My British Invasion

by Harold Bronson

  Our single received good comments in the press. Mike Saunders wrote in Phonograph Record Magazine: “‘Street Baby’ is an excellent hard rocker in The Stones mold with Who overtones on guitar.” Greg Shaw in Creem called it “exciting.”

  Classes for the spring quarter started on Thursday, March 30. I had a light schedule: Music of the United States, a history of rock music masquerading as a “survey from colonial times to the present”; Fundamentals of Learning, a psychology class on animal and human conditioning; Urban Sociology, which studied the characteristics of big cities in Western culture.

  The next night I drove Mark Leviton, Jim Bickhart, and Stan Berkowitz to Knott’s Berry Farm to see Paul Revere & the Raiders perform at the John Wayne Theater. Prior to the popularity of The Monkees, Paul Revere & the Raiders had been the most popular American rock group, racking up a slew of excellent hit singles that included “Just Like Me,” “Kicks,” “Hungry,” and “Good Thing.” As regulars on the Where the Action Is TV show, their popularity had been such that every member of the quintet was featured in the teen magazines. Since then, the personnel—except for lead singer Mark Lindsay and bandleader Paul Revere—had changed. They were older, more polished—and less crazy.

  After a tasty fried chicken dinner at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant, we met the band backstage before the show. The Raiders hadn’t had a hit in two years when “Indian Reservation” topped the charts in the spring of 1971. The set we saw showcased their more recent hits instead of the classics we had been expecting.

  On the turntable: Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything, Fairport Convention’s “Babbacombe” Lee, Neil Young’s Harvest, The Conception Corporation’s Conceptionland.

  April

  One Friday afternoon in the CBS Records sales office, Paul introduced me to a young friend of his, Justin Pierce, a senior at Fairfax High School. Justin would visit Paul, bring him pastries from the bakery where his mother worked, and Paul would give him promotional copies of new releases. Paul brought him into the shared office where I was sitting and suggested I help Justin with his writing for the school paper. The goal for me, and my fellow writers on the Daily Bruin, was to be good enough to make money writing. For those of us in the entertainment section, the promotional records, concert tickets, and movie passes were a bonus. In talking to Justin, I was taken aback that his primary motivation was to get the free stuff. He wanted to be a better writer—that’s why he approached me—but he wasn’t that committed to it. Still, I responded to his passion for the music, and gave him suggestions. As I got to know Justin, I could see that he was a good guy, and was inclusive as it related to people. He became one of my best friends, and we attended a lot of shows together.

  Phil Savenick was in charge of putting together the yearbook for the graduating class. He had an idea for a companion book, Your Book. It had nothing to do with the university—which the first book covered. It was a collection of cultural images from our age group: elementary school, television, music, sports. He asked me to lend him trading cards from my collection to be reproduced in the book. I loved his concept and was happy I could contribute.

  John Mendelsohn deserves a lot of credit for drawing peoples’ attention to the quality of The Kinks’ music, circa 1966-1970. To fans like me, The Kink Kronikles—the double album of hits, B-sides, and rarities he compiled and wrote the liner notes for—was sublime. The material was of a high quality, and many tracks hadn’t been released in America previously. It sold extremely well, breaking into Billboard’s Top 100, which was all the more noteworthy as The Kinks hadn’t had a hit in almost two years. Also on the turntable: The Mothers’ Just Another Band from LA, The Hollies’ Distant Light, Michael Nesmith & the Second National Band’s Tantamount to Treason.

  May

  It was time to reinvigorate my band. We’d made a couple of records, but we’d never performed live. We now had a sense of purpose. We were going to provide the entertainment for the year’s Daily Bruin party. Bill Pique, a newer contributor to the music section, was willing to switch from guitar to bass. Compared to us Jews, he was like a mountain man. He had played football at Palos Verdes High School. He was a good guy, but a bit uncouth. He suggested his friend, Rob Lampl, be the drummer. With his long hair and fuzzy beard, Rob looked like a typical hippie. He favored jazz-rock, and fingered a psychedelically painted guitar, but here his task was to pound the drums. He got a set from Bill’s brother and was a natural on the instrument. We practiced after hours and on weekends at the Daily Bruin office, often having a meal afterward at Maison La Crepe in Westwood Village. Bill practiced his French, but it must have been Dirty Old Man French, as he kept asking the pert, young waitresses for their legs.

  I enjoyed visiting Pete Senoff at Atlantic Records. With his short hair and body-builder physique, he was an anomaly for the music business. He may have been unhip on the outside, but he was hip on the inside, with excellent taste in music. He sponsored an annual bus trip to downtown’s Olympic Auditorium to take in the wrestling matches, with burgers afterward at Original Tommy’s at Beverly and Rampart. He gave me an advance copy—a white label pressing with no information—of Take A Sad Song… It was an ingenious production of contemporary hit songs—“Hey Jude,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Dance to the Music”—performed in 1950s arrangements by studio musicians under the artist name Godfrey Daniel, after an expression of actor W. C. Fields.

  Pete invited me to a showcase for new artist Bette Midler at the Paradise Ballroom in West Hollywood. A one-time bombsight factory, it was turned into a private club by Frank Sinatra and his pals in the late sixties. Cabaret acts, like Bette’s, were more familiar on the East Coast. I was impressed with her pipes and personality, showcased best on her lively renditions of The Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” and The Andrew Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Barry Manilow accompanied her on piano.

  CBS had released a line of albums in the new SQ Quadraphonic format. With a decoder box and special amplifier, records played a mix of four channels through four speakers. With the speakers placed in four corners surrounding the listener, it was as though he were in the middle of the music. This month RCA launched its competing format, Compatible Discrete 4. When Quad was introduced, I heard a presentation that included Steam’s hit “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.” Stereo approximates a performance coming from the direction of the stage. Quad seemed like a gimmick to me.

  One of the difficulties I had with the older—unhip—salesmen at the CBS office was that they didn’t seem to care about the music they were selling. The expression bandied about was that “a [record] salesman could just as well be selling shoes” for all he knew about the music. A big offender to me was Frank Mooney, who concocted a promotion for the new Music Odyssey store, with the prize being a new multi-gear bicycle. The way it worked was for each Columbia/Epic album a customer bought, he would have a ticket deposited in a box from which the winning one would be drawn. It was explained to me that it was illegal to have a contest with a raffle based on purchases. Mooney thought the store was too small to bear any scrutiny. Not even the contest could drum up shoppers.

  The girl who won bought over thirty albums and accounted for over 90 percent of the tickets in the box. After the contest, she attempted to return the albums for a refund. I don’t know if she got to keep the bike.

  The store was open less than a year when it closed in February 1973. Gabor failed to consider that there would be next to no business on weekends, holidays, and during school breaks, and little during summer sessions. Even though there were not many customers, Gabor estimated that he lost five thousand albums to theft.

  I went on my first record company junket. It wasn’t really a junket, just one night in a hotel room in Las Vegas traveling with other writers and publicists. B. B. King was appearing at the Casino Lounge in the Las Vegas Hilton. His set was proficient and polished, but I was surprised that it was the same act I had see
n when he opened for The Rolling Stones two and a half years earlier. I took note that even the moments I had thought were spontaneous, were well rehearsed. I came home with the confidence that I could win in Vegas, having pocketed twenty-five dollars from the Hilton’s two-dollar blackjack table.

  A couple of days later, on Saturday, May 13, John Mendelsohn’s band Christopher Milk played the Lindie Theater. The audience was sparse. John and the band showcased a lot of good ideas, but he was an ineffective singer and the music was too ambitious for the musicians’ abilities.

  On Tuesday, May 16, Randy Newman opened at the Troubadour. I first took note of him in 1967 from three songwriting credits on Eric Burdon and the Animals’ Eric Is Here album. I enjoyed “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” and “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today.” He didn’t perform often, so it was a treat to finally see him. Hunched over his piano, singing in a world-weary, Louisiana-blues style, he created an intimacy. Among the songs he debuted, I especially liked “Lonely at the Top” and the farcical sing-a-long “Political Science.”

  The next evening, my twenty-second birthday, went quietly except for taking in a performance by Chicago’s Wilderness Road at the Whisky. The Conception Corporation told me about them, but I found their set of country- and gospel-influenced rock lacking. It did include a promising original idea, that of a mock revival show, but it wasn’t developed enough for me.

  I was now a regular at the Whisky. It had been three years since my first visit, when Tom Matye and I arrived at the club not long after it opened for the night. We were shown to a table behind a post, and were too intimidated to ask for a better seat. We nursed our soda pop until Danny McCulloch—the ex-Animals bassist who had a new solo album out—took the stage to a sparse audience.

  I was familiar to some of the waitresses, and even to the doorman who called me by name, although not by my name. A good-looking black man who wore flashy suits that seemed at odds with his black-plastic-rimmed glasses, Albert was always in good spirits and greeted me with a wide smile. When it was my turn in line, I flipped my wallet open so he could see my ID. Facing it was an Elvis Presley pocket calendar. I was on RCA Records’ press list and received one each year. Somehow, Albert identified the photo as singer Tom Jones, even though I corrected him the first few times. “Here comes Tom Jones!” he would say when I approached.

  In the Daily Bruin’s annual Rock Poll, The Winos placed fourth in the Weirdos category, tied with Sha Na Na, trailing Alice Cooper, Flash Cadillac, and the winner, The Mothers of Invention.

  A new single on Epic, “Rub It In” by Dave Clark & Friends, came into the office. I was excited as it featured The Dave Clark Five’s vocalist Mike Smith. Rounding out the group were noted session musicians Alan Parker on guitar and Eric Ford on bass. It was a cover of a country record and didn’t sound like a hit to me, or like The Dave Clark Five. I much preferred the promotional poster of a beautiful naked girl.

  At the office I also picked up a few tchotchkes—Yiddish for ephemeral objects—in this case ones used for promotion. The record division of the mighty CBS Corporation pandered to the drug culture with packets of (marijuana) cigarette rolling papers. The covers plugged the latest releases by the Jeff Beck Group, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Delaney and Bonnie, and Dr. Hook. There were small bags printed with Columbia Cement Works promoting Andy Williams’ Love Theme from the “Godfather,” with a tag that read, “If you don’t buy this record, there’s more where this came from.” A handy jean-carrying bag was printed with the Loggins and Messina logo.

  On the turntable: Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick, Janis Joplin’s In Concert, Procol Harum’s Live In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s Dr. Hook, Raspberries.

  June

  David Bromberg was a folk singer who garnered notice because he had written a song, “The Holdup,” with George Harrison on which George also contributed slide guitar. On Saturday, June 3, he gave a private performance in Lenny Stogel’s backyard in the Malibu Colony. I was looking forward to seeing him play because I liked his debut album. Bromberg didn’t have a technically good voice—it wasn’t powerful and didn’t have much range—but it was expressive. He had a natural way of incorporating stories into his songs. I knew few people there, so I introduced myself to Harry Shearer and his wife. I was a fan of his comedy group, the Credibility Gap, from when they satirized the news on radio station KRLA starting in 1969. Their debut album, Woodschtick, had come out a year before, and taken the concept of a Woodstock-like rock festival and created an in-door event with comedians instead of musicians. Harry told me that he had also written for the Daily Bruin.

  On the following Tuesday, as I made my way through Westwood, visiting the record stores for the last time as a college rep, I appreciated the special qualities of the Village. It didn’t give me a warm feeling, like imagining the good old days The Kinks were singing about on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, nor were friendly, chirping blue birds guiding my path as in a Disney movie. The Village had its own self-contained feel: there was a Safeway supermarket and a Bullock’s department store. It also had a sort-of old world feel—at least for Southern California. For example, the Bank of America—where I’d applied for my BankAmericard credit card—was housed in an expansive Moroccan-styled building with a dome. I passed the art deco Bruin Theater, where I’d seen a screening of The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter, with Jim Morrison sitting a few rows back. I attended afternoon showings of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine at the UA, and Catch-22 at the National; the Fox, Regent, and Plaza were the other theaters. There were four bookstores: Westwood Books, Brentano’s, Campbell’s, and Hunter’s Books. And plenty of places to eat: Mario’s, Alice’s Restaurant (inspired by the 1969 movie), the Bratskeller, the Pizza Palace, Hamburger Hamlet, Woody’s Smorgasburger, Old World, and Wil Wright’s Ice Cream Parlor for dessert. Sepi’s submarine shop and Ships Coffee Shop were more affordable for my budget. As I walked, I took in the changes that were occurring with the architecture. The charm of the Spanish and Mediterranean styles was giving way to newer structures with less character. It was an area in transition. Already gone were the head shops, Headquarters and the Free Press Book Store, and Sat Purush, the Indian clothing boutique south of the Village where George Harrison romped in his underwear trying on clothes.

  That night I saw a new Columbia group, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, at the Troubadour. Although they looked like a quintet of hillbillies on leave from Li’l Abner’s Dogpatch, they were actually a bar band from New Jersey. Dr. Hook included ten of Shel Silverstein’s songs, one of which, “Sylvia’s Mother,” had just climbed to number five. It was based on a true incident whereby Silverstein had called his ex-girlfriend—not named Sylvia—and was told by her mother that she was getting married to a bullfighter. Despite the band’s casual nature— given to horsing around and swearing —they were strong vocally and instrumentally, and a lot of fun.

  I was looking forward to graduating, but little else. I had placed an ad in the Los Angeles Times to sell my gas-guzzling 1967 red Firebird convertible, but didn’t get much response. I did get a call from a doctor in Beverly Hills who requested that I drive to his office so he could test-drive the car. I did, but he wasn’t interested in buying. I made my way back to campus. It was dusk as I looked up at the lights coming from the dorms, and thought of Terri. I’d had few dates since I’d last seen her, which made me even lonelier.

  Despite my feelings for her, it may not have made for a long-term relationship when I considered her tardiness, or that she was so irresponsible to have racked up thirty-two parking tickets on campus. In one of our conversations, she was sympathetic for her older sister’s dilemma after having married a much older man. I wrote a song about it. Here are most of the lyrics to “Beauty Queen”:

  She was just twenty-one, she was a beauty queen

  But she was getting tired of the same old scene


  She looked fine, she was the Queen of Downey

  She was Miss Orange County

  Married to a man fifteen years older

  He gave her everything, he tried to mold her

  Every third day she cries on her bed

  Love was lacking so her sister said

  Beauty Queen, you’re a rose (i.e. Roese)

  You smile nice, but it’s just a pose

  Beauty Queen, you’re so keen

  You’re unhappy, so what does it mean?

  They had a kid and she found it hard

  To break away and leave her yard

  So she lives not knowing what to do

  I’d hate to be in her position, how about you?

  Not doing much other than completing my studies, I agreed to a publicist’s request to interview Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath’s lead singer. Even though I liked some of their songs, like “Paranoid” and “Iron Man,” I wasn’t a fan of the group. Black Sabbath was one of the few examples of an artist making it primarily on their own efforts. There wasn’t much of an initial marketing campaign, nor had they benefited from a hit single. The group had a unique sound that attracted fans who saw them opening for other bands on their first US tour. I was curious about their lyrical themes referencing the occult and religious horror imagery.

  On Wednesday, June 7, I met Black Sabbath at 773 Stradella Road in Bel-Air. They were renting a large house from John du Pont, an heir to the Du Pont Chemical fortune. They had been swimming, and a still-wet-in-swim-trunks Ozzy met me in front of the pool house. He was friendly. His stringy hair was still dripping water. His nickname—his birth name was John—was tattooed on the back of the fingers of his left hand, O-Z-Z-Y. I’d never met anybody with a tattoo before. Tattoos were associated with negative character traits: the province of roaming sailors, juvenile delinquents, and criminals. In addition to tattoos on his arms, he had a smiling face on each kneecap.