I was at the physiatrist’s office today (they treat chronic back pain and other ailments), and I took my New York Times to read while waiting for various phases of the visit.
The doctor ordered an MRI (don’t worry, probably just a pinched nerve) and his assistant took me to the office of a young woman named Brittany to get the test scheduled.
While Brittany was on the phone setting it up, I turned to the obits page and saw that Rock and Roll legend Paul Revere had died. He was 76, and the cause was cancer. He died on Saturday at his home in Garden Valley, Idaho.
After Brittany hung up, I said, “Have you ever heard of Paul Revere & the Raiders?”
“No,” she said, giving me a pleasant smile.
“You haven’t heard of Paul Revere & the Raiders?” I asked again, just to make sure.
“No,” she said. Then, she looked down at the paper and said, “Is there good news about them?”
“No,” I said. “He died.”
“Oh,” she said.
Before leaving, I said, “Are you in your 20s?”
“Yes,” she replied, giving me the answer I was already pretty sure of.
Not that even being in her 30s would have made any difference, but her age helped me understand why she might not have heard of that famous 1960s group.
Paul — born Paul Revere Dick in Harvard, Nebraska — was the group’s founder and played keyboard. He was still touring with a band, which included none of the original members, until July.
The group’s songs included”Hungry” (’66), “Good Thing” (’67), “Indian Reservation” (’71) and my favorite, “Kicks” (’66), which Rolling Stone magazine rated No. 400 in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
**
Paul Revere (at left)
One reason this baby boomer is here is to keep you apprised of the passing of some of the most accomplished artists from the 60s — the greatest decade for pop music, hands down — when I was in high school and college.
Paul Revere and his raiders sure did offer me some solace (along with many other memorable artists) during my often-pained and lonely years at a Catholic, all-boys high school.
Thank you, Paul, I wish Brittany had become familiar with your music. Maybe she still will…
And now, for your Monday evening listening pleasure, click here for “Kicks.”
(One YouTube commenter said this video was from the TV show Hullabaloo, which aired in 1965 and 1966…Paul is off to the side, on the keyboard…Note those groovy dancers with the fringed dresses.)
**
If you will note the comments below, you will see that our most prolific commenter, John Altevogt, is a bass player and played with bands that took the stage before some headline groups.
Here’s a photo that John sent me of himself, in 1964, I believe, in a restaurant outside Detroit.
John says this is a photo of Mick Jagger from a 1964 rolling Stones concert…
Kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find
Great band. Will that bad back hurt your golf swing?
Nahhhh!
Paul Revere and the Raiders was the first concert I ever attended at Municipal Auditorium at age13……had my eyes on the lead singer Mark Lindsay…..since he was the HOT one (he had a pony tail). Most of my friends watched “Where the Action Is” a California Teen Show “back in the day ” and The Raiders were on almost every day.
Nice anecdote, Ellen…In the photo, Mark Lindsay is at top right, head tilted to the right.
Glad he dropped the last name for performing. Finding a group moniker for Paul Dick and the (fill in the blank) would have been tricky.
The Raiders were (thankfully) one of the last of Dick Clark’s era of lip synch rock and roll bands. I could see it coming during the Stones first tour when they had one of Phil Spector’s girl groups as a back-up group and all they did was lip synch to a packed coliseum. After quickly being ushered off the stage, the Stones came on and (absent Brian Jones, who was recovering from “exhaustion in a Chicago hospital) blew the doors out of the place.
Interestingly, you could have put a group of talentless slugs on the stage during that era (witness the Dave Clark 5), but the Stones and many other English groups came out and put on tremendous live shows that buried their more tedious American counterparts for quite some time. Instead of riding a single hit into the ground for life, they split up and tried new ideas with different combinations of musicians. Keeping track of the lineage of the different musicians as they played musical chairs with different groups became a skill in and of itself. It was a fascinating time to be around music and while I enjoyed Paul’s music, the group itself was an anachronism almost from its inception.
Readers: John is our most prolific commenter, political and otherwise, but here he exhibits a heretofore unrecognized (at least to me) dimension — rock and roll critic.
What we need around here are versatile, nimble commenters, and, John, you fill the bill!
Thank you, I was extremely blessed to see the Stones on their first tour from the 2nd row center from the stage. Only the press were in front of us, apparently being used as fodder to keep us back, and I was an instant fan. About a month later I saw the Dave Clark 5 and they were a complete fraud.
I was also blessed to have stumbled onto a particular playing style during that era that became the thing to do and few did it, and so I got to play with a lot of people much better than I and we traveled quite a bit, playing the regional spot on the bill for groups like The Who, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Gentle Giant, etc. i also got to see many great American bands from that era that are long gone like Savage Grace (if you see their albums, get them) and some that are still around. I saw Alice Copper at the Grande when he was still throwing rubber chickens and garbage into the audience and Ted Nugent while he was still with the Amboy Dukes.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area where I could get on my radio the Motown sounds from CKLW, country blues by everyone from Jimmy Reed to BB King from WLAC in Nashville and all sorts of rock from WLS out of Chicago (now a talk radio station). And so those were the things that I heard, hiding under my blankets at night listening to my transistor radio until the wee hours.
If I had no other blessing than my contact with music I would be perfectly content.
Speaking of blessings, I also have access to the masters of the 35th musical anniversary of Anetta “Cotton Candy” Washington and would love to find some local arts council to provide a grant to master the tapes. They were recorded well and they really deserve to be saved as a part of Kansas City musical history.
So if any of your vast audience knows of anyplace that would fund such a project (all the proceeds would go to the studio), let me know.
Tell our vast audience where you grew up, what instrument you play (or played), where you saw the Stones on that first tour (and when), and what and where “the Grande” is…
Our readers must have these details.
I grew up in Fort Wayne, In. I played then and play now the bass. And the Grande Ballroom was in Detroit. It was a second floor movie theater that had all the seats taken out and one of the first huge PA systems installed. It is featured on the cover of the MC5’s album and I believe Savoy Brown also had a shot of it in one of their album covers. It was the Fillmore of the Midwest. We also played Roostertail Upperdeck there.
As for the Stones, I saw them in Fort Wayne and I think I scanned in the pictures on this computer that I have of that event. I’ll email them to you. Their problems on that first tour were almost biblical in nature.
There was a DJ at CKLW who was intent on being the “5th Beatle” on one of the Beatles tours and he ridiculed them unmercifully on his show before leaving for California to meet with the Beatles. As the story goes he bragged about his conduct not knowing that the Beatles and the Stones were friends and supposedly Lennon tore the contract for his services up in his face. How true that is I don’t know, but he was not on their tour. The damage however was done as the Stones were received very poorly in Detroit.
I was fortunate enough to play with Cotton for several years. Had I and our keyboard player been around earlier in her career she would have been national. She had a tremendous voice and was a legitimate jazz, blues and gospel artist. The 35th also features Myra taylor and Everett Devan. I left her band shortly before she died to play in a local jam band, but was fortunate in that I played the last complete gig she ever did, a Realtors’ Christmas party in St. Joe.
Great stuff, John…Interesting anecdotes and personal history…Above, I have pasted in the photo of you in the Fort Wayne restaurant.
No, that was outside Detroit just going into play Grande, but the Stones pictures are far more interesting.
Also, about 1969, if memory serves.