THEY HAD NO MONEY, THE PHONES HAD BEEN DISCONNECTED, THERE wasn’t any oil for the furnace, and it was bitter cold all winter. In desperate need of financial help, the Cowsills came to New York.
There, they met Artie Kornfeld, a record producer and writer. Kornfeld introduced them to a talent manager, Lenny Stogel, who got them a contract with MGM Records. Now, the Cowsills are one of the hottest groups around with their record, “The Rain, The Park, and Other Things,” riding high on record surveys all around the country.
The Cowsills are more than just another group with a hit record, they’re also a family. Brothers Bill, nineteen; Bob, eighteen; Barry, thirteen; and John, eleven, comprise the nucleus of the group. Whenever her voice is needed, their mother, Barbara, adds to the harmony of the group.
To keep everything in the family, the road managers are brothers Dick and Paul, and their father, Bud, coordinates the whole conglomeration. Susan, the youngest, is the only sister in the otherwise all-brother family.
The Cowsills live in a weird twenty-two-room “Munster-like mansion” in Newport, Rhode Island. Ivy grows all over the walls of the house, windows are broken, screens are hanging, and the grass has grown to a height of three feet.
The interior of the house matches the exterior. The living room contains one large sofa, two chairs, and a TV set. Meals are cooked on a 1917 gas range stove, which “requires a prayer to light it.”
What’s supposed to be a library houses a ping-pong table and the would-be dining room contains a pool table. There are seven bathrooms and one shower. “Water pressure isn’t so great,” explains Bob. “The best time to take a shower is around 3 o’clock in the morning.”
In John’s room there is a cage which used to house a miniature monkey. “I saved my allowance for six weeks to get Clyde,” John said. “I waited for him to come and then, the next day after I get him, I woke up in the morning and there he was, lying in the bottom of the cage, frozen!” A little white headstone marks Clyde’s grave on the Cowsills property.
Bud Cowsill believes that love is the key to raising a family. “When the kids do the right thing, they know it,” he says. “And when they do the wrong things, they know it.
“Whenever any member of the family has a problem, we do like all families, sweat, all the while helping it work itself out,” Bud said.
The way that things are going for the Cowsills now, it looks as if most of their problems have been worked out.