How the band got started May 16. 2024
Seeing the Rolling Stones cover band last Saturday made me nostalgic,
and sent me back to the old recordings I did of Eric Lemon (and the other
various names they band had during the 1970s and 1980s).
This also prompted me to call Garrick, who was Paulie’s longest
friend and was there was the beginning since I was on the west coast or in the
army for some of those critical years.
I saw the earliest version of the band in Paterson at St.
John’s community room in 1968.
Pete and John M, along with a drummer I didn’t know, made up
a trio.
Hank insisted I come and meet Paulie, who was to be invited
up to sing, and he did, although the crowd was so thick I didn’t get to talk to
him. At year later, while on leave from the Army, I went to the shore with
Paulie and others, where they took over the stage of some beach bum band.
I didn’t see him perform (except as a solo act at Charlie’s Halloween
party in West Paterson in 1970) until I got back to the east coast in early
1972, by which time the membership of the band was established.
I did not know how Paulie and John M hooked up with Rich Gordy
(the bass player) and John R, until yesterday when Garrick told me.
I knew about Nick Romeo’s basement jams, but hadn’t really
connected them with the band. Nick was a rich kid whose family brought in a
basement full of instruments, along with a full set of drums that he played.
Musicians flocked to the basement, including Paulie, John R,
and Rich Gordy.
So did everybody else. The basement became one big party.
Pauly had a recording he made from some of the performances
in the basement. I heard some of it during our “Dead Horses” recording sessions
in the mid-1970s, but like most of what Paulie had in his trailer when he died
in 2020, it is gone – although I managed to recover some tapes, one of which
might be from those sessions.
Romeo loved playing drums, not just in his basement, but was
part of the school bands, too.
As with Paulie and Garrick, Nick apparently attended St. Brendan’s
and was actually in some of the classes I was in, although I don’t recall
knowing him until later.
In 2000, many of the people associated with the band dating
all the way back came to the fire house in Little Falls to celebrate Garrick’s
50th birthday. It was chaotic, and I recorded a small portion of it, though it
was mostly drowned out by the volume of people talking. As a result of that, I
wrote a history of the band – but until yesterday I had lacked the earliest moments
of the band’s foundation. The history did not include events that transpired
after that, such as the fire house performance in Lake Hopatcong on Memorial
Day, 2002, a reunion of the band for Memorial Day 2004, and subsequent performances
in July and August of that same year, which saw the return of John R (who
passed away in 2008). But I did write chapters about these and will likely add
them to the original document now that Garrick has put the last pieces of the
puzzle in place.
The conversation with Garrick only made me miss Paulie and
the others all the more, and coming just after my birthday, I again feel the
ache of having survived when so many of those who shared my life have not.
Life is always a sad story, even with it is a happy one.
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