Felix Cavaliere’s Rascals and the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz: Spring 2022 Tour

by admin  3rd Jan 2022 Comments [0]

By Harvey Kubernik

 

Micky Dolenz of the Monkees and Felix Cavaliere’s Rascals are teaming up for live dates in 2022. Micky is fresh off the 41-date The Monkees Farewell Tour. Felix has a new album due soon and an autobiography coming in March.

Their trek kicks off January 22 at The Palladium in New York City and includes dates April 23 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Red Bank, New Jersey on May 12 and a May 14 appearance at the Patchogue Theater, Patchogue, New York.

A few years ago I saw the duo perform a stellar show in Los Angeles and excited they will hit the road together again.

(Left: Felix Cavaliere. May 1968. Photo by Henry Diltz)

 

During 2013 I interviewed Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals. A portion of our conversation was published in Record Collector News magazine in Southern California.

 

“It’s one thing to make hit records and have hits. I always felt we had a different purpose out there,” volunteered Felix Cavaliere. “And I see people going through their past. And their healing processes and their memories of those years. And they start crying. What I see are people reaching out for what I call that ‘sixties’ positive energy.’ We get clobbered in the media for the sixties but you know what? There were good causes out there,” Cavaliere underscored.

About his Hammond B-3 organ, a predominant instrument in the Rascals lineup, Felix explained, “When I saw an organist playing and singing he was doing bass, rhythm, lead vocal. And I said, ‘This is really encompassing a whole part of the music spectrum.’ One of the beauties of the Hammond is that it sort of fills in the sonority area where the voices are. So when you have singers and Hammond there is a blend. It really fills a room with this beautiful sound. That’s what turned me on. The overall orchestration of the instruments. The Rascals had studio bassists on the albums, jazz session men. Like the Doors who employed a bass player on their albums.

“The band happened after hearing the Beatles… To me it was ‘I could do this.’ The first time I saw them early they were a band playing and singing live. They had not really done what they did with George Martin. I know they had great singers and the players are OK. But they were starting to write their own songs. They had great songs. I thought, ‘I can do this.’ And I wanted to get the best guys I could find. The best singers and musicians. And it worked. From inception to record deal was six months.

“That’s unheard of. Ahmet (Ertegun) courted us. So did Phil Spector. Seriously, I wanted to produce the group. Ourselves. That was the goal. I didn’t want anybody to take hold of this. The good luck was that Atlantic put into the room these geniuses, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd. We opened Arif up to what he was capable of doing. The freedom was there. We had unlimited studio time. And our second record, ‘Good Lovin’ was number one.

“Initially when we were presented with ‘Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore’ I kind of had a crazy reaction to the songwriters coming in. ‘Cause I wanted to write our own songs. But we hadn’t gotten to that point yet where we could start demanding stuff. The songwriters on ‘Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore’ had a nice soulful thing and were Motown writers. ‘Hey, I’m a kid. Let me learn here and take it to the next step.’ I wanted to do our own thing and from the beginning that was my plan. And again, it was Beatles-stimulated. No question about it. All those English groups really opened the door for us and everybody.

“There is a different kind of pecking order once you have a big hit,” stressed Felix. “All of a sudden they have to listen to you a little bit more, you know. It was interesting and a bit pre-mature. In those days the only way you could work in a club was if you did other people’s songs. There was no way in New Jersey or New York you were gonna go in there and play originals. They’d throw you out on your heels. That was it. It was my job, our job, to come up with songs that were songs on the radio. And we had to fight for some of them like ‘Mustang Sally.’ They never heard that. But they were legitimately on the black radio stations and we brought them to the gig. What a place to test songs.

“When we played ‘Good Lovin’’ people got up and danced. So you kind of knew instantly what could be a hit record. If in fact it ever got to that level. You could see it and hear it. You had a built in Nielsen-type rating thing. But we had all covers. After that the spotlight was on us. And we had to follow a million seller. That’s not easy. The so-called sophomore jinx. So I really put my foot down, ‘You know damn it. We’re gonna write now. No more bringing outside stuff in.’

“We had a tough time. ‘You Better Run’ and ‘Come On Up’ came out. And, thank God, this woman came into my life and we started with ‘I’ve Been Lonely Too Long.’

“And, with ‘I’ve Been Lonely Too Long’ and ‘Groovin’’ at that point in my life I fell in love and I found a muse. It was just gaga land. I was gone. All of those love songs were about this one particular person. And it was so interesting and the culmination was ‘How Can I Be Sure.’ And then it was over. Things happen for a reason and the reason was to write those songs. That is what she was there for. The word muse is real. The stories were genuinely about being in love.

“There’s a certain divine thing that happens in every group,” posed Felix. “And Gene just fit. Initially he wasn’t funky but he learned. Dino was a wild horse drummer. And between (arranger) Arif Mardin and (engineer) Tommy Dowd they calmed it down. I didn’t have my recording chops together but Tom did. We overplayed, like all young kids and learned to chill.

“The thing about Atlantic Records was that it was not a corporate entity. The studios were open to anyone. No signs to keep out. One day Otis Redding sticks his heads in and says, ‘My God! They’re white!’ Which I loved. That was cool.

“At Atlantic everyone was jealous of us because we had eight-track. Can you imagine that? This is where you put the genius of Tommy Dowd. Forget it. He just knew and had tricks they had developed on the four tracks that we kind of inherited and learned. I learned from watching Tom. For example, you put the low bass and the high tambourine on the same track. And you can kind of make a change with EQ’s rather than overdubs and all that. Because we didn’t have any tracks, where to put stuff and how to blend.

“And don’t forget, stereo came in during that period of time. I found out that John F. Kennedy used to fly Tommy to the White House to do his press conferences. ‘Cause he was so enamored with his idea of stereo.”

© 2021 Harvey Kubernik

 

Felix Cavaliere. January 29, 1968. (Photo by Henry Diltz)

 

HARVEY KUBERNIK is the author of 20 books, including Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows, Neil Young Heart of Gold, Canyon Of Dreams, The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972.

Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. For November 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child published by Sterling/Barnes and Noble.

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. Kubernik’s writings are in several book anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski. This century he wrote the liner note booklets to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special and The Ramones’ End of the Century.

In November 2006, he was a speaker discussing audiotape preservation and archiving at special hearings called by The Library of Congress and held in Hollywood, California.

During 2020 Harvey Kubernik served as a Consultant on the two-part documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time directed by Alison Ellwood which debuted on EPIX television. In 2022 Kubernik is involved in several music documentaries and for the last decade is Editor-In-Chief of Record Collector News magazine.

 


Large as Life & Twice as Loud

by admin  27th Dec 2021 Comments [0]

Mike Brassard of Mike & The Ravens: January 15, 1943 – November 27, 2021

By Will Shade

 

Buddy Rich – or someone like him – once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up” or words to that effect… but what if you’re not bragging. What if you actually try to hide your light under a bushel but it always explodes like a geyser of Roman candles? What if the moment you open your mouth in either conversation or song, people come to a halt and at the very least say to themselves, “Whoa, what in the world is this?”

That was Mike Brassard. He oozed charisma like mustard on a clean white shirt. He couldn’t help himself.

You were larger than life, Mike, and twice as loud. And you’ll always take twice as much room in my heart as anybody else.

So, how can I say goodbye to my best friend? How do I say goodbye to my brother from another mother? How do I say goodbye to a father figure? And how do I say goodbye to a guy I played air guitar with, a guy who was 25-years-older than me, but we both grinned like insane fools with Link Wray cranked to maximum volume as we danced our keisters off around the studio?

Well, you don’t say goodbye… you say hello to the memories, and there were so many memories…

He called himself the Big Bopper… I said he was a rock ‘n’ roll citizen in a hip-hop world.

I’d tracked Mike down in 2004 as I was putting together a compilation of pre-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll from New York and Vermont. While Mike wanted to tout the songs of his erstwhile partner, Steve Blodgett, he was reluctant to open up in regard to his own abilities. Anybody who knows me, though, knows that’s a futile endeavor. Before too long, I was flying down to Florida to spirit him north and into the confines of the Saxony Recording Studios.

It was that willingness to squelch his own genius that actually brought his character into sharper focus.

I miss Mike’s generosity of spirit… but mostly I miss his sense of humor… I remember him explaining what it was like to be the nominal adult in a band with Blodgett, Lyford and Young back in 1962.

“It was like babysitting the Three Stooges,” he said… there was no meanness in it… it was simply a statement of fact with some levity thrown in.

I won’t be saying goodbye to Mike. Daily I’m reminded of him. Yesterday I was watching a documentary on Sun Studios. My first instinct was to send him an email, raving about Jerry Lee Lewis… but then I remembered there was nobody on the other end of the line… I sent the email anyway.

(more…)


Ode to a Mensch: Charlie Robert Watts

by admin  25th Aug 2021 Comments [0]

By Harvey Robert Kubernik 


This is not the platform or forum for me to display photos of myself with Charlie Watts or a post card he sent me from the road. However, I feel encouraged by musicians and poets who are offering phone shiva and compelled to write this appreciation.

Charlie was a friend of mine since the early nineties. We never talked about the Rolling Stones. Just jazz.

“One of the great things about recording in Hollywood at RCA was after a session you’d walk into the car port and literally on the other side of the building was [jazz club] Shelly’s Manne-Hole,” Charlie revealed to me at a 2016 Stones’ Coachella Desert Trip tour rehearsal at Third Encore studios in Burbank, California.

In my 2014 book Turn Up The Radio! Pop, Rock, and Roll in Los Angeles 1956-1972 published by Santa Monica Press, I asked Charlie about a Stones’ 1964 or ’65 recording session at RCA.

“While we were recording in Hollywood, I went to Shelly’s Manne-Hole twice—once to see Charles Lloyd, Albert Stinson [with Gabor Szabo and Pete LaRoca], and the Bill Evans Trio with Paul Motian on drums [and Chuck Israels]. I saw Shelly at his club.”

Charlie was always thankful I introduced him to drummer Stan Levey, who he saw in 1960 with Stan Kenton at Wembley. Earlier this century we had lunch at the Levey house in Sherman Oaks and Charlie arrived in a cab from The Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, wearing perfectly pressed blue jeans, to join Jim Keltner and I.

He relished the Chico Hamilton autograph I personally got for him, and was delighted by the gift I gave him of a Shelley Manne coffee table limited edition book. I fondly recall how Charlie described the thin drum sticks that Shelley used on the bandstand and in the studio. I was a Ludwig 7a wood tip guy.

Charlie supplied a testimonial quote for the back cover for a Buddy Collette album I produced and invited myself, brother Kenneth and Buddy to his big band concert at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood.

Jim Keltner and I later connected Charlie with met drummer Freddie Gruber. Lots of marvelous Buddy Rich and Max Roach tales.

On one Stones’ tour this century, we had a pre-show chat with the legendary drummer Earl Palmer. He had finally met Earl years earlier at The Palace in Hollywood. In the sixties Charlie visited a Phil Spector recording session at Gold Star studio in Hollywood invited by arranger/keyboardist Jack Nitzsche. He loved the Crystals’ record “Da Doo Ron Ron.” Earl or Hal Blaine played drums on the track.

On occasion he referenced his drum set up at Olympic studio in Barnes London, and Sunset Sound and Ocean Way in Hollywood.  During 1997 he invited me to a slew of recording sessions at Ocean Way by the Stones during their Bridges to Babylon studio bookings.

There is one memorable Charlie Watts sighting at The Jazz Bakery venue in Culver City when he went to see Elvin Jones. Charlie, in a dashing custom-made suit was greeted and embraced after the show by the drummer drenched in stage sweat. Witnesses knew Charlie wasn’t concerned at all about going to the dry cleaner the next morning.
In 2016 Charlie and Jim Keltner invited me to a Rolling Stones’ rehearsal in North Hollywood. I carried some cymbals into the room with Jim’s lead tech and cartage man that were put on Charlie’s kit. He handed me a tambourine from one cymbal stand that I briefly shook for twenty seconds as the band jammed.

Ronnie Wood saw it and said, “Hey. You’re big time. At our rehearsal. It’s your dream gig? Right?” And I replied, “Yes. But it is not lost on me and just as important is that you were the bass player on Jeff Beck’s Truth LP.”

That blew him away. Keith Richard heard our exchange and laughed out loud. Ronnie hugged me. Then they both handed me their guitar picks.

Charlie smiled…

A couple of years ago I saw Charlie at Don Randi’s Baked Potato club in Studio City. It was an event honoring Hal Blaine on his 90th birthday party. Charlie contributed some autographed drum sticks to a charity auction being held in the room.

Over the last few decades my brother and I would send and give Charlie rare jazz videos. He really dug them. In my last conversation with him, after he visited the Motown Museum in Detroit, Charlie indicated he was building a collection of rare drum items.

May his beat go on and on…

 

##

I talked to Andrew Loog Oldham in 2014 about Peter Whitehead’s Rolling Stones documentary, Charlie Is My Darling, filmed during the band’s 1965 tour of Ireland.

 

HK: In 2012 your well-earned original producing credit was officially distributed in the retail and commercial universe by way of Charlie Is My Darling. Can you talk about the genesis of the project? You’ve shown it over the years in related charity functions but now you’ve endorsed and promoted it while it’s achieved stellar notices.

 

ALO: Yes, it was a Julie Christie world but that is not the origin of the title. It’s the Irish use of it, more soil, more turf, sod of the earth, nothing really sixties about it. The credit is only well earned because I made the movie in the first place. Allen Klein and I had discussed doing it on many occasions, but thankfully nothing happened. There are no accidents—and the timing on this was immaculate.

That end of the sixties is slipping away, soon there will be no more reliable witnesses and this film is a reliable witness. Dylan’s Dont Look Back is a reliable witness. A Hard Day’s Night is not—somebody wrote, constructed and directed that. Charlie Is My Darling is the real deal, the end of the innocence, the last hurrah before what the Beatles had started when they appeared in February of ‘ 64 on The Ed Sullivan Show turned the game into business.

 

HK: You told me in 2012, “The film was done as an audition to see which one of the Rolling Stones the camera actually loved off stage. We knew who the focus was on stage. The concept was to see who was telegenic off stage. Like an MGM screen test or how studio heads would view talent at RKO. It was Charlie that the camera loved. Ironically, Harvey, is it not the same camera that loved Ringo? There you go.”

My only complaint is that some of the interview footage of Charlie Watts from the original print did not make the new cut of the DVD and new movie. And Charlie is terrific on screen.

 

ALO: I agree. Charlie was pissed about that as well—or let’s say he noticed it when he was shown the new edit. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how much he really cared.  It was indeed a screen test, done in Ireland so as to be away from journalists, girlfriends and the London life. I just wanted to see whom, off stage, the camera loved. The drummer’s rule, I guess! I thought Charlie looked and sounded terrific. He had the look, he had the voice. I thought he could have a big future in French noir films, but for that to happen somebody else has to agree with you, and they have to be in the French film business.

Charlie Watts (right) with the Rolling Stones at Peter Tork’s house in Los Angeles. October 20, 1969. (Photo by Henry Diltz)

The Rolling Stones at the Forum in Los Angeles, 1973. (Photo by Henry Diltz)