My British Invasion

by Harold Bronson

  The following week at the Troubadour I saw Fairport Convention, the best of the rock bands that forged their sounds on traditional English folk songs. Others in the genre included Steeleye Span, Lindisfarne and Pentangle. The music wasn’t totally unfamiliar to American fans of folk music. Jerry Garcia used to play “Matty Groves,” a staple of Fairport’s, in his pre-Dead days. Four of Fairport’s albums had made the Top 20 in the UK, with the most recent, Angel Delight, in the Top 10, but they were largely unknown in America. I liked the group but they lacked a strong singer. At the Troubadour, new member Dave Swarbrick excelled on the fiddle.

  Peter and Gordon, a guitar-playing duo who fashioned themselves after The Everly Brothers, were an important part of the 1960s British Invasion. Buddy Holly was also a big influence. The duo had a hit with Holly’s “True Love Ways,” and Peter Asher even wore glasses like Buddy’s. After the hits dried up, from which Peter revealed he received little money, he transitioned into a record producer, and then head of A&R (artists and repertoire) for The Beatles’ new Apple Records. His stay was short, as he soon departed to manage and produce James Taylor, whom he had signed to Apple. As I realized the limitations of my vocals in fronting a rock group, I wanted to learn more about the production side. By interviewing Peter, not only could I bone up on my history of Peter and Gordon, but also get insight into the tasks of a producer.

  I met Peter at the offices of Gibson and Stromberg, the premier rock public relations firm. Bob Gibson had a beard and gut, was a sloppy dresser, and didn’t seem to care about his appearance. He looked more like an aging Greenwich Village folkie than a hotshot Hollywood press agent. Despite his unattractive presence, he projected confidence and intelligence. His partner, Gary Stromberg, also came across as smart, but hipper, with straight, long hair and a beard. Their offices were on the second floor of a building catty-corner from Tower Records on the Sunset Strip. Rather than conducting business from individual offices with desks, they shared a large living room area with a comfortable black leather sectional sofa. The phones were on the large coffee table. It was relaxing, and it seemed like a natural way to conduct business. I always felt welcome. I liked their clients, and covered more of their acts than anybody else’s.

  Peter was shy, but congenial and forthcoming. He became friends with Paul McCartney when Paul began dating his sister, Jane. When Paul was in London, the Ashers invited him to stay in the garret of their eighteenth-century, five-story townhouse, in a small servant’s room next to Peter’s larger one. Through the wall, Peter heard Paul working on a song that he liked. Paul didn’t know what to do with it. Billy J. Kramer, whose first three hits were composed by Lennon and McCartney, had rejected it. The Beatles were never going to record it; John Lennon made fun of the opening line, Please lock me away. Peter had Paul write a bridge and “A World Without Love” became Peter and Gordon’s first, and biggest hit—number one on both sides of the Atlantic. McCartney wrote the duo’s next two hits, as well as 1966’s “Woman” under a pseudonym. Peter and Gordon hit the Top 10 with another reject, Del Shannon’s “I Go to Pieces,” after The Searchers turned it down.

  I naively asked Peter if orchestra sessions were ever prerecorded. What I meant was that for rock sessions, which were usually low budget, or for times when an orchestra was heard for a short duration on the record, whether it was sourced from a stock or library tape. I was thinking of the vast expense of hiring twenty-plus musicians. He chuckled and clarified that orchestral accompaniment was always newly recorded.

  On Saturday, September 25, a group of Bruin writers trekked thirty-two miles to the Long Beach Arena to see Black Sabbath in concert. Seeing the young teen crowd I felt old, even though I was only twenty-one. Black Sabbath’s music was simple but solid. What struck me most was how singer Ozzy Osbourne’s good-natured demeanor seemed at odds with the seriousness of the group’s music. They performed songs titled “Wicked World,” “Children of the Grave,” “War Pigs,” and “Paranoid,” and here’s Ozzy, his shirt off, grinning and waving his arms. His hands were configured into V-sign peace symbols, just like President Nixon. They closed their set with “Fairies Wear Boots.”

  A couple of nights later, Sherman Cohen got tickets from the radio station where he worked to see Ike & Tina Turner at the Greek Theater. I had been a friend of Sherman’s since Cub Scouts. We’d reconnected in our senior year in high school. Sherman was into girls, dancing, the Top 40, and, atypically, bodybuilding. Although we shared a love of music, we disagreed on the criteria of quality. Sherman felt that if a record wasn’t a hit, it wasn’t any good, failing to consider that many mediocre records became hits because radio DJs and programmers were (illegally) paid to play them. The Turners’ set was almost identical to the one I saw when they opened for The Rolling Stones two years previously. Seeing them again reminded me of how much Mick Jagger had copied Tina’s moves.

  A full-page in Rolling Stone advertised the new Beach Boys’ album in the creative manner that readers had come to expect from Warner Brothers: “For a Dollar and an Old Surfin’ Safari LP, We’ll Send You a Dry New Reprise LP by (Believe It) 1971’s Beach Boys—Surf’s Up.” By the mid-sixties, Warner Brothers—and its sister label Reprise—was largely a MOR company. The inner sleeve of its first significant rock signing, The Kinks, featured photos of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington, Rosemary Clooney, and Lou Monte. Creative services head Stan Cornyn responded to the company’s A&R overhaul later in the decade by concocting imaginative ads such as: “How we lost $35,509.50 on ‘The Album of the Year’” (Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle); “Pigpen look-alike contest” (promoting the first two Grateful Dead LPs); “Win a Fug Dream Date Competition” (The Fugs’ It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest). They ran mostly in Rolling Stone and contributed to elevating the label’s status to the hippest of the seventies.

  I spent part of Tuesday afternoon, September 28—the day after the fall quarter started—with The Moody Blues, as I had been assigned to write a feature article on them for Rock Magazine. I was a fan of the group’s music, and had all of their albums. Along with Bob Dylan, the lyrics of The Moody Blues and Procol Harum sparked my interest in poetry. I wrote poetry, incorporated elements into my song lyrics, and even took an introductory class at UCLA. The Moody Blues staged a press conference at the Bel-Air Hotel during which they were presented with a gold album for sales of five hundred thousand for Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. These natives of Birmingham, England, chose American Indian actor Jay Silverheels—best known for portraying Tonto in the 1950s TV series The Lone Ranger—to make the presentation because they saw him as an early representation of American culture. Typically, Jay wore a fringed buckskin jacket. Atypically, he wore hip striped trousers.

  I interviewed them afterward, but it was difficult for them to focus. Mostly they would drift in and out of the seating area to give a few perfunctory answers. Justin Hayward, the exception, sincerely responded to my questions. Talkative, but shy, he was the most accomplished member of the group. He sang most of the lead vocals, played lead guitar, and contributed the best songs: “Nights in White Satin,” “Tuesday Afternoon,” and “Question,” among them. I got what I needed for the article by incorporating quotes from the other members from the press conference.

  I found the story of the group’s breakthrough album, Days of Future Passed, most interesting. Justin Hayward: “Before that LP we weren’t selling any records and were seriously considering breaking up when the record company wanted us to record a stereo demonstration record. Their idea was to make something along the lines of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. I’d written a song called ‘Nights in White Satin,’ Mike had written ‘Dawn Is a Feeling,’ and John had written a song called ‘Peak Hour.’ It occurred to us that they were all three parts of a day. What a great theme of an album to just build it around a day!”

  This was not an ambitious, high-minded project. Decca Records wanted a budget-priced album to further interest
in the growing stereo format. The Moody Blues agreed, in part, because Decca offered to erase their debt to the company. During the summer of 1967, the group recorded their parts in little more than a week, with the London Festival Orchestra added later. The album—now regularly priced—became a fluke hit. Interest built slowly. It took six months for the album to make the Billboard album chart. Eventually it rose to number three and was among the Top 200 selling LPs for over two years.

  That night I took Tom Matye, a friend since junior high school and a Moody Blues’ fan, to The Forum to see the group in concert. The public relations firm provided a pair of complimentary tickets, as was customary, but they were positioned on the highest row behind the stage. It was hardly the consideration I would have expected for someone writing a cover story on the band.

  On the turntable (where I list my favorite albums, not previously mentioned, from the month’s new releases): The Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up, The Bee Gees’ Trafalger, John Lennon’s Imagine, The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus, Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee, Who’s Next, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Judee Sill, Live Yardbirds: featuring Jimmy Page.

  October

  As a college rep for CBS Records, whose main labels were Columbia and Epic, my primary duties were to promote our new releases to the four Westwood Village record stores—Vogue, Discount, and the two Wherehouses—and to get our records added to campus radio station KLA, which was accessible only to students living in the dorms, which meant it had few listeners. Even though I received a paltry salary of $17.50 a week, I looked for ways to expand the job.

  On making my rounds of the Westwood record stores, I noticed a stack of albums by String Cheese at the Wherehouse store on Galey Avenue. I had never heard of them, and couldn’t understand why a store would stock so many copies of an unknown act. The manager explained that it was a way for a new artist to get noticed, and said that the record company, in this case RCA—the album was on Wooden Nickel, a distributed label—provided extra advertising as an incentive.

  On October 6, in the first meeting of my Principles of Cultural Anthropology class, I noticed a young woman who was more attractive than the typical hippie coed. I followed her to a food machine and engaged her in conversation about the class, which she was dropping. Thinking I might not see her again, I boldly invited Terri Roese (pronounced “rose”) to go to the Whisky a Go-Go that night.

  Edgar Winter and White Trash headlined, and were musically impressive. Edgar’s brother, Johnny, had received a lot of attention as a hotshot blues guitarist. I hoped he would sit in, but the slot was filled by Rick Derringer, who had played in Johnny’s band, and had been a member of The McCoys—who’d had a hit with “Hang on Sloopy.” Edgar was an adept musician who excelled on sax and keyboards. I enjoyed the music, but I was more excited by Terri, who had dressed for the evening in a lavender hot pants jumpsuit.

  I liked Terri, and she seemed to like me. She suggested we meet on campus and have lunch together. I chose a bench in the Murphy Sculpture Garden, my favorite place at the university. She packed a lunch for each of us from her dorm cafeteria, a sandwich and an orange. It was the first time I’d seen someone peel an orange using her fingers.

  One afternoon I recognized Ed Ames slowly cruising by on his bicycle. He’d had a Top 10 hit with “My Cup Runneth Over” in 1967, but was best known for portraying Mingo on the Daniel Boone TV series. As he was in his forties, I wondered what he was doing on campus.

  Terri was soft spoken, smart, and easy to talk to. I wish I could have been as open with her. She gave me a small red plastic box that she’d purchased from the campus art store. It wasn’t much, but it was the first gift I ever received from a girl.

  The Conception Corporation invited me to see their video satire of network TV, Void Where Prohibited By Law, so on Thursday night I picked Terri up from her dorm. She was dressed in a suit. She said that she’d had lunch with her mother, a businesswoman, and wanted to dress to her mother’s expectation. I got the impression that her mother didn’t have a warm personality. Beforehand, we dined at Café Figaro on Melrose Avenue, an upscale hippie restaurant with old newspapers passing for wallpaper and where one could order an organic salad or veggie burger. Terri talked of her artistic aspirations, about wanting to design textiles.

  We then drove to a store space on La Brea Avenue, the New Vacuum Theater, which touted The Cushion Room, “the world’s largest waterbed.” (Waterbed mattresses were water-filled vinyl shells.) Four video monitors provided the screens, pillows and waterbeds the seats. It was cozy for Terri and me, until I took a bathroom break and ended up with soggy socks owing to a massive leak from “the world’s largest waterbed.”

  Friday, October 29, was Terri’s twenty-first birthday. I took her out to dinner at an upscale Westwood Village hippie restaurant. Serving omelets for dinner was a new trend, so I thought I’d take a chance and ordered one with spinach, but it came with the unwanted bonus of eggshells. We went to the Long Beach Arena to see the Jeff Beck Group in concert. I loved Beck’s guitar playing. He’d been a member of The Yardbirds, and then had led his own Jeff Beck Group, which included Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. His latest band was too jazzy for my taste, too colored by pianist Max Middleton’s playing. I also found singer Bob Tench’s vocals grating. Still, it was the first time I had seen Beck play. His band performed “New Ways/Train Train,” the song I liked best on the new Rough and Ready album, and a cover of Don Nix’s “Goin’ Down.” He experienced sound problems at the beginning, and his set never fully recovered. Much more entertaining was the 1950s revival group Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids. Wet Willie, a Southern rock band I didn’t care for, opened the show. I drove Terri to her parent’s apartment in Downey. We made out in the car.

  The next night a number of us Daily Bruin writers trekked to the Anaheim Convention Center to see a sold-out show headlined by Traffic. Steve Winwood was in fine vocal form, but the set overall seemed unfocused: poor stage presence, too much jamming, unexciting new material—especially compared to the group’s first four LPs. A highpoint was a cover of “Gimme Some Lovin’” from their new live album, which had been getting a lot of airplay. More notable was Fairport Convention who turned in a fun, energetic set of reels and jigs.

  Paul encouraged me to order any LPs I wanted from the CBS catalogue. I had first been introduced to Bob Dylan while playing Risk at Harvey Portz’s house. His brother Chuck—the bassist in The Crossfires, soon to be The Turtles—had his early albums. I thought Dylan had an unappealing, whiney voice, and I wasn’t interested. Years later—with a small budget for purchasing records—I spent time in the UCLA listening lab trying to understand what Dylan’s lyrics meant, as well as enjoying his wordplay. I ordered Dylan’s albums, the first three Firesign Theatre releases, and Having a Rave Up With The Yardbirds.

  On the turntable: Cat Stevens’ The Teaser and the Firecat, John Entwistle’s Smash Your Head Against the Wall, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks’ Where’s the Money?, The Move’s Message From the Country, Wishful Thinking’s Hiroshima, Lenny Bruce’s What I Was Arrested For.

  November

  On November 3, Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids played a free noon concert at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom. Sha Na Na’s appearance at the Woodstock festival, and in the subsequent film, had fueled a revival of interest in 1950s rock ’n’ roll. Flash Cadillac, too, recreated the era well, and were imaginative in their staging, character mugging, and humor. I had a good relationship with their manager, Peter Rachtman, and had booked them to appear. It was an excellent show, one unlike anyone had ever seen at the university. They had students dancing on stage in a twist competition with a hubcap for the prize. The campus media, and the cultural commissioner, said it was the “best received contest in the history of UCLA.”

  The next day the Daily Bruin finally published my interview with Emitt Rhodes. He had been a member of one of LA’s p
opular bands, The Merry-Go-Round. When Paul McCartney signaled the breakup of The Beatles by releasing his first solo album, McCartney, in May 1970, the album impressed the music community because it was the first by a major artist who played all of the instruments himself. Six months later, Emitt Rhodes was released, and it was even better. The Beatles heavily influenced Emitt, so his style was similar, and, like Paul, he played all the instruments himself.

  Emitt lived in Hawthorne, but while performing at the Troubadour in February had stayed at a house in Studio City, on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which is where I interviewed him. I had conducted more than a handful of interviews and all had gone well, but was stymied by a disinterested Rhodes. I did get usable quotes out of him, but I was at a loss on how to get better responses. He did clarify how his album differed from McCartney’s: “His concept is a happiness thing with his chick, and I wasn’t there when I was doing mine.” Emitt’s theme on the album was loneliness, with thoughts of death lurking in the background.

  I salvaged a decent article, and submitted it to Rolling Stone. Paul Scanlon, the managing editor, liked it and said he wanted to publish it. He kept telling me, “We’ll use it in an issue or two.” After eight months, I gave it to the Daily Bruin.

  I finally got a copy of Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (on Rolling Stones Records). Although Brian had shown that he was an extremely talented musician as a member of The Rolling Stones, nothing had been issued since his departure from the band: no solo recordings, no songwriting demos, nothing. His only released production was of the Master Musicians of Morocco playing flutes and drums, and chanting. A remote (rather than studio) recording, it sounded like cardboard. Whatever Brian heard—maybe it was the drugs he had taken—I couldn’t grasp.