by The Beatles my first album purchase.
I never liked school. On my first day in Grade One I cried so long and with such indignation that the principal telephoned my mother to come and pull me out of there. When I discovered that this was something I had to do five times a week for twelve years I believed that my life was over. I despised school so intensely that it physically hurt to attend class. I hated those big clocks they had in every classroom. I would sit and watch the second hand plod from one digit to the next as if I were trapped in some sort of purgatory for dummies. For most of Elementary School I thought I was stupid but as I squeaked into High School I realized that I just wasn’t interested in any of this.
It was around this time when I discovered something I did find interesting ... Girls!
If this is a story about sex, drugs and rock & roll (and I’m certain that it is) then it begins in the classrooms of Grade Eight, where half the population was most definitely of interest to me, an obsession that has lasted a lifetime. I don’t think I was abnormal in this way of thinking. It seemed that every boy in class had trouble keeping his stuff on his desk. And while he was down there picking it up, who could help but risk a quick peek up the dress of some not-so-unsuspecting female. Once begun, this was an endless game because there is so much mystery about what goes on up there that no boy ever really figures it out no matter how many pens and pencils are sacrificed. Perhaps Bobby Curtola’s, Three Rows Over,was written just for me?
In 1964 girls got pretty dolled up to attend school. In fact, the girls at Sir Winston Churchill High School were forbidden from wearing slacks or pants. I was much in favour of this particular rule because skirts and dresses allowed for the possibility that some lacy under thing might be spotted by accident or sweet fortune. The flash of a slip, garter, hook, belt, whistle, strap, wire or anything frilly would certainly provide an immediate thrill and it could also be stored in my depraved adolescent memory and conjured up later; again and again ... and again, when alone in bed in the dark. Then there was the mother-lode - panties! But this was about as common as a unicorn sighting as girls are taught from infancy that a flash of their panties is a crime of the highest level; “knees together - a lady reveals nothing.” Hence the little ditty, “I see London, I see France, I see _ _ _ _’s underpants” is about the most severe scolding any little girl can suffer. Women’s lingerie was pretty complex in those days but, fortunately, by the time I got in there, we were in a full-blown sexual revolution and nobody was wearing anything. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There was nothing indecent going on. But there was a power greater than all of us at work here. It inspired all the young maidens to unloose their pigtails and backcomb their hair into billows of hair-sprayed hives, to exchange their sneakers for pumps, to spend endless hours at the make-up table and douse themselves in intoxicating perfumes. It was all too confusing at that point so I continued with my strategy of peeking by day and whacking off at night.
At the end of the school year, in June, they had a dance for Grade Eighters. The band was a Top-Forty band called The CFUN Classics, so named because they were sponsored by the most popular radio station in town, CFUN Radio. Their leader was a sax player who doubled on organ named Claire Lawrence, the bassist was Glenn Miller and their vocalist, the great Howie Vickers. Guitarist, Brian Russell, went on to play many years with Anne Murray and drummer, Gary Taylor, became a nightclub owner in Vancouver later on. They were fabulous, playing their instrumental hit, Ace’s High as well as current hits like Dawn (Go Away) by The Four Seasons and lots of older rock & roll songs like The Night Has A Thousand Eyes by Bobby Vee and Telstar by The Tornadoes. I danced once when they played The Twist by Chubby Checker because that was the only dance I could do. The event itself was depressing but seeing a good band up close excited me even more.
For parents who had grown up during a depression and lived through a World War, my mom and dad accepted my seemingly frivolous intention to become a drummer better than I would have expected. I’m sure they thought it would be a passing phase and, instead of discouraging me, they supported my efforts, such as they were. My dad even drove me to drum lessons. Being consistent with my status as a bad student, I hated drum lessons too. Even though I believed that this was a waste of time, I learned the sacred drum rudiments from the bible of drum books, Syncopation. I practiced the various stroke-rolls, the ratamacue and all of the paradiddle family including the double-paradiddle, flam-paradiddle and the classic paradiddle-diddle. My teacher, who was an ancient man with a smelly studio in his ratty little shack on the East Side, conveyed these rudiments to me sanctimoniously as if this was the Masons' secret handshake but all I could think was, what fucking use to me was a paradiddle anyway? Years later I was astonished to re-discover the paradiddle, and all of its rudimentary relations, and I incorporated them into my drum solo.
1964 was an amazing year for music. The British had begun a musical invasion of North America led by The Beatles. Eight of The Beatles' songs hit Number One that year including, She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Can’t Buy Me Love and others and combined The Fab Four held the top spot on the Canadian charts for a total of nineteen weeks. Their first feature length movie in black & white, A Hard Day’s Night, drove us all crazy with Beatlemania. When The Beatlesplayed at Empire Stadium in Vancouver on August 22nd the fans repeated the Elvis riot of 1957. At one point the police chief forced emcee, Red Robinson to interrupt the concert and beg the audience to calm down. John Lennon was not pleased. “Get off the fuckin’ bloody stage,” he shouted at Red. I believe that Red is proud of that to this day. The riot was so frightening that Beatles manager, Brian Epstein called an audible and by-passed the hotel in favour of a quick departure at the airport. International reporters called the concert riot a “slugfest”. Vancouver had done it again.
And the British Invasion was supported by other English bands like Dave Clark Five with Bits & Pieces, Gerry & The Pacemakers and I’m The One, Peter & Gordon with A World Without Love, Manfred Mann’s Do Wah Diddy and The Animals’ classic rendition of, House of the Rising Sun. The U.S. fought back with the most loved frat-house anthem of all time, Louie Louie by The Kingsmen, and number one hits like Memphis by Johnny Rivers, Rag Doll by The Four Seasonsand Roy Orbison's biggest hit, Oh, Pretty Woman.
All of these great songs were played on C-FUN Radio by the 'C-Fun Good-Guys'; Red Robinson, Fred Latremouille, Mad Mel, Jolly John Tanner and Daryl B. Daryl B soon jumped ship and went over to the new competing top forty station in town, CKLG. Their jocks were called the 'CKLG Boss-Jocks'. They were; Daryl B, Roy Hennessey, Rick Honey and Russ Simpson. There was a heated rivalry between the stations and both the Good-Guys and the Boss Jocks would appear at any public event including supermarket openings and charity car washes.
In the fall, I entered Grade Nine. The Good-Guys showed up at a back-to-school sock hop with The Nocturnals. The Nocturnals were genuine recording stars with a national hit record titled, Because You’re Gone. C-Fun used them as background to promote the radio station. Deejay Jolly John Tanner, who was about six foot eight, sang a rendition of Ian Whitcomb’s You Turn Me On in falsetto while doing The Freddy. That’s not a sight you forget easily.
In the late afternoon of September 28th, Good-Guy, Fred Latremouille appeared on my television as host of a new local Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television program called, Let's Go. It was supposed to feature music and fashion for teens and the first show included, as co-host, a stiff young woman, obviously without broadcast experience, who reported on fashion. There was a house band featuring members of The C-Fun Classics and local singers such as Howie Vickers, Tom Baird, Susan Pesklevits, Rosalind Keene and Mike Campbell. By the third episode Red Robinson had elbowed the uncomfortable fashion reporter aside and took over as co-host. The show was very popular and continued as Music Hopin one
