prior statements and documents to help resolve this mystery.

Sincerely, Tom Feher

The reply:

Hi Tom, Thanks for the note. I have passed this on to our research team to look into for you. We appreciate your patience and understanding as this process may take some time, but I assure you we will communicate to you our findings. Please let me know if you have any questions in the meantime.

Best regards, Alex King / Client Relations

Weeks go by. May 3, 2012, from me:

So, how is it going digging up the information on this account? I expect with EMI resources it shouldn't take overly long. Tom Feher

May 6, 2012, the reply:

Hi Tom — Thanks for the follow-up. With EMI resources, it’s actually quite the contrary. We’ve got a number of inquiries which we take as they come in, and because of the merger with Sony, there were a number of changes (layoffs, system changes, etc.) and we have all hands on board. I assure you we are looking into your inquiry as diligently and efficiently as possible and will be in touch with you as soon as we’ve been able to fully research the account and confidently discover the answers to your questions. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Alex

From me:

Good to hear from you. It's regretful that there have been so many personnel changes; I have been in touch with about a half dozen different individuals over the past year and a half, on this same inquiry, so it would be very satisfactory to resolve it before the summer is in full swing. Sincerely, Tom Feher

(By actual count, since beginning the royalty tracking I had spoken to eleven people – Tim Livingston, Gene Zacharewicz, Mark Mooney, Mona Rudolph, Linda Santiago, James Knerr, Lisa Robinson, Maite Bursic, Matthew Barletta, Maryann Barletta, and Robert Briggs – before landing on Alex King.) His response:

Tom — Completely understood. We are working to make sure that happens for you. Best, Alex

June 6, 2013, from me:

Alex, I have allowed a month to go by, essentially 23 working days. I'm beginning to wonder about the efficiency of EMI administration machinery. Also, during this time, I came to wonder: exactly how did EMI acquire the publishing rights to my songs in question? (from the album Left Banke Too, originally on Mercury's subsidiary Smash label and re-released in June 2011 on Sundazed Records). I certainly haven't signed any agreements with EMI - were the rights acquired from another publisher, and if so, which one? I'm simply trying to trace the history of my own property while I was off raising four kids and teaching music. Tom Feher

So, that’s where it stands as of this writing. It took approximately one year and four months for me to receive payment from BMG-Chrysalis, something over nine hundred dollars. It has been two years since the Sundazed re-releases, and I have not received a penny in royalties from my song contributions to Left Banke Too. Rather, they are insisting that I owe them money! My own personal suspicion is that someone in the company tampered with the books – not just on my account, but on many – and made off with a good deal of loot. 

More recently, I began to wonder: how had EMI acquired publishing rights to the songs in the first place? I certainly hadn’t dealt with them previously.  Perhaps In the original agreements, or in the contract I signed with PolyGram in the ‘90s, I hadn’t read the text carefully enough. In the ‘60s, there’s no question that I and many others signed just about everything without understanding it. 

Just from small bits of information I had gathered that EMI was in financial trouble. I don’t keep up with music business news, but it seemed that EMI had been bought by SONY-ATV, which would tend to make my assumptions believable. Whatever the case, one has to consider this: all these people in publishing, or in any form of music business are essentially dealing with money and property that does not belong to them: the songs and the song income, every single bit, are the property of the writer. 

If there were no songs, there would be no music business – one should observe this in all its idiotic simplicity. In signing contracts, the writer is allowing the “suits” a piece of his pie. But there is also a responsibility that goes along with the eating of that pie – they’ve got to do something to earn it… set the table, wash the dishes, etc. allegorically speaking. Many of the people I encountered on this campaign were simply coasting along in their cushy jobs – I would exclude Lisa Robinson and Maite Bursic, who were most helpful. Actually, the execs at Universal were pretty responsive too.

Harry Fox Agency, which I’d first heard about in the 1960s, has always had a great reputation; I think that my message to Lisa Robinson just prior to the BMG payment helped speed up the payment process, even though HFA’s concern is from record companies to publishers, not to directly assist writers. But I took advantage of the watchdog character of their organization and it was a tremendous help. 

You shouldn’t have to go through all this. It’s one of the reasons why so many musical artists decide to take the sales of their recorded product into their own hands. But if there were a way to guarantee the ethical behavior of music industry executives, it would be much preferable to the free-for-all “independent” scene I see nowadays. It’s nice to actually have trusted representatives out there working in one’s behalf.

MUSIC TERMS USED IN BOOK HEADINGS

Because the Left Banke has been so closely associated with classical music, major headings in the book have been titled using classical music terminology. For those not thoroughly familiar with these terms, here is a short glossary.

FANFARE

A tune for a trumpet or horn, used to announce the arrival of royalty, the beginning of a parade, or for a similar purpose.

ÉTUDE (French)

An instrumental piece designed to improve the player’s technique.

PRELUDE

An introductory piece of instrumental music, either to a church service, or more often to another piece of music. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a short, independent piano composition in one movement.

MOVEMENT

A major section in a long instrumental work such as a suite, sonata, symphony or string quartet.

CRESCENDO / DECRESCENDO:

An Italian term directing the performer to perform with increasing loudness; by contrast, decrescendo is a direction to perform more and more softly.

INTERMEZZO (Italian)

A short dramatic entertainment with music, formerly inserted between the acts of a play or opera.

CODA

Italian for “tail.” A passage added to the closing section of a piece or movement in order to give the sense of a definite ending.

Source material for these definitions: 

The Harper Dictionary of Music by Christine Ammer

Harper & Row, Publishers, New York / 2nd Edition 1987

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to all the people who helped gather the story together:

Alan Merrill; Angela Wedo; Artie Schroeck; Barbara Linn; Bill DeYoung; Bill Inglot; Bob Meshnick; Charlemange Fezza; Charly Cazalet; Cookie Wrublewski Dakes; Daniel Coston; Dave White; David Minton; Dawn Eden; Dude Stewart; Even Johan Ottersland; Fred Adams; George Cameron; Harriette Knight; Jack Dabney; Jerry Hawkins; Joan Aupperlee; Lee Farber; Marg Finn; Mary Weiss; Mick Wexler; Mike Fornatale; Millie Bessey; Mindy Ledbetter-Flores; Paul Alves; Ralph Affoumado; Richie Unterberger; Rick Reil; Rob Norberg; Shelley Carey; Tim Weisse; Tony Sansone; Vance Chapman; Victor Kahn; Vivian Pummill.