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Read the following Excerpt:
The Chicago Four: G.E., Phil, Stu and Chuck—a
scary bunch, seemingly drawn together as much by fear and loathing as love
for each other. —Alex de Grassi
The next morning, Chuck invited me to go garage
saling with him. Over a breakfast of my huevos rancheros, he checked the
morning L.A. Times and circled all the yard sale announcements within a few
miles of Venice Beach. He also checked the used musical instruments section
of the classifieds, which turned up one particular horn of interest: a 1941
Conn Ten-M Tenor Saxophone for two hundred bucks.
“Wow!” he said. “If this thing’s in good
condition, it’s a real find!”
“Why?” I said.
“Because Conn stopped making it during the war
when the government commissioned them to make war stuff instead. They needed
bronze so badly that Conn melted down all the molds. Then, when they returned
to making saxes after the war, they had to create new molds. Their postwar
horns just aren’t as good as their prewar ones.”
“You
know a lot about this stuff, huh?” I said. I hadn’t heard him play yet, but I
was learning to respect Chuck’s business savvy.
“Well,
I should,” he said. “It’s how I’ve earned my living for the past ten years.
Let’s go.” I learned he’d been supporting himself by repairing horns for
several local music stores as well as buying them used, fixing them up, and
reselling them.
Next
I knew, we were out the door, into the still-shuddering Santa Ana wind, and
face-to-grill with “Ruby,” as Chuck had dubbed his cherry red ’65 Bel Air.
Ah,
Ruby: the latest in a long line of vintage vehicles to be operated by Chuck.
The bumper sticker read, “Another shitty day in paradise.”
“I
bought her literally from a little old lady from Pasadena,” he said, more
than a hint of pride in his voice. “She was in mint condition.”
“Was?”
“She
got hit by another car on the passenger side last week, so the door won’t
open. You’ll have to get in on the driver’s side and slide across. Or you can
do what Tiffany does: Climb in and out through the open passenger window,
legs first. Gives the guys a thrill, especially when she’s not wearing
underwear,” he said, grinning.
Mulling
over this image, I said, “Maybe we should take my car.”
“No,
really, Ruby’s fine. All she needs is a spare tire.”
“Don’t
tell me you’ve been driving around without a spare tire!” I gasped in
disbelief.
“It’s
okay, I’ll get one tomorrow.” Chuck seemed astonishingly nonchalant about
this, to me disturbing, fact. I’d been raised by an aerospace engineer father
who was such a safety nut he’d made me take the train from L.A. to New York
when I first went to college. He didn’t trust airplanes because he claimed
they were badly maintained. Before he allowed me to get my driver’s license,
I had not only to be able to change a tire but also to take a written test of
safety and maintenance questions created by him. One of his cardinal rules
was never to drive without a spare tire. But, well, rules were made to be,
well, broken, and Chuck inspired a faith I couldn’t explain.
I
checked to make sure I had my Auto Club card with me, decided we could always
get towed somewhere if we got a flat, then slid inside and across Ruby’s
front seat, thankful that it was a bench, not buckets.
The roads required careful negotiation as we headed to
Culver City, site of the Conn Ten-M. The Santa Ana had left its typical
flotsam: garbage cans rolling sideways on Pico Boulevard, palm fronds and
eucalyptus branches littering driveways. Chuck provided a running commentary
about his musical background as he navigated the Venice back streets, telling
me about how he’d shifted his creative interest toward music after leaving
high school, where he’d focused more on photography.
His initial independent foray began with a rental place on
Stuenkel Road in Monee, Illinois, during the early ’70s. With bands such as
Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears gaining popularity, Chuck heard
alternatives to the blues he’d grown up with. Music that featured hot horn
sections had galvanized him, inspiring his own creative horn and wind
concepts. He began trekking into the city, getting together with Jerry Smith,
a bassist who had been gigging with The Flock.
Before long, Chuck had joined forces with some other
musicians to form a band they called K.O. Bossy. They started out playing
cover songs of the hits, particularly the Kinks. They would also do “Good
Morning Little Schoolgirl” and other weird stuff. The guys in the band were
big partiers and influenced Chuck to join in their laid back, hang-out
lifestyle that was required for a happening rock band. They would play at a
coffee house type of club called The Twelfth of Never in Richmond Park.
K.O. Bossy became a fixture at The Twelfth of Never and
literally ran the place. They served the coffee, did everything—all the
owners wanted was a cut of the “door.” At one point the band decided to add a
violin player, but they were still doing all cover stuff—no one wrote for the
band, so they weren’t doing anything really original—but they were like one
big family. Although they recorded an album, it didn’t propel the band to the
stardom they had anticipated. According to Chuck’s sister Suzin, the first
pressings were off-center and produced a wah wah wah sound when they
were played, although this has been disputed by a fellow K.O. Bossy band
member. Needless to say, this didn’t do much for record sales.
“Where did the band’s name come from?” I wanted to know.
“K.O. Bossy was the name on the back of Curly Howard’s
bathrobe in a Three Stooges short,” Chuck said. “I think it was called
‘A-Milking We Will Go,’ when the stooges put Curly in a milking contest. He
enters the ring and has K.O. Bossy on his back.”
One of those hanging out with Chuck in those days was Warren
Flaschen, who, although two years ahead of him at Rich East High School, had
not actually met Chuck there. One night Warren ordered pizza from Romano’s,
and the guy who delivered it to him turned out to be Chuck. They got to
talking as Chuck handed the pizza to Warren and took his money. By the end of
the evening Chuck was eating Warren’s pizza with him.
Later, Chuck played with the McIan Forrest Stage Band, who went on to tour
with the Bee Gees as their backup band, and when he returned from the Bee
Gees tour he went back to delivering pizzas. This was when he wrote his first
memorable—according to a longtime friend—song, “It’s a Long Way from the
Kitchen to Philharmonic Hall.”
I wanted to know what it was like playing with the Bee Gees, my fascination
with celebrities getting the better of me.
“Terrible. They were fucked up most of the time, and they
only had me playing flute, when I really wanted to play sax.”
After his stint with the Bee Gees, Chuck began showing up at
the Situation Lounge in Steger. The Yazoo Shuffle Band played there, and
that’s how he met future ’Faxers Phil Maggini and G.E. Stinson, who were both
in the band. Phil hailed from a neighboring town, Homewood, and had been
playing in a group called Friends at the Valley View Young Adults Club in
Frankfort. Friends got booked with a band called Mama’s Bootleg Blues Band,
which featured G.E. on guitar. It was Phil’s first introduction to G.E.
Friends had come on first and done a Paul Butterfield tune, then G.E. came on
and said, “We’re gonna open with a song the first band did but we’re gonna
play it the right way.”
Eventually, Phil hooked up with G.E. in Yazoo Shuffle Band,
and Chuck started coming around and jamming with them. Even though Chuck
played a jazzy rather than bluesy sax—limiting the number of tunes he might
do with Yazoo—they all liked each other, and a strong bond began to develop.
Like many bands, Yazoo’s demise came about mainly through
lack of funds to support the band members, but it didn’t help that G.E. would
often become visibly disgusted with the audience. One night in Bloomington
someone in the crowd just stood up and screamed—really went wild—following
one of G.E.’s guitar solos, although he didn’t consider it one of his best.
Contemptuous that the hapless fan didn’t know the difference, G.E. walked to
the front of the stage and spit on the audience, thereafter earning the
nickname “Spit.”
Once Phil, G.E. and Chuck began jamming together, the need
for a keyboardist and drummer arose. The problem was solved when Warren began
taking recording engineer classes in Chicago. He befriended the teacher of
the class, told him about the band’s project and how they were looking for a
drummer and a keyboard player who could play Mellotron. It so happened that
Doug Maluchnik, a keyboardist who lived in New Jersey, had inquired about
this course. Warren called him up, he came out and auditioned for the band,
they decided it would work, and he joined up. At first he commuted between
Illinois and New Jersey, where his family lived, but eventually they all moved
to Illinois.
While Doug had never met drummer Stu Nevitt, he had heard of
him. At that point Stu lived in Miami, played with a jazz group and took
lessons from the same person who taught Bruce Springsteen’s drummer, “Mighty”
Max Weinberg. Doug contacted Stu who soon joined the rest of the band in
Chicago. With the addition of Doug and Stu to the fledgling group, the
as-yet-unnamed Shadowfax was complete.
The
First Shadowfax, 1974: Phil, Doug Maluchnik, Stu Nevitt, Chuck and G.E. [l-r]
Chuck finished his
back story about the band as he deftly maneuvered Ruby around a downed power
line that had partially blocked the road. He had proven himself to be a
cautious driver, belying Ruby’s impairments. However, I was beginning to
wonder if maybe we should have taken Blue Bomber after all. I glanced around
Ruby’s interior and noticed it was actually in pretty good shape, except for
the headliner, which was hanging in shreds from the ceiling like seaweed.
“What happened to the headliner?” I asked.
“Oh, that. I took Phil for a ride after he had a fight with
Tiffany. He took out his aggression on the headliner...with his fists. I
guess he was a little pissed off.”
“A little?” Before I could further question Chuck about the bass player, we
arrived at our destination.
The Ten-M turned out to be the property of an old lady whose
husband had died recently. She had discovered the sax in her attic, and Chuck
noted it was still in its original case. The old lady said her husband had
only played it a few times before going into the service, and when he
returned from the war, he was a changed man, no longer interested in music.
Chuck considered this information and said, “Does it still
play?”
“I don’t know, but you can try it out if you’d like,” she
said.
Chuck wrested the gleaming horn from its case and began
examining it with what looked to me like real tenderness, the way a mother
might hold her newborn. He depressed each key, then reached for the
mouthpiece.
“The keys seem to work and the mouthpiece still has a reed
in it, but the cork’s pretty shot,” he said, twisting the mouthpiece onto the
horn.
Then, lifting the sax to his mouth, he blew out some notes.
They were only scales, but I could tell he knew how to play it. His tone was
rich and confident. This guy really is a musician, I thought. But can he play
anything besides scales?
Chuck put the sax back in its case, schmoozed the old lady
for a few minutes, then offered her one-fifty.
“My son told me not to accept less than one seventy-five,”
she said.
“Okay,” Chuck said, pulling out his wallet. “I’ll take it.”
He counted out the money and handed it to her.
Grabbing the sax with one hand and my hand with the other,
he thanked the old lady, and we exited into the wind.
When we had climbed back into Ruby, I said, “You really are
a musician, aren’t you.”
“What did you think?” he said, glancing up and down the
street. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Let’s go to my place,”
pulling Ruby onto Pico Boulevard and heading to Santa Monica. “I’m supposed
to meet Robit there in a few minutes.”
“Who’s Robit?”
“A Jewish South African ex-pat musician friend. We’ve been
working up some of his tunes.”
“How did you meet him?”
“Phil and I were standing in line at a movie theater in
Venice and Robit was right behind us. We hit it off right away.”
“What kind of music does he play?”
“Robit is actually more of a poet/lyricist than musician.
Kinda like Bob Dylan on a bad day. Phil calls him a master of the ‘abused
folk song.’ But we need someone to play with, and he needs backup musicians.
We’re going to go over some tunes today to get ready for a showcase next
week. There’s a guy from Virgin Records interested in doing an album with
him. Maybe we can get him interested in signing Shadowfax too. Or Eko-Eko.”
“What’s ‘Eko-Eko’?” I said.
As we headed to Santa Monica, Chuck described Eko-Eko, the
band he and Phil were forming. Chuck had written a couple of rock tunes which
he had recorded with Phil and some other musicians. “Sensory Overload” was
composed in his Santa Monica apartment one night while listening to the urban
cacophony emanating from outside his window, a stark contrast to the quiet
and peacefulness of the rural Illinois he had left:
I live in a modern city,
Twentieth Century all around me.
Electric music is in my house.
Voices of strangers come through my window.
Traffic comes and always continues.
My T.V. won’t let me down.
Down to the car and go to the store,
My antique V-8 engine roars.
Radio news tells me the score: sensory overload.
“Elevator Racing” evolved from a dream:
We were elevator racing in the Empire State,
To see how hot we could get the cable.
Like living in a Frigidaire falling through
space,
In a twentieth-century fable.
Because there’s so few thrills up in the modern
world,
You feel so insecure.
You’ve got to keep your head when the cable
breaks,
You’ve got to jump ’fore it hits the floor.
Chuck warbled the lyrics to me as we pulled into the carport
of his apartment on Eighth Street in Santa Monica. The first thing to catch
my eye upon entering Chuck’s place was a baby grand piano that occupied the
dining room along with a table upon which the artifacts of his horn repair
business—instrument parts, saws, soldering irons and electrical wires—lay
strewn. Globs of what appeared to be congealed glue covered the table. As
soon as I stepped inside, I was immediately attacked by a small, truculent,
parrot—a blue conure to be precise.
“Blue! Cut it out!” said Chuck. “Don’t worry. He won’t bite,
but he might go for your earrings. He likes bright objects like that.”
“Don’t you keep this thing in a cage?” I said, feeling for
my earrings and cringing as Blue took a few dives at my head.
“Yeah, but he prefers to have a run of the house and to sit
on my shoulder while I work.”
I glanced around at the disarray, wondering how much of it
was Blue’s responsibility and how much was Chuck’s, not to mention his absent
roommate Tiffany, who had not struck me as a neatnik. I could see that the
curtains framing the kitchen and living room windows had been shredded at
their edges. In some places, the curtain hooks had been pulled out from the
rod. Blue had resumed his perch on the curtain rod in the upper corner of the
kitchen window and chewed on one of the hooks, which he grasped in one clawed
foot. This was obviously a favored spot for him—globs of what appeared to be
his poop dripped down the wall and curtains.
Despite my trepidation at spending time in such an
unsanitary environment, I was curious about Chuck’s music.
“Play something for me,” I said to him as he scurried around
trying to make the apartment a little more presentable. “I want to hear what
the lyricon sounds like. How about Watercourse Way?”
“Nah, I’ve never been happy with the way it turned out. But
I do have a demo of something classical I did with an Oberheim synth player
named Linda Nardini.” With that,
Chuck walked over to a reel-to-reel tape player in the living room and turned
it on. What followed was the most indescribably ethereal and unique music I’d
ever heard, despite the roughness of the recording. It had an amazing range,
from notes high like a flute down to a low tone like a bass clarinet. Chills
corresponding to the sound frequency ranged through my body outside my
control, from the highs that tingled in my skull to the lows that rumbled in
my belly. What kind of magic was this? Even with my untrained ears, I
understood immediately that Chuck’s was a talent destined for fame, if not
fortune.
It was love at first sound.
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