My First Band
Forward
A story about the past is a construct even when pains are taken to be accurate. It’s as real as the future, and that is to say, not very. Reality is an infinitesimally small pinpoint called “now” that is constantly moving ahead, leaving us a step behind.
For millennia, it’s been suggested that certain states of mind are possible that allow a person to ride that pinpoint and be aware of the world directly, and that anything less is sleep. Big fans of this theory are prophets, seers, and high school stoners.
In this spirit, I share my recollections freely and merrily….life is but a dream.
What We Were Up Against
In 1968, Rhythm and Blues was king in the Toronto area. Songs like Midnight Hour, Knock on Wood, and Hold On I’m Coming were standards that all aspiring young musicians were expected to know. There was a certain swagger that came with this Black-American genre and teenage boys from my era loved to swagger.
My first band, when I was fourteen, had none of those African-American pretensions. We simply thrashed around on our instruments until something worked.
We began in April 1968 with Pete Buttle on rhythm guitar, Gary Fohr on drums, and me on lead guitar. During the month of May, we added a bass player, Pete Metzger, and a singer, Wayne Hussey.
We played long, repetitive songs like “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones and “For Your Love” by The Yardbirds.
The bass player created a name for us:
The Synthetic Society
This wasn’t an R&B name. It was more in tune with a rapidly rising new genre that we embraced called Psychedelic Rock, later known as Acid Rock. It had elements of Blues, Folk, Classical, and Pop and featured long, mesmerizing instrumentals, hallucinatory lyrical imagery, and pretentious mystical insight. It was a product of the marijuana and LSD culture favoured by the rebellious and extreme left-wing Hippie movement.
San Francisco was the epicenter of the culture with bands like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. There was also a thriving sub-genre of drug influenced music coming out of Britain. Bands like The Jimi Hendrix Experience (he was from Seattle Washington but lived and recorded in England) and Pink Floyd.
The birth of the whole style was arguably the Beatle’s “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” released in late May of 1967. Recognized as the first concept album (meant to be listened to in its entirety), it made a huge impact on popular music and influenced even the die-hard blues-based bands in London like The Rolling Stones and, a bit later, Cream.
The oldest member in our band was fifteen, and the edgiest thing we had ever done was smoke cigarettes. We had no idea what it was like to be high on weed or acid. Still, we had long hair, wore brightly colored shirts with Nehru collars, and peppered our conversation with words and terms like “Far Out,” “Dig It,” “Wow Man,” and “That Blows My Mind.” We proudly proclaimed The Synthetic Society to be a psychedelic band and as for R&B, we left that to the Greasers, Bullies, and Hoods.
Business Was Business
Contrary to the “peace and love” motif central to this new culture, we coldly fired the rhythm guitarist and the singer because our bass player had a friend who could do both. The friend’s name was Glenn Williams. He could play guitar behind his neck and knew the words to “Like A Rolling Stone.” We were sold.
No psychedelic band was complete without a light show, which Mark Jewett handled. He was a friend of Peter and Glenn and to this day, a close friend of mine. What qualified Mark for the job was that he knew how to do those overhead projector things with globules of coloured oil (hard to describe but very hip at the time), and he had a strobe light.
Generation Flap
We rehearsed almost every day except when we’d have to move to a different member’s basement. We’d stay long enough in a place to drive one of our families bonkers (less than a week, in some cases) with our droning endless free-for-alls. We’d throw every lick and riff we knew against the wall in a thunderous shit storm of atonal chaos.
Neo Mozart
We even did a few tunes that I wrote. One was called “Delusions Of Psychosis” which was a very descriptive title for it. There was another one I wrote that had no name. We referred to it as the “Coke tune” because it had a melody and lilt to it that would have made an excellent background for a soft drink commercial. It was kind of sucky, but it was good contrast (and relief) after ten minutes of “Your Head Is Reeling” by The Ultimate Spinach.
Put It To The Test
Not long after our new format was organized, the local community center announced a “Battle Of The Bands” to take place the third week of July 1968. It was open to any band with at least a few members residing in our new city of too many syllables, Mississauga.
On a very hot and humid early summer day, the band gathered at my place and trudged almost two miles to the Huron Park Arena and Recreation Center where the competition was to take place and meet with the organizers.
Few of the members of the other four bands were present, they just sent their phony managers. We weren’t the slightest bit intimidated. We signed up, confident we were going to win.
When the big day came, we were third on the roster. There were just three stages, so after our performance, there would be an intermission to set up for the final two bands.
The bands that performed before us were no great hell. Just more watered-down R&B. We played what we thought was a pretty good 45-minute set of Stepenwolf-Bob Dylan and smugly waited for the final two groups, which we already knew would be doing the same tired “Knock on Woods” and “Midnight Hours” as everyone else.
We weren’t too far wrong with the fourth act, but the last band had a big sound system, professional amplifiers, and a keyboard player, and they wore uniforms!
C’mon, What Would You Do?
Of course, they won. The judges didn’t mention any runners-up, so knowing there was no way to prove us wrong, we mitigated our humiliation by lying to everyone that we took second place.
Peter Out
The band continued on until the end of the summer with one change.
Pete Metzger’s father, a first generation German-Canadian, was fed up with his boy playing in a rock band and growing his hair long.
“He looks like a gypsy!”
So he pressured him into quiting the band and at the end of July we were short a bass player.
Go Very Slow Over Bumps
Enter Lionel, a kid from Lorne Park (an upper middle class area in Mississauga). He wasn’t too bad of a bass player but when we discovered he had a car, the auditions ended. We found our guy.
Until then, we had relied on a very iffy deal with our parents to cart our gear around. I don’t remember Lionel’s last name but I do remember his car. It was a mid-sized Studebaker with a roof-rack. We were able to load all of our instruments and amplifiers into and on it. It rode very low.
Diaspora
We played at drop-in centers around the city and actually got paid! As the new school year approached interest waned.
For various reasons the four of us would be attending different high schools and the group just ground to a halt without any kind of official end.
Discovering The Truth
Before the end of September 1968 I assembled a new band with new guys. Getting back so quickly on that horse was the result of an early insight into my own psychology. I discovered that I enjoyed being a loud obnoxious long haired rock and roller more than just about anything else.
Also, I believed that being in a band made it easier to impress girls (or chicks, as we called them back then). This turned out to be a myth, at least for me.