Salmon Pink, and, of course, Shoreline Gold.
I would pore over my Fender catalogue for hours on end to view the guitars played by my musical heroes. I can still feel the glossy pages of the book, as the corners brushed across my fingertips; pages filled with images of beautiful, smiling teenagers enjoying their instruments together, on the beach and on the bandstand.
I imagined how it would feel to cradle one of those contoured Stratocasters or Jazzmasters in my arms. I woke up thinking about these immaculate instruments, scheming ways to coerce my folks into buying me one.
I was mesmerized by the steely twang of Don Wilson and Bob Bogle’s Fender Stratocasters and Jazzmasters, their use of the vibrato arm to simulate Hawaiian steel guitar sounds, and how they would use the palms of their hands to create a muting effect that deadened the strings and made the sound pop. I also loved the sound of Mel Taylor’s snare drum, which he played in rim-shot style, thus combining the sound of the drumhead with the sound of the metal rim of the drum. It gave the backbeat a unique metallic gunshot sound that I could not get enough of. I had first heard that sound years before on “Jailhouse Rock.” The drum was played to sound like a gunshot ricocheting off the hard prison walls. Nokie Edwards played his sunburst Precision bass with a pick to give the bottom end a powerful snap.
I used to haunt The Balkans music store. It was located on Cermak Road and Clinton Avenue (one block from Karen Moulik’s family dwelling—the future Karen Peterik). Balkans was not only known for carrying a broad selection of ethnic sheet music, but it also carried a great array of electric guitars. There was a door that led to an actual recording studio. The big red light flashed “Recording” when a session was in progress. I didn’t dare ask the proprietor, Mr. Slavico Hlad, to enter those sacred confines. That was for music pros, not us little kids. One of the store’s highlights was a glass case that held the cream of the current guitar crop. I remember a red Gibson ES 355 that stayed there ’til the store closed its doors years later. I wish I’d been the one to finally buy it. Once when I ran in I was stopped in my tracks by an entire wall of Gretsch hollow body electrics. At first, I was riveted by a blood orange model until my eyes caught sight of one finished in a pale green with a darker green back and sides. That one became the focal point of my fantasies. Years later, in Minneapolis on tour with Survivor and REO Speedwagon, I bought a Gretsch just like that one. It was called the Anniversary model, from Pete of Pete’s Guitars, one of the several vintage guitar merchants who would meet groups backstage, tempting us with their wares.
Of course, I always had to go home to face my own el-cheapo guitar. Finally, as Christmas was closing in, my dad caved in to my incessant nagging and said, “I think it’s time we got you a decent electric guitar.”
The accordion player in my dad’s band, Al Tobias, did business with a store on the legendary music row down on south Wabash Street in downtown Chicago. That store imported not only fine ornate Italian-made accordions, but also began to import very bizarre-looking electric guitars, also from Italy.
I was beside myself with excitement the day my dad decided it was time to go downtown to the now-familiar district and check out some guitars. I raced up the narrow flight of stairs, ahead of my dad, which led to the music showroom, and found myself face-to-face with rows of shiny electric guitars. This was Mecca to me!
Dad whispered Al Tobias’s name to the proprietor of the shop, after which he proceeded to hand me an abstractly shaped, sparkly white Wandre. It said “Noble” on the headstock, but that was just the name of the importer. It was actually a Wandre designed by the eccentric Italian luthier, Antonio Pioli.
When I plugged this oddity into an amp, even with my limited experience, I realized it was a pretty lame instrument, even though I was only eleven. The strings were impossibly hard to hold down and the sound was kind of soft and wimpy. But then the owner handed me a Gibson, a higher priced brand. When I plugged this one in, the vibrant and piercing sound came shooting through the speaker. I was electrified!
We left the shop not knowing which guitar my dad would choose to put under the tree for me that Christmas, though I was hoping with all my heart that I would get the Gibson.
On Christmas morning, I was the first one to wake up, and, still in my pajamas, I spotted a red guitar case under the tree. Breathlessly, I opened it up to find, not the Sunburst Gibson of my dreams, but that modern, Danish coffee table of a guitar—the Wandre! My dad chose it not only for the sweet deal that was offered to move these beasts, but also for its warp-proof aluminum neck. Practicality like that spoke volumes to my father’s generation.
Christmas morning with the Wandre.
When my parents finally got up, I feigned excitement and posed happily for them. I cradled the guitar in my arms. I have that Wandre to this day. I love it—not only because I cut my guitar chops on it in those blissful, halcyon days, or because it has now become a valuable collector’s item, but because my dad bought it for me with his hard-earned money.
In addition, I realized that I had inherited my dad’s respect for a bargain. He shared my dream at that moment, and buying me that guitar made me love him even more.
From that moment on, that ugly first guitar and I became inseparable. I still didn’t have an amp, but Al Tobias came to the rescue and let me borrow his high-end Magnatone when the band wasn’t gigging. The amp had a dazzling vibrato effect built right in. You’d hit a chord and the sound went, wah wah woosh, as it swirled around the room. It made even a simple E chord sound profound!
At that time, I had just written my first song, which I had started to play in front of the grade-school kids. It was a derivative of a Chuck Berry tune. I called it “Hully Gully Bay.” The popular dances of the time were the Hully Gully and the Mashed Potato, so I decided to write a song about an imaginary place where you would go and dance and party (somewhere sunny and exotic) or maybe even a barely discovered archipelago. That extraordinary getaway was “Hully Gully Bay.”
“Come with me, my babe
Where the sea is choppy
and the tide is high
Come with me, my babe
Where the seagulls rock and the riverboats fly
Yeah, Yeah—hey hey
Come with me to Hully Gully Bay
Where the sea is choppy
And the waves are rocky
And the hully gully seagulls are winging our way
Come with me, my babe
to a place called the Hully Gully Bay”
Copyright Jim Peterik/Bicycle Music ASCAP
When I performed this original for my seventh-grade class, I suddenly became the hit of Piper Elementary. I had experienced once again the rush of performing. I liked the way it made me feel and I couldn’t wait to do it all again.
There was another guitar player at Piper whose name was Scott Sindelar. I heard that he played pretty well, and one day he invited me over to his apartment to show me his brand-new Gibson Les Paul Special, which was finished in what the Gibson catalogue called “TV Yellow.” The name was penned because of the hue’s resemblance to the blond finish on many television sets in the ’50s and ’60s. (Recently
