The Sons of Adam: Saturday’s sons of the Sunset Strip

By Greg Prevost & Mike Stax

From late ’65 until early ’67, the Sons of Adam were one of the most happening bands on the Sunset Strip, playing to packed houses at clubs like Gazzarri’s, Bito Lido’s and the Whisky A Go Go. They had the right sound, the right image, and some of the most talented musicians on the scene. They even had their share of lucky breaks, including an appearance in a major Hollywood movie and a deal with Decca Records. Arthur Lee even gave them one of his songs. Yet somehow the Sons of Adam never managed to lift themselves out of the Hollywood club scene and into the major leagues. Today they’re mostly remembered as the band Michael Stuart was in before he joined Love, or the band Randy Holden was in before joining Blue Cheer. What’s too often overlooked is that the Sons have a proud legacy of their own: three enormously great 45 releases, and a story that is long overdue to be told.

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Warsaw Pakt: Rocket-fueled rock’n’roll from the bunker

Real high-energy rock’n’roll in its most potent form is best captured live and in the moment. Maximum thrills, minimum frills.

In 1977, London’s Warsaw Pakt took that premise one step further, recording their album live, straight through, direct to the cutting lathe – no tape master, no overdubs, no mixing. The record was pressed, packed and shipped overnight and was in the record stores the following day. No procrastination. Instant gratification.

“The idea was to bypass tape and gain a very accurate recording that would be louder and clearer than any other method then available,” remembers guitarist Andy Colquhoun.

The actual process was simple. “It was play Side One, break, tune up, play Side Two,” he explains. “This was done three times. The engineers were very concerned about us destroying the cutting lathe heads, which ran about five grand each. At first the sound in their control room at the top of the building was very restrained. By the third take of the two sides it was OK, but not as good as the room sound. They used that take anyway. The master was taken directly to the factory and manufactured overnight, and we were in Virgin Records at Marble Arch the following afternoon signing copies.”

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On the anniversary of John Lennon’s death

By Mike Stax

(The article below appeared in the SAN DIEGO READER in 2010 as part of a larger story marking the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death.)

On December 8, 1980 I had been living in America for just over four weeks. I had flown to San Diego from England with a suitcase, a bass guitar and about $250 to join a band called the Crawdaddys. I was 18 years old. The Crawdaddys were one of the first fiercely retro ‘60s bands. We lived and breathed 1964-65: vintage clothes, vintage guitars, vintage amps, vintage songs. Musically we were fixated more on the Stones and Them than the Beatles, but the early Beatles were a big part of the daily soundtrack of our lives. John Lennon in A Hard Day’s Night was the epitome of cool to us: his quick wit, that hard-faced sarcasm in the face of authority.

At the time I was living with Ron Silva, the Crawdaddys leader, and his girlfriend Mindy in a small apartment on Fifth Avenue, close to downtown. Ron and I arrived home early that evening after another day of walking around the city. We’d walked as far as 30^th and Meade where Ron had dropped a jacket off at a tailor he used there. Later we figured out that’s where we must have been when Lennon had actually been shot. I can’t drive by that block now without thinking of John Lennon. When we got home Mindy blurted out between sobs that John Lennon had been shot. We were stunned, speechless. She and Ron disappeared into the bedroom and I was left alone, reeling in disbelief. It wasn’t until a few minutes later when Ron reemerged that I learned that Lennon had not only been shot, he was dead. Mindy was inconsolable, fixated on a line Lennon sung years before: “The way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me.”

Later that night and over the next few days, we, like the rest of the world, watched as the rest of the story unfurled on television. None of it made any sense: the killer, the motive, the media canonization. I was gutted but felt completely detached from the public displays of grief, the constant soundtrack of “Imagine” on every TV set or radio. These people seemed to be mourning a different John Lennon than we were. Did they even know him? I remember one grieving ‘fan’ on TV sobbing to a reporter that she loved John so much because he’d written two of her favorite songs: “Yesterday” and “Hey Jude.” You had to laugh to keep from puking.

A few months later Reagan was shot, not by a political revolutionary but by another delusional loner with an unhealthy celebrity fixation.

So this was America, I thought, a land where any disaffected loser can simply grab a weapon, select his target and blast himself a small perch in history. I seemed to have arrived in a very strange place, a long way from home. Maybe John had a similar revelation as he lay dying on the cold pavement in front of the Dakota. Maybe we all did.

Mike Stax, writer, Ugly Things magazine publisher, lead singer of The Loons.