Читать книгу Sonic Boom: The Impact of Led Zeppelin. Volume 1 - Break & Enter - Frank Reddon - Страница 14

Rare shot of Jimmy Page using a Les Paul guitar. In these early days, when he played with The Yardbirds, he favoured his psychedelic “Dragon” Telecaster.

Courtesy: Howard Mylett Collection, used with permission. Enzepplopedia Publishing, Inc

Ray Hewitt is a bass guitar player who played as a teenager with a couple of his buddies in a group called The Rembrandts. The group hailed from Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. The Rembrandts have the distinct honour of being the first band to have played live on Canadian Bandstand in 1967.

Who was Ray’s inspiration in the world of popular music along the way? Among his major influences were the British Invasion Bands, including The Yardbirds and newly formed Led Zeppelin, circa 1968. Ray and a couple of his friends had the added pleasure of seeing The Yardbirds with Jimmy Page perform at a very unlikely venue: Hidden Valley Ski Resort, in an out-of-the-way part of north/central Ontario.

REDDON: Hi, Ray. It’s great to talk to you!

HEWITT:

It’s my pleasure, Frank. Ask whatever you want and I’ll try to recall. It’s been awhile now!

REDDON:

All right, thanks! The best place to start is by asking you a bit about your musical beginnings in high school. How did you get interested in rock’n’roll; in particular, The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin?

HEWITT:

I was in a band called The Rembrandts with a few of my buddies from high school. Our lead guitarist, a guy by the name of Gord Cottrill, could play anything and everything he put his hands to, as far as the guitar went. He was, and still is, an unbelievable player. He was from Paisley, which is fairly close to my hometown of Owen Sound, Ontario. In fact, he didn’t have any special guitar effects gadgetry much of the time in our band. Yet he could somehow get the sounds he heard on the records he liked by manipulating what equipment he did have. It was amazing and he’s always been one of the best guitarists in the country.

Gord is a professional musician today. He’s done everything from studio sessions to playing with the likes of Canadian country music legend, Stompin’ Tom Connors. Our band, The Rembrandts, had everybody down pat…Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards. We formed a five-piece band – guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, drums and vocals – around grade eleven, in high school. I played bass. We loved The Animals, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, The Rolling Stones. All the stuff that nobody else was playing at the time in our town, we were doing it all and having a great time with it!

REDDON:

Yes, from what I understand, you guys did very well; even played on a program called Canadian Bandstand in the late 1960s. I have to be honest. I didn’t even know there was a program called Canadian Bandstand, until I heard about you and Gord from your friend Dave at a recent record show in Toronto. That’s why it’s so much fun doing this research…always learning something that’s right under your nose you never managed to come across until a circumstance like this, interviewing you.

HEWITT:

I can imagine you’ve talked to many fascinating people during the course of such research. Good for you, it’s a lot of work.

REDDON:

Thanks, yeah it is. But learning so much new information about the late 1960s and Led Zeppelin has been reward enough. Anyway, I’d like to find out more about how your Canadian Bandstand gig came about in a moment or two. What an experience! But, for now, would you tell how you happened to see The Yardbirds at a rather remote location in 1968, of all places, Hidden Valley Ski Resort in northern Ontario? I couldn’t believe it when your friend David first told me about that one!

HEWITT:

Certainly, I’d be glad to! And you’re right - it’s not really a place you would think of if you wanted to go and see The Yardbirds.

I think maybe we first heard it on Toronto’s CHUM radio. We used to go to Toronto to buy records at places like Sam The Record Man on Yonge Street. I get a kick out of this when I look back on it today. I used to take orders from anybody in Owen Sound who wanted records when I knew I was making a record-buying trip to Toronto!

I’d go down to Toronto every so often and I enjoyed those trips very much, since I was very excited about getting the latest records from the groups I loved. So, I think I probably heard about The Yardbirds from CHUM. As well, the Toronto Star newspaper had a section for teenagers and that’s maybe where I saw that The Yardbirds were coming to Hidden Valley.

REDDON:

That’s very interesting. It would be incredible to hear such an old radio ad, for such a great group in a rather remote location! It’s impressive that you would take record orders for people. Very considerate.

HEWITT:

I don’t know about that, but I didn’t mind getting records for other people from Owen Sound because I was going anyway and it was fun. Yes, that would be quite novel to hear the old radio advertisement today. That was a long time ago now.

REDDON:

So you mentioned you were the bass player in your high school band, The Rembrandts?

HEWITT:

That’s right. I played bass guitar and I still have that bass from back then. Oh, by the way…the bass I played is a bit of a collector’s item. I contacted the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio to find out more about it in recent years. It turns out it was a “first edition” Fender Bass, made in 1951 and it was only made for the first six months of that year. After that, it was changed. So that’s pretty interesting to have a piece of Fender history like that.

REDDON: I’ll say!

HEWITT:

I played a lot of Yardbirds and early Led Zeppelin from their first album with our band locally, on that bass! I was shocked to learn that The Yardbirds were playing at Hidden Valley. It’s a pretty remote place in northern Ontario, between Huntsville and Algonquin Provincial Park. The Yardbirds didn’t play in a big city like Toronto that time around when they were touring. Hidden Valley was the only Canadian place they were playing at the time I saw them, to my knowledge.

I was totally surprised and couldn’t believe our good fortune that The Yardbirds were actually going to play there! I don’t want to say that only “second rate bands” played in our area or places like Hidden Valley, but most of the bands that passed through on a tour were hardly what you would term as “headliners”, either. I guess the most accurate way to describe the acts that stopped in our area and farther into northern Ontario, is to politely refer to them as “second tier” acts. Groups like The Dave Clark Five, The Turtles, etc.

This was in 1967, I believe. We get some unbelievably harsh winter conditions with lots of snow up this way in the winter, so I definitely know it was in the spring or summer of the year when we went to Hidden Valley to see The Yardbirds because the weather was nice. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gone because of the formidable winter weather we usually get. We took Highway 11, north to Huntsville and then east toward Algonquin Park. It’s a bit of a haul at the best of times.

REDDON:

You’re right, Ray. From what I’ve been able to research, The Yardbirds gig you saw was on August 25, 1967 at Hidden Valley. The Yardbirds had just finished playing the Village Theatre in New York City. After Hidden Valley, they went to play in Warwick, Rhode Island. Do you recall who the opening act was for The Yardbirds at Hidden Valley?

HEWITT:

That’s right…that rings a bell. I knew they had come from New York. I think the opening act was The Five Man Electrical Band. The Yardbirds went on stage very late. It was about 11:00pm and the announcer said that they were so late starting because The Yardbirds had been held up at the U.S./Canadian border crossing!

REDDON: Gee, I wonder why?

HEWITT:

Yeah, that’s right…good question! Like I mentioned, they were apparently just coming from New York City where they had been performing. It was a bit strange. It wasn’t the usual crowd of rock’n’rollers at Hidden Valley that you would expect to be attending a gig in the 1960s…especially to see such a high-voltage act as The Yardbirds, who were right into the experimental sounds and psychedelia.

Most adults at that time would cringe at the thought of that kind of music. Instead, it was mainly a resort crowd which was very odd to see, for such a band as The Yardbirds. Everybody was in shorts and tourist clothes. I’ll never forget how strange that all seemed, not only to me but to the friends I was with, too. We couldn’t believe it.

REDDON: What was your reaction when The Yardbirds kicked off their performance?

HEWITT:

Absolutely astounding, from the first note. Since I was a bass player, that’s what I was most interested in while watching The Yardbirds play. We were always trying to learn things off records and when we had the opportunity to see someone play live, we were riveted to pick up what we could from them. It’s a great way to learn.

Of course Gord Cottrill, who I’m sure was very happy to speak to you, was crazy about Jimmy Page and what he was into…so the lead guitar was what Gord watched. Gord probably told you in much more detail what Jimmy Page was doing on guitar…that’s who he was focusing on. What I do remember, and what probably made the biggest impression on me, is that Page and his guitar work completely dominated everything The Yardbirds performed. It was that loud! He was amazing in every way as he played.

REDDON: Do you recall any of the numbers The Yardbirds played at Hidden Valley?

HEWITT:

They did Train Kept A Rollin’, Mister You’re a Better Man Than I, Shapes of Things. Looking back on it, a great deal of what they were doing would become early Led Zeppelin ideas when Page went out on his own with his new band. Bits and pieces of what we heard turned up as developed musical ideas on Led Zeppelin. Even though it was a bit of a trek for us to get to this concert, we were glad we did it, I’ll tell you that! Before we knew it, the gig was over. It went by really fast because we were so into what they were doing and they were so great.

We had driven up that day and, as I said, it was quite a hike from Owen Sound, up north to Hidden Valley. Gord and another friend had gone with me. By the time we got out of there, it was very late. The Yardbirds show had finished around 1:00am. I was driving and I recall pulling off to the side of the road in Collingwood on the way home and sleeping for a few hours. I was that exhausted. In fact, I recall passing my father, who was going to work just as we were getting back into town the next morning. That was quite a night!

REDDON:

Do you think The Yardbirds were staying at Hidden Valley or just passing through?

HEWITT:

I would imagine they probably stayed at Hidden Valley. Again, I’ve always been kind of puzzled why they even played there in the first place. By the time they would have loaded up their equipment and everything at 1:30-2:30 a.m. or so that night, it was probably best to stay put. I imagine that’s what they would have done because they were all travelling on a big bus. It was so thrilling to see such an accomplished act like The Yardbirds in that setting. Extraordinary! They were also fantastic musicians who played their hearts out for us. I found them to be exceedingly professional and that performance is a treasured memory for me. It was also very inspirational for our band when we got back home.

REDDON:

I’d like to ask you about that next. The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin were a huge influence on the members of your band, The Rembrandts, correct?

HEWITT:

Without question, yes! We were all completely impressed with both those bands and many others from Britain.

REDDON:

How did the Canadian Bandstand appearance come about for The Rembrandts, in 1967?

HEWITT:

Canadian Bandstand lasted several months on television and was broadcast from Waterloo, Ontario at CKCO-TV. Our band, The Rembrandts, was the first live band to play Canadian Bandstand, which is quite an honour really when you think about it.

REDDON: I’d say so. That’s a big accomplishment!

HEWITT:

It all came about thanks to a friend of our band’s, named Dave Barber. He asked the TV station in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, CKCO about getting us on that program. We had to be in the Musicians’ Union to go on the show and the program was taped. The pre-taped portion of Canadian Bandstand the night we played it live starred Gordon Lightfoot, who was just starting out at that time.

REDDON: Wow, that’s neat!

HEWITT:

Canadian Bandstand was modelled after the highly successful program that Dick Clark hosted, American Bandstand. There were kids dancing in the audience and everyone had a great time. All you could hear behind the “sound wall” was the drums; everything else was in the background.

Our band had been playing locally and, as I mentioned, we were doing lots of Yardbirds songs and learned a great deal from their records. We were also doing The Rolling Stones, Hendrix and others, too. Gord Cottrill, our guitar player, had this pre-amp he used to get distortion for his guitar solos and it was very, very effective.

Of course, Led Zeppelin wasn’t out yet in 1967 and 1968, but we played many Yardbirds songs in our sets and they went very well. People wanted to hear The Yardbirds’ material. What a thrilling experience! Everyone seemed to love what we were playing. Later, we did stuff from Led Zeppelin. I recall a pretty good version of Good Times, Bad Times for example.

It was funny because, in between one of the breaks in the taping segments when we were on Canadian Bandstand, since we were on television, the soundman came up to us and said, “It sounds really good but there’s a problem with the guitar player’s sound. We can’t get it out of the sound mix, no matter what we do”.

It turns out it was the distortion Gord was using for his guitar work that he had learned from the likes of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page! He absolutely loved the guitar sounds he got and, as I’ve said, he was really proficient at pulling them off when he was playing. Page and Beck were big influences in his playing and guitar style.

It was amusing that the sound guy didn’t know what Gord was doing -- manipulating his pre-amp that hooked into his main amp, to get the distortion he wanted -- like Page used to do on some of TheYardbirds’ recordings. The sound guy had never heard anything like that before. Unfortunately, the tapes were recorded over for future programming. Back then, no one really thought of archiving things. In those days, the performers played and that was it. It’s unfortunate looking back on it years later, but that’s just the way it was.

In the late 1960s, it’s safe to say that Gord Cottrill was easily the best guitar player in Canada. He was that good. The rest of us mainly rode on his coattails! Our group, The Rembrandts, was a five-piece band, as I’ve said and Gord had big groups of teenage boys watch him play, mesmerized at what he was doing with the guitar. We also played Blood, Sweat and Tears numbers.

Gord had acquired some equipment along the way, like the miniature Leslie. It was put out by a Canadian company called Trainer. It was an extension speaker out of the amp. The regular Leslies were huge and it took several people to move them around.

When we were in Grade 13, we drove down to Toronto for a couple of weekends and cut a few demos on Merton Street, a side street off Yonge and south of Davisville Avenue. We were offered a contract to open for a band from Detroit called Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, for a tour. We all decided against it, choosing to finish our education instead.

REDDON: What did you think of The Yardbirds, on the whole?

HEWITT:

I thought The Yardbirds were a very, very good band, but not a great one. The guitarists who went through the group at various stages of its career and development, can be classified as “greats”: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. As much as I enjoyed The Yardbirds when I saw them at Hidden Valley, they didn’t strike me as great…with the exception of Page, whom I considered as such. He stood out completely. The vocalist for The Yardbirds, Keith Relf, was adequate but nothing exceptional to me. The Yardbirds’ records and the experimental sounds and techniques that made their music so distinctive compared to many other groups, have always been the main reasons why their work has been so inspirational to me, for all these years.

I know my personal music growth and that of our band, was due to The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin. Learning songs by those two groups made us more skilled and proficient musicians. However, I was probably most influenced, as far as bass players are concerned, by Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane.

REDDON: What other groups or artists did you see in the 1960s?

HEWITT:

I went to lots of concerts in Toronto. There was quite a rich musical scene there really, since it was such a large city. All the big acts went there and we were very fortunate to be within driving distance of Toronto. I remember I saw Jefferson Airplane there and The Grateful Dead, at the O’Keefe Centre. They played there almost from Monday to Saturday…it was a lot of gigs in a row.

Jack Casady, who played bass for The Airplane, was a huge influence on my bass playing. Both The Dead and The Airplane played until about two or three in the morning…amazing! It was interesting because my friend and I worked our way to the stage at the O’Keefe Centre, got on stage and started dancing with Grace Slick, The Airplane’s female singer… really did! The security guys started coming towards us to throw us off, but Grace Slick motioned to them that it was okay, and we kept dancing with her until the song was over! It was a different time back then. Everything was more casual and simple…just as it was when I saw The Yardbirds.

I also saw Jimi Hendrix at The Horse Palace, on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto. We paid our money for tickets at the door and basically ran as fast as we could to get as near to the stage as we could. It was all festival seating then. There were no assigned seats and you went wherever you wanted. Hendrix was positively mind-blowing. He was just starting out at that point and wasn’t well known.

The Rock Pile was another place that was a hot spot for the new music in Toronto. They used to have New Year’s Eve concerts there. The bands would start around 8:00 pm and they’d keep going and going. I remember seeing Van Winkle there. I used to come down to Toronto from Owen Sound to The Rock Pile to see acts like John Mayall and Alice Cooper. Incidentally, the only prop Alice Cooper had at that point was a window-frame, so you know that’s a long time ago now. The Rock Pile was a wonderful venue. One New Year’s Eve, Blood Sweat and Tears was there and it was great seeing David Clayton Thomas, a “Canadian guy made good”, playing back home in his native Toronto.

REDDON:

Yes, what a “musical hot-bed” in southern Ontario; the Toronto area. As you know, Led Zeppelin also played at The Rock Pile a couple of times in 1969, one of them being on the First U.S. and Canadian Tour of 1968-69.

HEWITT: That would have been quite something! I’m sorry I never saw those shows.

REDDON:

That makes two of us. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have gone…even though I was only eight years old at the time!

Okay…back to reality for me! What did you think about the Led Zeppelin LP when it came out in 1969?

HEWITT:

I loved it and so did my friends. Every song on it is incredible for different reasons. It’s acoustic, electric, light, dark…it covers so much musical territory. We all recognized it and that’s one reason that album is still popular today. I had this portable record player that ran on batteries. I used to take it to school and listen to records like Led Zeppelin at lunch. You could tell that album was an extension of the ideas Page had worked up during The Yardbirds. We set it up in the auditorium and my friend Dave, you’re acquainted with…

REDDON: Yes, I’m hoping to interview him one day soon…

HEWITT:

Yes, he’ll be a good source of information for you. He and others used to hang out and listen at lunch. It was a great time for all of us! There were approximately 16,000 people in Owen Sound at that time, around 1968-69. And probably only two people with long hair. I was one of them and got beaten up a few times over it!

In addition to taking my record player to school and playing Zeppelin and all the other stuff we liked at the time, we also started a school newspaper called Sweet Rag. It was an alternative student newspaper that was not only going around school but around town. Because it had “subculture overtones”, it was banned from our school. We’d distribute it out in the street off school property. My friend, Dave, was the editor and our teachers were interested it. They came out in the street off school property to get a copy!

We also petitioned the school to see if we could play our records over the PA system at school. They went for it and that’s what we did at lunch, eventually. Another student’s mother worked at an Owen Sound radio station and we had our own radio show for awhile. We were playing Jethro Tull, the Led Zeppelin LP, The Rolling Stones, The Who. That was great fun and we were on about 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m. The program folded because we couldn’t get any funding but we did get people to hear the music that was inspiring us so much and that was satisfying. Although it didn’t last all that long, it was a good experience for us.

REDDON: What bands influenced you the most overall?

HEWITT:

I would have to say The Yardbirds were a big influence for me personally, as well as for our band, The Rembrandts. So were Led Zeppelin and the Led Zeppelin LP…we played songs off Led Zeppelin after it came out and we, and everybody else, were crazy about their material. We learned songs off Led Zeppelin, note for note and off The Yardbirds’ records. What a great way to learn, as well as enjoy the music from them and what we were trying to do with it.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was extremely influential, too. They were the first three-piece band to come to my mind, that was completely “filled”. By that, I mean sound-wise. You would expect there to be musical holes because there’s only a guitar, bass and drums. Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell (drummer) and Noel Redding (bass) were so proficient at what they did and contributed, there were no musical holes to be filled, which is quite an accomplishment. Their sound was so full as a three-piece. When our band, The Rembrandts, changed from five to four pieces (guitar, bass, drums and vocals), we changed our name to The Straw. By the way, Bob, who played rhythm guitar in The Rembrandts, now plays keyboard for Shania Twin, a tribute act to Shania Twain.

Of course, when Led Zeppelin hit the scene, I remember thinking how “full” the Led Zeppelin record sounded, for a four-piece group. It was a fantastic album and is still popular today for good reason.

REDDON:

Wow, thanks so much for all of your invaluable insights and recollections, Ray. I’ve really enjoyed hearing about them and they’ve been extremely educational.

HEWITT:

Not at all, it was so much fun doing all of that back then, I hope it helps your work. Good luck with your book and I’d like to see it when you’re all finished. It sounds fascinating.

REDDON:

The material I’ve collected from people like you who actually lived it have made this an unbelievably fun journey in compiling the interviews. I’ll definitely keep you informed on the progress.

HEWITT: Great! I’ll look forward to it!