our first number, “I’ve Had It,” by the Crestones, I felt as if I was standing on the top floor of Chicago’s Prudential Building without a parachute, screwing up the courage to jump. But jump, I did. And we rocked! “One, two, three, four! Blast off!”
A schoolmate of mine named Larry Millas, unbeknownst to me, was sitting in those bleachers with soon-to-be bandmate Bob Bergland. Larry was a tall kid that I had known since third grade. You couldn’t miss him because he wore pink-tinted glasses. Fully present that day, he was mentally taking notes. I always wondered why he wore those pink-tinted glasses throughout grade school. I figured it was some correctional thing. About a year ago, I finally asked, “Larry, what was up with those pink glasses?”
He said, “I just thought they looked cool.”
Larry was way ahead of the curve with those specs. But, specs or no specs, he was always kind of a cool guy, and in eighth grade, during that performance with The Renegades, he was the one scanning the stage, like a nighthawk, for signs of life. He must have been thinking, That band is terrible, but that guitar guy plays and sings really well. Bob added, “Yeah, and he knows all the chords!”
About a week after that event, I heard a knock on the door. It was Larry Millas clutching a guitar case. I recognized him from grade school, but I didn’t let him in at the time. He talked to me as he stood outside on the front porch.
“I’ve got a band and, umm, I think you’d be great in this band,” he murmured.
“I’ve already got a band. Thanks, though. What’s the band’s name?” I asked.
“The Shy-Lads,” he replied. Huge negative.
A week later, I heard that persistent knock, knock, knock, and found Larry Millas, again, at the door. This guy just wouldn’t take no for an answer!
“I’ve got this band. We’re called the Shy-Lads.”
“I know, I know! That’s a terrible name,” I replied bluntly.
“Yeah, our drummer’s dad came up with it. But, really,” he said, “come over to Bob Erhart’s house. He plays drums and Bob Bergland plays bass.”
I already knew Bob Bergland. We had been in the same Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts troop. Our fathers were friends and we were both from close-knit, supportive families. In fact, Larry told me that Bob’s mom had recently cashed in her S & H Green Stamps (these were stamps you would receive for purchasing merchandise at various stores that you would paste into booklets and redeem for other merchandise) to buy her son a shiny, new, copper-finished six-string Danelectro bass. The “Dano” was an American brand distinctive for its use of Formica and composite board instead of wood for its body. The magnetic pickups were cased in what appeared to be lipstick cases. I found out later they actually were lipstick cases!
So, finally, I gave in to Larry’s persistence and agreed to come and play. A few days later I walked the four long blocks to current drummer Bob Erhart’s home, lugging my Wandre guitar and Al Tobias’s fifty-pound plus Magnatone amplifier. I would have to stop about every fourth bungalow to rest and shift hands.
In Erhart’s tiny attic space, the boys were working on the song “Tell Me Why,” a brand-new one from the Beatles (that places the date exactly in time: the summer of ’64). Fortunately, I knew this tune very well and joined right in.
I started strumming the chords on the guitar, mimicking John Lennon’s rhythm part (even then, Lennon was my favorite), while Larry sang the lead vocal. I noticed right away that when I sang harmony, the other guys did not switch to my part. That impressed me to no end!
The hallmark of a lousy band is when one of the singers is swayed to move up or down to another band member’s part. These guys stayed on their own parts! Actually, this was the main thing that convinced me to leave The Renegades behind and join The Shy-Lads. (I didn’t want to rock the boat that first day, but something had to be done about both the name and drummer Bob Erhart’s clunky-looking 1940s natural-wood drum kit—actually I now realize it was pretty cool!) Plus, Larry had a very good voice. Still, there was work to be done. I knew I had to give these guys a crash course in vocal phrasing.
Now, every Beatles fan knows that the verse in “Tell Me Why” goes, “Well, I gave you everything I had, but you left me standing all alone…”
“No offense, Lar, but your phrasing is all wrong,” I said, hoping that I wasn’t launching an attack. “The phrase ‘I gave you everything I had’ is sung bunched up quickly like this [I demonstrated], not sung slowly. Same thing with the words ‘but you left me standing on my own,’” I added. “The rest of the line follows from there.”
Larry looked at me. I guessed that he was not used to being challenged in this way, and then, after what seemed like an interminable, deadly silence, he replied, “Let me try it that way.”
Whew, now I knew I had to be in this band! How could I have known that this day would give way to a fifty-year journey that sees no chance of stopping? From this attic rehearsal, my career would be catapulted into motion.
The next day, I told the members of The Renegades that it was over—I was disbanding the group and joining The Shy-Lads. Though I braced myself for a meltdown, there were no tears. The anticlimactic sendoff made me realize just how uncommitted these guys were to making it big. Obviously, our time together had just been a lark to them!
The next time I got together with Larry and the guys, I sheepishly ventured, “We really should find a new name. The Shy-Lads is really bad. How about The Shondels?”
I had been keeping this name in my back pocket for a while now. I had first seen it in the back pages of a Melody Maker newspaper (I treasured these publications because they represented the whole allure of the British rock culture), which Alice Anne had brought back to me after visiting England and Scotland with her Scottish fiancé and future husband, Jim McCabe.
My culture-crazed sister had also carried back these other amazing recordings: The Shadows’ Greatest Hits, smashes by Freddie and the Dreamers (this was before their dance, “the Freddie,” became popular; it resembled a Kingfisher penguin flapping its appendages mindlessly against its thighs), and the debut LP by a new English group called The Rolling Stones! “England’s newest hit makers!”
But it was the adverts, in the back of that newspaper, that intrigued me most. It was like being in the London Underground gazing at emerging bands with strange and fascinating names: The Steampacket, The Underbeats, Shane Fenton and the Fentones, and The Graham Bond Organisation (note British spelling!). They were performing in clubs such as the Cavern, the Marquee, and the Rainbow. It was in these back pages I noticed a performance by an obscure group called The Shondels.
They were a small-time British band playing tiny clubs in London. I figured (correctly) that they’d never make it, and history proved me right. But, I also liked the name because it was the last name of one of my favorite artists, Troy Shondel. His hit “This Time” was currently in high rotation on my turntable.
Larry, in his unvarnished honesty, asked, “What’s a Shondel?”
I told him that I had absolutely no idea, but added, “It sounds cool, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Larry said. “It sounds cool!” Everyone else agreed. That day we officially became The Shondels.
That agreement marked the beginning of forever. We rehearsed tirelessly and went from teen club to teen club, from
