Читать книгу Rocket Norton Lost In Space - Rocket Norton - Страница 5

As my ninth school year plodded on into 1965 I still had no reason to believe that the high-risk, adventurous life that I had envisioned for myself would ever actually happen. Then, everything happened at once.

In January, driven by that magical force that thrusts the sexes together, a healthy specimen of a teenage girl, named Marsha, took a liking to me. I had shot up to about six feet and had dropped all of the chubbiness, but I remained painfully shy and far from being any kind of a prize in the looks department. Still, Marsha gave me her school photo with the inscription, 'to a very sweet boy' and I thought I was Casanova. One day, at school, driven by hormonal excretions I knew nothing about, I plucked up the courage to pat her hips. This was the first time that I had touched a girl with even the most innocuous sexual intent. It was done subtly, as if by accident, but it sent a charge straight between my legs. Either she didn’t notice or she didn’t care, or maybe she accepted my impertinent but innocent advance. I got away with it and hungered for more. I rushed home to my room and indulged in a fantasy-frenzy. After that, every time I heard Shirley Ellis, sing Marsha‘s name:

Marsha

Marsha bo Barsha,

Banana Fanna fo Farsha

Fe Fy mo arsha, Marsha

in her hit, The Name Game, I got hard.

Churchill was a mid-sized school of about twelve hundred students. It was unusual because of the diversity of ethnic, social, religious and economic groups. There was incredible wealth on one side of Oak Street and poverty on the other. There was a large Jewish population and a balance of Catholics, WASPs and religions that I did not yet understand. It wasn't the friendliest environment. The school halls were flush with little cliques. I did not fit into any particular group but was accepted by most as a fringe player. My family situation was middle-class so I guess I was border-line with both economic groups and Marsha was Jewish so that got me in there.

For my first date, I took Marsha to a school dance in the gym. I was hoping for a chance to mount an even more brazen assault on her young womanly body. The band was one of the most popular rhythm & blues bands in Vancouver. It was called The Night Train Revue. They were a big band with a full horn section and a revolving-door of vocalists including Sy Risby, Chuck Flintroy, Billy Dixon and Miss Suzanne. I drooled over drummer, Doug Cuthbert’s green sparkle Ludwig Super Classic drum kit. The Night Train Revue came on with Ike & Tina Turner, Mary Wells, Ray Charles and more. They wore sharp suits and did steps. They were very slick and maintained a furious energy all night.

After the dance, my premeditated mauling of the nubile Marsha was never realized; not even a kiss goodnight. It was my fault. She hinted that she was willing to allow a little abstemious groping but I was so unsophisticated, I simply did not know how. I was embarrassed and humiliated by my failure. My infatuation with Marsha fizzled quickly after that. By compensation, I was invited to hang out with the rich Jewish clique more often.

Their leader was Mark Wosk who came from a wealthy and prominent family. He was decidedly more mature than the rest of us and tall, dark and handsome in a Sean Connery - James Bond kind of a way. (There always seemed to be a Pussy Galore hovering around his locker). He played a bit of piano and was interested that I played drums. One day, in March, we took the bus downtown and met his father, who was a successful merchant. We walked up to Ward Music on Hastings Street where Mark picked out a double manual Honer electric organ and an amplifier with four plug-in jacks, reverb and echo; top of the line gear for early in 1965.

While we were there I noticed a full-set of blue-sparkle Cornet drums with Zyn cymbals. I don’t believe that the entire kit cost more than a hundred dollars but it was ninety-nine dollars more than I had. Somehow, I talked my parents into it and the kit was mine.

On weekends, Mark and I, and brothers, Bruce and Les Ames on bass and guitar, would haul our gear into someone’s rec-room where we would butcher songs like, Tall Cool One by The Wailers, The Witch by The Sonics and the big-daddy, Louie Louie by both The Kingsmen and Paul Revere & the Raiders. All of these bands were from the music-rich Pacific Northwest. The Kinsmen and Paul Revere became famous but The Wailers and Sonics were two incredible Seattle bands who never broke out.

Now that I had a whole drum kit I had to graduate from “Shhhhhhhh-Cluck” to something more complicated. So now while my right hand still went “Shhhhhhhh” and my left hand graduated to “crack” (the sound a snare drum makes when placed on a proper stand), I had to tell my right foot to press down on a pedal that made a beater hit the bass drum and get my left foot to rock back and forth on another pedal to open and close the hi-hat cymbals. The hi-hat is a stand with two cymbals that open and shut, crashing together, by pressing a foot down on a pedal. And then there are the tenor and floor toms which must be struck from time to time. All of this is like playing the piano while riding a bike. When executed properly music is created, but when practiced my way, it’s an offensive racket.

Liquor first passed my lips in a similar manner to that which it does for many teenagers. I snuck a little Canadian Club Whiskey from my dad’s stash in the back of a cupboard above the fridge. He drank so infrequently that I believe this bottle was already ten years old and still half full. I had to be careful because he would have certainly noticed if too much went missing. Actually, I suspect that he did know but he never said anything. I poured a small quantity into a 7-Up bottle and hurried out the back door. My childhood friend Kenny and I still hung out on occasion and this Saturday night we wandered the back alleys of the neighbourhood guzzling CC & Seven and smoking cigarettes. The booze was bitter and I didn’t like it. I got a little stupid and we knocked over a few garbage cans. The experience that night failed to kick-start what would eventually become a life-long addiction (alcohol – not vandalism).

In May, I saw a revolutionary film at the Vogue Theatre on Granville Street. It was called The T.A.M.I. Show (The Teen-Age Music International Show). It was a film made by a television director named Steve Binder of a concert that took place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1964 featuring dozens of the world’s biggest music stars including Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, Jan & Dean and a performance that would impress me almost as much as The Beatles on Sullivan. When I saw James Brown & His Famous Flames do Please Please Please I was mesmerized. Even The Stones’ vocalist, Mick Jagger looked shaken after Brown’s electrifying performance.

The next weekend, I attended my first rock concert. It was Paul Revere & The Raiders at the Agrodome in Vancouver. The opening act was The Syndicate of Sound (who would later have a Top Ten hit with a song titled, Little Girl). The Agrodome was an acoustic nightmare, designed and built for horse shows. Their sound system consisted of two Vox Super-Beatle speaker boxes on each side. This was grossly inadequate for the venue but it was the state-of-the-art in sound reinforcement at the time, and nobody knew any better. Paul Revere & the Raiders sounded great to me. They wore bright red, white and blue American Revolutionary Army costumes and had exciting choreography. I didn‘t see any reason why I couldn't do that - except that I didn't have a band to do it with.

That was about to change. I was approached by two Grade Eleven students named Bob Kripps and Frank Brnjac. They had a reputation around school as hipster guitar players in a band called, The Surfs. I learned quickly that The Surfs was partially a myth. They had played one dance on April 30th with a drummer named Barry and an organist named Keith - no bass player. Barry and Keith were not serious. Bob and Frank were very serious so they turfed Barry and Keith and went looking for me. I guess they thought that I was serious too because they asked if I was interested in trying-out for them.

This was my chance! This is what I had been waiting for! If I passed the audition I too would be a musician, a member of an elite global musical family, brother to The Beatles, sibling to The Stones, friend to Freddy & the Dreamers. I would be entitled to all that came with it, the benefits, the spoils, the women. All I had to do was pass that audition. Every day after school for a week I ran home and practice. I practiced until I wore out every Beach Boys record I owned.

When the big day arrived, Bob and Frank crammed into my den with all the pomp and circumstance that the gravity of the event warranted. The situation was made even more tense with the added embarrassment of having my mother hovering around the house. I put a record on and played along with Surfin’ USA and I Get Around. Then the worst happened. Bob asked if I could play the signature drum solo made famous by drummer Ron Wilson on the 1963 surfing classic, Wipe Outby The Surfaries. For a piece that was recorded as an afterthought “B” side and made up on the spot, it became the benchmark for drummers at the time and is still miss-played by most drummers today. I had a pretty good feel for it and attacked it with gusto.

After I had finished, it was awkward for all of us; I had no idea of whether I had nailed it or not. Bob and Frank stepped out into the narrow hallway and closed the door so that they could discuss me in private. My mother, who was just down the hall, and could hear them clearly, told me later that all they said was, “Well, he can play the roll to Wipe Out and he has good hair”. Based on that, I passed the audition, got the job and took my first major step in the pursuit of my dream. I was finally on the road to somewhere.

Bob and Frank were impressive. Firstly, they had great gear. Bob owned a rare Hofner guitar and a Fender Showman amp. Frank played a Fender Jazzmaster guitar and a cherry-red Gibson ES335, and had a Vox Super-Beatle amp. It turned out that both of their amps were fakes; perfect copies that they made themselves in Frank‘s basement. First lesson of show business - it’s all make-believe.

Frank was tall with long dark brown hair and a sharp nose. He was plugged into the newest sounds coming out of England. He had albums and 45s by groups like The Kinks, The Who and The Yardbirds. He knew who Jimmy Page was, and Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Ray Davies as well. He could play songs like Tired of Waiting, I Can’t Explain, For Your Love and others. He had a wacky sense of humour but was very serious about his music.

Bob was a good looking guy; super hip and full of confidence, and he attracted the attention of all the girls. He was also all-the-rage when it came to fashion. He resembled Brian Jones of The Stones. He dressed like him and wore his blond hair like him. He was our lead singer and rhythm guitarist and understood the importance of having a strong presence out front.

Bob was more worldly than Frank. He was an inspired leader who ran focused, intense practices. He knew who The Pretty Things were before anybody. And, he introduced me to one of the best pure rock songs I have ever heard, The Nazz Are Blue, by The Yardbirds.

The summer of 1965 was spent in the rec-room of Bob’s parents’ house. Although we didn’t have a bass player, we still felt that we were a legitimate band. We renamed the band, The Aztecs, because we weren’t playing surf music anymore. We were now into the hard core British rock sound. The popular groups in Vancouver were still big rhythm & blues show-bands like The Night Train Revue, Kentish Steele & The Shantelles (with guitarist Paul Dean), Jason Hoover and the Epics, Rosalind Keene & The Apollos and Billy Taylor & The Spectors (with a trumpet player named Bruce Fairbairn) or Top Forty rock bands like The C-FUN Classics, The Nocturnals, The Centaurs, The Shadracks (with guitarist Craig McCaw and bassist Bob Verge), The Stags and The Shockers (with drummer Dave Johnson). We weren’t even a garage band - we were a rec-room band. Still, even without a bass player, we could rock-out on our hip repertoire of material that I called, 'noise music'. These were songs like I'm A Man by The Yardbirds, The Who's My Generation and anything by The Pretty Things.

With all of this hipness going on, it was unimaginable what was about to happen to me. My stage debut would not include the music of The Yardbirds, The Who or Pretty Things. Instead, I appeared as a monk in the Royal Ballet's Vancouver presentation of Romeo & Juliet at the new Queen Elizabeth Theatre (opened in 1959). The Grande Dame of British ballet, Dame Margot Fonteyn, and the world's greatest dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, were the two principal dancers. Fonteyn was a legend and Nureyev a temperamental, hot-headed, brawling, smoking, boozing phenomenon on feet.

Bob's mother was the chair of a local dance committee and enlisted Bob, Frank and I to take part in the chorus. We showed up at the stage door and were herded down a metal spiral staircase into the bowels of the theatre. One of the army of wardrobe mistresses (not all of whom were biologically female) assigned Page costumes to Bob and Frank but was annoyed because I looked about twelve years old. She settled on a monk's costume and ordered me to keep the hood up so that the audience didn't see a baby-faced Father. As I struggled to squeeze back up the tight staircase I tripped on my robe and did a face plant on the floor. “Fuck!” I cursed meekly. I heard giggling and looked up at the tiny, dainty and very famous feet of none other than the Prima Ballerina, Margot Fonteyn, herself. She was sitting pretty, like a delicate porcelain doll, on what might as well have been a throne, surrounded by the company of flawless young ballerinas. She gazed upon me for a moment and then laughed out loud. It was a bigger laugh than I would have expected from such a noble creature but she really let it go; even her eyes danced. I guess the sight of this little baby-faced cherub blurting out “fuck” really tickled her funny-bone (assuming that anyone so refined would have a funny-bone).

Now red-faced, I quickly picked myself up and hurried along to the stage where I was to receive my final instructions. An assistant stage manager in charge of minute details ran me and another padre through our assignment. As the curtain rose, we were to stroll diagonally from down stage left to up stage right (that's from the back of the stage on the audience's right to the front of the stage on the audience's left – everything in show business is mixed up). Then we were to take up a position in a set-piece doorway down stage and watch. It was from this spot that I first saw him. He was standing about ten feet away from me in tights and a sweat shirt. He raised his hands above his head and struck a god-like pose. Then he effortlessly leaped about ten feet into the air, twirled about and landed like a feather. Even though I was only fourteen years old, and had never seen a male ballet dancer in real life, with that one move I knew that this man was the greatest dancer in history. I wanted to say something to express my awe and admiration but I remembered another of the assistant stage managers cautioning us not to speak to Rudolph Nureyev and better yet, not to even look at him directly with the naked eye. The rumour was that he beat the crap out of a waiter in a restaurant the night before for the brazen audacity of offering a compliment to the great man.

I did three performances with the Royal Ballet but, when the company moved on, I wasn't invited to continue. My career in the ballet was over. Good thing I still had a drum set to fall back on.

I turned fifteen that summer. I was over six feet now and had developed a strong physical condition. I ran a lot and got a good workout playing drums. More importantly, my hair was getting longer and was dark and curly.

Bob had turned sixteen and had earned his driver’s license. He had use of his mom’s ’63 Chevy Impala and we cruised all the way to Labour Day.

It was difficult going back to start Grade Ten that fall. There was so much musical excitement in my life that it was tough to concentrate on science and math.

I still had no clue when it came to girls. As much as I fantasized about them, and to the extent that I lusted after them, they scared me. I tried not to be too obvious as I ogled them parading by me in the halls. I pretended to look at the floor as my eyes darted from one to the next, afraid I might miss a pretty one. Fashions were changing rapidly. Skirts were shorter and tops tighter. In their fresh summer tans they all looked so much older, so much more womanly. It was going to be real hard to keep my pen on my desk this year.

Bob met a girl who had just moved to Vancouver from England. He started going steady with her. She loved the British sound and brought with her stories of the Rockers and the Mods and the Hard-Mods; enormous gangs separated by a dress-code that clashed all over the streets of London. Her name was Anne and she was smashing. She came on like a woman of the world with oceans of make-up and sexy short mini-skirts. One Saturday night Bob invited me to join him and Anne and her friend, DeeDee, on a double date. I didn’t have to be asked twice. Any friend of Anne’s had to be luscious and she was.

DeeDee was a walking wet-dream in a blue mini-skirt, white blouse and go-go boots. I was even more intimidated because she looked like Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, who was about the cutest girl on earth at that time. She slipped into the back seat with me and we drove around for a while. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her bare thighs and now, as if I wasn’t nervous enough, I also had to contend with my emerging hard-on. We ended up parking somewhere out by the beach and Bob and Anne started necking in the front seat. I was way too naïve to make any advances on DeeDee and so we sat there in silence suffering the sounds of Bob and Anne slurping, sucking and moaning in the front seat. Just when it became unbearable, I made a move. I lunged at her and planted an awkward kiss in the general area of her mouth. Surprisingly, she responded with raw enthusiasm. We achieved a full-on, sloppy-wet lip-lock. This was accompanied by a flurry of petting and pawing but, in the passion of the moment, I do not believe that I felt-up anything important. We both hung on for as long as we could but she was as inexperienced as I, and had not yet mastered the skill of breathing while kissing, so eventually we burst apart. At that moment Anne also came up for air. She recognized the awkwardness of the situation and decided to take a break. She lit up a cigarette, slid around with her knees on the bench and rested her arms on the back of the seat facing DeeDee.

“All the Mod birds in Chelsea are teasing their hair bigger,” she lectured DeeDee, “and you've got to use more spray. It's all in the spray!”

Bob, suddenly bored, turned on the radio. Barry McQuire's, Eve Of Destruction filled the car.

“But I back-combed until my arms hurt,” DeeDee whined. “Why do I have to do it like they do in Chelsea?”

“'Cos I'm older and I know these things,” said Anne.

“Well I'm almost ...”

Anne turned suddenly to Bob. “How old do you think I am?” she baited him.

Bob was the apotheosis of cool. He was pretending to listen to the song on the radio but, he had told me that he really wanted to find out how old Anne was, so it was great act. “What? Sorry, I was listening to Barry McGuire.”

“You lie!” she laughed and punched his shoulder. “Come on, guess, how old am I?”

“I don't have to guess,” he replied. “I know how old you are.”

“You do not!” she punched his shoulder again. “You don't. You can't ... Can you?”

“Yeah I can. You're fifteen.”

“Hah! You're wrong! I'm thirteen!” she cried.

“Thirteen!” Bob shouted. “You're only thirteen?”

“Oh shit!” Anne said. “You tricked me!”

“Well, it's not fair. You look so much older.”

She smiled, satisfied that she did look older; she was a woman. Then she began to laugh. She turned around and looked at me. “Do you know how old DeeDee is”? She asked.

“Uh, no,” I replied weakly.

“Can you guess?”

I looked over at DeeDee in her false eye-lashes and thick pink lipstick, now being expertly reapplied after I smeared it all over her face (and mine). “Fifteen?” I guessed, “Or, maybe sixteen?”

Anne and DeeDee squealed with glee and collapsed in convulsions of giggling only possible in young girls. Finally, Anne gathered her composure, looked at me and said, “she’s eleven ... DeeDee is in Grade Seven; she’s eleven!”

I sat, stunned, my teenage mind racing frantically evoking the images of what had just happened. Did I have my hand between her legs? God! No! I couldn’t have! She’s only eleven years old!

I went out through the window.

Halloween was approaching and The Aztecs caught a big break. Bob’s mother was on the Committee at the Marpole Community Centre and she convinced them to hire us to play the Halloween Dance. Mark Wosk agreed to play organ with us and Bob found a bass player through an ad in the paper. When he arrived at our first practice we were alarmed to discover that he was an East Side greaser. His name was Neil. He looked like a chubbier version of the fifties rocker, Gene Vincent. The Committee had specified that we play a variety of songs so we could not play all our British 'noise' music anyway. This was my first lesson in compromising artistic integrity for a gig. Neil was helpful here as he knew a lot of songs.

In honour of this significant event we re-renamed the band The Statics.

My first professional gig happened on Saturday, October 30, 1965 in the gym at the Marpole Community Centre. We were dashing in black collarless blazers, white pants and turtlenecks; kind of a Dave Clark Five look. The dozens of fans that had gathered that night heard us play rock, rock & roll, surf, British invasion, blues, rhythm & blues and pop. We played The Stones’ Satisfaction and set a world record for continuous performances of Louie Louie. We also played The Beatles’ Ticket to Ride as well as Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tamborine Man by The Byrds. Our ‘waltz’ was House of the Rising Sun which was repeated several times so that the boys and girls could press together pelvis-to-pelvis right under the watchful eyes of the chaperones. Dances had chaperones in those days to save teenagers from their own pernicious lust.

During the breaks, Neil poured whiskey from a micky he kept in his bass case into a Coca-Cola bottle and got plastered. As the end of the night approached, I became aware of a gang of leather jacketed hoods pointing at the bandstand. When we were done they came around back to the stage door and started banging on it.

The fear on my face must have been obvious. Mark laughed and teased, “Hey Rock! You gonna pound those punks?”

Frank joined in, “come on Rock! Go get 'em Rock!”

Neil calmly packed up his bass, took his twenty dollars pay from Bob, threw open the stage door and pushed his way into the mob. The door slammed behind him and I never saw the hoods or Neil again in my life.

After we had packed up our gear Mark and I walked home. I was exhilarated by my first gig. I waxed on philosophically about what it took to succeed in the music business, as if I knew.

“Mark, The Beatles started in a tiny club in Liverpool,” I said with absolutely no knowledge of whether this was correct or not, “and now they’re the biggest band in the world. It’s because they’re tough; they’re hard as rock.”

“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “They’re hard as rock, Rock.”

“That’s right, Rock,” I said. “We have to be hard as rock too.”

“Okay, Rock,” Mark answered.

“Okay, Rock,” I concluded

At school, whenever I passed Mark in the hall we would call each other “Rock”; we were both Rock. Then others began to call me Rock and the name stuck. It was somewhat prophetic as I was very dependable, reliable and dedicated to the band and was already considered The Rock by Bob. Soon all those in the know called me Rock or the more formal, The Rock.

I was finally beginning to establish a place for myself in the school society although not an insider with any particular group. There were two powerful sects at school. The first, the Jewish circle, was still very much the in-crowd and, as Mark was their leader, I was invited to tag along to parties and to other events.

One of their group was Howard Diner. Howard was small and uncommonly skinny. He couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds and most of that was nose. He was cursed with a Cyrano de Bergerac sized nose but it was a thing of awe and beauty and, like his fictitious counterpart, Howard wore it well. He was a zany guy with a hilarious frat-house sense of humour. He was also our driver. A bunch of us would go out in his mom’s ’65 Parisienne and we’d cruise the avenues honking at girls and looking for trouble. One time we found more than we could handle when we were chased by a car full of tough-guys. Our lives were at risk but we had nothing to fear as tiny, fragile Howard, barely able to peer over the steering wheel of the gigantic Pontiac, expertly maneuvered the car, careening down back alleys and flying over side streets at frightening speeds, until our would-be attackers chickened-out, gave up and sought easier prey.

The other force at school was the 'Hershey Bars'. This was the madras shirt, Converse running shoe set. They loved surf music, sports and necking. They were led by the coolest guy at school, Steve Walley. Steve was tall with shaggy blond hair and intelligent blue eyes. He was a James Coburn, Our Man Flint kind of a guy. He was his own man and had confidence that all around him was his. He could do no wrong and even a cursory “Hi” as he passed by in the school halls sounded perfect and made you wish you‘d said that. The man was KOOL!

The Hersheys had formed a band of their own and they called it The G.T.s. Steve was the bass player.