Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 19:23:53
-0600 (CST)
To: davidmor@voyager.net
From: Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>
Subject: Re: questions for interview
1. Tell me about your background; i.e. where you were raised, notable
childhood experiences, etc.
I was born right after World War II on February 26, 1946 in northern
New Jersey. Like many young post-war families we were relatively poor
but upwardly mobile. My parents and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment
in a garden apartment complex called Normandy Village in the town of
Union. "The Village" was a good place to grow up, being a
real community of young families with kids of varying ages, roughly
divided into "little kids" and "big kids" with a
three to four year age gap resulting from the war years' separation
of their parents. The Village was surrounded on three sides by vacant
lots and was only a few blocks from the center of town and from schools,
so I could easily walk by myself wherever I wanted to go.
My father's first love was baseball (he had been a semi-pro pitcher),
and when I was about four he was training to be a pro ball umpire. Training
camp was in Florida, so we spent some time in Saint Petersburg during
the summer. Umpiring didn't work out, though, so he went to work as
a salesman for a hobby supplies company. As a result I had a refrigerator
carton FULL of model kits.
Money was tight in those years and my mother worked as a bookkeeper
at an electrical supply company just across the street from the Village.
I was taken care of after school by one of the "big kids"
named Jimmy Trelease. He had a fertile imagination and was a wonderful
story teller, and like my father was quite a good artist. We'd draw
and sculpt fantastic creatures in modeling clay, and this helped lay
the groundwork for my creative life.
When I was in third grade we bought a house in a new development just
across the street from the local golf course. For the first time I had
a whole basement as a playroom and in addition to building model kits
I would create "scenes" on a 4 by 8 foot sheet of plywood.
I'd build environments using supplies designed for model railroad layouts,
and I'd populate them with clay dinosaurs and space creatures of my
own creation. In those years I was already an insatiable reader, particularly
of juvenile science fiction such as Tom Swift Junior. Reading, films,
and TV fed my imagination, and other than hiking and exploring the nearby
golf course I was always much more active in my imagination than in
physcial activities.
My father died of a heart attack at age 40, about two weeks before my
eighth birthday.
Notable childhood experiences? I had surgery on my knees when I was
three or four years old. It was the first time I'd ever been away from
my parents. I knew why I was in the hospital and what the surgeons were
going to do to me, but many of the other kids didn't. They had been
told that if they were very good they'd get to go to the "fun room"
and play games and music. I knew they were actually going to get cut
open. That was the first time I realized that grownups lie to kids.
Other more pleasant formative experiences were the many trips I made
to New York City to visit the American Museum of Natural History (for
a while I thought I'd be a paleontologist when I grew up) and the Hayden
Planetarium (later on I thought I'd be an astrophysicist). I also took
annual trips to Florida to visit my grandparents (I now own their little
house in Gulfport).
But perhaps the single most significant experience was the first time
I saw Flash Gordon on television.
2. What is your earliest musical memory?
The first music I remember was on the radio, and it was mostly the hits
of the day from the likes of Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney. There
wasn't much live music at home, except for informal singing. Possibly
the first musical instrument I heard with any regularity was the piano
in my second grade classroom, and of course the organ at church. When
I was at summer camp one of the counselors played guitar, and that was
probably the first time I heard one live. My favorite of the songs he
sang was "Blood on the Saddle," and I used to do an a capella
rendition of that myself during Boy Scout campling trips.
I have clearer memories of early SOUND memories, again mostly from the
radio. We had an old 1940s AM radio (which in fact I still own) and
we listened to it a lot. I remember as a toddler of two or three, climbing
up on the bookcase to peek behind the radio, looking for the little
people inside. My favorite show was Big John and Sparky, Sparky's voice
being a sped-up recording, presumably of Big John. My parents listened
to mystery and adventure shows such as the Shadow, and I am quite sure
I overheard the original "Chicken Heart" horror show, as later
lampooned by Bill Cosby.
3.Who were some of your early
favorites?
My favorite song in 1950 was "Goodnight
Irene" as recorded by the Weavers. I was also quite fond of the
theme from Dragnet and of the William Tell Overture, which was used
as the theme music for the Lone Ranger. That was when I was around seven
or eight. My earliest rock and roll favorites were "Little Darlin'"
by the Diamonds, the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace," and "Yakety
Yak" by the Coasters. In my pre-teen years I tended to go for novelty
tunes and was a big fan of David Seville. I did a credible vocal imitation
of the Witch Doctor and the Chipmunks. This was in the late 1950s. It
amazes me that the Chipmunks are still popular.
It's important to note that during these formative years I was also
strongly influenced by the music I was hearing in science fiction films.
Everything, from the theremin warbles in The Day the Earth Stood Still,
to the home-brew circuits used by Louis and Bebe Barron for Forbidden
Planet, to the dissonant orchestrations in The Creature from the Black
Lagoon, was influential to my developing ear. While I didn't seek out
these tonalities at the time, they helped shape my underlying sensibility
and informed my post-rock composition.
But returning to my early pop music preferences, without a doubt the
biggest impact on my teenage ears came from Dion. I remember the first
time I heard "Runaround Sue" on the radio in a soda shop near
my high school. I rode home on my bike trying to remember the song but
really only hanging on to the rattling rhythm of it. I became a Dion
devotee and traced his career back to the Belmonts, and then I began
to explore oldies and especially doo-wop. Some of my other favorites
of that early 1960s period were Del Shannon, Bobby Darin, the Tokens,
Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, the Everly Brothers.
4. What do you remember about your first public
performance?
I'd have to answer that several times, since I had a number of "first
public performances" over the years. The earliest I remember was
portraying one of a group of gnomes in a first grade Christmas pageant,
and I appeared in various school plays and pageants through eighth grade.
I started trumpet lessons in fifth grade, and I performed once in a
marching band for a Memorial Day parade. Once, when I was faking it
on a difficult passage and only pretending to play, a spectator yelled
out, "You're out of tune." That was my first experience with
a music critic. I quit playing shortly thereafter.
I always enjoyed singing, and sang in school and church choirs, and
in some stage productions in sixth through eighth grades. During high
school I was in the chorus for several musicals, including Oklahoma.
I even had a speaking role with a few lines (which I fluffed, but got
a nice laugh from the audience).
My first "band" experience was with a group called the Silvertones
in high school. I didn't make it to the gigging stage, but I remained
friendly with the group. On a couple occasions I got up spontaneously
and sang with bands at dances, but it was usually embarrassing. During
the early '60s, at least in suburban New Jersey, rock bands were extremely
rare. Besides the Silvertones I remember Ozzie and the Sonics (Ozzie
Ahlers went on to play with Jerry Garcia, Craig Chaquico, and others),
one other rock band, and an a capella doo-wop group. There was also
a bluegrass trio and a couple of folk singers.
My first appearance playing guitar and singing was for the All Tech
Sing during my sophomore year at MIT. Our group was the Warlocks (no
relation to the Grateful Dead) and we wore black turtlenecks and engineer
boots. Our repertoire consisted of four songs, "Walkin' the Dog,"
"Long Tall Texan," "Muleskinner Blues," and "The
Hills of Shiloh" by Shel Silverstein. We performed just once more,
at a dorm mixer.
My first professional gig was in Santa Monica in October 1965, during
my semester working at Douglas Aircraft on a work-study program. When
I got my first paycheck from Douglas I bought my first electric guitar
at Ace Loans (later Ace Music) and on the day I picked it up I met a
bass player named Fred, and a drummer. We formed a band on the spot,
and Fred immediately went down the street and booked a gig at a bar
called the Brass Bell. Then we started rehearsing, but the drummer (who
was still in high school) got into some trouble and was grounded. Not
to be undone, Fred called guitarist acquaintance of his, and arranged
for him and his drummer to do the gig with us. We had two rehearsals.
We did well enough to be hired back, and after finding permanent guitarist
and drummer we continued to work there until it was discovered that
Fred was using a fake British passport to buy drinks.
5a.What were your high school years like?
Were you the typical long haired garage punk in a conservative setting?
High school was a miserable period for me, before being miserable in
high school became hip. There wasn't really such a thing as a "long
haired garage punk" in the early 1960s, unless you count the duck-tailed
greasers who worked in gas stations after school. I was an anomaly,
being in the top academic percentile in the school but sporting a rock
and roll hairdo and listening to Dion rather than Peter, Paul, and Mary
or Johnny Mathis.
5b.Were you in fear of being drafted?
I was only 17 when I graduated high school and I had a college deferment
as long as I stayed in school. However, I DIDN'T stay in school. By
the beginning of fall semester 1966 I was pretty sure I was going to
drop out and play music. I was having psychological problems anyway
and decided to start seeing a shrink, so I went to a public mental health
clinic and got a bargain rate of $15 a session to see a young psychiatrist
named Dr. Alvin Poussaint. I also visited the Boston Drug Addiction
Clinic, not because I was addicted to anything but because they were
giving IQ tests to drug users and I thought it might be fun. I don't
remember the director's name, but he was a good guy. Once I was officially
no longer in school I got a notice to appear for a pre-induction physical.
I secured psychological evaluation letters from both shrinks and prepared
myself emotionally to weird out the examiners. I was my usually hippie-looking
self but behaving like I was about to freak. I carried a faceted crystal
ball and stared in it as I waited in line. It was a little like Arlo
Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" and at the end of the exam
I was told to go visit the social worker for referral to counseling.
I never heard from the draft board again, to our mutual benefit.
By the way, I've seen Dr. Poussaint frequently on television talk shows
and in newspaper interviews. He's now on the faculty of Harvard Medical
School and has been a regular advisor to the Bill Cosby Show.
6. Upon graduation, what were your plans?
Where did you attend college and was a full-time music career your main
goal at this time?
I didn't start playing guitar until after high school. The week after
graduation, June 1963, I bought a $22.00 second hand Harmony guitar
and some rather useless Mel Bay method books. By the end of the summer
I had learned the chords to only four songs that I found in one of my
mother's "easy organ" books. The guitar was so bad that I
had to use two fingers to make barre chords.
In September I went to MIT to study aeronautics and astronautics and
left my guitar at home. My goal was to work in the space program, but
once I met some real-life aerospace engineers my interest waned. When
I saw the Beatles perform on Ed Sullivan in early '64 I immediately
washed the grease out of my hair and started learning Beatle songs on
guitar.
Like the organ books, the Beatles song books were oriented toward keyboard
players. This meant that the songs tended to be in "flat"
keys such as F, Bb, and Eb, which are easier to play on keyboard than
"sharp" keys such as E, A, and D that are more typical of
guitar voicings. As a result I had to learn to transpose and I soon
figured out some of the basics of harmonic theory by observing the relationships
between the chords and common chord progressions. Since I already knew
the fundamentals of music notation from trumpet lessons and choral singing
I was able figure out a fair amount on my own.
I later took some music theory classes and gained a more formal grounding
in harmony and counterpoint, as well as getting an overview of classical
and contemporary art music. At one stage I tried to change my major
from Engineering to a split degree of Humanities in Engineering with
a concentration in music, but the department head told me I had insufficient
background in music and declined my request. I remembered this years
later when I earned my PhD in composition.
7. When and what was your initial drug experience? What was your attitude
towards drugs in general?
Since my freshman year of college I had been wanting to try marijuana,
but could never locate a source. It wasn't until the summer after my
sophomore year that I first got turned on by my friend Artie, AKA "The
Saint." We had only a minuscule amount and didn't know how much
was needed to get high. We smoked it in a pipe and tried to convince
ourselves that we were getting stoned. It took more than a year before
I had a decent connection for some reasonably strong pot, and I then
started turning on regularly.
I started taking acid in the summer of 1966, but I had a bad trip Ñ
a "flashback" Ñ a few days after my second time and
quit shortly thereafter. I blamed my own lack of preparation, not the
LSD, for the negative experience. I thought psychedelics were a good,
even a holy thing, and I was firm in a belief that they should not be
treated as "party drugs." In contrast, I was always very negative
about uppers and downers. I even wrote an anti-speed song. Throughout
the remainder of the '60s I rarely took drugs of any kind, even pot.
This was due largely to having negative emotional reactions, especially
with certain "heavier" varieties such as Colombian. I'd often
start feeling paranoid, in certain social situations or out on the street.
But with "lighter" varieties of pot, such as some of the Mexican
strains, I could smoke a little at home and happily play guitar and
write songs by myself.
I started taking acid again in the early '70s and I no longer had bummers.
I believe I had worked through some of the psychological problems that
were underlying my earlier negative reactions and I was able to feel
emotions such as sadness or loss without displacing the feelings or
interpreting them as a threat. I also had learned to recognize certain
physiological reactions as simply body things and did not misinterpret
them as fear. I got comfortable enough to take small doses and even
drive my car! It also helped that I was buying larger quantities of
small doses, so that I was familiar with the effect and could somewhat
predict how I'd react. I rarely took very much at a time.
8. What was the genesis of the band? Who did you
meet first and how did things evolve?
Judy Bradbury had been performing in a folk duo in 1964-65 and Ken Frankel
was their sideman on guitar and banjo. During that same period Ken and
Carey Mann formed a four-piece folk rock band called the Blues Crew
(later "The Prophets"), and Judy became their singer. Ken,
Carey, and their bassist and drummer were all MIT graduate students.
I was an undergraduate recently returned from a semester of work-study
in Los Angeles, and while I was there I'd bought an electric guitar
and formed my first band. I was looking for people play with and getting
nowhere, when one day in the spring of 1966 I got a call from Ken. Their
bass player was leaving for the summer to play in the Catskills, and
one of Ken's students had recommended me. I auditioned and played them
some of the songs I'd been writing. Ken and Carey didn't think much
of my playing, but I sang OK so I got the job. Carey, somewhat reluctantly,
switched to bass and I came in on rhythm guitar and vocals.
Within a couple of weeks of my joining the drummer got mononucleosis,
so we started auditioning for a replacement. Dave Kinsman responded
to a note we'd left in a music store, and after some of the North Shore
bar band drummers we'd heard he was a breath of fresh air. We were solidly
into a folk rock bag and were doing an assortment of Lovin' Spoonful,
Beatles, folk tunes, and original material. Dave had a tasteful and
simple style and knew a lot of our material already. He fit right in.
The next to arrive (from Los Angeles) was Ken's younger Brother Tom,
who agreed to be our manager. We started gearing up at that point and
began playing every weekend. We also began recording a demo in a small
studio at a local sound company. We were part-way through overdubbing
vocals when Judy abruptly quit. We started auditioning singers immediately.
I remember only three applicants, all three of whom would have done
well. Conny was the last to try out, and seemed at first sight to be
the least likely. She had come directly from her job as a phone company
service rep and was dressed conservatively, with a Peter Pan collar
and short frosted hair. But when she opened her mouth the sing it our
doubts evaporated. It was clear that she wouldn't slide into the void
left by Judy, but that Conny would help establish a new sound and musical
direction. Judy's voice was pure and clear, with a superb folksinger's
quality; Conny's was big, bold, and brassy.
9. How did the name Ill Wind come about?
When I joined the band was called the Prophets, in keeping with Ken's
and Carey's Old Testament patriarch look. After we hired baby-faced
Dave Kinsman the name no longer rang true, so we had a naming session
in which nobody liked anybody else's suggestions. I think it was Tom
who finally suggested we use the title of one of Ken's tunes, "Ill
Wind" and nobody objected. The next day Judy and I were walking
through the Boston Public Gardens and we decided that we both hated
the name. Unfortunately when we called Tom to discuss this he said it
was too late to change because he had already ordered the business cards
and bumper stickers.
10. What were the other group members like as people? Was there a dominant
personality in the band?
Ken and Carey were/are both highly intelligent and disciplined, as you'd
expect from MIT graduate students. Neither of them had what you'd think
of as a rock and roll personality. Ken's musical background was primarily
in bluegrass, and his stage persona had the sort of pickin' and grinnin'
cornball quality you might expect. Offstage he could be jocular and
clever when in a good mood, or mulish and passive-aggressive when annoyed
or challenged. In my less charitable moments I thought of Ken as a spoiled
rich kid from Bel-Air (whereas I was a spoiled only child from suburban
New Jersey - we were both used to getting our way so we fought a lot).
In addition to his considerable musical talents Ken was quite a good
athlete and a top scholar. He could do whatever he sets his mind to.
As I recall he first met Carey in the MIT wood shop, where Ken was building
a harpsichord. Later on, before consumer-level 4-track tape recorders
were available, Ken hacked the electronics of two 2-tracks to build
his own 4-track!
Carey was from the Pittsburgh area and was an award-winning jazz guitarist
before concentrating on rock. He loved music of many kinds and didn't
seem to lean strongly toward any one style - if it was good music he'd
play it. His doctoral work at MIT was in a branch of mathematics called
topology, which is an often extremely abstract study of spatial relations
and shapes. He had a remarkable facility for visualization and structural
thought, which made him a skilled musical arranger. He was also handy
with mechanical and electronic projects and often modified his equipment.
Carey had a Hammond B3 - a massive roadie's nightmare - and he modularized
it so that he could move it on his own: The upper section, including
keyboard and electronics, and the lower pedalboard section were repackaged
as separate luggable units, with plywood uprights on each end attaching
them together.
Although Carey had a wry and sometimes playful side, his prevailing
demeanor seemed stern. He could in fact be downright intimidating, particularly
when you consider his 6'7" stature. He drove a Harley, as did his
girl friend Dee. To illustrate Carey's determined nature: We had an
afternoon gig at U Mass Amherst and Carey and Dee had decided to drive
their bikes out to Western Massachusetts - a normally pleasant drive
through the countryside. When the day came it was pouring rain, absolutely
torrential. Despite our urgings to come along in the truck or Conny's
car, they suited up in their foul weather gear and drove their bikes
as planned!
I was a few years younger than these two, being an MIT Junior, and as
the new kid and less-skilled musician I tended to defer to them at first.
I soon got over that one, though! I'm by nature rather stubborn and
hotheaded, and I had many a fight with Ken and Carey, and with Ken's
brother Tom. Since Ken and Tom were writing partners as well as brothers,
and because all group decisions were made by an equal vote of all six
of us, there was sometimes a sense of Tom and Ken being a power bloc
within the band. Most of the time this was OK, because I often aligned
with Carey, Conny, and Dave, and because nobody really had any bad musical
ideas. But it did get heated at times.
Conny was a semi-rich Catholic girl from Montclair, New Jersey. She
had several years of experience singing blues and standards in New York
and the Jersey Shore and she had a remarkable voice that could handle
anything from sweet ballads to flat-out rock. She oozed confidence and
was flamboyant and fun. I sometimes thought of her as an Irish Barbra
Streisand with a little Janis Joplin thrown in. When she joined the
band she was "straight" in that her drug of choice was alcohol
(but we soon fixed that one). Conny's husband Jack was a doctoral student,
and later a professor, at MIT in City Planning. He was financially well-off,
had a racing catamaran, and would often rent a summer house on Cape
Cod. Their marriage was pretty relaxed, and Jack seemed happy for Conny
to have a creative and social outlet. The band was generally welcome
at the Devanney house, and Conny often threw dinner parties.
Dave was the youngest of the group, though he had a few years of solid
experience playing in high school bands. He made his musical opinions
known, but was less assertive than others of us. As is often the case
with drummers he would head for the kitchen whenever the rest of us
had to work out chord progressions or vocal arrangements. He was from
an old New England family, a real Yankee: laconic, laid back, and eminently
practical. Dave was in business college when he joined the band and
he was often very helpful on the booking end of things.
Tom Frankel was brash, amusing, generous, and flamboyant. Weather permitting,
he would go barefoot, with a string of bells around one ankle, and with
his paisley shirt open to the navel. He enjoyed artistic creativity
and tried his hand at leather work, painting, guitar playing, and songwriting.
His lyrics were often quite good and formed the basis for a mojority
of the band's original material. Tom was at all the gigs, and since
he couldn't be on stage, he made himself musically useful by standing
in the audience and giving us hand signals to maintain the balance (this
was the late 1960s when most bands carried their own primitive sound
systems and a front-of-house mixer was practically unknown).
So in answer to your question, "Was there a dominant personality
in the band?" I would have to say, "Yes, there were four or
five of them."
As the band's personnel changed over the years, so did the group dynamics.
During the 1967-68 period there were overlapping creative and social
circles. Ken, Carey, Tom, and I hammered out most of the writing and
arranging tasks, while Conny, Dave, and I would also hang out socially.
The social scene also included Conny's friend (and seamstress) Ursula
and our roadie Dick ("Berred") Ouellette so we had a bit of
an entourage. After recording the album some of us moved to Wellesley,
and the dynamic began to change. Tom rented a large house and took on
the role of paterfamilas of a sort of hippy tribe which included Dave,
Berred, Michael Walsh (after he replaced Carey), a couple named Jan
and Michael Costello from California, and the assistant roadie Little
Ron. I lived next door with my girl friend Ellie in a house presided
over by Ray Paret (manager of Ultimate Spinach, Quill, and others),
also inhabited by various musicians from Ray's bands.
That was the summer of our disillusionment, and it was followed by the
autumn of our discontent. The album was a flop, the tour had been cancelled,
Carey had quit, and then Tom got into a wreck in our van and was in
traction with a crushed hip. The band carried on with a rather different
center of gravity. With neither Carey nor Tom participating, rehearsals
were actually more cordial and cooperative, as if we knew we were treading
close to a precipice and had to be careful to maintain our balance.
We started recording in our new basement studio and were talking about
doing a second album independently, with Ken producing.
However, "one slip of the lip sinks ships," and one day Dave
happened to be talking to Tom Wilson on the phone and mentioned that
we were recording. Wilson immediately picked up another year's option
on our contract and we responded by breaking up the band. Ken and Judy
got married and moved to California. Tom, Michael and Jan Costello,
Dave, and Michael followed suit.
About a year and a half later Dave and Michael returned to Boston and
the band reformed - it was quite a different ball game. Without Tom
Frankel as manager the main business responsibilities fell to Dave Kinsman
with increasing participation by Conny. Responsibility for musical direction
was more equitably shared among all band members. I think that during
our first months back together we had almost an overly careful attitude
toward our group relationship, trying to avoid conflict whenever possible.
It was a fun time, but then disaster struck.
Out of respect for those involved I won't go into the details. Suffice
it to say that after a propitious start, a conflict erupted between
Carey and Conny and this resulted in Carey's leaving the band. It was
an uncomfortable and mutual decision, and one that left me as the single
member with "creative" aspirations. The others were fine musicians
but were primarily interested in the enjoyment of playing and entertaining.
I was a songwriter and an intellectual, and my political motivations
were bound to my musical efforts. I also wanted to explore some more
challenging musical terrain, and as we auditioned guitarist I was on
the lookout for someone who would help pull the band forward. When Larry
Carsman played for us I immediately offered him the gig, but unfortunately
I was overstepping my authority. Larry joined, and the music did improve,
but he was never really part of the group. He quit within three months,
by which time there was a very clear affiliation of Conny, Dave, and
Michael as the good-time party band in opposition me as the wanna-be
artiste. Replacement of Larry with Walter Bjorkman only reinforced that
division, with results to be discussed.
11. What were some of the early gigs like? What
gear was used and what was the reaction of the audiences when you played
live?
Our first gig was at the Rathskellar in Kenmore Square in Boston. It
was a rather weird summer day - the sky had the flat and ominous quality
that often presages a tornado, though the weather cleared while we were
playing. The Rat in those days was a real dump; the stage seemed to
be made up of fruit crates tacked together and the clientelle seemed
to be mostly football players from Boston University. We schlepped our
equipment to the gig in a trailer pulled behind Ken's Porsche. I think
Ken and I played through the same amp.
Once we had made it out of the first gig intact we started to get more
serious about our infrastructure. During that period Tom arrived from
California and started handling the management. Shortly thereafter Ken's
Porsche got stolen, so he used the insurance money to buy a Dodge van.
We also bought a PA and some new amps, courtesy of Ken and Tom. Early
on Ken and I played through Fender Twin Reverb amps. I think Carey was
using an Ampeg bass amp. At some point Ken bought a Vox Super Beatle
amp, and as we started playing larger venues we all added extension
cabinets to our amps, with the extensions located on the opposite side
of the stage from the main amps so we could hear each other better.
The PA consisted of two Voice of the Theater speakers on stands, with
a small four channel mixer with rotary pots. Later on we added a pair
of fiberglass horns as vocal monitors. I think we were the first band
in New England to have a monitor system.
I played a cheap little Gibson Melody Maker solid body guitar at first,
until it was stolen out of the equipment truck. I replaced it with a
Gibson ES-335, and I also played a Fender electric 12-string on one
tune. Carey played a Fender Precision bass. Ken played a succession
of 6/12 double neck guitars (Bartell, Mosrite, and finally Gibson) and
an amplified banjo.
Dave Kinsman knew a booking agent in Manchester New Hampshire named
Charlie Kearns. He was an old-timer who had been booking New England
resorts, colleges, and teen centers for years. He was a great old guy
and he liked our band, so he started booking us into resorts, colleges,
and teen centers. Most of the work tended to be to the north of Boston.
We were not at all the sort of band these kids were used to. Our strangeness
turned to our advantage fairly quickly and we soon had a reasonable
following. I can't remember ever playing to a small audience (of course
when you play in the boondocks there isn't much competition).
12. Tell me about regular gigging...where
and how often did you play?
Our normal schedule was two rehearsals and two gigs per week. We initially
limited it to that because several of us were in college, but even after
Ken, Dave, and I had dropped out we kept the same schedule. We didn't
play in town very much, although we appeared many times at the Boston
Tea Party. One of our regular venues was a teen center in Manchester
(after our album came out a local band started covering our tunes!).
We played beach resorts on Cape Cod and along the New Hampshire and
Maine Coast and we played colleges as far west as Amherst and as far
north as Waterville Maine. We were regulars at teen clubs and community
centers from Melrose to Leominster to Wooster. We did a few gigs in
New York City. I remember playing the Bitter End (one of Conny's old
haunts) in the East Village. A comedy group from Chicago was also on
the bill, but I stayed in the dressing room. It turns out the John Candy
was in the troupe!
The very last gig before we temporarily disbanded was at the Boston
Tea Party, sharing the bill with Fleetwood Mac on their first American
tour. They all had the flu and were very miserable, so the second night
the J. Geils band did a set to relieve them. Geils ran over, so we had
to cut our final set short! I had just started a construction gig that
week and fell off a scaffolding on the first day of work, so I played
that weekend with a broken rib.
13. Who were some of the bands that you played
with/opened for? Which so-called legendary/mythical figures did you come
across?
Chuck Berry, Van Morrison, Mitch Ryder, the Young Rascals, the Stooges,
Vanilla Fudge, Fleetwood Mac, J. Geils, Moby Grape, the Who.
The Van Morrison gig at the Boston Tea Party was interesting because
it was his first performance after splitting from Them. He picked up
a three-piece backing band from Berklee, but unfortunately the guitarist
seems to have flunked Tuning Up 101. Van looked bummed all weekend.
The Who concert at Boston Music Hall in 1968 was a thrill for me, having
been a fan since 1965 when I heard "My Generation" on my car
radio while driving down the Pacific Coast Highway. This gig was pre-Tommy,
although they were working on it and did perform Pinball Wizard during
the show. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry were quite friendly, and they
intended to come out to our house in Wellesley after the gig. Unfortunately
Keith Moon had other plans. During the climactic destructorama at the
end of their second set, a very drunk Keith got carried away. He started
throwing drums into the audience, while their road manager (a small
Cockney named Sweaty) stood in the orchestra pit and by turns threw
drums back onto the stage and pushy fans back into the audience. Finally
Keith had enough and staggered off stage, kicking our drum kit over
on the way. His final gesture was to shove his fist through a window,
creating quite a serious gash. Pete and Roger decided it was best to
just return to the hotel and take care of Keith. Sigh.
Your second question, about who we came across is almost in reverse.
Who didn't we come across? We DIDN'T come across the Beatles or Stones
(though I did see the latter perform with Brian Jones). Naturally we
were acquainted and in some cases friendly with other New England bands
such as Beacon Street Union, the Lost, Ultimate Spinach, Eden's Children,
et al. I hung out a bit with Ian Bruce-Douglas from Spinach, and in
fact was living with his manager at the time. Chevy Chase and Jeff "Skunk"
Baxter both crashed at our house.
In addition to the groups ILL WIND played with, I went to concerts incessantly
during 1965-71 and saw the Byrds, the Grass Roots,the Leaves, Lovin'
Spoonful, Wilson Picket, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Muthers (yes,
that's how they spelled it in 1965), Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Grateful
Dead, Muddy Waters, Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother and the Holding
Company, The Blooz Magoos, The Youngbloods, Traffic, Chicago, the Beach
Boys, the Supremes, Bob Dylan, Allman Brothers Band (with Duane), Spirit,
Neil Young, MC5, Bonzo Dog Doodah Band.
Also, during ILL WIND's 1967 mini-tour of California we crossed paths
with an aspiring psychedelic band from Tucson called the Naz (later
to be renamed Alice Cooper).
14. Describe a typical set - what songs were usually played?
Naturally the repertoire evolved over time, but apart from our original
material we did covers of Beatles, Stones, Lovin' Spoonful, Byrds, Love,
and some arrangements of traditional folk tunes. Each set normally had
a Beatles medly (a "trilogy") such as I'll Cry Instead/I Should
Have Known Better/Daytripper. We did "You Didn't Have to Be So
Nice," "Big Boss Man," "Hey Joe," "The
Water is Wide." We used to stretch out on "Satisfaction"
with a long vamp at the end over which I would deliver Zappa-esque diatribes
about the Vietnam War. Although we tended toward a San Francisco sound
we avoided directly covering songs by Bay Area bands. The closest we
got was High Flying Bird, which was an Airplane staple, because that
song had been in Conny's repertoire for years. Our original material
ranged from light folky to country and bluegrass tinged Frankel and
Frankel collaborations to somewhat more Beatle-ish pop from Carey to
heavier psychedelic material from yours truly.
During 1970-71 the reformed band did some of the old material, but added
both new originals and cover tunes. We did some doo-wop and girl group
songs ("In the Still of the Night" and "Will You Still
Love Me Tomorrow"), some soul ("Do Right Woman"), folk
rock ("Get Together" and "Morning Dew"), Beatles
("Something" and "Birthday"), Delaney and Bonnie
("Where There's a Will There's a Way"). During the brief Larry
Carsman period we added some Blues numbers ("Sweet Little Angel,"
"How Blue Can You Get"), and after Walter joined we added
some others ("Crossroads").
15. Of the groups and musicians on the scene at this time, which were
the ones that you felt especially connected to?
I was into the Beatles, Stones, Them, Yardbirds, Kinks, Dob Dylan, the
Byrds, Lovin' Spoonful, Love, Mothers, Country Joe and the Fish, Cream,
Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, the Who, Spirit, H.P. Lovecraft, Fever
Tree, and a lot of avant garde and electronic music by composers such
as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mort Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros,
Steve Reich.
16. How did the record deal with ABC come about?
Ken and Tom had a cousin in the Los Angeles office of William Morris
Agency. ILL WIND got signed to William Morris and they made the introduction
to producer Tom Wilson. It wasn't a deal between us and ABC per se.
Wilson was an independent producer and he had deals with several labels
including ABC. Our album was release at the same time as the Bagatelle
and Fraternity of Man albums, as a first offering by Wilson's Rasputin
Productions.
17. Can you look back on the lp and describe the
recording of some of the songs? How do you feel about the record now when
you listen to it?
The 1967 sessions at Capitol Records in New York were done in Studio
A, a very large room where big band and orchestral recordings had been
in earlier eras. Dick Weissman was the producer, and Tom Frankel was
paying for the sessions. We recorded to Ampex 1/2" four track machines,
which allowed very limited overdubbing. We recorded instrumental backing
tracks first, I believe as a stereo pair, and then overdubbed vocals
and some instrumental parts. Ken laid down an oboe-like fuzz guitar
part on "Tomorrow You'll Come Back" and Carey played piano
on his song "You're All I See Now." Studio technique was very
new to all of us, and I was impressed by some of the magic. For instance,
Carey had flubbed a vocal entry on "R. U. Write" and wanted
to do it over. The engineer said not to worry, that he could fix it,
and he simply cut out a small section of just ONE track of the tape,
deleting just the false entrance!
The Tom Wilson recordings were done at Mayfair Studios, also in mid-town
New York, during four weeks in February 1968. Harry Yarmark was the
engineer, and we recorded on 8-track in two different rooms at the facility.
The recording technique was basically similar to what we'd done at Capitol,
except that we had twice as many tracks with the freedom that implies.
I think we used five tracks for the basic instruments and had the remaining
three for vocals and some instrumental overdubs. This being the post-Sergeant
Pepper era, I was anxious to try all sorts of experiments. The brutal
reality was that we were on a limited budget, so anything that didn't
come together quickly was scrapped.
Most of the instrumental tracks were played straight through as in performance.
The only instrumental overdubbing I remember was some second banjo on
the solo of "Sleep," piano by Cary on "Little Man"
and the organ at the end of "Full Cycle." That's both Ken
and Carey at the same keyboard, playing stacked parallel fifths (e.g.
D, A, E, B) along with the chant-like melody. Another detail on that
cut is that the electric bass and tambourine were both recorded on the
same track, and that balance between the two sounds was accomplished
with EQ. The vocals were triple tracked, so there are as many as nine
voices.
We double-tracked vocals on some songs, such as "Little Man,"
and in some cases triple-tracked a single voice. Carey did that on "Sleep,"
although I normally sang one of the parts live (my intonation was never
all that wonderful in those days, and I was having some mid-winter throat
problems to boot). I did the vocals at the end of L.A.P.D. These were
intended to serve as a background texture to Carey's fuzz bass solo,
but Wilson mixed them forward - much to my annoyance.
Listening back to these recordings after more than 30 years, I have
a much more favorable reaction than I did at the time. I was actually
so pissed off when we first got the release disks that I tried to smash
one! Of course vinyl is practically unbreakable unless you freeze it
first, so it kept bending no matter how hard I tried so I finally gouged
it up with scissors.
I still hear all the flaws, especially in my own voice, but overall
it's strong, tuneful, and well played. The Frankel and Frankel songs
are good and Conny is a real talent. Carey was a remarkable bass player,
Dave was a solid drummer, and Ken was a deft guitarist. ILL WIND should
have done well, but a combination of internal strife, Tom Wilson's questionable
business practices, and fallout from Alan Lorber's "Bosstown Sound"
debacle just took it out of us.
Despite the degeneration loss on the Weissman recordings (tape dub of
an acetate transferred to CD) I prefer the sound quality to Wilson's
production. The Wilson mix is bathed in reverb and has a muted quality
compared to the punchiness of Weissman's mix. I do think that Wilson
and Yarmark captured the sound of Carey's fuzz bass very well on "My
Dark World," "People of the Night," and "L.A.P.D."
I'm just sorry we didn't have two more weeks in the studio to properly
finish some of the tracks. As a songwriter I was bummed that I got only
a single song on the album. "Flashes" was actually the name
of one of my songs that got recorded but never finished because it was
taking too long. Wilson suggested it for the album title early on and
it stuck despite the song itself not making it. "Flashes"
was the most overtly psychedelic piece in our repertoire, being in fact
about my first acid trips. I had some musical ideas in my head but insufficient
musicianship and diplomatic skills to translate them into an arrangement
that ILL WIND could play. "Transmutation" suffered a similar
fate, being a heavy, nearly Hendrix-like, song that we never did get
right. These were at the heart of my worst interactions with Ken, since
he didn't immediately "grok" what I was after and tended to
dismiss it as "weird," while I couldn't play guitar well enough
to do it myself.
Here's a tragicomic afterword on the "Flashes" album. The
initial pressing was of 10,000 copies, all of which were defective.
The back cover had individual solarized black and white photos of the
band members, but the printing job was so dark that the photos were
actually "black and black." What was worse, the song "High
Flying Bird" had a mastering error. Near the end of the song there
is a vamp over which Conny and I do a vocal improvisation on the "Lord
look at me." It's supposed to go on for 16 bars, but the second
8 bars repeat, happening three times! There was a young band in Manchester
New Hampshire who started emulating our look and style, and after "Flashes"
came out they covered many of the songs, including "High Flying
Bird" with all the erroneous repeats.
18. What about the non-lp tracks? Where were they recorded?
I'm pretty sure that "Ill Wind" was recorded at Hanley Sound
in the Boston area. We did the instrumental tracks while Judy was still
in the band and then finished them with Conny. The other five songs
were done with Dick Weissman at Capitol Records Studio A in New York.
As I recall we did "Tomorrow You'll Come Back," "You're
All I See Now," and "R.U. Write" in the spring of 1967
and then returned in the late summer to cut "It's Your Life,"
and "People of the Night," and to redo lead guitar on "R.U.
Write."
19. Can you tell me about the seemingly ill-fated trip to California and
the subsequent bust upon returning?
The trip to California wasn't ill-fated in itself, but the drug bust
was definitely a bummer. We went to California due to the largesse of
Ken and Tom's father Don Frankel (the oil man). He flew us out to play
a private party at a large venue in Venice called the Cheetah (formerly
the Aragon Ballroom). He spent something like $10,000 (in 1967 dollars)
on the party and gave each of us ten shares of his oil company stock.
Among the guests were record execs from Capitol. Cheetah offered to
have us back one week later, so we drove up to San Francisco to play
a couple of auditions in the interim. Things went well in San Francisco
and had we been able to simply stay there I expect we'd have had more
success. But Conny had to go back and find a new apartment so we all
came back.
Here's where my memory doesn't serve me quite well... I know that later
that summer we played a week at a club on Long Island and then came
into New York to do more recording at Capitol. I also know that Ken
and Tom got busted for manufacturing LSD. I just don't remember which
came first!
In any case, I was awakened one morning by the telephone to be informed
by this annoying Catholic-girl-sort-of-groupie-but-without-the-sex of
my acquaintence that the Frankels had been arrested. I saw the news
report in a bar (or all places) later that day. Ken and Tom got out
fairly quickly and told the band that business would carry on. Naturally
they we evicted from their rented house in Watertown, which meant the
band lost its rehearsal space in the basement, but we quickly rented
a new and better space in Cambridge and the Frankels moved to the North
Shore. The already-tentative Capitol deal evaporated.
But just as Tom had said, things did carry on. We linked up with Tom
Wilson and recorded the album. We moved to Wellesley, anticipating that
our album would be fabulously popular and that we'd be prosperous. It
didn't happen and the band broke up by the end of 1968. The Frankels
hired famous dope lawyer Joseph Oteri and he eventually got Ken acquitted
and Tom convicted with a suspended sentence. Both Frankels moved back
to California and got richer in real estate.
20. How did your relationship with the band come
to an end?
My relationship with the band came to an end TWICE. The first time was
when the band broke up in the wake of our album release and the promotional
tour that wasn't. Although we already had a manager in Tom Frankel,
our producer Tom Wilson had a partner who also became our manager. So
we had two managers who didn't like each other, splitting one commission,
and mostly working a cross purposes. After the album was released we
were supposed to tour for six weeks to promote it. We booked no gigs
for that period. Then Wilson's partner cancelled the tour, so we had
no work.
On top of that, only part of the band moved to Wellesley, so Ken, Conny,
and Carey had to commute. Carey got sick of it and quit the band, so
we had to hire a new bass player, a handsome young lad with high pretty
voice, Michael Walsh. We finally got back to gigging and things looked
promising, but then Wilson picked up the contract option for another
year. We were in shock - there was no way we wanted to continue working
with Wilson, so we disbanded.
The second time I left ILL WIND I was fired. After the group broke up
in December 1968 everyone went his or her own way. I was stone broke
and I ended up working as a janitor for half a year (actually quite
a productive time during which I wrote many songs). Then my girlfriend
and I moved back into Boston and I went back to school at MIT. At the
same time I joined a bar band to pay the rent. The following spring
the remaining members of ILL WIND got togeter ostensibly for a one-time
performance on a benefit concert on the very first Earth Day, sharing
the bill with my bar band. We had such fun that we decided to get back
together, with Carey Mann on guitar and Hammond organ, Michael Walsh
on bass, and Dave, Conny, and I in our usual slots.
Things went well at first. We had a kindly avuncular booking agent named
Charlie Kearns who kept us in gigs throughout the summer and the music
was better than ever. Then something happened, and Carey quit the band
again (especially inconvenient since we were rehearsing in his basement).
We quickly hired a replacement, a hot young guitarist from Detroit named
Larry Carsman. I got along famously with Larry, but unfortunately the
rest of the band didn't. Larry quit after a couple of months and joined
the James Montgomery Blues Band, old friends of his from Detroit. Larry's
replacement was Walter Bjorkman, formerly of the Cloud and recently
of Swallow. Walter played a very sinuous bluesy style of lead guitar
and sang in a high, clear voice. It seemed a perfect lineup.
Shortly after things had settled down with Walter and we were gigging
steadily, another member of the band approached me with a problem. I
had been bringing my girl friend of two years to most of the band's
gigs. My anonymous bandmate didn't particularly like her and it made
him uncomfortable for her to be there all the time. He was asking me
to stop bringing her along. Naturally this put me into an untenable
position. My rather high-strung girl friend threw a fit and threatened
to leave me, so I dutifully took her part against my bandmate. Unfortunately
it quickly turned from us against him into us against them and I found
myself driving separately to all the gigs, with guitar and amp in the
back seat of our VW bug and my girl friend by my side. This state of
affairs could not last for long, and one day in the spring of 1971 the
band called a meeting at my apartment and gave me the bad news.
21. What was your direction following the
split with the band?
I was mostly going in circles. My problem girlfriend and I split up
by the end of the year, so I had neither girl friend nor band. After
losing my music gig I worked various jobs including technical assistant
at the MIT Film Section, waterbed installer, and laborer on a remodelling
crew. Having lost the last of those jobs during the same week I split
from the girlfriend, I moved in with some filmmaker friends in Cambridge
and started dealing dope. Carey Mann and I got together, as fellow ILL
WIND alumni, and tried to get a band together. We rehearsed for some
months with a pianist named Bill Clapham and eventually connected with
a guitarist from Philadelphia named Danny Starobin. Danny had a rather
successful blues horn band called Sweet Stavin' Chain, but cancer knocked
him out of the running. He had come to Boston post-treatment to attend
Berklee School of Music. Despite a few moments of really excellent music,
this lineup did not work.
I then worked briefly in a pickup band in which Willie Alexander played
drums, but Willie got sick, missed a couple gigs, and got fired so I
quit too. I then started and led my own band, Salamander from fall of
1972 until the winter of 1974. We were a six piece: two guitars, keyboard,
tenor sax, bass, and drums. It was another MIT band. The lead guitarist
was an astrophysicist and the sax player was a biology major who is
now an acupuncturist. We did a mixed bag of cover tunes and a number
of my compositions. I gave it a shot, but after a little more than a
year without an obvious breakthrough I quit the band and decided to
move to California to work on an independent feature film with a friend
I'd met in film class at MIT.
I spent a year living in Palo Alto and working on that film (Off the
Wall, written and directed by Rick King) and then moved to Santa Cruz.
The local community college had a great music program, so I started
taking a few courses and ended up as a full time student for two years.
After that I got into a graduate program in composition at UC San Diego
and after five years (1977-82) I had earned a PhD. I focused mostly
on electronic and computer music and intermedia theater. I was doing
a lot of large theater pieces with projected images, choreography, and
electronic sound. During this period I met a lot of the composers whose
worked I'd first heard on record during the late 1960s and early '70s:
Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Mort Subotnick, Milton Babbit, Luciano
Berio, Earle Brown, Conlon Nancarrow, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley, Alvin
Lucier, David Behrman, and quite a few others. After finishing my doctorate
I worked for three years with the singer Diamanda Galas and also pursued
my own composition. We recorded a couple of albums and performed around
North America and Europe.
Diamanda and I split in 1985 and shortly thereafter I met my companion
of 14 years, violist Pamela Goldsmith, and moved to Los Angeles to be
with her. For a few years I had a go at performing solo electronic music
and continuing to create theater pieces, and I maintained a collaboration
with the bassist Robert Black from Hartford Connecticut. Robert's CD
"State of the Bass" on oodiscs has two of our pieces on it,
along with other works written for him.
After a few years I became increasingly active as a consultant in computer
music and multichannel audio, and less in music per se. For a while
I did custom software development for clients including the Grateful
Dead and Marc Canter's Media Band, and I did some college-level teaching
at CalArts and UCLA Extension. I also worked for about half a year for
Graham Nash.
22. What is life like today? What do you listen to now?
I live in Los Angeles with Pam and five cats, on the ridge overlooking
the San Fernando Valley. I have a dozen guitars, a stack of synthesizers
and signal processors, and several computers. I work as a consultant
in entertainment technology, principally for Level Control Systems,
manufacturers of multichannel sound automation systems for theater and
theme parks. I do various things for them, ranging from hardware and
software testing to technical support to customer training to technical
and marketing writing. I recently went to Seattle to assist at the Experience
Music Project. Our other customers include Broadway shows (Seussical,
Fosse, Ragtime), Las Vegas shows (Cirque du Soleil, EFX, Lance Burton),
theme parks (Universal Studios, Disneyland, Disney World), and various
other venues (Hollywood Bowl, Hayden Planetarium).
I don't listen to as much music as I did when I was young, but I do
keep up with some popular music. Whenever I hear about something that
intrigues me I'll pick up some CDs, most recently Radiohead. I enjoy,
and have a lot of respect for, REM. A few others I've picked up over
recent years have been Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Alanis Morisette,
Primus. I never tire of my old favorites, and I have all the Beatles
on CD, as well as the Byrds, Moby Grape, Love. I've been listening to
avant garde or "experimental" music since about 1966, so I
have quite a collection of rather "outside" music. I'm a big
fan of John Oswald (Plunderphonic), Conlon Nancarrow (player piano music),
Jon Hassell. I have a lot of the classics of electronic music by Karlheinz
Stockhausen, John Cage, Mort Subotnick, and a whole lot of newer music
by artists too numerous to name. I don't have any particular interest
in the contemporary electronica or noise music. I suppose it's a case
of "been there, done that" - altough I went to a rave a while
back and enjoyed some of the groups a lot.
For a few years I performed with a quasi-improvisational group named
Cosmic Debris. You can check us out on mp3.com. Our lineup consisted
of Richard Bugg on flute and electronics; Keith Snyder on keyboards
and occasional vocals; Chris Meyer on rhythm loops, hand percussion,
and sample;, Lucky Westfall on electric bass; Blake Arnold actor and
storyteller; myself on Eventide H3000 and DSP4000 signal processors.
We described our genre as "ambient groove and spoken word."
My role within the band was as sound mangler. I used the Eventides to
process and sample the other members of the group.
Three years ago I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer (the same thing
that killed Bogart) and I spent about a year going through all kinds
of hell: chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, more chemo. We appear to
have beaten it - at least so far. During my convalescence I did a lot
of reading (I finally finished Joyce's "Ulysses") and I bought
a Line6 POD amp simulator and started playing guitar again after a 20-year
retirement. I got enthusiastic and started buying the guitars I never
could afford as a youth. I now have a dozen of them, including a Rickenbacker
12-string, a Jerry Jones electric sitar, a Danelectro Baritone, two
Strats (one with built-in MIDI), an MIDI bass, and so on. I also have
a couple racks of signal processors ranging from an Eventide Orville
down to Line6 stomp boxes. I will never play for money again, nor will
I get famous at it, but it's fun.
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