| »Dawn Eden interviews Tom Finn |
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DAWN EDEN:
I sat with Tom Finn on the upper balcony of the Palladium, a few hours before the clubs doors were to open on a Friday night.
Besides DJing at the Palladium, Finn emcees at another New York disco called Heartbreak. The interview began with a few questions about
Finn's pre-Left Banke band, The Magic Plants. What were they like?
TOM FINN: Psychedelic, sort of psych with a British style, that was 1965. DAWN EDEN: 1965 was a bit early for psych wasn't it? TOM FINN: I know, but look at our name! THE MAGIC PLANTS! It self suggests marijuana. DAWN EDEN: Was the Magic Plants record on Verve ever released? TOM FINN: Yeah, it was out somewhere. I don't think it did too well. But it was released. The name of the single was "I'm A Nothing" (Tom starts singing it) "Well, I'm the one that you hear on the radio..." DAWN EDEN: Did you play bass on that? TOM: No, I just sang background on that record, I didn't know how to play that well back then, I was only 16. DAWN: (Finn had also been in a harmony group called THE CASTLES) How did you decide to make the bass your instrument in The Left Banke? TOM: I remember I was disappointed when it came around to that, I wanted to play the guitar, but the limitations to my talent were such that I had to play an instrument where my fingers didn't move so fast. I just didn't have the chops to play guitar, so I played bass. DAWN: (Finn introduced the Left Banke members to each other. He also introduced his girlfriend to Mike Brown, her name was Renee.) TOM: A bunch of teen's got an apartment together around Tin Pan Alley, in the broadway area, & Renee lived there part time when she wasn't living with her mother. Most of the kids were like half runaways in those days, & there was a "crash pad" there, as we used to call it. I guess I brought her to the studio one day were Michael met her & fell in love with her. DAWN: Did Michael fall in love immediately? TOM: Just about, yea. For a kid of 16 or 17 she was just sort of free & liberal & open minded, sexy, everything, you know? She was just very different for that time so she just bowled Mike over. I was broken hearted when she lost interest in me after a while. DAWN: Did Mike write "Pretty Ballerina" & "She May Call You Up" around the same time as "Walk Away Renee?" TOM: Yea, he wrote "Walk Away Renee." Well, he basically wrote it, but we all wrote it together. Around that time, maybe with in another month he wrote "Pretty Ballerina" about her, even though she wasn't a ballerina, and "She May Call You Up" was written on the same day, or maybe the same week, as "Pretty Ballerina," & he never mentioned at the time that they were about her. DAWN: Were you broken up with her by this time? TOM: Yeah, she was going out with the drummer of the group by then, Warren David. Warren David was a blond guy, our original drummer. Mike's father kicked him out of the band. DAWN: Why was that? TOM: Well, Warren was bi-sexual, & Mike's father found out about that, & that was frowned upon. One thing that you couldn't be in those days was black or bisexual. Warren is now a transsexual, I understand. He's now named Lisa. I don't think Mike felt comfortable about Warren being a girl or thinking he was a girl. But at that same time Michael & Warren ran off to California together & sold Michael's coin collection, & Mike's father, being that Mike was a minor, had them stopped at the airport. We mentioned to Mike's father that Mike left for California, & he got right on the phone, found out what airplane they were getting on, what names they went under & he had them arrested when they reached California, thrown in prison, & then returned to New York. DAWN: I've observed that Mike's father must have felt like he had to have control over Mike? TOM: Absolutely, Mike's father & his control is what killed the Left Banke. No question about it. He cut us off from Brian Epstien, the BEATLES manager! He wanted to manage us in the UK & handle us. That offer was made in late 66 through Walter Hofer, the Beatles lawyer in New York. DAWN: And Harry said "No way?" TOM: That's my understanding, he said no. He also turned down Richard Avedon, who wanted to shoot a photography session on us in return for us to do a party. And he also cut us off from Danny Fields who was a manager of Hullabaloo magazine then & went on to discover the Ramones & so many other groups. DAWN: Why did he want to cut the Left Banke off from all of these connections? TOM: He thought he had the golden goose & he was going to slay it himself. He was just like Colonel Parker. He had the straw hat, the cigar & everything. He's from Kalamazoo, or whereever. He was just an old-time, straw hat wearing, cigar smoking, carnival type huckster. At the same time he was talented, and, for a bunch of immature little kids, he made us feel like we were important sometimes. I'm not blaming him for everything, I'm just saying that if he had any vision or insight or had any sort of savoir-faire as Brian Epstein did, he would have had a giant group. DAWN: (I asked Tom a question I asked some of the other members) How well were you able to duplicate live what you had created on your recordings? TOM: We weren't. It was another problem that the management & the people looking after us didn't take care of. You know, we were just a bunch of you kids who didn't know any better, & I think our success was premature. We really did need strong management. We needed somebody to look after us & nobody did. They just sent us out there with the worst possible equipment, on the longest, most poorly planned tours that you can think of. And the days on the road took their toll, & we couldn't stand each other after being cooped up in that car. DAWN: Could the audience tell the band sounded different than the recordings? TOM: Definitely. The only time we fared well was when we were on tour with a major group, like the Beach Boys or the Mamas & the Papas. When we did the show our selves we never had a sound system that we could even use. We had to rely on what ever sound system was at the hall when we got there. When we used the Beach Boys system, we came off pretty well. Or when we played with the Temptations in Cobo Hall in Detroit. 25,000 people. We tended to do good the better the sound system was. In those days there weren't very many good sound systems. DAWN: Brian Wilson wasn't touring with the Beach Boys when the Left Banke was touring with them, but don't you think he & Michael Brown would have hit it off? TOM: Michael & Brian are just about on par. I mean, I wouldn't say one is more talented than the other. They're both mad geniuses. Except I think Brian obviously got a little more accomplished than Mike, because Mike was a lot younger & didn't have brothers around him like that & didn't have the family support. I think Brian flipped out for different reasons. I think Michael was all washed up by the time he was 20. DAWN: Is it true that the Left Banke members never really liked each other or got along that well? TOM: That's not true, we got along very well. Like I said, there were things that led to our fighting & not getting along, which I guess that part was true, we didn't get along. But we did like each other & there is a difference. The reason that we didn't get along was the circumstances & the frustrations surrounding the group. We weren't getting paid, we would do a tour where we did 25 to 30 cities & we would come back & get shit! They would say, "well, you owe money for this or that", & this one would get more $$ then that one! We were being mishandled to the n'th degree. That's exactly why we didn't get along. We were thrown on the road & put in a car & had to drive from New York to Detroit to Texas & Mike's father would keep all the money, basically. DAWN: What do you remember about the Left Banke's first gig? the one at the church? TOM: The thing I remember about the first gig was we got paid $100 for it, that was 65 or 66, & we did the gig at the church, we didn't even have a hit record yet. We took about $50 or $60 of that money & rented a limousine and went & played that show. So right from the beginning we really had a sense of flair. You know, we had the limo, the blonde, & when we arrived all the girls started screaming because back then not many people had long hair. We had shoulder length long hair & a limo! It was so exiting. There were about 1000 people there, at Our Lady Of Solace, in the Bronx. DAWN: Did the Left Banke ever make a tv appearance? TOM: Yeah. Around that time, we did the Zacherly UHF show, which was in New Jersey on Channel 31 or something. Zacherly's Disco-Teen. We did the Clay Cole show with the Rolling Stones in New York. We did Shindig, Upbeat in Cleveland, Where The Action Is, American Bandstand. DAWN: When did the band's internal tensions begin? TOM: I'll tell you exactly when they began..... They began after the hit, before then we were all very humble, we didn't know what we were going to do, we didn't know if we would ever make it. 10 labels turned down Walk Away Renee! Capitol, Audio Fidelity. Michael's dad got tired of taking it around, because he had tried to get us a deal on a record before that they all turned down as well called "I've Got Something On My Mind" backed with "I Haven't Got The Nerve". We recorded those two songs before Walk Away. Then we tried one more shot & it didn't look like it was working. Then Mike & Warren left for California before the thing was even completed. While they were in California we put the vocal parts on Renee, then when they got back, Mike's father mailed it out to about 10 more labels & one of them said, "Ok, we'll take a shot, we'll put it out." It became a big hit immediately. DAWN EDEN: And that is when the tension began? TOM FINN: Yea, because we started playing shows to 5 & 6 thousand people, we'd do the Ohio state fair or something like that, & it was a lot to ask a kid to do. You know, to go on stage with Led Zeppelin or something like that. I mean, it was alot. We would shit in our pants you know? Then we didn't get any money for it! We got very resentful. Then we blamed Michael. Michael didn't want to go on the road anymore, & then we figured he was making all of the money, him & his father were splitting it. It was terrible, really terrible. DAWN: When Brown left, how did the Left Banke feel they could go on without him? TOM: Well, I could ask that same question, how did Mike feel he could go on without us? Because he formed another group called the Left Banke & they released "Ivy Ivy" which is now out on commercial release on our album "The History Of The Left Banke", which is a glaring mistake performed by Rhino Records. DAWN: I was surprised to hear Tom talk that way, I asked him if he really was unhappy about Rhino releasing Left Banke material. TOM- Yes, because Rhino is not really representing the history of THE Left Banke, because Ivy Ivy is not THE Left Banke Nor are 4 other songs on that album. "Myrah," all of that stuff was Steve Martin on acid at Elephant 5 studios, being fed cocaine & told "Sing kid, Sing!" I mean, it had nothing to do with the Left Banke, & I'm surprised that Rhino would put that on there. DAWN: So what you mean is, The Left Banke was neither Michael Brown nor the three original members, but rather, was all four of then together? TOM: Definitely, it was a chemical reaction. We terminated our contracts with Mike's father & our road managers. Bill Ottinger & Roger Rubinstein become our regular managers. They opened an office called Rubott & we nurtured 3 or 4 other local bands. One of them was called the Chain Reaction. Their lead singer & drummer was Steve Talarico, who later became Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. We paid him $50 a week as a song writer, for 1 or 2 years. I hired him to sing back up on the songs I wrote for Left Banke Too, our second album. He appears on "Dark Is The Bark," "Nice To See You," "My Friend Today" & "There's Gonna Be A Storm." DAWN: Brown, Martin, Cameron & yourself reunited to record the "Love Songs In The Night" single for Buddha records. Was this originally to be a permanent reunion? TOM- We were just testing the waters to see what would happen. DAWN: By this time you were playing the guitar? TOM: Well it was half me & half Hugh McCracken. Hugh played the lead & I played the electric rhythm. DAWN: Why did the single come out under Steve Martin's name & not the Left Banke? TOM: That was Dominic Sicilia, who was this guy who was the manager of Stories at the time. That was his bright idea. All they were doing was just trying to control the future of something that had no idea of what it even was they had. They should have just left us alone & everything would have turned out fine. DAWN: In 1978 you reunited with Martin & Cameron to record for Cam music. Did working with them feel the same as it did 10 years before then? TOM: It was different, I worked very hard on that project & I wrote about a dozen songs that I thought were pretty good. If I would have had help from Steve, it would have been a lot better. But Steve & George had both developed alcohol problems, so they thought more about drinking & getting high than they did working. They basically didn't believe in the project & didn't know what they were looking for. It didn't work & it could have. I mean the basis was there if they had been willing to work. DAWN: Did the other members want to record their own songs instead of the ones you wrote? TOM: Well, I did write several songs with Steve on that project. "Heartbreaker" I wrote with Steve, although I wrote 90 percent of it. I did use an idea that he had. They would vote for their own songs to be used, even if it was an inferior song, rather than a good song of mine. DAWN: So did the band have the same kind of tension as it did 10 years earlier? TOM: Yeah, worse. DAWN: Were the Cam releases on Bam Caruso & Relix legitimate releases? TOM: I have my lawyer looking into that. I guess Victor Benedetto from Cam has the right to release that since he does own the masters. But we have not received any royalties from BMI or any notification of release, nor have we signed a mechanical license to release it. I'm gonna wait to see what happens. At this point I don't don't know if we will get any royalties from the Bam Caruso deal, we may have to bring Benedetto to court to collect any money. DAWN: Are you currently working on any projects? TOM: Funny you should ask, I'm getting together with Michael Brown this week, he & I are going to attempt working as a production team together. I write, he writes & I know how to get the current sounds. He's creative, I'm creative so we are going to give it a go & see what happens. I think the difference now is that whatever resentment I did have in the past or he might have had, I think we have both grown up a bit & it's all water under the bridge. I'd like things to be easy for a change instead of difficult. Everything was always a struggle back with the Left Banke. Mike say's he has a singer right now that sings his songs really good, so with Mike's songs, my arrangements & vocalizing, I would think most of the sound would center around the Piano & Synth. DAWN: If this singer works out, will this project go on for the next 20 years of the Left Banke's history? TOM: I don't know, you see, 'cause unless Mike & I become a production team & produce a lot of different artist, it doesn't make sense to just use this singer to get a deal and then be the producers. Either we will be producers of different artist or WE'LL find a singer & put together a band. Finn's parting notes on the Left Banke: We got together in '65 so we were pre psychedelic. Our roots were the same as those of the Byrds & the Beau Brummels. Although we weren't as popular as those bands we deserve our place in Rock history as a pre-psych, long hair, American Rock n Roll band. |
