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MOTHER TUCKERS YELLOW DUCK
Part 6 - Continued excerpt from the beginning
of the book, 'Listen Carefully to Everything he Says, Then Ignore it
Completely', by C. Livingstone.
(See here about the Book)
MTYD -- Part 6
It was actually a bigger blown opportunity than it might appear. When I had
been in New York trying to get the band across the border to the Electric
Circus, I had spent an hour with band leader Benny Dorsey’s manager Willard
Alexander.
Willard was trying to cross over into rock. Willard was the one who had
touted us out to Atlantic Records, and I found out long afterwards they
had a big promotion deal all lined up.
That was not the first time I miscued a phone call. Not even the call
from Billy Graham was the first. The winter before, we had backed up to
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at a big show in Vancouver. At the
traditional after party, the bass player approached me to tell me he was
more than just a little bit impressed and would I mind it if he
mentioned us to their manager. “Not at all”, I said, thinking, “ahhh”,
quietly to myself, as their manager was also Bob Dylan’s manager who was
still riding high at the top of his form.
About two months later, the phone rang one day around dinner. It was the
Dylan manager. After about two sentences as he was introducing himself,
the phone cut off. I don’t know why, and to this day I still have no
idea why. I waited awhile, but he didn’t call back. And I never called
him back.
I have no idea what might have happened or if anything at all. One of
those loose ends that can remain for the rest of your life like a
question mark over your forehead if you let it.
Those were my most obvious missed band opportunities. I also missed a
couple of other potential opportunities around the same time which were
not quite so obvious. One day I received a call from the Canadian
president of Columbia Records. He wanted to know if I would like to come
over to the Columbia Records studio in Toronto because he had something
to show me.
I knew who the man was by name but didn’t know the man from Adam face to
face. I was a bit surprised that he had called, but said, “Sure, why
not”, things being a little quiet around the band house at the time.
What he wanted to show me was a tape of a new group from Montreal which
he had just signed up. In particular he gave me all the details about a
large multi-million dollar international promotion they had already put
in place ready to go at the push the button.
I was way too slow in smelling the coffee. So he asked me if I wanted to
accompany him around while he made his rounds for the day.
I said sure and away we went. I thought it more than passing strange
that I was in this situation of tooling around town with the president
of one of Canada’s largest record companies, whom I had just met,
yakking like we were old buddies. By the end of the day, I was still too
stupid to smell even day old. So he dropped me back at my car at the
studio and we said goodbye. I never heard from him again.
It didn’t light bulb until many years later, that all he had wanted me
to do was bring up the subject of the band. Because we were already
talking to Capitol Records at the time, he couldn’t initiate the
discussion. An industry code of ethics kind of thing. What he had been
desperately tying to do was show me by tangent was what his Company was
willing to do for us and more.
All it had needed was for me to have initiated the first word and he
would have been off the ethical hook. Some boats are slow arriving to
harbour. Unfortunately in this case, all the loading berths were long
gone loaded up when the ship finally did arrive. Talk about allowing an
opportunity to pass.
I probably missed yet another ‘golden maybe’ on behalf of the band
around the same time. I had lunch with a guy from a junior record
company whose proposal was that the company wanted to get closer to the
main stream action of rock and roll.
So the company was looking for a band with strong enough punch to act as
a flagship act for them. Sort of like what Jimmie Hendrix had done to
get Atlantic Records started into rock out of jazz. He thought our band
had it, so was proposing that his company would be willing to invest
whatever it took to make the band a winner.
Unfortunately he also commented that as far as he was concerned, the
current state of society was the greatest thing that had every happened
to mankind. Also unfortunately, was the fact that like most hippies of
the time I didn’t exactly share the sentiment, who as a group somewhat
distained the decidedly ‘money first and principles second’ flavour of
the so-called modern era.
So I passed. Looking back today it’s hard to believe that I had actually
passed an opportunity like that for such a do-little reason. We should
have signed on and worked on mellowing out his viewpoint. The other side
of the coin is that he was in sales and not management. So maybe he was
only trying to brownie point up to his superiors and his proposal might
never have flown past the next boss upstairs. Like I said before, maybes
can be a lot of fun as long as your life doesn’t depend on them.
In another somewhat another minor brush with history, I used to sit
around the office occasionally, chit chatting with the publisher of a
small Canadian Music publication called ‘RPM’. Walt, with his ever
faithful German Sheppard companion at his ever cowboy booted feet, was
right in the throes of putting together the first all Canadian National
Music awards show, just changed from the unmemorable ‘RPM Gold Leaf
Awards’ to the much more pizzazzish ‘Juneau Awards’. And was sweating
buckets about the name change. Eventually changed again to the Juno
Awards.
The Canadian Juno Awards are now the Canadian equivalent of the American
Grammy Awards. Same mile long limos, same blazing search lights sweeping
every inch of sky, same million dollar smiles in the direction of every
camera within reach.
I eventually negotiated a deal with Capitol Records. They agreed to
reimburse us for the cost of our record master which we had produced out
of pocket. Plus they were to produce an album. Plus we got five thousand
dollars up front. The big perks would come down the road. As you can
figure out by now it was probably one of the wimpiest deals ever hacked
out in the annals of the rock and roll world up to the ongoing moment.
For Capitol, it was a little bit like buying the Taj Mahal for a couple
of hundred bucks. For the band, it was a bit of a misfortune that as
capable a fellow as I was to have around, I just never did get the hang
of where the jugular was.
Later that summer, we decided to go back to Vancouver while Capitol
Records put a promotion plan together. We stopped on the way back though
Winnipeg again. We had a two week gig booked in Edmonton three weeks
ahead so had decided to hang around in Winnipeg for a couple of weeks
doing nothing instead of hanging around in Edmonton for the couple of
weeks doing nothing. Winnipeg was way more familiar territory.
It wouldn’t have mattered a whole lot in the end result anyway as a lot
of our time in Winnipeg was spent looking for something to do. After
about a week, we were over at Donnie’s parents one afternoon doing
nothing. Suddenly Donnie leaped to his feet saying, “Hey, I know some
band guys who live in a haunted house, let’s go check it out”. Well this
was huge. So off we went, eyeballs popping like peeled onions in
anticipation.
Back while still living in Winnipeg in grades nine and ten during the
mid fifties just before we moved to Vancouver, as mentioned in Book 1 we
had lived for about two and a half years right in the middle of the very
middle and upper class Winnipeg area of River Heights. We lived on
Montrose Street almost a block down from Academy Road, smack dab in the
middle of the upper middle classiest section. Just up the street were
some very decidedly upper class establishments.
Our house was a red brick, narrow three story affair, circa the 1900s
with two bedrooms on the third floor instead of an attic. One of the
rooms had a twenty five watt light bulb from 1918. It was still on when
we moved into the house and still going strong. They sure knew how to
make bulbs to last in those days. Nowadays it’s a mug’s game. Exactly
one thousand hours and one minute, your light bulb burns out.
The day we had moved into the house, I went to the basement to check it
out. The basement was completely carved up into tiny little utility
rooms, including a small room full of shelves of preserves. I went into
the room to have a look see and immediately felt an intense prickly
feeling all over my body. The feeling was not unlike the feeling your
teeth get when eating a green apple. But it was all over my body and
quite uncomfortable. Like ants crawling all over, only on the inside.
I then noticed that them thar jars of preserves on the shelves weren’t
dill pickles, they were pieces of human bones with screws in them. Quite
the grisly find.
Turns out, in yet another minute brush with history, the previous owner
of the house was one of the doctors who had pioneered the process of
using screws in bone fractures to help speed up the healing process.
This collection of specimens was apparently part of his research. A
stellar bunch of stuff to leave lying around in a basement for kids to
find. Particularly since, as it turned out, some of the original owners
may have still been attached.
We settled into the house and I ended up sleeping in one of the bedrooms
on the third floor. As time passed, more and more before I went to sleep
every night I would get the very oppressive feeling that I would see a
skeleton in the corner. It went on for some time.
What used to freak me out the most about it was that I was afraid that
if I were afraid enough about it long enough, I would actually make it
happen. Then one night it did happen. I gave my usual furtive glance to
the corner. And sure enough, I saw a full size skeleton shimmering away
at me from the depths of the corner. I went straight under the covers
and when I finally peeped out again about ten minutes later, it was
gone.
It’s amazing how fast the mind can conclude that out of sight means out
of mind in circumstance like that. Like the ostrich philosophy that if
you can’t see them, they can’t see you. I mean like, you’re under the
covers or your head is buried, so therefore the whatever it is can’t see
that you’re there. Like right. Apparently your bum sticking high up in
the air doesn’t matter.
At any rate, it must have worked because I never saw the skeleton again
or anything like it. Except for the slanted eyes. More and more as I
tried to fall asleep at night I would see pairs of slanted siren’s eyes
dancing around in front of my eyes under the lids. Sometimes dozens at a
time. It would sometimes take a half hour or more before the stupid
things would subside or I fell asleep anyway.
I took all these things in stride and never once did I think about them
or wonder what if anything, was actually going on. Then in the beginning
of October 1955, we moved to Vancouver and that was the end of that.
Donnie’s parents lived in a comfortable southeast section of Winnipeg
called St. Vital. When we were about half way over to the so called
haunted house, and this was nearly fourteen years later, it suddenly
behoved me to notice that we seemed to be heading in the generally
familiar direction of River Heights. Suddenly the forty year old light
bulb in the attic went on and I blurted out, “hey, that haunted house
isn’t on Montrose Street is it”.
Donnie’s jaw dropped flabbergasted. Like how on earth could I have
possibly known that. Sure enough, as we pulled up in front of our old
house on Montrose Street, Donnie swept his arm in grandiose manner
pronouncing, “Here it is guys, the haunted house”.
‘What are the Odds’, you tell me.
When we had first arrived back in Winnipeg, some girl friends of
Donnie’s younger brother who were in their early twenties, glommed onto
a couple of the musicians almost from the first day. Musicians and
politicians are equally alike for arousing females. Something about the
songs they sing. These were actually nice girls though and became good
friends of the band.
Three of the girls in particular became extra good friends with three of
the musicians in matters of extra curricula particulars. This was
despite the fact that the three particular musicians involved already
had gals of equally particular matters awaiting for them back home in
Vancouver.
The Winnipeg girls treated us all like royalty, cooking special
Ukrainian dishes and providing constant good company to compensate for
our long trip on the road away from family and friends. The pocket
camera clicked constantly.
When we got back to Vancouver, the films were developed and everybody
gathered around our big picnic table styled kitchen table for a look see
at the pictures. The photos were being handed hand to hand one at a time
around the table. One of the musicians of one of the similar girlfriends
in Winnipeg, was sitting beside his particularly similar girlfriend in
Vancouver.
The photographs had all been carefully screened beforehand to prevent
any mishap. But one of the incriminating photos had inadvertently
slipped through the screening. The photo showed our three troubadours
standing with their arms around the waists of their respective Winnipeg
girlfriends and grinning from ear to ear.
Our guy sitting beside his similar particular Vancouver girlfriend saw
the loaded snapshot going by and with a very audible, “woops”, reached
over and plucked it deftly out of the air. But his similar particular
Vancouver girlfriend had heard the audible. So just as deftly she
plucked it out of his hand.
Well there’s no doubt about it, a picture is worth a thousand words. She
took one look and was packed and gone before supper. Fortunately the
photo was destroyed before the married guy’s wife got to see it.
Just as the viewing session was winding down, an old friend of our lead
guitar player from the BC interior stopped over to see what was going
on. Norm had just come out of fourteen months in the slammer for
something he hadn’t done. A friend of a friend had been busted for
possession of a small quantity of marijuana or however it’s spelled.
The guy had already been through the process once already. So was facing
a much more harsh incarceration this time for being such a second time
around heinous criminal. So since it would only have been only Norm’s
his first offence, Norm took the rap instead of the heinous criminal.
The one thing you had to admire about hippies was their unfailing sense
of fairness sometimes. Not a joke.
That was one thing the regular community didn’t know much about. Hippies
were usually very supportive and helpful with each other, even with
complete strangers. Flower power was real and flourishing abundantly
right under everyone’s nose.
Norm was hoping someone would also show him the photos. Everyone else
had something else they had to do, so I volunteered. I didn’t really
want to either because I also had something else to do too. But I
decided that if this fellow could sacrifice a year or so of his life for
someone who was almost a stranger, certainly I could sacrifice an hour
or two of my life for him who wasn’t a stranger
Well, ‘One good turn deserves another’, ‘Kindness is its own reward’,
etc., etc., etc., because I ended up having the time my life. We hooted
and hollered for nearly two solid hours as I carefully detailed every
little story behind every little photograph. Just goes to show how a
little bit of kindness can be even more than just its own reward.
We also had apparently set up another kind of bond. Because almost two
years later I had been hitch hiking up the Trans Canada highway East of
Vancouver headed to Harrison Lake. Harrison Lake was a small town and
hot spa resort about ninety miles up on the north side of the Fraser
River from Vancouver.
I had been standing miserable at the same spot for nearly two hours. It
was cold, the rain had been pouring non-stop, and it was getting dark.
If there was any worse possible weather for hitch hiking tell me about
it because I hadn’t been there yet. I was completely wrapped in a rain
cape, and shivering so badly I could hardly move. The only visibility to
show I was even human was my face from under my rain cape.
Suddenly a car veered in straight off the highway and offered me a lift.
It was our friend Norm. He said later as we were driving along, that he
hadn’t known it was me. All he had seen was a pair of eyes blazing
pleadingly out from under the cape and felt a sudden compulsion to stop.
Good vibrations beget good vibrations. One of life’s big lessons: what
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was trying to capture when he did well
over a hundred retakes of ‘Good Vibrations’ before finally settling on
the fourteenth.
After leaving Winnipeg in the middle of August, the band finally arrived
in Edmonton for our two week gig. The club turned out to be a hot spot
pizza rock club right next to the University of Alberta.
We stayed in the finished attic of a gigantic three story red brick
mansion for most of our time in Edmonton. The mansion had originally
been the official home of the provincial Governor General. The Governor
General had long since been moved into swankier digs and the old mansion
long since divvied up into a myriad of small student’s apartments
because of its close proximity to the campus.
The place was nearly empty for the summer. The fellow running the
mansion had seen us on our first night at the club and liked the music.
He invited us to hole up in the third floor attic rent-free while in
town. This was rent we could afford so up the stairs we went.
We had spent the first night in the city at a motel. The motel sat just
out of town on the West side about fifteen miles along the main highway
west towards Jasper National Park and the Canadian West Coast at Prince
Rupert.
It had been late in the evening and nearly pitch black when we arrived
at the motel. From what we could see from outside the place, it was
pretty posh. But the rates were low. Very very low. That should have
been the tip off.
It was however late, and we had been on the road all day and not all
that sharp on the uptake. It was also the first one we had come upon
that wasn’t ‘No Vacancied’. So we gladly took a couple of small units
way out back from the main complex.
Way down in the back end of the night, or way up in the front end of the
morning, take your pick, I was awakened by the approaching blare of a
diesel train way off in the distance. Then it was a lot closer. Then it
was right upon us. Then it was just like coming right through the room.
The walls started shaking and the furniture started jumping all over the
place.
A big earthquake would have been little different, but it seemed more
like a fast moving freight going by about sixteen feet right outside the
window. I ran to the window to see what the hell was going on. Sure
enough. A fast moving freight train was going by at about sixteen feet
right outside the window.
The motel turned out to be a true Hollywood façade, in other words a
front porch job. A big bright impressive two story front faced the
highway to lure them in. Dinky little mouldy old units sat tightly
adjacent to the main CNR railway line out of Edmonton out back to hole
them up. Our window had looked right out over the tracks.
I visited a friend in Thunder Bay once a number of years later. Brian
was living in a converted warehouse. The back window of his apartment
was only a couple of feet from a train track which squeezed tightly
between his warehouse and another sitting directly behind his on the
other side of the track.
As was typical of the era back in the hay days before container hauling
made truck shipping a lot easier, the original idea was to allow boxcars
to squeeze exactly between two warehouses back to back such that
straight in and straight out loading from the boxcar’s floor to the
warehouse’s floor was possible and vice versa. The actual original idea
of a loading bay. So consequently, the box cars fitted between the
warehouses with only inches to spare on either side.
The rent was cheap so Brian considered it a bargain. I was treated to
the pleasure of a train going slowly by in the middle of the night,
little more than a couple of feet away from my head on the bed right
under the window. To each their own I always say.
When the walls had first started shaking and furniture started jumping
around in the motel in Edmonton, I immediately thought of the ‘wey-weys’
which had constantly kept coming around when I was a little kid in
Châteauguay Quebec in the early forties.
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