CHAPTER 5

Unsung Heroes

Artists are crazy. When you’re winning, you keep going. It’s like throwing dice, when you’re winning, you don’t stop.

—Mickie Most, producer, September 22, 1972

In the summer after my junior year of high school, I attended a dance at Pacific Palisades High School. I wasn’t familiar with the band, the Boston Tea Party, but was impressed at how good they were: musically, vocally, their presence, and song selection. I later heard their records, which in no way compared to how impressive they were live. It occurred to me that not everybody who was good becomes successful. I felt the same way when, a few years later, I saw the Fountain of Youth play at a dance in the gym at Loyola Marymount University. They were so good that, even as a trio, they were able to convincingly capture the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” The following are some of Rhino’s artists that had the goods to be successful, but ultimately weren’t.

THE TWISTERS

The Twisters were my favorite club band. When I was looking for a band to produce, Mark Volman told me to check them out. They had the songs, they played well together, and they were visually exciting. Their front man was good-looking, in the suave manner of Brian Ferry, and he was English, a novelty among bands in Southern California. The quintet was from the blue collar South Bay where their extreme popularity at the Sweetwater was akin to the Beatles at Liverpool’s Cavern. One of their songs, “Vampire Bat,” inspired their fans to choreograph a dance to match the music. Because singer Michael Wainwright had been in touch with what was happening in England, he was quick to incorporate flourishes from Dr. Feelgood and the Police, the latter by way of a reggae arrangement of the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go.” Initially they were eager and responsive. When I casually suggested they clean up their appearance, get rid of their hippie mustaches and cut their long hair to approximate the look of a new wave act, they did it. Paul Wexler finagled spec time at The Band’s studio—I don’t mean Big Pink—Shangri La in Malibu. He and I produced a couple of songs with them, which were released on Rhino compilations. Other suggestions I made were beyond their collective grasp. Months later they signed with two guys who had music biz credentials.

Aaron Russo parlayed his management of Bette Midler into producing her first feature film, The Rose, which was very successful. With a career as a film producer looming—he also produced Trading Places—I couldn’t understand why he and music producer Paul Rothchild wanted to use their cachet to launch a new wave label to extract a big advance from one of the major companies. In the short term, the opportunistic pair signed new wave artists to manage. I don’t think it was because they related to or loved the music, and their ambitions for a label never panned out. As managers of the Twisters, they did some good for them: they got them a better booking agent, sprung for some ads, and Rothchild produced them in the studio. But nothing happened, and Russo lost interest as his film career blossomed.

Bill Gazeki, who engineered The Rose soundtrack, produced six tracks with the Twisters but couldn’t get them signed either. I made a deal with the group and with Gazeki to release those tracks as an EP. Their subsequent managers wanted to limit sales to California so that the group wouldn’t be overexposed when their, ahem, major label album was released, so we agreed to sell the record only in California. I felt that the group had a large enough local following that our release would be profitable.

Their fans bought close to 4,000 records, and The Twisters entered (industry trade magazine) Record World’s January 1981 album chart, thereby earning it the distinction of Rhino’s first charting record. Unfortunately, the group’s vision was limited, and their management’s was equally nearsighted. Rhino’s national distributors were clamoring for its first charting record, but we couldn’t sell it to them. I appealed to the managers, but they were steadfast. Needless to say, the record soon fell off the chart and the momentum created for the band totally disappeared.

The Twisters never signed to a major label. Two years later an album was finally released on The Goods Records, a vanity label that was distributed by MCA. The cover qualified as among the worst ever for a rock band; there were no photos of the members on the jacket, nor were their names listed. A year later, they broke up.

I kept in touch with Wainwright and the Twisters’ road manager, Geoff Hagins, and produced a couple of songs with Wainwright’s subsequent band, Fun the mental, in 1983. The project lost steam when keyboardist and versatile instrumentalist Mike Lardie was able to realize his dream of being a rock star by joining Great White. Years later I wanted to include a track on a Rhino compilation album, but Lardie had lost the master tape. He had engineered the session at the studio where he worked, and mixed the multitrack tape to a DAT (Digital Audio Tape) cassette, instead of a two-track analogue tape, as was customary.

BARNES & BARNES

Robert Haimer and Bill Mumy (a child actor best known from the TV series Lost in Space) were childhood friends who went new wave as Barnes & Barnes. A song recorded in Bill’s home studio, “Fish Heads,” achieved massive popularity on Dr. Demento’s radio show. Their artistic enclave of supporters, mostly transplants from Texas, included Bill Paxton, who considered himself more of a guerilla filmmaker than an actor, and Rocky Schenck. They teamed to produce a “Fish Heads” video. LA radio station KROQ played the song, Saturday Night Live aired their video, and ex-Doors manager Bill Siddons—Robert was a big Doors fan—promised to get them a record deal. Given the attention, Bill and Robert thought they could be the next Devo or Wall of Voodoo. We released their first album, Voobaha, in 1980, and a handful more through the years.

While their home recordings were well produced and arranged, they were a little too weird, and they suffered from not having been recorded in a professional studio. That and Robert’s refusal to play live hindered their career more than their talent. If a major label had signed and nurtured them, they could have sold much more than what they were able to do on Rhino. In using an example from cinema, David Lynch’s weird Eraserhead initially played to a cult audience. When he got backing from a major studio, he excelled as a talented director. I had Barnes & Barnes produce a number of records for us, and they always delivered artistically, if not commercially.

JULIE BROWN

When we were originally sent a copy of a privately pressed twelve-inch single, “I Like ’em Big and Stupid” by Julie Brown, we passed. Richard and I didn’t think the song was that good, and the cover photo looked like a housewife in her late twenties trying to cash in on the rock scene. Only later, when we heard the B-side, “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun,” and met Julie, revamped with a new wave style, did we agree to sign her. We hit it off with her and her producer/husband Terrence McNally. We had them record three additional songs to qualify releasing the record as an EP, and shoot a new cover to reflect how Julie currently looked. We insisted she record one of her demos, “’Cause I’m a Blonde,” which became the second most popular song on the record. Richard had her write a song, “Queen of Pleasure,” for the new dance single he was recording with movie icon Mamie Van Doren. On their own, they produced an inspired and funny video of “Homecoming Queen” to match the cleverness of the lyrics.

The EP was released in October 1984. Dr. Demento jumped on the record right away, and then KROQ and some other stations. By February we had gotten enough airplay and sales to make the Billboard album chart. Warner Brothers Pictures signed her to develop another of the songs, “Earth Girls Are Easy,” into a feature film. It was at this time that Julie’s momentum started to unravel. Julie and Terrence thought Rhino’s continuing promotion would overexpose other songs on the record, like “Earth Girls,” rendering them old songs when heard in the film. Because Warner Brothers Pictures was producing the movie, a Warner Music label, Sire, signed her as a recording artist. In order to limit her exposure, Sire told MTV not to play the video. But that’s not what MTV told us. They cited Julie’s shooting spree, despite the video being comedic. MTV made no justification to Rhino for why they had played the Rolling Stones’ “Under Cover of Night” video where the violence was more realistically portrayed. We were incensed at Sire’s intrusion, but as a small label, we didn’t have any influence with MTV. During the seven weeks it was on Billboard’s chart, MTV played the video once.

Record producer Mickie Most’s words of wisdom have resonated with me since I interviewed him for Rolling Stone: when you have momentum, you keep it going. His point was that you can never guarantee that the next thing you do will be successful. When you’re fortunate enough to have a shot at a hit record, you do all you can to make it happen, rather than putting on the breaks, which happened here. We didn’t want to stand in the way of Julie’s career moves, so we cooperated and let Warner buy us out of our deal with Julie. If we had done otherwise, we would not have had the cooperation of the artist on the current project, or for any in the future. The right strategy would have been for us to continue to market Julie’s record, but we gave in to the artist’s wishes. At 57,000 copies, it was by far Rhino’s biggest selling record to date, but we could have sold so much more if the plug wasn’t pulled.

I had to negotiate with Julie and Terrence’s lawyer, Jody Graham, who I found exceedingly unpleasant and unreasonably demanding. It was the first time I had dealt with a lawyer whose professional personality was so repulsive. I cringed every time I had to talk to her on the phone. Still, I completed the deal. I thought there’s no way I want to deal with her again, making me realize that an artist’s lawyer or representative could hamper a business relationship.

The momentum we helped create with Julie totally dissipated. After twelve script rewrites, Warner Brothers passed, and the film project transferred to De Laurentiis Entertainment. During the interim, interest in Julie had cooled to the extent that the starring role she had been expecting went to Geena Davis, and she had to settle on a supporting one. MTV hired an English VJ (video jockey) who also went by the name Julie Brown. With her popularity, Rhino started receiving orders—which we couldn’t fulfill—from store buyers who thought the more visible MTV star was the singer of Rhino’s record. Late in 1987, Sire released Julie’s album, Trapped in the Body of a White Girl—which included two of Rhino’s songs—but it flopped, as did the Earth Girls Are Easy movie, which debuted in theaters in May 1989.

We liked Julie and Terrence, and had intermittent relationships with both after they divorced. Julie continued to act. In 1992 she produced, wrote, and starred in Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful, a funny parody of Madonna’s documentary. In 1998 she starred in Rhino Films’ first released feature, Plump Fiction, a parody of Pulp Fiction. I thought Julie had the talent to be a star, but it was not to be.

DADDY MAXFIELD

Louis Maxfield (real name Naktin) was among the best guitarists in the city, but few people outside of the neighborhood kids knew about him. He was like Jimmy Page—even looked a bit like him, except for Page’s wavy hair—but he was better. Page was more dexterous as a guitarist, but Louis came up with better melodies and hooks in his songwriting.

In 1967, when Louis was in high school, his band, the Looking Glasses—which included John Branca, who later became a top music business attorney and deal maker—released a single on a small label that got enough airplay on local radio that the band performed on the TV show Groovy. It was a brief, exciting few weeks, but the record never charted. In his subsequent musical endeavors, Louis got just enough encouragement to believe that the brass ring was within his grasp. The next year his group, now called Odyssey, recorded a single for White Whale—the company that released the Turtles’ hits. Two years later he was part of another White Whale release, this time a studio group called Shake that attempted to get a hit with “Two of Us,” a song the Beatles hadn’t issued as a single from their new Let It Be album.

Louis met singer Graham Daddy, and the next year they signed a publishing deal with Frank Zappa’s company, Bizarre. In 1972 they took some recordings they had made to London. Pye Records liked “Rave ’n’ Rock,” had them rework it, and released it as a Daddy Maxfield single to some dance club play. Back in the States, they signed a publishing deal with RCA Records, who managed to get two sides of theirs released as a single on United Artists in 1976.

I met Louis when he lived with his parents and brother upstairs from Justin Pierce in the Fairfax district. Louis, Graham, and I wrote a few songs together—my lyrics, their music—which turned out great. Through the years they helped out on some Rhino novelty songs, and I used Louis as much as I could for recording sessions. They were good enough to make it, but success was always elusive. Sometimes their behavior worked against them.

THE RAVERS

It was June 1977, and I was roasting by the pool at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. I was there to interview comedian George Carlin for the Los Angeles Times and to cover his performance that evening in the hotel’s Congo Room. While lounging by the pool, the 100-degree heat must have got to me as I started writing a Christmas song about the new punk rock movement. I imagined how the Christmas season would change if punk became popular and wrote the lyrics on the back of a Newsweek magazine I was reading. One line purposely reflected the stupidity of the singer: “All those Christmas trees swinging safety pins from their leaves.” Of course, Christmas trees are pines, which have needles, not leaves. I was friendly with Pat Siciliano, who was West Coast head of publicity for Epic Records. He had expressed an interest in learning how to produce a record, and I offered to find a project for us to produce together. He said he could get Epic to pay for it.

I had Louis and Graham write the music for “It’s Gonna Be a Punk Rock Christmas.” It was convenient to use their band for the recording, which, in addition to Graham on lead vocals and Louis on guitar, included David Dennard on bass and Mike Campbell on drums. As they were all in their later twenties, they couldn’t relate to this obnoxious music coming from England.

I called Siciliano numerous times to tell him we were ready, but he never picked up the phone or returned any of my calls. I didn’t have much money, but I felt so strongly about what we were doing, I shelled out $600 to record the song and the B-side, a comparable version of “Silent Night.” The studio was located across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on the third floor of a seedy office building. It was run by a guy named Gary who assumed an Eastern name, Ganapati, and transformed his look with robes and long fingernails.

As Daddy Maxfield, by name, didn’t want to be associated with the record, I came up with the Ravers, after the English slang of someone who goes mad in a rock ’n’ roll context, as expressed in the lyrics of the Small Faces’ “Lazy Sunday.” Three companies were interested. I would have liked to sign with Warner Brothers Records, who ultimately didn’t make a formal offer. David Berson said something interesting to me—that Warner would prefer to have made a deal on a record they didn’t completely believe in rather than turning it down and see it become a hit elsewhere. They would have paid an advance on a record in order to avoid the embarrassment if they showed poor judgment in turning down a hit.

I first met Gerry Hoff when he headed the Moody Blues’ Threshold Records in the United States. When that imprint closed its doors, he became West Coast head of A&R for the parent label, Mercury Records. He was interested, but instead signed a weird group from Cleveland, Pere Ubu, to kick start Mercury’s new punk label, Blank Records. Scott Shannon had excelled in the world of radio, but now he was head of A&R for Ariola. He wanted to get into the punk game as well. He made a deal for the Ravers record to launch the new Zombie Records imprint.

The record received impressive airplay in LA and in other parts of the country, yet failed to become a hit. Although initially Graham and Louis were repelled by the new punk sensibility, the airplay made them reassess their situation. They manifested newfound punk identities and marched up to Ariola to make demands from Jay Lasker, the president. I was the only one who had interacted with the label—I had only met Lasker briefly—and Louis and Graham didn’t run their plan by me. I was surprised to get a phone call that afternoon from Shannon, who said that if I wanted to make another record for the company, I needed to get a new group. What could they have done, I wondered. I was shuddering; they might have blown my relationship.

Louis and Graham had been accompanied by two striking women, Graham’s wife and her friend. Graham adopted an aggressive, cockney tone and demanded that Ariola book them into the Whisky to play and make up promotional t-shirts and 8x10 publicity photos. Lasker and Shannon reeled at their lack of diplomacy and the threat to their pocketbook.

Why did they do it? Louis later said that they thought they could be as big as David Bowie or Led Zeppelin and that fueled their bluster. I felt betrayed by their move, which also put my deal in jeopardy. Initially Shannon said that the Ravers were off the label. I didn’t speak to them for well over a year after the incident.

I replaced Daddy Maxfield with Atom, a band Todd Schneider managed. During the recording at Studio Sound Recorders, Shannon dropped by and wanted to take a dinner break with his engineer buddy from Nashville, Jack Stack-A-Track, who he was able to scrape up work for by sticking him on our session. I had asked Jack what he had done previously that prepared him to work our rock session, and he replied that he had been recording bird calls for National Geographic. The buddies dined in the elegance of the French restaurant next door. Shannon asked me to join them, but I chose to work, utilizing the assistant engineer. Shannon said he’d bring me dinner. It said a lot about Shannon that he brought me back not the French repast I was expecting, but a burger and fries from McDonald’s.

Shannon came across as slick and pompous, one of those guys who tries to pass themselves off as knowing more than they do. He wasn’t much of a record executive, either, but he knew his music. I was surprised to discover that two of my favorite obscure records of the time, “Dirty Pictures” by Radio Stars and I Like Your Style, the first solo album by Hot Chocolate’s Tony Wilson, were also on his personal playlist.

“I love it. Let’s put it out next week,” said Shannon, of the Ravers’ second recording session: his suggestion of a cover of the Honeycombs’ “Have I the Right” backed with “Rich Kids,” a Leviton-Bronson original that would have made the Guinness Book of Records as the first punk record to utilize string arrangements, if there had been such a category. Zombie’s other releases, produced by Shannon and Stack-A-Track for Dazzle-Em Productions, fared less successfully than “Punk Rock Christmas.” The plug was pulled on the punk experiment, and the second Ravers’ single was never released. I bought back the four masters and issued them on Rhino as a twelve-inch EP, on “Red and Green Christmas vinyl.”

Shannon went back to radio, and built a significant career as a program director and on-air personality. When Richard and I were on a Rhino promotional tour in September 1999, he welcomed us as guests on his morning show on New York’s WPLJ.

I had Louis help out on the Monkees 1987 new recordings, from which he established a professional relationship with the producer Roger Bechirian. It took David Dennard about a year to embrace the new music, which he did by becoming the bass player in Gary Myrick and the Figures. Dennard did many sessions for us, as well.

MOGAN DAVID AND HIS WINOS

My band, Mogan David and His Winos, was a loose affair formed during high school to pass the time during summer vacation. We never considered performing for anybody. We amused ourselves by hearing how we sounded butchering the hits of the day as recorded on my reel-to-reel tape recorder. Some of us could play instruments; others could not. The name Mogan David and His Winos—with the spelling changed from that of the Mogen David Wine Corp to avoid getting sued—was inspired by those crazy band names of the psychedelic era, such as Jefferson Airplane and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.

After high school we had summer jobs and the band concept was abandoned. On a summer afternoon following my sophomore year at college, I invited guitarist Jon Kellerman and bassist Jim Bickhart, both fellow writers from the Daily Bruin, to join me and Tom Matye—the Winos’ pianist from high school, now also at UCLA—for an afternoon of recording in the Matye family living room. A high school friend whose drumming I admired decided not to honor his commitment to participate, but did loan me his kit, so I played drums even though I hadn’t previously. I wasn’t able to coordinate the bass drum pedal, so there was no bass drum on the recording.

We recorded a song I always liked from Mad magazine, “Nose Job.” Rather than the doo-wop arrangement of the original, I fashioned ours more like the Rolling Stones, singing the comedic lyrics deadpan, with a drawl in the manner of Mick Jagger. The B-side, “The Big War,” was inspired by a Zombies’ song, and was written by Tom and me. I placed an order with Rainbo Records in Hollywood. The label name I chose was Kosher Records.

One day Paul Rappaport came into the Daily Bruin office and introduced himself as the campus rep for CBS Records. We became friends. With his facial hair and frizzy mop, Paul looked like Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, but he played guitar more like the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, which meant that he also referenced Chuck Berry. He had a true rock spirit, which was confirmed when he was kicked out of high school, twice: once for wearing knee-high boots, just like Paul Revere and the Raiders did, and once for combing his hair down over his forehead, the length approaching the look of the Beatles. Paul had once been in a band that played the Hullabaloo club in Hollywood. He thought of himself as a blues guitarist, and considered himself a feel player, which meant that he could communicate emotionally, but he lacked the discipline to learn musical signature and nomenclature, as the “F” he received on his Music 1 test confirmed.

Paul heard “Nose Job” on the UCLA radio station, KLA, and loved it. He ordered twenty copies from me. He didn’t pay in cash, but in promos. Because Jon Kellerman was immersed in graduate school, I asked Paul to fill his slot for the recording of the next Winos’ single. “When I agreed to join the Winos, I was reticent,” said Paul. “In other bands I had been in, there was a seriousness about practicing for a gig or getting good enough to get a record deal. I found that attitude lacking in the Winos; it was about playing to have fun.” Paul’s style was perfect, plus he played the same make of guitar as Kellerman, a Gibson Melody Maker.

I met Mark Leviton the previous year when as a freshman he came into the Daily Bruin office to inquire about writing for the entertainment section. The few of us who were there were impressed when he told us that he had published a record review in Rolling Stone when he was still in high school. In addition to liking all the bands of the British Invasion, Mark and I bonded over our mutual appreciation of Frank Zappa, the Firesign Theatre, and private detective novelist Raymond Chandler. He didn’t look like a wannabe rock star. He had short, crinkly hair and a beard, and he wore glasses. When I visited him during the summer at his home in Northridge, he impressed me by being able to play the entirety of the Who’s Tommy solely by himself on guitar. He was quite a sight to see, sitting on his bed, pin wheeling his right arm in Townshend fashion as he blasted through the rock opera on his Herb Ellis model Gibson guitar. His voice lacked dynamics, but it was in tune, and he displayed a real rhythmic feel with his playing. He joined the Winos and we wrote the next single together.

The band’s apex occurred on May 31, 1973, when we played a free noon concert at UCLA’s Ackerman Union Grand Ballroom. It was the same stage on which Procol Harum, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, and Carole King had played. Paul was the only stellar player, but even he could be flaky. “Train Kept A-Rollin’” is a song most rock fans know, but was never a hit. Originally performed by Tiny Bradshaw and his jump-blues swing band in the early 1950s, it was transformed into rockabilly by Johnny Burnette and the Rock ’n’ Roll Trio. That’s where the Yardbirds heard it, and they recorded it on their Having a Rave Up album. In 1974 Aerosmith recorded it for their Get Your Wings album. The main hook of the song is an irresistible throbbing rhythm, which Paul refused to play when the Winos performed it, robbing the song of its primarily appeal. We ended our set with Paul walking off the stage with a watermelon on his shoulder, just like Alvin Lee in the Woodstock movie.

We also recorded two songs for a proposed third single release: a heavy metal styled arrangement of the Leiber-Stoller song “Love Potion Number 9,” and an original composition, “Beauty Queen.” On the latter song Paul engaged me in an hour-long discussion on whether we should, or shouldn’t, use maracas. It was our best recording to date and showed real progress. However, neither our progress nor our potential were recognized by the industry.

I compiled an album of our old and new tracks and a handful of songs recorded on cassette from our performance in Shelly and Nikki Heber’s backyard. I copied the elaborate presentation of the Who’s Live at Leeds album. In their package they had reprints of items from their history, like rejection letters and income sheets. In ours, we made fun of ourselves by including a copy of Paul’s failed music test and the two ads I did featuring Mark and me plugging Columbia product, among other items. I titled it Savage Young Winos as a joke. With the initial success of the Beatles, a dubious record company released a flimsy album of eight songs where the Beatles were primarily used as a backup band to singer Tony Sheridan. It was titled Savage Young Beatles, and it featured an early photo of the group wearing leather jackets. I borrowed leather jackets from Michael Ochs to approximate the Beatles look for our group photo and copied the album design. We pressed up less than a thousand copies. In a poor move and despite my warning, Paul responded to the overly enthusiastic husband of a coworker and shipped the bulk of his share to France and was never paid.

At the time, record companies were more interested in singer/songwriters and disco artists, not a 1960s influenced rock band. I would not have evaluated us as being good enough to make it, but we were better than the punk bands that proliferated in the late 1970s. If I had been prescient, a more fitting name for the band would have been the Record Executives. We didn’t make it as a rock band, which resulted in a detour-free route for three of us to excel as high-level executives in the business.

When Paul Rappaport was initially offered the position of college rep, he wasn’t that enthused, but it set him on a course that would give meaning to his professional life. He was offered a full-time job in the promotion department, but after a couple of years he was disenchanted with “working for the man.” The world of record companies, the ones who made the records he bought, seemed fake, populated by “hey babe,” insincere, older promotion guys. He was going to quit. At the end of a company event, as people were trailing out, he approached the special guest, singer Tony Bennett, and expressed his frustration. Tony commiserated, telling Paul, “Sometimes the business is fucked up,” then inspiring him with: “You have to be yourself, but be the best you, you can be.”

Paul stayed the course, exercised more of his ideas, and rose to Vice President of Artist Development, being so well considered that he survived numerous company purges to rack up a remarkable 33 1/3 years at Columbia Records. He got to work with one of his heroes, Keith Richards, when Columbia distributed the Rolling Stones’ label. He was so well thought of by Pink Floyd that they invited him to play guitar during the encore at one of their concerts. In July 1989, at the London Arena, he traded licks with Dave Gilmore during “Run Like Hell.”

Mark Leviton worked at Warner Brothers licensing division, Warner Special Products, for twenty-five years, rising to vice president of the division. Jim Bickhart was employed as a writer for A&M Records and Warner Brothers Records, then as Mark’s predecessor at Warner Special Products, before opting for a career in city government, most recently in the offices of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. I, of course, was managing director of Rhino, in addition to cofounder of the label.

Al Albert, the Winos 1973 drummer, didn’t work in the record business, but he also became a VP, with Clairmont Camera, a company that rents cameras and other equipment for film and TV production. Jonathan Kellerman transitioned from child psychology into a successful career as a best-selling author of murder mysteries.

Twenty years after our UCLA performance, I resurrected the Winos for a reunion. We recorded two songs over a weekend: “I’m an Adult Now” was a cover of a particularly apt song by the Pursuit of Happiness that voiced the dilemma of rockers aging. “Cover Girl,” a song Mark and I composed in the 1970s, was consistent with other songs we wrote that expressed the frustration we felt with unapproachable girls. We considered it the best song we had written. More importantly, after not having played together for twenty years, our sound was remarkably intact: meaning we had an identifiable sound, which wasn’t always easy for an artist to achieve. It reminded me of a rehearsal I attended of a Yardbirds reunion in June 1983. The original singer, Keith Relf, had passed away, and none of their celebrated original guitarists were there, but, remarkably, the rhythm section of Chris Dreja (guitar), Paul Samwell-Smith (bass), and Jim McCarty (drums) sounded just like it did in the 1960s. It made me appreciate the concept of chemistry in a band; the emotional quality that infused their playing was the same as individuals as it was as an ensemble. And the same could have been said about Mogan David and His Winos.