Is that who I think it is?
You were with the Five Americans?!?!?!?
C’mon. Sing along with me.
Dit-dah-dit-dah-dit, dit-dah-dit-dah-dit, dit-dah-dit-dah-dit, dit-dah-dit-dah-dit.
I loved that song.
aging rock star:
here is my question:
who were all the famous people you met in other bands and who were the coolest and why?
Dang!! Knew I forgot the most important question: “What’s your favourite colour?”
Rock Rocks!
The Five Americans Rule!!
Chief:
well as I said before maybe in another thread I can’t remember for sure but musicians are a bunch of self centered egotistical bastards. But having said that, here is a list of people that we played with on the road but just weren’t around long enough to form hard and fast friendships.
Paul Revere and the raiders ( nice guys at first but after a week together on tour we almost got in a fist fight with Paul after he referred to us as “Southern Fries”.
BeachBoys ( Most of them especially Al Jardine are nice guys, however while in Houston Mike Love freaked out at an after concert party about his girl friend and our rythum guitar player and asked us to not only leave the party but leave their tour.) We did.
Rascals ( Completely zany. Felix Capalardi (sp?) Ran around for most of the short tour with a rubber chicken sticking our of his fly.
Strawberry Alarm Clock ( I watched Dick Clark give them a good cussing after they were late for a concert as the opening act in Shreveport La. Didn’t get to know them tho)
Eric Burdon and The Animals ( Completely crazed in the last half of their careers especially. We were scheduled to play after them at lake ponchatrain in New Orleans. The crowd left after Eric hung a sheet up behind the band and projected a pic of Jesus on it which he stabbed with a knife until shredded.
Spencer Davis I’m a man ( I became a good friend for a while but he lives in London and we just didn’t keep in touch. Super nice guy though )
Allman Brothers ( They Actually were our opening act at the whiskey a go go in LA. They were known as the Hourglass at the time. We had a big fight about who’s equipment would occupy the tiny stage. They won but I blew Duane’s amp. Then the shit really flew. Turned out ok even though they were so good it made us nervous.
Bobby Vee ( a gem of a fellow still friends with our organ player.)
Nicest entertainer?? Your not going to believe this but here is my answer…
Glen Campbell.
He took Brian Wilson’s place when brian was too fucked up to go on the road and we got to know him pretty well on the beach boy tour.
Before we had ever met him. we were at a restaurant in Portland Oregon. We waited for 30 minutes in the hotel restaurant for a waitress. Seems they didn’t like long hair in Portland in the mid-60’s and they were apparently trying to freeze us out. Glen sat across the restaurant eating. Finally he grabbed a waitress and said,
“Hey you haven’t waited on those guys yet.” She took our order then we walked over and thanked Campbell. We spent the rest of the night drinking beer with him and were pretty good friends from then on.
Have you done any studio work on any other albums? Has anyone else famous been on your albums?
Have you written or produced for anyone else?
More tales of depravity!
When you were at “The Pirates Nook.” and gainfully employed, I presume you were not serving herbal tea?
Question about rock lyrics: If a song starts “he had white horses…” and says “oh what a lucky man, he was…” are we supposed to take this seriously or was it perhaps tongue in cheek?
How do you sing with your tongue in your cheek?
Billie:
I played on one session with with Larry Knectal sp? ( keyboardist for Bread) and Hal Blaine…never heard of him? Oh yeah you have, if you listen to the radio you have, he has played drums on about every pop record ever recorded…ie Carpenters, Monkees. The session was a forgetable one but it was fun hangin with triple scale musicians for a bit.
Well I suppose… the last record that I recorded in the business was produced by Mike Pastal aka Mike Post. writer and producer of such hits as hillstreet blues, St Elsewhere and a million more)
Also The Five American records where produced by Dale Hawkins…writer and singer of the original Susie Q.( eat your heart out fogerty.)
Yes I produced a song by Jon And Robin in the late 60’s called “Do it again Just a Little bit Slower” It went to 18 in billboard. I also played guitar on a song called " A piece of paper" by a group called Gladstone. That song also went top 40.
Tales of depravity eh? I was once fellated while laying down a vocal track on one of our albums.
Rilchiam:
Unless there was a lot of little-shark debauchery going on involving rock stars at Seattle hotels, it would have to be Led Zeppelin. The incident is chronicled in their biography, “Hammer of the Gods.”
Aging Rock Star:
– What are the biggest ways that “it just isn’t like it used to be?” I don’t mean technology-wise; I mean making it as an artist with hits.
Hypothesizing that your sound is contemporary to today, do you think your band still would have made it, playing the game by the rules as they are today?
– You’ve mentioned the artists you liked as people. Howzabout telling us the ones you most disliked, and why? Who were the real dinks?
– Did you get the sense that Dick Clark really cares about the music, or was he out-of-touch, like many claim Ed Sullivan was?
Ed Sullivan? Out-of-touch??:D:D
Dear Aging Rock Star:
What do you listen to these days? Is there anyone out there right now that you particularly like? (A perfectly acceptable and understandable answer is “no”. 
)
What do the kids at school think about having an Aging Rock Star for a music teacher/principal? Do you talk about it much? If so, has their take on it changed over time?
Dr. J
Use to you could go and audition in front of record execs. They were always looking for another new talent. People use to say “hey you can’t keep a hit from becoming a hit.” Today if you don’t have the right connections to get in the business your song is liable to never get heard by anyone of importance in the industry.
Yes because we had more energy than talent…we wanted it worse than anyone and we put everything behind it. We treated getting a hit record and being a good band as a business. We rented a warehouse in Dallas and “went to work” everyday practicing 9-5 only taking a few minutes off for lunch. Then we played 4 hour sets at night to earn a living and a 4 hour matinee on Sunday in a sleazy night club.
–
I am starting to feel a bit queasy about dropping names in a negative manner on the internet.–
We did a couple of Dick Clark Caravan Of Stars tours and Clark was all business. We also did his TV show twice and he never said one word to me…however I did get to boink his secretary after meeting her before one of the shows.
I don’t mean to be vague but I like most of the music out there that is good. Some of it is just too frantic for me. We use to say “You don’t need to win the Battle of the Bands everytime” and some of these screaming groups today seem to be trying to do just that. Hey it ain’t how much you play, a lot of the time it’s how little you play. Listen close to Carlos Santana.
Ha ha I don’t talk about it much. Usually if anything they say…" my daddy and mama know you…they have your record."
Or Mr. aha, didn’t you use to be in a rock group??? See there Billy I told you so.!!!
DARS,
Did you know you were a big hit in India? Yup, the 60’s arrived in India in the '70’s with all the hippies traveling overland from Europe. They brought all the psyc. 60’s tunes with them. Most times they sat in tiny tea-shops in the small hill communities up north stoned out of their minds.
I bought a couple of albums from them and that batch included on of yours. Over there, the ‘Five Americans’ were on the same level as the ‘Stones’ or the Beatles.
I don’t have a question here, just thought you’d like to know that you were really big in places you probably never even dreamed your music was playing.
By the way, what were you doing during the <cough> draft? - and you don’t have to answer that - at all.
Pleasure to know you are at the sdmb
Interesting to know toecutter I have recieved some foreign royalties from there. Are you from India? If so are you in India now?
Well I joined the National Guard in 1961 just out of high school and did 6 months active duty in South Carolina and then monthly meetings for 3 years. Of course that exempted me from the draft.
Just got back last month. I’m im Toronto at the moment. Flit back and forth quite a bit. SDMB is becoming more popular by the day - at least amongst my friends.
Up North, in the Punjab, the internet connection is not very reliable - one factor why there are so few Indian Posters.
Did you know there are still (really, really aging)hippie colonies still in existence. The local canteen cranks out Hendrix, Cream and the Animals. I swear some anthropologit is going to make a name for himself/herself by describing a ‘tribe’ of lost tie-died bandana clad hippies living in communes. I guess they liked it so much that they stayed. Their kids are now having children.
No doubt there are a few ‘Five American’ die-hards and groupies there… so if you ever think of visitng… I’d like to come along…
I checked in at allmusic.com and they had this to say about the band:
“In 1966-67, this Dallas group enjoyed some modest national success with the number five hit “Western Union,” as well as a few other Top 40 entries, “I See the Light,” “Zip Code,” and “Sound of Love.”
Dominated by high, bubbling organ lines and clean harmony vocals, the group favored high-energy pop/rock far more than British Invasion or R&B-inspired sounds, although a bit of garage/frat rock raunch could be detected in their stomping rhythms. Recording prolifically throughout the last half of the '60s (often with ex-rockabilly star Dale Hawkins as producer), and writing much of their own material, they were ultimately too lightweight and bubblegumish to measure up to either the era’s better pop/rock or garage bands. Their 1966 hit “I See the Light” is their toughest and best performance.”
– Richie
Unterberger, All Music Guide
What do you think of this summary of your band?
(btw,“Western Union”-I really dig it!)
Please talk a bit about how a recording session went in your days. What were the contents of a recording studio? I read somewhere that a lot of the early Beatles stuff was on a four-track done in 2 or three takes. Was that how it really was? What sorts of effects, mixers, etc. were available?
Keep those tales of debauchery coming!
Yeah so lightweight and bubblegumish that we sold millions of records. I wonder how many records Richie U. has sold?
Reviews like that above just piss me off I saw it about a year ago and emailed the guy and asked him to blow me.
Yep in the early 60’s you were lucky to find an 8 track machine anywhere. As I understand it, Sargent Pepper was cut on two 4 tracks then mixed down to one. And if you listen to it carefully it does sound “Crowded” even though the songs are great.
By the mid sixties most of the studios around Dallas had 8 track scully’s. Generally 3 tracks were dedicated to the drums ( symbols, kick drum etc got their own tracks) one for the bass, one for the guitar/guitars one for keyboard and one for vocal with one extra for harmony overdubs etc.
The only real special effects that we had was reverb which came installed on the equipment and a sound called “slapback” which was sorta like reverb except not as wet sounding as reverb. You can hear it used on the Beatles “Good Morning” and Elvis almost ALWAYS used it. It totally made up the Yellow Sun Record Label sound. The effect was created by recording your voice on a two track machine. Then recording it again on another two track machine. Then while the two were being played back simultaneously onto the master 8 track, the engineer used his fingers to slow down one of the two-track vocal tracks which could create one of two things…a slapback echo or a phaser sounding ethereal sound depending on how much the engineer slow down the tape.
Debauchary…a member of our band had a plaster cast made of his genitalia by Susie Creamcheese of Dallas groupie fame. His likeness is up there with Jimi Hendrix and others.