 |
|
 |
|
PROFILE AND
BIOGRAPHY PART 1: LET THE BOY ROCK AND ROLL [PART 2]
I was 16 and working in this place called The Spice House in Cambridge, Massachusetts – I was just a general dog’s body – when these longhaired kids my age called in, including this bloke Chris Cunningham who I remembered from a local band called Prince and the Paupers. They took a shine to me and said I sang really well and did I want to come down to one of their rehearsals? So I started singing with them – covers of Beatles’ song and stuff by the Everly Brothers, which I’d never tried before. This went on for a year or so until Chris said he’d had it – Boston wasn’t the place to be, he was off to Hollywood with the guitarist and bass player. He said I should come out too. Nearly a year passed – speaking on the phone to them – when I decided I’d join them. So in the dead of January 1971 I flew to LA thinking ‘I’ll surprise them’. I called from the airport and got a less than ecstatic welcome but they agreed to come and pick me up and took me back to their flat in Laurel Canyon. Chris told me the band was working with a producer who’d be 'happy to meet me' but the light bulb didn’t go off ‘till I got there, not until I was given a glass of wine that had been spiked with barbiturates. This guy started coming on to me and I couldn’t be dealing with that. Chris said that if I put out it would further the band’s career. I said ‘no way!’ and marched out. So I found this empty house – it belonged to the comedian Flip Wilson – and moved into the cellar. Phil, the bass player from the band, had had enough of LA and headed up to San Francisco where he met Mike Wilhelm and an old friend of mine called Kenny Streight who’d somehow heard I come out to the West Coast. Kenny called Chris to find out where I was and when he heard what had happened he told Chris to find me or he was going to come ‘round with a couple of friends who would start breaking things.
After about 10 months I’d had enough of Loose Gravel – the band was going nowhere – and so I was thinking of going home when Cyril and Danny approached me and said that Roy was out the Groovies and they wanted me to replace him. When I told Wilhelm I was leaving the band he cried! I had a couple of days of rehearsals and then I was out gigging with the Groovies. At that time Cyril and I had a great rapport – we worked really well together – although I got shat on a bit sometimes for being this country bumpkin. Danny could be a bit of a bully but George I loved from the start – one of the nicest guys I ever met. The band had played a few gigs in LA when Andrew Lauder got in touch with Cyril from London and said he really wanted us on his label, United Artists. Cyril asked if we could fly over to London and work with Dave Edmunds, which was apparently a possibility, but we had to go through channels. We were told to take our demos down to UA in LA. We turned up five minutes late and this guy, Marty Cerf, just barked "You’re late – put your tape on!" – the material that ended up on Sky Dog that we’d recorded in Danny’s living room. He listened to it for about a minute before telling us it was "too vague – you time’s up, see you later". And that was it, we were out. We went back home to San Francisco and Cyril called Andrew Lauder who said it wasn’t a problem: "I’ll bring you guys over here." A couple of months went by and we’d heard nothing so Cyril decided to force his hand, and so he got on a plane and went over to London. It worked and Lauder agreed for the band to follow, so in May 1972 we joined Cyril.
|
The Flamin' Groovies were formed by Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney in the
San Francisco area in 1965. [Above] The label of the B side of the acetate of the Groovies’ second single for UA, Married Women, featuring Little Queenie and Need a Shot of Rhythm and Blues. The Bickershaw Festival One of
the first things The Flamin’ Groovies did upon arrival in the UK in 1972 was play the
Bickershaw Festival. The event took place over the weekend of the 5, 6 and 7 of May and
was, by all accounts, one of the wettest festivals of all time. |
Ticket to
San Francisco