| »History Of The Left Banke - Tom Finn's Story 1985 |
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I introduced the group members to one another. I met George in
‘64. Steve I met at City Squire Hotel in
New York
after a Rolling Stones concert. He had just come here from Madrid.
His mother was a flamenco guitar player.
His father was a representante in New York, but died six months after moving to New York. I was in a
group called The Magic Plants recording for the Verve label, and we were
produced by World United, which was Michael’s father Harry Lookofsky.
I met Michael up at World United and introduced him to George, who was in a
group called The Morticians, at the time. Michael was working in the studio,
cleaning up and hanging around and playing piano for Reparata
and the Delrons, a group his father recorded. We just became friends to start a band. If you had long hair you were in a band, (this was early ‘65), and Michael had the keys to his father’s studio. His father was a serious Broadway producer, not big time, but he had Reparata and the Delrons. He had this Steinway piano, drums, amp, and we would hang around in the studio, invite girls up, play the instruments, but we never recorded. We sang Beatles songs, Kinks songs, Zombies songs. Then his father started getting interested in us ‘cause Steve had a remarkable voice and perfect pitch and all this music in him — he’s half gypsy — and we had this nice vocal sound. I was in a Brooklyn vocal group called the Castles, and we could hit a real good harmony because been doing it for three or four years on street corners. George and I could sing, and Steve had the better voice, so the three of us together had a tight three part harmony. We couldn’t play instruments; except Michael who played a classical piano. We were street-smart the three of us, and Michael was this classic, closet-case intellectual kid from Great Neck who had taken piano lessons from the time he was four. We would stand around Michael at the piano and filter our ideas through him; he would use all our ideas, it was a collaboration. Michael had the musical background to interpret what we were doing, and that was the creative essence of The Left Banke. The first thing we recorded was “I’ve Got Something On My Mind,” mid- ‘65, the other song on the date being “I Haven’t Got The Nerve,” which became the flipside of “Walk Away Renee.” “Walk Away Renee” was recorded late in 1965 or early 1966 and was turned down by at least ten major labels. Renee was my first girlfriend. See, I was the catalyst in the group. I would make the introductions and this and that. I brought Renee over to the studio, and Michael fell in love with her. She didn’t want to have anything to do with Michael, and the song is the expression of a teenager’s despair and loneliness. The same day he wrote “Pretty Ballerina” about her; and “She May Call You Up Tonight.” “Renee ended up marrying a guy called Woody from a band called The Strangers who used to play the Night Owl a lot. She moved to Boston had some children. I haven’t heard from her since. Michael had a way of drawing everything out of people. For the most part, Michael did write “Renee” but the arranger on the session, John Abbott, came up with a big chord change in the beginning of the hook. Michael’s father played classical violin, and he was a session man, so he got a lot of friends to work very cheaply. We got a string quartet, and the drummer was Al Rogers, and Hugh McCracken played guitar on a few things on the album. He played on “What Do You Know,” “Barterers and Their Wives,” and maybe “She May Call You lip Tonight.” On bass we used Joe Mack, a legendary bass player, mainly to save time the studio men would play our lines. It was never a matter of them coming up with a part, but we were basically a vocal group. Our original drummer was Warren David and he played on the first two songs. It was his drum part that was copied for “Walk Away Renee.” George was originally the guitarist. For “Walk Away Renee” they got Al Rogers in to play drums. What happened was Warren was thrown out of the group by Michael’s father. We had recorded the track to “Walk Away Renee” and everybody thought the group was a bomb because we weren’t getting anywhere, so Michael and Warren left the group and went to California to try something on their own, selling Michael’s coin collection for planefare. Michael’s father found out about it and had them stopped as soon as they got off the airplane, and thrown in jail. While all this was going on, I did the vocals with Steve and George on a two track overdub. Michael’s father was a diehard. The group was almost broken up, but Harry had invested some money in it - not much - so he went out and sold it to Charlie Fach at Mercury. The record entered Billboard at 69 with a bullet; this was July of 1966. It broke in Erie, Pennsylvania and jumped over to Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, and went right to number one really quickly. We went from being a bunch of street kids to signing autographs, and we could barely play. It was a joke. We went out with a U-Haul and no sound system. We had to set up our own equipment, many times in front of packed houses after we had been driving hundreds of miles. We’d recorded “Pretty Ballerina” at the beginning of 1967 on the fly at this small studio, and then we moved into Mercury Studios. That was the beginning of the end. The local bands who were opening for us had nothing better to do than practice and buy equipment; so they’d blow us off the stage. It finally got to Michael, and he just decided he would be like Brian Wilson and not go on the road with the group just stay home and write. The rest of us got very resentful of that, so we hired a lawyer to terminate the deal with Harry. We broke the ties that bind, and went on to do Left Banke Too and let our road managers manage us. They were inexperienced, and the record was a mishmosh of several different producers. We tried to make a reconciliation before we went in and did that second album, and went in and did “Desiree” with Michael playing, at the Capitol Records studio on 46th Street, with Bobby Greg on drums. It was really well received by the critics and radio, but dropped off quickly. You see, Michael had formed another group called The Left Banke with Bert Sommer on vocals, and they recorded a song called “Ivy Ivy.” Our lawyer threatened a lawsuit to these people, and we had their record stopped. After that, the radio stations didn’t really cotton playing anything by us. Steve Talarico, now known as Steven Tyler (Aerosmith) sings a bit on the second album. He was in a band called The Chain Reaction, who’d opened for us, and I brought him in to do some harmonies. He sang on “Nice To See You,” “My Friend Today,” and “Dark Is The Bark.” He was hungry, and a good singer, so we put him on there. In those days, the only guys making it out of New York were us and The Rascals. In 1968 we finally broke up. It had gotten too ridiculous. The personality problems within the group were insurmountable. Steve was impossible; but his voice was just so amazing. Emmit Lake was our keyboardist at that point. He was the music editor of the East Village Other. The last show we did was in Dade, Florida after which we were supposed to open for Led Zeppelin’s first show in Louisiana! There were some efforts to reform the group in the Seventies, backed by Victor Benedetto of CAM Music. I approached him as a writer, and he got this bright idea to reform The Left Banke around me. As they were ready to put out a hundred and fifty grand I said okay. Victor treated us fairly, but for various reasons, the production was really schlocky, so they couldn’t get a deal. We became a product of how people saw us. |
