Autumn 1967. Lake Avenue, St. James. Suffolk County, New York State. In a home within the woods, a bunch of younger males reside collectively in ramshackle bohemian splendour – 20-year-old college students, graduates and wannabe musicians with a phobia for the 9-5, their days are spent in countless jamming and dope smoking. Nobody has cash for utilities so the home is massive, chilly and damp. The home windows are coated in blankets, the partitions are painted black. In the lounge, somebody has painted a mural of Jim Morrison depicted as a strutting lion.
Residents embrace Donald Roeser, wizard guitarist and part-time pupil at Stony Brook College and Allen Lanier, a keyboard participant and guitarist within the technique of extricating himself from the draft. Patently ill-equipped to struggle the conflict in Vietnam, Allen is working as an apprentice editor on industrial movies. When he goes AWOL, Jeff Latham takes over.
On bass is Andrew Winters, a mordant, wisecracking New Yorker who ought to take credit score for beginning the band. Winters works as supply boy at a drugstore in close by Smithtown run by the daddy of 1 Samuel ‘Sandy’ Pearlman, an erudite scribbler for the ground-breaking Crawdaddy journal who – legend has it – first makes use of the time period ‘Heavy Steel’ in a evaluation of The Infamous Byrd Brothers. Afterward, Sandy will develop into the rising group’s lyricist, mentor, conceptualist, producer and supervisor. His pal, one other Stony Brook pupil and fellow Crawdaddy scribe Richard Meltzer, writes arcane verses that shall be changed into songs.
The drummer drums is Albert Bouchard, a drop-out civil engineer and pal of Don’s from Clarkson Faculty, Potsdam, NY. Albert can be an occasional contributor to Crawdaddy, writing about Buffalo Springfield. And finishing this ramshackle ensemble is guitarist/bassist John Wiesenthal, who as soon as had tuition from Pete Seeger and taught Jackson Browne some folks chords, and tall good-looking tenor sax participant and singer Jeff Richards.
In October 1967, Pearlman will get the boys their debut gig as Steve Noonan’s backing band on the Stony Brook College gymnasium, and since they want a reputation for this occasion, and Meltzer’s suggestion of Cow hasn’t been widespread, Sandy christens them Comfortable White Underbelly: “after Winston Churchill’s description of Italy because the mushy underbelly of the axis” he explains. Pearlman’s obsession with WW2 army historical past will crop up later when he writes the Blue Öyster Cult music ME 262.
Comfortable White Underbelly play a blues set in November on the Café au Go-Go supporting James Cotton, and do their very own factor at a Christmas social gathering in Stony Brook to check out some authentic materials: Bouchard and Meltzer’s All-Night time Fuel Station, a prolonged psych jam, will mutate into A Reality About Sneakers – a music they report as Stalk-Forrest Group in 1970. Albert’s different contribution is You.
“That was a dream I had about being drafted, although I by no means was,” he says. “Sandy modified the phrases to an elaborate story about Canadian Mounties. That turned I’m On The Lamb, However I Ain’t No Sheep (which seems on the initially unreleased Stalk-Forrest Group album, and the debut BÖC album), after which as The Crimson and the Black (on Tyranny and Mutation).
“For the primary half dozen reveals, I sang and performed drums utilizing a increase microphone. Jeff Richards was an excellent singer however he had horrible stage fright. It wasn’t supreme. We wanted a singer. Earlier than me they’d tried out David Roter and Jeff Kagel.”
Meltzer tried his hand too, however normally confined himself to shouting obscenities.
”Meltzer was all the time opposite”, says Donald. “He had no boundaries. He was like a shark: carry on shifting otherwise you drown. I appreciated him lots however he had no discretion. Civil society wouldn’t perform if everybody had been like him. However he and Sandy did have folders filled with presumably nice lyrics, and we spent hours sorting them out.”
In early ’68 a longhaired stranger arrived on the home within the woods and located “what appeared like elves, taking part in among the many bushes.” This was Les Braunstein, who entered the Underbelly after bumping into Pearlman’s girlfriend (later spouse) Joan Shapiro whereas visiting mates on campus.
An aspiring songwriter and a graduate from close by Hobart, the place he’d shared anti-authoritarian conversations with fellow pupil Eric Bloom, Les had written a cutesy jug band monitor known as I am in Love With a Huge Blue Frog that Peter, Paul and Mary coated as their compulsory kiddy music on Album 1700 (1967). It was greater than faintly twee, but this ditty gave Les a daily $75 a month royalty cheque, enabling him to purchase a VW bus. He had different issues to commend him: he’d seen The Doorways play in 1967 and he’d frolicked with Nico and Tim Hardin.
Smoking a joint with Joan on his bus, Braunstein performed her a number of songs. “She mentioned: ‘you will need to meet the boys, Comfortable White Underbelly. My boyfriend is guiding them.’ Once I turned up at St. James they had been taking a break and smoking up so I joined in. We obtained extra stoned on the bus after which I entered their rehearsal room, with all of the tools squeezed in. They performed and it appeared like nothing I’d ever heard earlier than: highly effective, good and electrical.
“I obtained very paranoid. I felt so trapped contained in the music I needed to run outdoors. Joan got here to fetch me and mentioned ‘oh, that occurs to everyone.’ I went again and it was nonetheless the very best factor ever – Donald, Albert, Allen and Andrew. They confirmed me some songs. Meltzer’s had been whacked out; so odd I didn’t see how they may ever make sense, however Donald and Albert labored that out.”
Braunstein joined the “hangers-out”. As soon as built-in, he provided to take part and sang: “I’m within the band home, we’re all within the band home”. Sheer poetry. “Yeah, nevertheless it obtained extra difficult. I attempted out considered one of my school jug band songs, Rational Passional; barely foolish nevertheless it got here out just like the Jefferson Airplane.
The lyrics had been fairly good. ‘I used to be at Selective Service [a US agency that maintains data on people potentially subject to military conscription] and the folks made me nervous, so I requested the sergeant why they made me come. He mentioned do exactly what you’re ordered, or we’ll have you ever drawn and quartered. You’re a awful commie peace creep hippy bum…’”
Brausntein joined in earnest after leaping on stage on the Anderson Yiddish Theatre, Greenwich Village however doesn’t full a set till February, a medication bust profit starring Nation Joe & The Fish and The Fugs. Again from the military on a furlough, Lanier was horrified to search out “the band home man” upfront. “The fixed, the communal context was altered,” he remembers. “I used to be all the time an outsider as a matter of fashion however we had been nice mates, additionally we weren’t. It was all in regards to the band.”
Ever the open guide, Les understands Al’s antipathy. “Allen Lanier didn’t come alone, he got here with the Gothic South and the French poets. The boy was haunted. We didn’t discuss a lot. He attacked the keyboards with an depth that was lacking in his on a regular basis manner, the place he was quiet, courteous and distant. We had been utterly non-confrontational as folks.
“With the occasional exception of Andrew, no person gave anybody else a tough time. Everybody expressed themselves in regards to the music because it got here collectively; that was understood as being constructive. However what was not expressed in phrases was by no means hidden in perspective. I may see it most clearly in Allen. He was annoyed at seeing the change within the band’s persona that I precipitated. ‘Why do we would like a singer with vibrato?’ he requested.
“He had been taking part in and jamming with the band for months, had began to dream the massive goals, had been dragged away into the military and now comes again to search out that this man who had been singing slightly within the band home was now the singer with the band. Plus life, which was clearly struggling and misery, was what to this man? I used to be too comfortable for him. I appreciated Allen, however there was no place for me in his dream.”
Higher gigs arrived. In April ’68 SWU supported BB King and Chuck Berry on the Era Membership, NYC, and in addition backed the rock and roll star.
Albert: “That was very cool. We arrived early. Chuck didn’t flip up ‘til quarter-hour earlier than the doorways opened. He plugged in and requested ‘who’s the drummer?’ I used to be truly sitting at my drums! ‘OK. my songs. That is what occurs: after I convey the top inventory of my guitar down which means cease and the music ends, however hold the beat getting in your head and be prepared to return again in; after I elevate up my left leg and convey it right down to my proper leg which means wrap it up ‘cos that’s the top of the music OK?’
“He instructed Andrew to play Memphis ‘however not just like the report, like Johnny Rivers’ and Andy goes ‘wh-a-aat?’ That was all the sound test. We performed, then we backed him and he was extremely loud however lucid and dynamic. What an excellent singer.”
In Could SWU supported the Grateful Useless at Stony Brook. Albert thought “they (the Useless) had been slightly boring, went on and on and the vocals didn’t do something. However Don appreciated Jerry Garcia and stole a bunch of concepts. They had been a folky jug band and we nonetheless had an East Coast jazzy affect. Oh, however Phil Lesh came to visit and mentioned ‘you’ll be nice some day’. Dunno if that was a praise.”
Lastly, a break. Pearlman persuaded Elektra boss Jac Holzman to observe the Underbelly play within the Ballroom on the Resort Diplomat, New York Metropolis, the place Meltzer gave the report firm boss a joint laced with horse tranquilliser. Evidently it labored as a result of after they climaxed with All Night time Fuel Station Jac got here flying out of the bleachers. “He jumped on stage threw his arms spherical me and hugged me and mentioned ‘You’re within the household boy!’ It was a really particular second,” says Les.
Whether or not he appreciated SWU is a moot level, however Holzman seen Les as an East Coast Jim Morrison. “Most likely as a result of on the finish of the set I made up this story about going outdoors the Diplomat with a flower youngster area woman after which this dude arrives and she or he doesn’t like him so she pulls out these two lengthy metal pins and I begin screaming and she or he plunges them into her eyes.
In late ’68 SWU began recording at Elektra’s New York studio, then moved to the not too long ago opened A&R Studio 2 in early 1969. Right here they recorded sufficient materials for an album. The songs included Mothra (Pearlman and Lanier), an early Cult-styled summary Japanese horror monster piece, Queen’s Boulevard (Pearlman and Lanier), in regards to the dying of the basic American bike, the Fleischmann’s space of New York and the thrill of driving down mentioned Boulevard, and Fantasy Morass (Meltzer and Lanier) about urinating in a public bathroom with a lyric that goes “It’s not a yellow cloud, it’s not a smelly vent…”
Bark within the Solar (Meltzer and Bouchard) would develop into the Secret Treaties music, Cagey Cretins, when recycled with one other SWU tune, Mystic Stump, one thing they by no means recorded. The unique incorporates one other tremendous Meltzer couplet: ‘You vomit slime, my armpits rhyme like artichoke hearts, not our personal hearts.’
Pearlman and Albert wrote Buddha’s Knee, a trance music carried out beneath the affect of LSD with a quick guitar passage that indicated how ridiculously good Donald had develop into on guitar.
There have been additionally makes an attempt on the following: St. Cecelia, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy, Arthur Comics, Ragamuffin Dumpling (written by Meltzer about Les who used to make the band dumplings and in addition referred to himself as ‘the magic man’ of the music), Donovan’s Monkey and All Night time Fuel Station. These six had been revisited and drastically altered by the Stalk-Forrest Group. Lastly, there was a Braunstein folks music known as Jay Jay that Albert says “was how Les needed us to be. We thought ‘oh effectively, the Beatles all the time do some bizarre shit folks, so why not? We gave it our greatest shot, Allen particularly.”
In the course of the closing recordings, with bemused producer Peter Siegel going slowly nuts, Les determined he didn’t like his vocals and erased them. In line with Albert “He actually didn’t need to sing Meltzer’s songs. He knew Meltzer didn’t like him and he didn’t like Richard’s tone as a result of it wasn’t optimistic and was intentionally indirect. What it boiled right down to was that Les wasn’t as critical in regards to the music as the remainder of us. He was gifted and gifted however when he re-did his vocals all of it obtained fucked up. He began by mendacity down on the ground twelve ft from the mic or he’d insist on singing after we weren’t there.”
The ultimatum was sotto voce. Both Les performed ball, or he may do one.
Les additionally needed to draft in arranger David Horowitz and add Love/Without end Modifications fashion strings and horns. The remainder of the Underbelly had been aghast however Les sees it in another way. “It’s true that I had performed trumpet and French Horn in school, so on Buddha’s Knee I hit a hearth hose towards the mic to make a metallic clang, then I blew down the brass nozzle and located this nice one-note waaaah after which I blacked out. Semi-conscious, I felt extra concerned within the Underbelly then I ever had executed. I attempted it first after we performed with Blood, Sweat and Tears. I hadn’t taken acid at that time.”
By mid-69 Jac Holzman was getting chilly ft about his $5000 funding (removed from the usually reported $100.000 advance), however nonetheless known as the Underbelly in for a gathering with William S. Harvey, the Elektra sleeve designer. Neither man appeared significantly happy with the recordings, which had been quirky and nonetheless unfinished.
Although no official rejection was provided, bass participant Andrew Winters was probably the most vocal dissident, because the others had been non-confrontational. When Harvey, trying to be avuncular, talked about that ‘your album paintings doesn’t should be like typical Elektra paintings’ Winters shot again “Effectively, that’s factor.”
In early summer season, Les was “disengaged”. He performed his final present with SWU once they supported The Band at Stony Brook, again within the fitness center, and it felt like déjà vu. Sandy Pearlman killed the SWU classes off, terminating them on the neck as a result of he didn’t assume them releasable. “If we’d persevered, it could have been a catastrophe” he mentioned. Les went off touring together with his girlfriend Kippy and the others quickly enlisted their new van man and sound man to take his place.
His identify was Eric Bloom. A brand new chapter was about to start.