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"Tell me what can a poor boy do 'cept to play for a rock roll band..." The Rolling Stones In 1966 Norris Lytton, sax, John Fisher, bass, Mike Clendenin, drummer, Mike Corey, guitarist, Ron Frame, trumpet and Tony Senator keyboards and vocalist extraordinaire were in a popular band in Charleston WV called the Epics. They were a soul band more or less with English invasion influences. John was going to Ohio State, Tony was going to Beckley College in Beckley WV, with fellow classmate Harry Fuller, also a drummer. Mike Corey was attending Morris Harvey, and I believe Ron Frame was also in the local college, and of course, Mike was involved with Corey Brothers - a supplier of fresh fruits, veggies, etc. to Charleston restaurants. Norris was going to West Virginia University. They played lots of James Brown, Chuck Jackson, and enough English covers to make it interesting and diverse. They played regularly at the Sherwood Inn and the Roaring Twenties. That's how Norris met John's sister, Alexa, a unique girl, who he dated. She would come to hear them play along with JV (John's dad). Norris would get on the bus in Morgantown on Friday afternoon and when he arrived in Charleston hours later, the band would pick him up and head straight for the early gig in Charleston. After the early gig they would break down the equipment and go to the Roaring Twenties and play until around 4am or 5am. The next day, Saturday afternoon, they'd rehearse at the Roaring Twenties, and play there that night until again until 4am or 5am. Sunday, Norris would get on the early afternoon bus back to Morgantown and get there around 11pm at night. The schedule was becoming too hard to handle. Finally, Norris was able to take a flight back and fourth during the second semester. Larry was currently a singer without a band. He had decided in his junior year of HS that he wanted to be an entertainer and would sing along with records. He chorded guitar and had started a few small bands before but never got any jobs that paid well. Competition was fierce. He also sat in with a local band named Chuck Birch and the Velvetones with Bonnie Bee at the Moose Club, Elk's Club and Sons of Italy . No one at HS school knew he was a singer until he surprised them at a school talent show by singing Diana by Paul Anka, and Donna by Ritchie Valens. Rockabilly was king of rock and roll. Donna Reed show (with Shelly Fabre) was prime time. Bonanza was the best show on tv along with Ben Casey and Doctor Kildare (Richard Chamberlain). Combat was still on. President Kennedy was alive and well. A few years passed and Larry was attending a local college at West Virginia State. One Friday night in the summer of '66 Larry was cruising in Kanawha City with with a friend his former drummer, Ronnie Binford. They saw Norris walking. He had been in the graduating class with Ronnie a year after Larry. Ronnie said he had gone to school with Norris and that he was in the Epics. So they gave him a ride and Norris invited Larry to one of the Epics rehearsals. Tony Senator and John Fisher were talking about going to WVU where Norris went. They along with Norris were tiring of the routine of the rushed trips between Morgantown and Charleston. The Epics broke up. Tony along with Harry Fuller and John transferred to West Virginia University. Ronnie Frame and Mike Clendenin married their high school sweethearts moved to Charlotte, NC. John convinced Larry to transfer to WVU too. They all became good friends and Larry's brother had just graduated and was giving up his apartment in Morgantown. John and Larry moved into the apartment at 454 Pine Street. Norris already lived on High Street where he met Tom Warfield. It was all so spontaneous they barely had time to enroll in WVU, with only one week left. Tuition was outrageously low, $50 a semester :-) But they all had the grades so they got in. Norris introduced John to Tom Warfield who then moved in at Pine Street and Norris moved to South Park with John Corey and Simon Bailey. I'm not sure where Tony lived. Tom met a guy named Jim Bateman who also moved into Pine Street. Bateman is another story entirely :-) He eventually married a girl named Duck, also another story. Love ya Jim and Duck, where ever you are. Then John Fisher, Norris Lytton, Tony Senator, Tom Warfield and Harry Fuller started a band which Tom ( lead guitar taking the place of Tony's keyboard), named The Glass Menagerie. That line up lasted a semester until Harry got drafted and was sent to Viet Nam. Then Tony who was in ROTC got married and quit the band and moved back to Beckley, eventually to go into the army. Warfield and John asked Larry to be the lead singer, and found a drummer named Jim Straub. Jim was quite a character and had been the Soldier of the Year in 1965. John was the only one experimenting with writing original songs at the time. They were strange. I'd have to say psychedelic. At last Spring was coming and the Glass Menagerie had a tour booked in the Midwest. Tom Warfield married Betsy Gerwhig that winter and decided not to go on tour with the Menagerie. Jack Bond played many different instruments and came to watch all the Glass Menagerie gigs. Norris remembers Jack showing up wherever they played, "I believe the first time was at a fraternity party, then maybe at the Pleasant Valley Fire Hall in Fairmont. He was a fan". Larry also remembers meeting Jack for the first time at a fraternity party where the Menagerie was playing. With Warfield gone, John switched from bass to lead guitar, Norris switched sax to bass, and John invited Jack to join the band as keyboardist. Jack didn't have a keyboard so John offered to buy one for him and let him pay it back little at a time. That spring of 1967 the band started the tour in the Midwest, thanks to John Fisher who had made the connections with agent Ken Adamany in Janesville, Wisconsin, who later discovered the band Cheap Trick. Ken changed our name to the Grass Menagerie and we played songs by the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Animals, Music Machine, Seeds, Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane, and others along with some originals. Larry remembers The Rathskeller, "a very interesting club in Mankato, Minnesota that had the "smallest stage I have ever been on". The local college kids, artists and intellectuals came out to see the psychedelic Grass Menagerie and took them into their circle. There are some beautiful people in the heartland. Larry says "They welcomed us because, as they said, all they ever got in Mankato were some country bands and occassionally, some Buddy Holly cover bands coming up from Texas." There's nothing wrong with Buddy Holly, but variety is the spice of life. And a new kind of music was beginning. As the tour ended, and the band broke up. Norris, Larry, and Jack returned to Morgantown. John Fisher joined the Shadows of Knight and stayed in Chicago I believe. Jim Straub left for parts unknown and the band lost contact with him. After a few weeks back in Morgantown, they ran into a band that was forming with afemale singer, Marla Thomas, and a guitar player Pete. He had just come back from India. Two other guys were jamming with them, John Vaughan, guitar teacher and Ted Smith drummer and music major. Jack, Norris and Larry went to a few of their rehearsals to audition for Pete and Marla's band. But while the ex-Menagerie musicians were auditioning, they were in turn auditioning the others. In the end, it was Norris and Jack who convinced John and Ted to leave Marla and Pete and form yet another new band with the former members of the Menagerie. Wham! Electricity!. That turned out to be the perfect combination and the Mind Garage, not yet named, was born. The magic mix was greater than any one individually. There was an energy surrounding them. 'No' was not in their vocabulary. Through John Vaughan we met the fiery young Reverend Michael Paine, a courageous man who, in the words of the journalist John Corey "withstood the harranging and embarrassing harassment of opposition." It was Reverend Paine's wife Tori who named the band the Mind Garage. Reveredn Paine began formenting a plan to use Rock and Roll in church.John Keester and Bob Reeger, owners of the small Mother Witherspoon bar were kindred souls who having come to an agreement with Rev. and Tori Paine, let us play in their club. By that time Jimi Hendrix was Experienced, Cream was in the White Room, Procul Harum turned a Whiter Shade of Pale, and the Doors were sleeping all night in the Soul Kitchen, Tim Leary had turned on, tuned in and dropped out, Surf Music was dead and Psychedelic music was wild, alive and growing. Morgantown was reeling from the Mind Garage, as her sons and daughters tuned in. Another battleground in the Cultural War was determined.
"Those dirty beatnik hippies" is what they called us. The Witherspoon's beer license was revoked supposedly because alcohol had been sold to a minor. I don't know if that's true or not. Revoking Witherspoon's beer license, leaving soft drinks as the only available beverages, only increased our exposure because now anyone, even those under 18 not previously allowed in the Witherspoon, could come into the club to see us play. We continued to pack the club. That speaks volumes in what was at the time the #1 alcoholic college party town. But as much as we loved The Mother Witherspoon the owners could not make it financially with only soft drinks. We made a transition to the Olympia, where we had not been able to get a job before until our reputation from the Witherspoon preceded us. The Witherspoon closed. The band's reputation and notoriety spread to Pittsburgh. Reverend Michael Paine had met another Reverend Malcolm Boyd who had written a book entitled "Are you Running With Me Jesus". That's when Rev. Paine got the idea to combine the Episcopal church's new Liturgy with rock music. The way Rev, Paine expressed it, "you shouldn't leave your humanity at the door" when you go to church. He wanted to bring the music of the beer halls into church much the same way Bach's music had been used. We premiered the Mass in Morgantown, but it was almost stillborn because a photo of the band and Reverend Paine provoked such controversy the church father's forbade us the use of church property. But at last a place was provided by Reverend Jennings Fast of Wesley Methodist Church. The people came, saw, and that was the turning point. Once we began, it was amazing as the hatred and bigotry toward us disappeared. After the rock worship service, one fur collared woman exclaimed to her dark suited husband on the way out, "I didn't know they were like THAT!! That was BEAUTIFUL". And it was. Cossie was from Pittsburgh. in the spring of 1968. You have to remember this was in the days before 8-tracks, web pages or email and word of mouth was how news of the band had spread. Coz had heard about us and wanted to be our manager. With Cossie and Reverend Paine, the Mind Garage toured the east coast playing the Electric Mass and commercial shows in clubs and arenas. But the Mass was reserved for the church and we never charged for doing it. Where ever we went they invited us back. Often we did return. During 1968 we recorded some demos in the Glen Campbell Studio in Pittsburgh, Pa. Later that same year at Bell Sound Studio in New York City, we recorded Asphalt Mother and Reach Out which was released on our own Morning Glori Music label. Then in 1969 Cossie secured a recording contract for us with RCA Victor. We recorded one album and two singles for RCA studios in New York, and Chicago before making a pilgrimage to the west coast to spend some time in San Francisco and the Haight Ashbury. It had been arranged that Cossie would send our equipment but it never arrived, so we were unable to play. The band returned to Charleston, West Virginia where we took up residence. John Vaughan stayed in California, and eventually married the girl he stayed with, but the rest of the band was soon headed to the RCA studios in Nashville run by Chet Atkins. There we recorded "MIND GARAGE AGAIN" and included the Electric Liturgy. We felt that if we didn't take this opportunity to record it, it could be lost forever, as we did not have plans to play it forever. It was an experiment, and not meant to become the standard service. There were always several spots in the Mass where we could insert any song we wanted. Water and Circus Farm from the 1968 Pittsburgh session were re-recorded as part of the Mass for the AGAIN/Electric Liturgy album because we needed original filler, not because they had an particular significance to the Mass. Sometimes we substituted, "Oh Happy Day" or "People Get Ready", both old spirituals into the spots, or another favorite, "Get Together". There is a tangential history to that song by the Youngbloods, who had also been on RCA before we became the Mind Garage. The Youngbloods' song "Get Together" had been released before. The Dino Valenti song had also been recorded by the Jefferson Airplane who were also on RCA. It had not been as successful as it could have been by either group. I had never heard the song when one day in the winter of 67-68, John and Norris arrived at the Olympia where we were practicing and said let's put this in the Mass. They told me the words and hummed the tune. It became one of our most well liked songs in the Mass, probably because our version was totally original considering I had no model to use. It worked out better that I had never heard it. One day in 1969 at the RCA Studio B in New York ( the studio where Elvis stood under the stairs to achieve an echo effect ) we were warming up with "Get Together" and some RCA executives came in, among them Don Burkheimer. The executives listened as we rehearsed and I remember clearly hearing one of them say with surprise, "hey, we own that song." They started promoting the Youngblood's version again. It appeared in a public service ad on TV. Within six months the song was a chart buster. It is not often that a previously released song is released again several years later by the same group on the same label and becomes a smash hit. We never met the Youngbloods, and I doubt if they knew what part the Mind Garage played in their success, but that Thanksgiving of 1969 we were in San Francisco and we heard they had reveived $200,000 in royalties from RCA. Their response was to take the money and leave RCA. I'm guessing they felt RCA had not supported them enough before. When I told this story to Les Peterson our music consultant he commented: That is interesting about the Youngbloods song. That explains why it charted two different times. It first charted in 1967 and only went to #62. It was re-released with a different B-side and different number but the same version in 1969 and that is when it made it big. So there we were in the band's house in Charleston. We had recorded another album for RCA in Nashville and right after that we played Bill Graham's Fillmore East in New York. Then for the last time we played with the Iron Butterfly. Jack would go home to Fairmont sometimes for days or weeks to see his friends and parents. Norris had always lived in Charleston and he was gone from the band house lots of times too. Plenty of friends dropped in. I can't even remember locking the door. It was open house. Before long Ted and I would drift in and out of the house too. Then in April 1970 the band simply stopped playing. There was no discussion among us, no fanfare, no announcements, and we had not broken up. One by one each of us left the house, drifted, and never came back. Amazingly we walked away, abandoning the house and equipment. It hadn't been planned. I didn't know at the time but later Cossie had collected the equipment and sold it for us. What ever we were thinking, if we were thinking at all. It's as if we had been called together for a time, or a task, and now it was recess. It was like exhaling. It's strange, almost funny. Norris says, somebody forgot to call another practice, that's all. We were as close as brothers, but afterwards we went our separate ways and rarely communicated. Who knows why? I didn't think about it, as if we were under a spell. I didnt have contact with anyone for years. I moved to Detroit with my wife, Vicki, who I had married while on the midwestern tour. Unknown to me, Ted had moved to Detroit too. That will give you an insight as to how little we communicated. I ran into Ted after about a year by accident. But I didn't like the cold in Michigan and moved to Florida. Ted remained in Detroit. Norris and Jack stayed in West Virginia, got their degrees. Jack later moved to Florida after circling the globe a few times. John came back to WVU and got his degree, then returned to California. The band never got together again until one day in the summer of 1983 we all showed up at the Bon Ton, Dr. Ken Roberts' wedding anniversery. Someone asked us to play a few songs and we did using the equipment of a British group who was there. It felt good to play together again, so we made plans to do a recording session in a few weeks. That was the "Carolina Session" After 1983 we drifted apart again for an additional 22 years, rarely communicating. In 2005 I received a CD from Jack of a 1968 session in Pittsburgh. In the Winter of 2004, unknown to Jack, his brother Dan found and took the 1968 demos to Rick Ravenscroft, Jack's long time friend. These tracks had remained lost and forgotten for 35 years. Even though not a live performance, they represent the band at its finest, a young, original, energetic group. RCA heard, loved and signed us, but was never able to capture the raw sound. Rick turned the demo into a CD and presented it to Jack. If that had not happened these songs might have been lost forever, except for Dan and Rick ! Now we are just as excited about them as the day we first recorded them. The Spirit of the 60s had been sleeping but was now awake. It feels like no time has passed. In March 2005 I finally contacted each band member again. Here is what became of us. Ted stayed in Michigan, and played with the Spinners for a while, and many other famous performers. Jack kept on going, traveling the world, and is especially popular in Japan, Canada and Mexico. John Vaughan remains in California, playing Country & Western. Norris remains in WV jamming. I went back to Morgantown for a while, then moved back to Florida. In the 1990's in Palm Beach, I saw Johnny Barrille's name (of the Morgantown Bonnevilles) on a hotel marquee. I called the hotel and Johnny and I had a good chat, but that was the last I ever heard of him. There are dozens of other songs that we wrote and never released, packed away in forgotten places. Every now and then some come to light such as "Stained Glass Windows" written by Larry in 1967 before he joined the Glass Menagerie. The Mind Garage played it in concert occassionally. It was finally recorded in the 1983 session with Evan Jones on guitar. At that session, the band, minus John Vaughan, got together for one day after 13 years apart. When you listen to "Stained Glass Windows", you can get some insight as to just how tight we were with each other. We talked it out, went over the lyrics, agreed who did what and when. It was recorded in one take with no rehearsal. The 1968 Early Years CD has been released on the Morning Glori Music label. The strangest and most psyched out song on it is "Norris" also known as "What Shall We Do Till Norris Comes". Its erie. Very strange. Anyone around in the 60s might have flashbacks as they listen! It really pulls you in and takes you back. At least it does for me. Turn it up. Way up. It makes the walls spin or maybe thats the head and not the walls. It employs all the technics that were used to make our live shows hypnotizing, demanding the crowd's complete attention. A live show really was psychedelic, mind bending. There are great crescendos and silences, mysterious hurried passages in panic, like something is chasing you and then suddenly, safety in soft alien music giving you space to breathe. When we played in clubs everything stopped, nobody talked, nobody danced, nobody moved, they just watched and listened in unbelieving rapt silence. When a song was over, the audience was in a trance, and it took them a few moments to come down and realize they could move again. Sometimes you could hear a pin drop until someone snapped out of it and started clapping or cheering. In 2007 the Mind Garage recorded some new material which will be released in the future. Its a mixture of songs, some for fun, with at least two being for a rock opera we hope to complete. In 2007 the band, along with Artie Kornfeld, the Father of Woodstock, organized and headlined Goodstock 2007, a three day rock festival in Summersville, West Virginia. |